Chapter Twenty Seven.The Fugitives.Don and Jem plunged almost simultaneously into the black, cold water, and felt the sea thundering in their ears.Then Jem, being broader and stouter than his companion, rose to the surface and looked round for Don; but a few seconds of agony ensued before the water parted and the lad’s head shot up into the faint light shed by the lanthorns.“Now for it, Mas’ Don,” whispered Jem; “think as it’s a race, and we’re going to win a cup at a ’gatta. Slow and sure, sir; slow and sure, long, steady strokes, and keep together.”“They’re calling to us to stop, Jem,” whispered Don.“Let ’em call, Mas’ Don. Somebody else seems a-calling of me, and that’s my Sally. Oh, don’t I wish I hadn’t got any clothes.”“Can they see us?” whispered Don, as they swam steadily on.“I don’t believe they can, sir; and if they can, they won’t see us long. Shouldn’t be surprised if they lowered a boat.”“Ah! Look out!” whispered Don. “Shall we dive?”For he heard the clicking of the muskets as they missed fire.“Well, I do call that cowardly,” said Jem, as he heard the order to load; “shooting at a couple of poor fellows just as if they was wild duck.”“Swim faster, Jem,” said Don, as he gazed back over his shoulders at the lights as the shots rang out.“No, no; swim slower, my lad. They can’t see us; and if they could, I don’t believe as the men would try and hit us. Ah! Not hit, are you?”“No, Jem; are you?”“Not a bit of it, my lad. There they go again. Steady. We’re all right now, unless a boat comes after us. We shall soon get ashore at this rate, and the tide’s helping up, and carrying us along.”“Toward shore, Jem, or out to sea?”“Shore, of course,” said Jem, as he swam on his side, and kept an eye on the faint lights of the ship. “Say, Mas’ Don, they won’t hang us, will they, if they ketches us?”“What made you say that?”“Because here comes a boat after us.—Hear the skipper?”“Yes; but the canoe—where is the canoe?”Don raised himself, and began to tread water, as he looked in the direction where they had seen the water flash beneath the paddles.“I dunno, my lad. Can’t see nothing but the lights of the ship. Better swim straight ashore. We sha’n’t be able to see no canoe to-night.”They swam steadily on, hearing only too plainly the plans made for their recapture. The orders, the creaking of the falls, even the plash made by the boats, as they kissed the water, and the dull rattle of the oars in the rowlocks was carried in the silence of the night distinctly to their ears, while the regular plash, plash, plash, as the oars dipped, sent a thrill through Don, and at times seemed to chill his energy.But these checks were almost momentary. There was a sense of freedom in being away from the ship, and, in spite of the darkness, a feeling of joyous power in being able to breast the long heaving swell, and pass on through the water.“Better not talk, Mas’ Don,” whispered Jem, as they swam; “sound goes so easily over the water.”“No, I’m not going to talk,” said Don; “I want all my breath for swimming.”“Don’t feel tired, do you?”“Not a bit.”“That’s right, lad. Stick to it steady like. Their lanthorns aren’t much good. Don’t you be skeart; we can see them plain enough, but they can’t see us.”“But it seems as if they could,” whispered Don, as they saw a man standing up in the bows of one of the boats, holding a lanthorn on high.“Yes, seems,” whispered Jem; “but there’s only our heads out of water, and only the tops o’ them sometimes. Say, that must ha’ been fancy about the canoe.”“No, Jem; she’s somewhere about.”“Glad on it: but I wish she’d come and pick us up.”They swam on silently toward the shore, listening to the shouts of the men, and watching alternately the lights of the boats and those of the ship.All at once a curious noise assailed Don’s ear.“What’s the matter, Jem?” he whispered, in alarm.“Matter?” said Jem, greatly to his relief. “Nothing, as I knows on.”“But that noise you made?”“I didn’t make no noise.”“You did, just now.”“Why, I was a-larfin’ quiet-like, so as to make no row.”“Oh!”“Thinking about them firing a volley at us in the dark. Wonder where the bullets went?”“Don’t talk, Jem; they may hear us.”“What! A whisper like that, my lad? Not they. Boats is a long way off, too, now.”The excitement had kept off all sense of fear, and so far Don had not seemed to realise the peril of their position in swimming through the darkness to land; for even if there had been a canoe coming to their help, the lowering of the boats seemed to have scared its occupants away, and though the sea was perfectly calm, save its soft, swelling pulsation, there were swift currents among the islands and points, which, though easily mastered by canoe or boat with stout rowers, would carry in an imperceptible manner a swimmer far from where he wished to go.But they swam steadily on for some time longer, Jem being the first to break the silence.“Say, Mas’ Don,” he whispered, “did you hear oars?”“No, Jem.”“I thought I did. I fancy one of the boats put off without a lanthorn. Weren’t there three?”“Yes, I think so.”“Well, you can see two of ’em easy like.”“Yes, Jem; I can see.”“Then there’s another cruising about in the dark, so we must be careful.”There was another interval of steady swimming, during which they seemed to get no nearer to the shore, and at last Jem spoke again.“Say, Mas’ Don, don’t you feel as if you’d like a cup o’ tea?”“No.”“I do. I’m as dry as sawdus’. S’pose we’re nearly there, but I can’t touch bottom. I tried just now.”They swam on, with the lights of the boat farther off than ever, and the ship more distant still.“Getting tired, Jem?”“N–no. Could go on for about another week. Are you?”“My clothes seem so heavy. Can you see the shore?”“I can see the beach right afore us, but can’t tell how nigh it is. Never mind about your clothes, my lad; but they’re a great noosance at a time like this. Take your strokes long, and slow as you can.”“That’s what I’m doing, Jem, but—do you think it’s much further?”“Now, lookye here, Mas’ Don; if ever there was a good-tempered chap it was—I mean is—Jem Wimble; but if you gets talking like that, you aggravates me to such a degree that I must speak.”Jem spoke angrily, and with unwonted excitement in his manner.“Is it much furder, indeed? Why, of course it arn’t. Swim steady, and wait.”Jem closed in as much as was possible after raising himself in the water, and scanning the distant shore; and as he did so a cold chill of dread—not on his own account—ran through him, for he felt that they were certainly no nearer shore than they were before.“Throw your left shoulder a little more forward, Mas’ Don,” he said calmly; “there’s a p’int runs out here, I think, as’ll make the journey shorter.”Don obeyed in silence, and they swam on, with Jem watchfully keeping his eyes upon his companion, who was now deeper in the water.“Jem,” said Don, suddenly.“Yes, Mas’ Don. Take it coolly, my lad. We’re getting close there. Oh, what a lie!” he added to himself, with a chill of misery unnerving him.“Jem.”“Ay, ay, Mas’ Don.”“If you escape—”“If I escape!” whispered Jem, angrily. “Now, what’s the use o’ your talking like that? Escape, indeed! Why, I feel as if I could live in the water, if I had plenty to eat and drink.”“Listen to me,” said Don, hoarsely. “If you escape, tell my mother I always loved her, even when I was obstinate. Tell her we didn’t run away, and that—that I didn’t take that money, Jem. You’ll tell her that?”“I won’t tell her nor nobody else nothing of the sort,” said Jem. “I’m too busy swimming to think o’ no messages, and so are you. Steady—steady. Bit tired, lad?”“Tired, Jem? My arms feel like lead.”“Turn over and float a bit, dear lad, and rest yourself.”“No,” said Don. “If I turn over I shall be too helpless to keep up, and I can’t turn back.—Jem, I’m beat out.”“You’re not!” cried Jem, in so loud and angry a voice, that the occupants of the pursuing boats must have heard them if they had been near. “You’ve got to keep on swimming steady, as I tells you, and if you says another word to me ’bout being beat, I’ll give you such a shove aside o’ the head as’ll duck you under.”Don made no answer, but swam on feebly, with the water rising over his lips at every stroke; and as Jem swam by him he could hear the lad’s breath come quickly, and with a hoarse, panting sound.“And I can’t leave him, even to; save myself,” groaned Jem. “Oh, Sally, Sally, my gal, I did love you very true; and if I never see you again, good-bye—good-bye!”It seemed to poor Jem Wimble that his thoughts were so heavy that they sank him lower in the water; but he had a buoyant heart, which is the surest and best of life preservers; and taking a long breath, and setting his teeth, he swam on.“Not so very far now, Mas’ Don,” he said. “You feel better now, don’t you?”“Jem.”“Yes, lad.”“It’s getting darker. I want to keep on, but I can’t. Can you shake hands?”“No!” cried Jem, fiercely. “You turn over and float.”Don uttered a sigh, and obeyed in a feeble way, while Jem ceased his striking out for shore, and placed one arm under Don’s neck.“It’s all right, my lad. Don’t lose heart,” he said. “It’s wonderful easy to float; but you’re tired. It’s your clothes does it. You’re a wonderful good swimmer, Mas’ Don; but the wonderflest swimmers can’t swim for ever in clothes. That’s resting you, arn’t it? I’m fresh as a lark, I am. So ’ll you be dreckly, lad. Keep cool. Just paddle your hands a bit. We’re close in shore, only it’s so dark. We’ve done ’em. Boats is right away.”“Are they—are they right away, Jem?”“Yes, my lad, thank goodness!”Don groaned.“Don’t do that, my lad. You do make me savage when you won’t be plucky. Why, you can swim miles yet, and you shall, as soon as you’re rested. I say, how savage the capen will be when he finds he can’t ketch us!”“Jem, my lad,” said Don, quietly; “don’t talk to me as if I were a child. It’s very good of you, and—kind—but—but I’m done, Jem—I’m done.”“You’re not!” cried Jem, savagely. “Say that again, and I’ll hit you in the mouth. You arn’t done, and it’s the way with you. You’re the obsnittest chap as ever was. You’ve got to swim ashore as soon as you’re rested, and I say you shall.”Don made no reply, but he floated with his nostrils clear of the water, and smiled as he gazed straight up in the dark sky.“There. It was time I spoke,” continued Jem. “Some chaps loses heart about nothing.”“Nothing, Jem?”“Well, next to nothing, my lad. Why, mussy me! What a fuss we are making about a few hundred yards o’ smooth water. I’ve swum twice as far as this. Rested?”Don made no reply.“Ah, you will be soon. It’s the clothes, my lad. Now look here, Mas’ Don. You take my advice. Never you try a long swim again like this with your clothes on. They makes a wonderful deal of difference.”“Jem,” said Don, interrupting him.“Ay, ay, my lad.”“Are the boats very far away?”“Well, a tidy bit; say half-mile.”“Then swim ashore and leave me; save yourself.”“Oh, that’s it, is it?”“And tell my mother—”“Now, look here,” cried Jem. “I should look well going and telling your mother as I left you in the lurch; and my Sally would spit at me, and serve me right. No, Mas’ Don, I’ve tried it easy with you, and I’ve tried it hard; and now I says this: if you’ve made up your mind to go down, why, let’s shake hands, and go down together, like mates.”“No, no; you must swim ashore.”“Without you?”“Jem, I can do no more.”“If I leaves you, Mas’ Don— Ahoy! Boat!—boat!”Jem meant that for a sturdy hail; but it was half choked, for just at that moment Don made a desperate effort to turn and swim, lost his remaining nerve, and began to beat the water like a dog.“Mas’ Don, Mas’ Don, one more try, dear lad, one more try!” cried Jem, passionately; but the appeal was vain. He, with all his sturdy manhood, strength hardened by his life of moving heavy weights, was beaten in the almost herculean task, and he knew at heart that Don had struggled bravely to the very last, before he had given in.But even then Don responded to Jem’s appeal, and ceased paddling, to make three or four steady strokes.“That’s it! Brave heart! Well done, Mas’ Don. We shall manage it yet. A long, steady stroke—that’s it. Don’t give up. You can do it; and when you’re tired, I’ll help you. Well done—well done. Hah!”Jem uttered a hoarse cry, and then his voice rose in a wild appeal for help, not for self, but for his brave young companion.“Boat! Boat!” he cried, as he heard Don, deaf to his entreaties, begin the wild paddling action again; and he passed his arm beneath his neck, to try and support him.But there was no reply to his wild hail. The boats were out of hearing, and the next minute the strangling water was bubbling about his lips, choking him as he breathed it in; and with the name of his wife on his lips, poor Jem caught Don in a firm grip with one hand, as he struck wildly out with the other.Four or five steady strokes, and then his arm seemed to lose its power, and his strokes were feeble.“Mas’ Don,” he groaned; “I did try hard; but it’s all over. I’m dead beat, too.”
Don and Jem plunged almost simultaneously into the black, cold water, and felt the sea thundering in their ears.
Then Jem, being broader and stouter than his companion, rose to the surface and looked round for Don; but a few seconds of agony ensued before the water parted and the lad’s head shot up into the faint light shed by the lanthorns.
“Now for it, Mas’ Don,” whispered Jem; “think as it’s a race, and we’re going to win a cup at a ’gatta. Slow and sure, sir; slow and sure, long, steady strokes, and keep together.”
“They’re calling to us to stop, Jem,” whispered Don.
“Let ’em call, Mas’ Don. Somebody else seems a-calling of me, and that’s my Sally. Oh, don’t I wish I hadn’t got any clothes.”
“Can they see us?” whispered Don, as they swam steadily on.
“I don’t believe they can, sir; and if they can, they won’t see us long. Shouldn’t be surprised if they lowered a boat.”
“Ah! Look out!” whispered Don. “Shall we dive?”
For he heard the clicking of the muskets as they missed fire.
“Well, I do call that cowardly,” said Jem, as he heard the order to load; “shooting at a couple of poor fellows just as if they was wild duck.”
“Swim faster, Jem,” said Don, as he gazed back over his shoulders at the lights as the shots rang out.
“No, no; swim slower, my lad. They can’t see us; and if they could, I don’t believe as the men would try and hit us. Ah! Not hit, are you?”
“No, Jem; are you?”
“Not a bit of it, my lad. There they go again. Steady. We’re all right now, unless a boat comes after us. We shall soon get ashore at this rate, and the tide’s helping up, and carrying us along.”
“Toward shore, Jem, or out to sea?”
“Shore, of course,” said Jem, as he swam on his side, and kept an eye on the faint lights of the ship. “Say, Mas’ Don, they won’t hang us, will they, if they ketches us?”
“What made you say that?”
“Because here comes a boat after us.—Hear the skipper?”
“Yes; but the canoe—where is the canoe?”
Don raised himself, and began to tread water, as he looked in the direction where they had seen the water flash beneath the paddles.
“I dunno, my lad. Can’t see nothing but the lights of the ship. Better swim straight ashore. We sha’n’t be able to see no canoe to-night.”
They swam steadily on, hearing only too plainly the plans made for their recapture. The orders, the creaking of the falls, even the plash made by the boats, as they kissed the water, and the dull rattle of the oars in the rowlocks was carried in the silence of the night distinctly to their ears, while the regular plash, plash, plash, as the oars dipped, sent a thrill through Don, and at times seemed to chill his energy.
But these checks were almost momentary. There was a sense of freedom in being away from the ship, and, in spite of the darkness, a feeling of joyous power in being able to breast the long heaving swell, and pass on through the water.
“Better not talk, Mas’ Don,” whispered Jem, as they swam; “sound goes so easily over the water.”
“No, I’m not going to talk,” said Don; “I want all my breath for swimming.”
“Don’t feel tired, do you?”
“Not a bit.”
“That’s right, lad. Stick to it steady like. Their lanthorns aren’t much good. Don’t you be skeart; we can see them plain enough, but they can’t see us.”
“But it seems as if they could,” whispered Don, as they saw a man standing up in the bows of one of the boats, holding a lanthorn on high.
“Yes, seems,” whispered Jem; “but there’s only our heads out of water, and only the tops o’ them sometimes. Say, that must ha’ been fancy about the canoe.”
“No, Jem; she’s somewhere about.”
“Glad on it: but I wish she’d come and pick us up.”
They swam on silently toward the shore, listening to the shouts of the men, and watching alternately the lights of the boats and those of the ship.
All at once a curious noise assailed Don’s ear.
“What’s the matter, Jem?” he whispered, in alarm.
“Matter?” said Jem, greatly to his relief. “Nothing, as I knows on.”
“But that noise you made?”
“I didn’t make no noise.”
“You did, just now.”
“Why, I was a-larfin’ quiet-like, so as to make no row.”
“Oh!”
“Thinking about them firing a volley at us in the dark. Wonder where the bullets went?”
“Don’t talk, Jem; they may hear us.”
“What! A whisper like that, my lad? Not they. Boats is a long way off, too, now.”
The excitement had kept off all sense of fear, and so far Don had not seemed to realise the peril of their position in swimming through the darkness to land; for even if there had been a canoe coming to their help, the lowering of the boats seemed to have scared its occupants away, and though the sea was perfectly calm, save its soft, swelling pulsation, there were swift currents among the islands and points, which, though easily mastered by canoe or boat with stout rowers, would carry in an imperceptible manner a swimmer far from where he wished to go.
But they swam steadily on for some time longer, Jem being the first to break the silence.
“Say, Mas’ Don,” he whispered, “did you hear oars?”
“No, Jem.”
“I thought I did. I fancy one of the boats put off without a lanthorn. Weren’t there three?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well, you can see two of ’em easy like.”
“Yes, Jem; I can see.”
“Then there’s another cruising about in the dark, so we must be careful.”
There was another interval of steady swimming, during which they seemed to get no nearer to the shore, and at last Jem spoke again.
“Say, Mas’ Don, don’t you feel as if you’d like a cup o’ tea?”
“No.”
“I do. I’m as dry as sawdus’. S’pose we’re nearly there, but I can’t touch bottom. I tried just now.”
They swam on, with the lights of the boat farther off than ever, and the ship more distant still.
“Getting tired, Jem?”
“N–no. Could go on for about another week. Are you?”
“My clothes seem so heavy. Can you see the shore?”
“I can see the beach right afore us, but can’t tell how nigh it is. Never mind about your clothes, my lad; but they’re a great noosance at a time like this. Take your strokes long, and slow as you can.”
“That’s what I’m doing, Jem, but—do you think it’s much further?”
“Now, lookye here, Mas’ Don; if ever there was a good-tempered chap it was—I mean is—Jem Wimble; but if you gets talking like that, you aggravates me to such a degree that I must speak.”
Jem spoke angrily, and with unwonted excitement in his manner.
“Is it much furder, indeed? Why, of course it arn’t. Swim steady, and wait.”
Jem closed in as much as was possible after raising himself in the water, and scanning the distant shore; and as he did so a cold chill of dread—not on his own account—ran through him, for he felt that they were certainly no nearer shore than they were before.
“Throw your left shoulder a little more forward, Mas’ Don,” he said calmly; “there’s a p’int runs out here, I think, as’ll make the journey shorter.”
Don obeyed in silence, and they swam on, with Jem watchfully keeping his eyes upon his companion, who was now deeper in the water.
“Jem,” said Don, suddenly.
“Yes, Mas’ Don. Take it coolly, my lad. We’re getting close there. Oh, what a lie!” he added to himself, with a chill of misery unnerving him.
“Jem.”
“Ay, ay, Mas’ Don.”
“If you escape—”
“If I escape!” whispered Jem, angrily. “Now, what’s the use o’ your talking like that? Escape, indeed! Why, I feel as if I could live in the water, if I had plenty to eat and drink.”
“Listen to me,” said Don, hoarsely. “If you escape, tell my mother I always loved her, even when I was obstinate. Tell her we didn’t run away, and that—that I didn’t take that money, Jem. You’ll tell her that?”
“I won’t tell her nor nobody else nothing of the sort,” said Jem. “I’m too busy swimming to think o’ no messages, and so are you. Steady—steady. Bit tired, lad?”
“Tired, Jem? My arms feel like lead.”
“Turn over and float a bit, dear lad, and rest yourself.”
“No,” said Don. “If I turn over I shall be too helpless to keep up, and I can’t turn back.—Jem, I’m beat out.”
“You’re not!” cried Jem, in so loud and angry a voice, that the occupants of the pursuing boats must have heard them if they had been near. “You’ve got to keep on swimming steady, as I tells you, and if you says another word to me ’bout being beat, I’ll give you such a shove aside o’ the head as’ll duck you under.”
Don made no answer, but swam on feebly, with the water rising over his lips at every stroke; and as Jem swam by him he could hear the lad’s breath come quickly, and with a hoarse, panting sound.
“And I can’t leave him, even to; save myself,” groaned Jem. “Oh, Sally, Sally, my gal, I did love you very true; and if I never see you again, good-bye—good-bye!”
It seemed to poor Jem Wimble that his thoughts were so heavy that they sank him lower in the water; but he had a buoyant heart, which is the surest and best of life preservers; and taking a long breath, and setting his teeth, he swam on.
“Not so very far now, Mas’ Don,” he said. “You feel better now, don’t you?”
“Jem.”
“Yes, lad.”
“It’s getting darker. I want to keep on, but I can’t. Can you shake hands?”
“No!” cried Jem, fiercely. “You turn over and float.”
Don uttered a sigh, and obeyed in a feeble way, while Jem ceased his striking out for shore, and placed one arm under Don’s neck.
“It’s all right, my lad. Don’t lose heart,” he said. “It’s wonderful easy to float; but you’re tired. It’s your clothes does it. You’re a wonderful good swimmer, Mas’ Don; but the wonderflest swimmers can’t swim for ever in clothes. That’s resting you, arn’t it? I’m fresh as a lark, I am. So ’ll you be dreckly, lad. Keep cool. Just paddle your hands a bit. We’re close in shore, only it’s so dark. We’ve done ’em. Boats is right away.”
“Are they—are they right away, Jem?”
“Yes, my lad, thank goodness!”
Don groaned.
“Don’t do that, my lad. You do make me savage when you won’t be plucky. Why, you can swim miles yet, and you shall, as soon as you’re rested. I say, how savage the capen will be when he finds he can’t ketch us!”
“Jem, my lad,” said Don, quietly; “don’t talk to me as if I were a child. It’s very good of you, and—kind—but—but I’m done, Jem—I’m done.”
“You’re not!” cried Jem, savagely. “Say that again, and I’ll hit you in the mouth. You arn’t done, and it’s the way with you. You’re the obsnittest chap as ever was. You’ve got to swim ashore as soon as you’re rested, and I say you shall.”
Don made no reply, but he floated with his nostrils clear of the water, and smiled as he gazed straight up in the dark sky.
“There. It was time I spoke,” continued Jem. “Some chaps loses heart about nothing.”
“Nothing, Jem?”
“Well, next to nothing, my lad. Why, mussy me! What a fuss we are making about a few hundred yards o’ smooth water. I’ve swum twice as far as this. Rested?”
Don made no reply.
“Ah, you will be soon. It’s the clothes, my lad. Now look here, Mas’ Don. You take my advice. Never you try a long swim again like this with your clothes on. They makes a wonderful deal of difference.”
“Jem,” said Don, interrupting him.
“Ay, ay, my lad.”
“Are the boats very far away?”
“Well, a tidy bit; say half-mile.”
“Then swim ashore and leave me; save yourself.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it?”
“And tell my mother—”
“Now, look here,” cried Jem. “I should look well going and telling your mother as I left you in the lurch; and my Sally would spit at me, and serve me right. No, Mas’ Don, I’ve tried it easy with you, and I’ve tried it hard; and now I says this: if you’ve made up your mind to go down, why, let’s shake hands, and go down together, like mates.”
“No, no; you must swim ashore.”
“Without you?”
“Jem, I can do no more.”
“If I leaves you, Mas’ Don— Ahoy! Boat!—boat!”
Jem meant that for a sturdy hail; but it was half choked, for just at that moment Don made a desperate effort to turn and swim, lost his remaining nerve, and began to beat the water like a dog.
“Mas’ Don, Mas’ Don, one more try, dear lad, one more try!” cried Jem, passionately; but the appeal was vain. He, with all his sturdy manhood, strength hardened by his life of moving heavy weights, was beaten in the almost herculean task, and he knew at heart that Don had struggled bravely to the very last, before he had given in.
But even then Don responded to Jem’s appeal, and ceased paddling, to make three or four steady strokes.
“That’s it! Brave heart! Well done, Mas’ Don. We shall manage it yet. A long, steady stroke—that’s it. Don’t give up. You can do it; and when you’re tired, I’ll help you. Well done—well done. Hah!”
Jem uttered a hoarse cry, and then his voice rose in a wild appeal for help, not for self, but for his brave young companion.
“Boat! Boat!” he cried, as he heard Don, deaf to his entreaties, begin the wild paddling action again; and he passed his arm beneath his neck, to try and support him.
But there was no reply to his wild hail. The boats were out of hearing, and the next minute the strangling water was bubbling about his lips, choking him as he breathed it in; and with the name of his wife on his lips, poor Jem caught Don in a firm grip with one hand, as he struck wildly out with the other.
Four or five steady strokes, and then his arm seemed to lose its power, and his strokes were feeble.
“Mas’ Don,” he groaned; “I did try hard; but it’s all over. I’m dead beat, too.”
Chapter Twenty Eight.Friendly Attentions.A peculiar pale light played and flashed from the surface of the black water which was being churned up by the desperate struggles of the drowning pair. It was as if myriads of tiny stars started into being where all was dark before, and went hurrying here and there, some to the surface, others deep down into the transparent purity of the sea.A minute before Jem Wimble had kept command of himself, and swam as a carefully tutored man keeps himself afloat; that minute passed, all teaching was forgotten in a weak, frantic struggle with the strangling water which closed over their heads.A few moments, during which the phosphorescent tiny creatures played here and there, and then once more the two helpless and nearly exhausted fugitives were beating the surface, which flashed and sent forth lambent rays of light.But it was not there alone that the phosphorescence of the sea was visible.About a hundred yards away there was what seemed to be a double line of pale gold liquid fire changing into bluish green, and between the lines of light something whose blackness was greater than the darkness of the sea or night. There was a dull low splashing, and at every splash the liquid fire seemed to fly.The double line of fire lengthened and sparkled, till it was as so much greenish golden foam reaching more and more toward where the drowning pair were struggling.Then came a low, growling, grinding sound, as if the long lines of light were made by the beating fins of the dark object, which was some habitant of the deep roused from slumbers by the light of the golden foam formed by those who drowned.And it rushed on and on to seize its prey, invisible before, but now plainly seen by the struggles and the resulting phosphorescent light.Long, low, and with its head raised high out of the water, horrent, grotesque and strange, the great sea monster glided along over the smooth sea. Full five-and-twenty fins aside made the water flash as it came on, and there was, as it were, a thin new-moon-like curve of light at its breast, while from its tail the sparkling phosphorescence spread widely as it was left behind.The low grumbling sound came again, but it was not heard by those drowning, nor was the light seen as it glided on nearer and nearer, till it reached the spot.One dart from the long raised neck, one snap of the fierce jaws—another dart and another snap, and the sea monster had its prey, and glided rapidly on, probably in search of more in its nightly hunt.Nothing of the kind! The long creature endued with life darted on, but the long neck and horned head were not darted down, but guided past those who where drowning. Everything was stiff and rigid but the playing fins. But there was another dull, low grunt, the fins seemed to cease by magic; and, instead of being snapped up by the monster’s mouth, the two sufferers were drawn in over its side.Then the water flashed golden again, the monster made a curve and rushed through the water, and sped away for miles till, in obedience to another grunting sound, it turned and dashed straight for a sandy beach, resolving itself into a long New Zealand war canoe, into which Don and Jem had been drawn, to lie half insensible till the beach was neared when Jem slowly and wonderingly sat up.“Where’s Mas’ Don?” he said in a sharp ill-used tone.“Here he is,” said a gruff voice, and Jem looked wonderingly in a savage’s indistinctly seen face, and then down in the bottom of the long canoe, into which they had been dragged.“Mas’ Don—don’t say you’re drowned, Mas’ Don,” he said pitifully, with a Somersetshire man’s bold attempt at the making of an Irish bull.“My pakeha! My pakeha!” said a deep voice; and Jem became aware of the fact that the big chief he had so often seen on board the ship, and who had come to them with the present of fruit when they were guarding the boat, was kneeling down and gently rubbing Don.“Is he dead?” said Jem in a whisper.“No, not this time,” said the gruff voice out of the darkness. “Pretty nigh touch, though, for both of you. Why didn’t you hail sooner?”“Hail sooner?” said Jem.“Yes. We came in the canoe to fetch you, but you didn’t hail, and it was too dark to see.”“We couldn’t hail,” said Jem, sulkily. “It would have brought the boats down upon us.”“Ah, so it would,” said the owner of the gruff voice. “There’s three boats out after you.”“And shall you give us up?”“Give you up? Not I. I’ve nothing to do with it; you must talk to him.”“My pakeha!” cried the big chief excitedly.“That isn’t his name, is it?” said Jem.“No. Nonsense! Pakeha means white man. I was a pakeha once.”“Let me help him up,” said Jem eagerly.“My pakeha! My pakeha!” said the chief, as if putting in a personal claim, and ready to resist Jem’s interference.The difficulty was ended by Don giving himself a shake, and slowly rising.“Jem! Where’s Jem?”“Here! All right, Mas’ Don. We’re in the canoe.”“Hah!” ejaculated Don; and he shuddered as if chilled. “Where are the boats?”“Miles away,” said the tattooed Englishman. “But look here, I’m only on board. This is Ngati’s doing. I know nothing about you two.”“My pakeha! My pakeha!” cried the chief.“Lookye here,” cried Jem, speaking in the irritable fashion of those just rescued from drowning; “if that there chief keeps on saying, ‘My pakeha’ at me in that there aggravating way, I shall hit him in the mouth.”“Ah! You’re rusty,” said the tattooed Englishman. “Man always is when he’s been under water.”“I dunno what you mean by being rusty,” said Jem snappishly. “What I say is, leave a man alone.”“All right!” said the Englishman. “I’ll let you alone. How’s your young mate?”“My head aches dreadfully,” said Don; “and there’s a horrible pain at the back of my neck.”“Oh, that’ll soon go off, my lad. And now what are you going to do?”“Do?” interrupted Jem. “Why, you don’t mean to give us up, do you?”“I don’t mean to do anything or know anything,” said the man. “Your skipper’ll come to me to-morrow if he don’t think you’re drowned, or—I say, did you feel anything of ’em?”“Feel anything—of what?” said Don.“Sharks, my lad. The shallow waters here swarm with them.”“Sharks!” cried Don and Jem in a breath.“Yes. Didn’t you know?”“I’d forgotten all about the sharks, Jem,” said Don.“So had I, my lad, or I dursen’t have swum for it as we did. Of course I thought about ’em at first starting, but I forgot all about ’em afterwards.”“Jem,” said Don, shuddering; “what an escape!”“Well, don’t get making a fuss about it now it’s all over, Mas’ Don. Here we are safe, but I must say you’re the wussest swimmer I ever met.—Here, what are they going to do?”“Run ashore,” said the Englishman, as there was a buzz of excitement among the New Zealanders, many of whom stepped over into the shallow water, and seized the sides of the boat, which was rapidly run up the dark shore, where, amidst a low gobbling noise, the two wet passengers were landed to stand shivering with cold.“There you are,” said the Englishman, “safe and sound.”“Well, who said we weren’t?” grumbled Jem.“Not you, squire,” continued the Englishman. “There; I don’t know anything about you, and you’d better lie close till the ship’s gone, for they may come after you.”“Where shall we hide?” said Don eagerly.“Oh, you leave it to Ngati; he’ll find you a place where you can lie snug.”“Ngati,” said the owner of the name quickly, for he had been listening intently, and trying to grasp what was said. “Ngati! My pakeha.”“Oh, I say: do leave off,” cried Jem testily. “Pakeha again. Say, Mas’ Don, him and I’s going to have a row before we’ve done.”The chief said something quickly to the Englishman, who nodded and then turned to the fugitives.“Ngati says he will take you where you can dry yourselves, and put on warm things.”“He won’t be up to any games, will he?” said Jem.“No, no; you may trust him. You can’t do better than go with him till the search is over.”The Englishman turned to a tall young savage, and said some words to him, with the result that the young man placed himself behind Don, and began to carefully obliterate the footprints left by the fugitives upon the sand.Don noticed this and wondered, for in the darkness the footprints were hardly perceptible; but he appreciated the act, though he felt no one but a native would distinguish between the footprints of the two people.“My pakeha,” said Ngati just then, making Jem wince and utter an angry gesticulation. “Gunpowder, gun, pow-gun, gun-pow.”“Eh?” said Jem harshly.“My pakeha, powder-gun. Pow-gun, gun-pow. No?”“He says his pakeha was to have brought plenty of guns and powder, and he has not brought any.”“No,” said Don, shivering as he spoke. “The guns are the king’s. I could not bring any.”The New Zealand chief seemed to comprehend a good deal of his meaning, and nodded his head several times. Then making a sign to a couple of followers, each took one of Don’s arms, and they hurried him off at a sharp run, Jem being seized in the same way and borne forward, followed by the rest of the men who were in the boat.“Here, I say. Look here,” Jem kept protesting, “I arn’t a cask o’ sugar or a bar’l o’ ’bacco. Let a man walk, can’t yer? Hi! Mas’ Don, they’re carrying on strange games here. How are you getting on?”Don heard the question, but he was too breathless to speak, and had hard work to keep his feet, leaving everything to the guidance of his companions, who kept on for above a quarter of a mile before stopping in a shadowy gully, where the spreading ferns made the place seem black as night, and a peculiar steaming sulphurous odour arose.But a short time before Don’s teeth were chattering with the cold, but the exercise circulated his blood; and now, as his eyes grew more used to the obscurity, he managed to see that they were in a rough hut-like place open at the front. The sulphurous odour was quite strong, the steam felt hot and oppressive, and yet pleasant after the long chilling effect of the water, and he listened to a peculiar gurgling, bubbling noise, which was accompanied now and then by a faint pop.He had hardly realised this when he felt that his clothes were being stripped from him, and for a moment he felt disposed to resist; but he was breathless and wearied out, and rough as was the attention, it struck him that it was only preparatory to giving him a dry blanket to wear till his drenched garments were dry, and hence he suffered patiently.But that was not all, for, as the last garment was stripped off, Ngati said some words to his people, and before he could realise what was going to be done, Don felt himself seized by four men, each taking a wrist or ankle, and holding him suspended before Ngati, who went behind him and supported his head.“Hah!” ejaculated Ngati, with a peculiar grunt. His men all acted with military precision, and, to Don’s astonishment, he found himself plunged into a rocky basin of hot water.His first idea was to struggle, but there was no need. He had been lowered in rapidly but gently, and he felt Ngati place the back of his head softly against a smooth pleasantly-warm hollowed-out stone, while the sensation, after all he had gone through, was so delicious that he uttered a sigh of satisfaction.For now he realised the hospitality of the people who had brought him there, and the fact that to recover him from the chill of being half drowned, they had brought him to one of their hot springs, used by them as baths.Don uttered another sigh of satisfaction, and as he lay back covered to his chin in the hot volcanic water, he began to laugh so heartily that the tears came into his eyes.For the same process was going on in the darkness with Jem, who was a less tractable patient, especially as he had taken it into his thick head that it was not for his benefit that he was to be plunged into a hot water pool, but to make soup for the New Zealanders around.“Mas’ Don!” he cried out of the darkness, “where are you? I want to get out of this. Here, be quiet, will yer? What yer doing of? I say. Don’t. Here, what are you going to do?”Don wanted to say a word to calm Jem’s alarms, but after the agony he had gone through, it seemed to him as if his nerves were relaxed beyond control, and his companion’s perplexity presented itself to him in so comical a light, that he could do nothing but lie back there in his delicious bath, and laugh hysterically; and all the while he could hear the New Zealanders gobbling angrily in reply to Jem’s objections, as a fierce struggle went on.“That’s your game, is it? I wouldn’t ha’ thought it of a set who calls theirselves men. Shove me into that hot pot, and boil me, would you? Not if I knows it, you don’t. Hi! Mas’ Don! Look out! Run, my lad. They’re trying to cook me alive, the brutes. Oh, if I only had a cutlash, or an iron bar.”Don tried to speak again, but the words were suffocated by the gurgle of laughter.“Poor old Jem!” he thought.“I tell you, you sha’n’t. Six to one, eh? Leave off. Mas’ Don, they’re going to scald me like a pig in a tub. Hi! Help!”There was the sound of a struggle, a loud splash, and then silence, followed by Jem’s voice.“Oh!” he ejaculated. “Then why didn’t you say so? How was I to know you meant a hot bath? Well, it arn’t bad.—Mas’ Don!”“Yes.”“What! Ha’ you been there all the time?”“Yes.”“What yer been doing of?”“Laughing.”“Larfin’? Are they giving you a hot bath?”“Yes.”“Arn’t it good?”“Glorious!”“I thought they was going to scald me like a pig, so as to eat me afterwards. Did you hear me holler?”“Hear you? Yes.—How delicious and restful it feels.”“Ah, it do, my lad; but don’t you let any on it get into your mouth. I did, and arn’t good. But I say; what’s it mean? Seems so rum to me coming to meet us in a canoe and bringing us ashore, and giving us hot baths. I don’t seem to understand it. Nobody does such things over at home.”As they lay in the roughly-made stone slab baths, into which the volcanic water effervesced and gurgled, the followers of Ngati came and went busily, and a curious transformation came over the scene—the darkness seemed to undergo a change and become grey. Then as Don watched, he saw that above his head quite a cloud of steam was floating, through which a pale, sad light began to penetrate; and as he watched this, so pleasant and restful was the sensation that he felt as if he could sleep, till he took into consideration the fact that if he did, his body would become relaxed, and he would slip down with his head beneath the surface.As it grew lighter rapidly now, he could make out that the roughly thatched roof was merely stretched over a rough rocky nook in which the hot spring bubbled out of the mountain slope, and here a few rough slabs had been laid together, box-fashion, to retain the water and form the bath.Before he had more than realised the fact that Jem was in a shelter very similar to his own, the huge New Zealander was back with about a dozen of his men, and himself bearing a great native flax cloth marked with a broad pattern.Just as the sun had transformed everything without, and Don was gazing on a glorious prospect of lace-like tree-fern rising out of the steaming gully in which he stood, Jem Wimble came stalking out of the shelter where he had been dressing—a very simple operation, for it had consisted in draping himself in a great unbleached cloth—and looking squat and comical as a man in his circumstances could look.Ngati was close at hand with his men all standing in a group, and at first sight it seemed as if they were laughing at the little, stoutly-built, pink-faced man, but, on the contrary, they were smiles of admiration.“I couldn’t ha’ believed it, Mas’ Don,” said Jem; “I feel as fresh as a daisy, and—well, I never did! Mas’ Don, what a guy you do look!”Don, after a momentary thought that he looked something like one of the old Romans in a toga, just as he had seen them in an engraving, had been so taken up with the beauty of the ferny gully, with the sun gilding here and there the steamy vapour which rose from the hot springs, that he had thought no more of his personal appearance till Jem spoke.“Guy?” he said, laughing, as he ran his eye over Jem. “I say, did you ever hear the story of the pot and the kettle?”“Yes, of course; but I say, my lad, I don’t look so rum as you, do I?”“I suppose you look just about the same, Jem.”“Then the sooner they gets our clothes dry and we’re into ’em again, the sooner we shall look like human beings. Say, Mas’ Don, it’s werry awkward; you can’t say anything to that big savage without him shouting ‘pakeha.’ How shall we ask for our clothes?”“Wait,” said Don. “We’ve got to think about getting further away.”“Think they’ll send to look for us, Mas’ Don?”“I should say they would.”“Well, somehow,” said Jem, “I seem to fancy they’ll think we’re drowned, and never send at all. But, look here; what’s all this yaller stuff?”“Sulphur.”“What, brimstone? Why, so it is. Think o’ their buying brimstone to lay down about their hot baths. I know!” cried Jem, slapping his thigh, “they uses it instead of coal, Mas’ Don; burns it to make the water hot.”“No, no, Jem; that’s natural sulphur.”“So’s all sulphur nat’ral.”“But I mean this is where it is found, or comes.”“G’long with you.”“It is, Jem; and that water is naturally hot.”“What, like it is at Bath?”“To be sure.”“Well, that caps all. Some one said so the other day aboard ship, but I didn’t believe it. Fancy a set o’ savages having hot water all ready for them. I say, though, Mas’ Don, it’s very nice.”Just then Ngati came up smiling, but as Jem afterwards said, looking like a figure-head that was going to bite, and they were led off to awhareand furnished with a good substantial meal.
A peculiar pale light played and flashed from the surface of the black water which was being churned up by the desperate struggles of the drowning pair. It was as if myriads of tiny stars started into being where all was dark before, and went hurrying here and there, some to the surface, others deep down into the transparent purity of the sea.
A minute before Jem Wimble had kept command of himself, and swam as a carefully tutored man keeps himself afloat; that minute passed, all teaching was forgotten in a weak, frantic struggle with the strangling water which closed over their heads.
A few moments, during which the phosphorescent tiny creatures played here and there, and then once more the two helpless and nearly exhausted fugitives were beating the surface, which flashed and sent forth lambent rays of light.
But it was not there alone that the phosphorescence of the sea was visible.
About a hundred yards away there was what seemed to be a double line of pale gold liquid fire changing into bluish green, and between the lines of light something whose blackness was greater than the darkness of the sea or night. There was a dull low splashing, and at every splash the liquid fire seemed to fly.
The double line of fire lengthened and sparkled, till it was as so much greenish golden foam reaching more and more toward where the drowning pair were struggling.
Then came a low, growling, grinding sound, as if the long lines of light were made by the beating fins of the dark object, which was some habitant of the deep roused from slumbers by the light of the golden foam formed by those who drowned.
And it rushed on and on to seize its prey, invisible before, but now plainly seen by the struggles and the resulting phosphorescent light.
Long, low, and with its head raised high out of the water, horrent, grotesque and strange, the great sea monster glided along over the smooth sea. Full five-and-twenty fins aside made the water flash as it came on, and there was, as it were, a thin new-moon-like curve of light at its breast, while from its tail the sparkling phosphorescence spread widely as it was left behind.
The low grumbling sound came again, but it was not heard by those drowning, nor was the light seen as it glided on nearer and nearer, till it reached the spot.
One dart from the long raised neck, one snap of the fierce jaws—another dart and another snap, and the sea monster had its prey, and glided rapidly on, probably in search of more in its nightly hunt.
Nothing of the kind! The long creature endued with life darted on, but the long neck and horned head were not darted down, but guided past those who where drowning. Everything was stiff and rigid but the playing fins. But there was another dull, low grunt, the fins seemed to cease by magic; and, instead of being snapped up by the monster’s mouth, the two sufferers were drawn in over its side.
Then the water flashed golden again, the monster made a curve and rushed through the water, and sped away for miles till, in obedience to another grunting sound, it turned and dashed straight for a sandy beach, resolving itself into a long New Zealand war canoe, into which Don and Jem had been drawn, to lie half insensible till the beach was neared when Jem slowly and wonderingly sat up.
“Where’s Mas’ Don?” he said in a sharp ill-used tone.
“Here he is,” said a gruff voice, and Jem looked wonderingly in a savage’s indistinctly seen face, and then down in the bottom of the long canoe, into which they had been dragged.
“Mas’ Don—don’t say you’re drowned, Mas’ Don,” he said pitifully, with a Somersetshire man’s bold attempt at the making of an Irish bull.
“My pakeha! My pakeha!” said a deep voice; and Jem became aware of the fact that the big chief he had so often seen on board the ship, and who had come to them with the present of fruit when they were guarding the boat, was kneeling down and gently rubbing Don.
“Is he dead?” said Jem in a whisper.
“No, not this time,” said the gruff voice out of the darkness. “Pretty nigh touch, though, for both of you. Why didn’t you hail sooner?”
“Hail sooner?” said Jem.
“Yes. We came in the canoe to fetch you, but you didn’t hail, and it was too dark to see.”
“We couldn’t hail,” said Jem, sulkily. “It would have brought the boats down upon us.”
“Ah, so it would,” said the owner of the gruff voice. “There’s three boats out after you.”
“And shall you give us up?”
“Give you up? Not I. I’ve nothing to do with it; you must talk to him.”
“My pakeha!” cried the big chief excitedly.
“That isn’t his name, is it?” said Jem.
“No. Nonsense! Pakeha means white man. I was a pakeha once.”
“Let me help him up,” said Jem eagerly.
“My pakeha! My pakeha!” said the chief, as if putting in a personal claim, and ready to resist Jem’s interference.
The difficulty was ended by Don giving himself a shake, and slowly rising.
“Jem! Where’s Jem?”
“Here! All right, Mas’ Don. We’re in the canoe.”
“Hah!” ejaculated Don; and he shuddered as if chilled. “Where are the boats?”
“Miles away,” said the tattooed Englishman. “But look here, I’m only on board. This is Ngati’s doing. I know nothing about you two.”
“My pakeha! My pakeha!” cried the chief.
“Lookye here,” cried Jem, speaking in the irritable fashion of those just rescued from drowning; “if that there chief keeps on saying, ‘My pakeha’ at me in that there aggravating way, I shall hit him in the mouth.”
“Ah! You’re rusty,” said the tattooed Englishman. “Man always is when he’s been under water.”
“I dunno what you mean by being rusty,” said Jem snappishly. “What I say is, leave a man alone.”
“All right!” said the Englishman. “I’ll let you alone. How’s your young mate?”
“My head aches dreadfully,” said Don; “and there’s a horrible pain at the back of my neck.”
“Oh, that’ll soon go off, my lad. And now what are you going to do?”
“Do?” interrupted Jem. “Why, you don’t mean to give us up, do you?”
“I don’t mean to do anything or know anything,” said the man. “Your skipper’ll come to me to-morrow if he don’t think you’re drowned, or—I say, did you feel anything of ’em?”
“Feel anything—of what?” said Don.
“Sharks, my lad. The shallow waters here swarm with them.”
“Sharks!” cried Don and Jem in a breath.
“Yes. Didn’t you know?”
“I’d forgotten all about the sharks, Jem,” said Don.
“So had I, my lad, or I dursen’t have swum for it as we did. Of course I thought about ’em at first starting, but I forgot all about ’em afterwards.”
“Jem,” said Don, shuddering; “what an escape!”
“Well, don’t get making a fuss about it now it’s all over, Mas’ Don. Here we are safe, but I must say you’re the wussest swimmer I ever met.—Here, what are they going to do?”
“Run ashore,” said the Englishman, as there was a buzz of excitement among the New Zealanders, many of whom stepped over into the shallow water, and seized the sides of the boat, which was rapidly run up the dark shore, where, amidst a low gobbling noise, the two wet passengers were landed to stand shivering with cold.
“There you are,” said the Englishman, “safe and sound.”
“Well, who said we weren’t?” grumbled Jem.
“Not you, squire,” continued the Englishman. “There; I don’t know anything about you, and you’d better lie close till the ship’s gone, for they may come after you.”
“Where shall we hide?” said Don eagerly.
“Oh, you leave it to Ngati; he’ll find you a place where you can lie snug.”
“Ngati,” said the owner of the name quickly, for he had been listening intently, and trying to grasp what was said. “Ngati! My pakeha.”
“Oh, I say: do leave off,” cried Jem testily. “Pakeha again. Say, Mas’ Don, him and I’s going to have a row before we’ve done.”
The chief said something quickly to the Englishman, who nodded and then turned to the fugitives.
“Ngati says he will take you where you can dry yourselves, and put on warm things.”
“He won’t be up to any games, will he?” said Jem.
“No, no; you may trust him. You can’t do better than go with him till the search is over.”
The Englishman turned to a tall young savage, and said some words to him, with the result that the young man placed himself behind Don, and began to carefully obliterate the footprints left by the fugitives upon the sand.
Don noticed this and wondered, for in the darkness the footprints were hardly perceptible; but he appreciated the act, though he felt no one but a native would distinguish between the footprints of the two people.
“My pakeha,” said Ngati just then, making Jem wince and utter an angry gesticulation. “Gunpowder, gun, pow-gun, gun-pow.”
“Eh?” said Jem harshly.
“My pakeha, powder-gun. Pow-gun, gun-pow. No?”
“He says his pakeha was to have brought plenty of guns and powder, and he has not brought any.”
“No,” said Don, shivering as he spoke. “The guns are the king’s. I could not bring any.”
The New Zealand chief seemed to comprehend a good deal of his meaning, and nodded his head several times. Then making a sign to a couple of followers, each took one of Don’s arms, and they hurried him off at a sharp run, Jem being seized in the same way and borne forward, followed by the rest of the men who were in the boat.
“Here, I say. Look here,” Jem kept protesting, “I arn’t a cask o’ sugar or a bar’l o’ ’bacco. Let a man walk, can’t yer? Hi! Mas’ Don, they’re carrying on strange games here. How are you getting on?”
Don heard the question, but he was too breathless to speak, and had hard work to keep his feet, leaving everything to the guidance of his companions, who kept on for above a quarter of a mile before stopping in a shadowy gully, where the spreading ferns made the place seem black as night, and a peculiar steaming sulphurous odour arose.
But a short time before Don’s teeth were chattering with the cold, but the exercise circulated his blood; and now, as his eyes grew more used to the obscurity, he managed to see that they were in a rough hut-like place open at the front. The sulphurous odour was quite strong, the steam felt hot and oppressive, and yet pleasant after the long chilling effect of the water, and he listened to a peculiar gurgling, bubbling noise, which was accompanied now and then by a faint pop.
He had hardly realised this when he felt that his clothes were being stripped from him, and for a moment he felt disposed to resist; but he was breathless and wearied out, and rough as was the attention, it struck him that it was only preparatory to giving him a dry blanket to wear till his drenched garments were dry, and hence he suffered patiently.
But that was not all, for, as the last garment was stripped off, Ngati said some words to his people, and before he could realise what was going to be done, Don felt himself seized by four men, each taking a wrist or ankle, and holding him suspended before Ngati, who went behind him and supported his head.
“Hah!” ejaculated Ngati, with a peculiar grunt. His men all acted with military precision, and, to Don’s astonishment, he found himself plunged into a rocky basin of hot water.
His first idea was to struggle, but there was no need. He had been lowered in rapidly but gently, and he felt Ngati place the back of his head softly against a smooth pleasantly-warm hollowed-out stone, while the sensation, after all he had gone through, was so delicious that he uttered a sigh of satisfaction.
For now he realised the hospitality of the people who had brought him there, and the fact that to recover him from the chill of being half drowned, they had brought him to one of their hot springs, used by them as baths.
Don uttered another sigh of satisfaction, and as he lay back covered to his chin in the hot volcanic water, he began to laugh so heartily that the tears came into his eyes.
For the same process was going on in the darkness with Jem, who was a less tractable patient, especially as he had taken it into his thick head that it was not for his benefit that he was to be plunged into a hot water pool, but to make soup for the New Zealanders around.
“Mas’ Don!” he cried out of the darkness, “where are you? I want to get out of this. Here, be quiet, will yer? What yer doing of? I say. Don’t. Here, what are you going to do?”
Don wanted to say a word to calm Jem’s alarms, but after the agony he had gone through, it seemed to him as if his nerves were relaxed beyond control, and his companion’s perplexity presented itself to him in so comical a light, that he could do nothing but lie back there in his delicious bath, and laugh hysterically; and all the while he could hear the New Zealanders gobbling angrily in reply to Jem’s objections, as a fierce struggle went on.
“That’s your game, is it? I wouldn’t ha’ thought it of a set who calls theirselves men. Shove me into that hot pot, and boil me, would you? Not if I knows it, you don’t. Hi! Mas’ Don! Look out! Run, my lad. They’re trying to cook me alive, the brutes. Oh, if I only had a cutlash, or an iron bar.”
Don tried to speak again, but the words were suffocated by the gurgle of laughter.
“Poor old Jem!” he thought.
“I tell you, you sha’n’t. Six to one, eh? Leave off. Mas’ Don, they’re going to scald me like a pig in a tub. Hi! Help!”
There was the sound of a struggle, a loud splash, and then silence, followed by Jem’s voice.
“Oh!” he ejaculated. “Then why didn’t you say so? How was I to know you meant a hot bath? Well, it arn’t bad.—Mas’ Don!”
“Yes.”
“What! Ha’ you been there all the time?”
“Yes.”
“What yer been doing of?”
“Laughing.”
“Larfin’? Are they giving you a hot bath?”
“Yes.”
“Arn’t it good?”
“Glorious!”
“I thought they was going to scald me like a pig, so as to eat me afterwards. Did you hear me holler?”
“Hear you? Yes.—How delicious and restful it feels.”
“Ah, it do, my lad; but don’t you let any on it get into your mouth. I did, and arn’t good. But I say; what’s it mean? Seems so rum to me coming to meet us in a canoe and bringing us ashore, and giving us hot baths. I don’t seem to understand it. Nobody does such things over at home.”
As they lay in the roughly-made stone slab baths, into which the volcanic water effervesced and gurgled, the followers of Ngati came and went busily, and a curious transformation came over the scene—the darkness seemed to undergo a change and become grey. Then as Don watched, he saw that above his head quite a cloud of steam was floating, through which a pale, sad light began to penetrate; and as he watched this, so pleasant and restful was the sensation that he felt as if he could sleep, till he took into consideration the fact that if he did, his body would become relaxed, and he would slip down with his head beneath the surface.
As it grew lighter rapidly now, he could make out that the roughly thatched roof was merely stretched over a rough rocky nook in which the hot spring bubbled out of the mountain slope, and here a few rough slabs had been laid together, box-fashion, to retain the water and form the bath.
Before he had more than realised the fact that Jem was in a shelter very similar to his own, the huge New Zealander was back with about a dozen of his men, and himself bearing a great native flax cloth marked with a broad pattern.
Just as the sun had transformed everything without, and Don was gazing on a glorious prospect of lace-like tree-fern rising out of the steaming gully in which he stood, Jem Wimble came stalking out of the shelter where he had been dressing—a very simple operation, for it had consisted in draping himself in a great unbleached cloth—and looking squat and comical as a man in his circumstances could look.
Ngati was close at hand with his men all standing in a group, and at first sight it seemed as if they were laughing at the little, stoutly-built, pink-faced man, but, on the contrary, they were smiles of admiration.
“I couldn’t ha’ believed it, Mas’ Don,” said Jem; “I feel as fresh as a daisy, and—well, I never did! Mas’ Don, what a guy you do look!”
Don, after a momentary thought that he looked something like one of the old Romans in a toga, just as he had seen them in an engraving, had been so taken up with the beauty of the ferny gully, with the sun gilding here and there the steamy vapour which rose from the hot springs, that he had thought no more of his personal appearance till Jem spoke.
“Guy?” he said, laughing, as he ran his eye over Jem. “I say, did you ever hear the story of the pot and the kettle?”
“Yes, of course; but I say, my lad, I don’t look so rum as you, do I?”
“I suppose you look just about the same, Jem.”
“Then the sooner they gets our clothes dry and we’re into ’em again, the sooner we shall look like human beings. Say, Mas’ Don, it’s werry awkward; you can’t say anything to that big savage without him shouting ‘pakeha.’ How shall we ask for our clothes?”
“Wait,” said Don. “We’ve got to think about getting further away.”
“Think they’ll send to look for us, Mas’ Don?”
“I should say they would.”
“Well, somehow,” said Jem, “I seem to fancy they’ll think we’re drowned, and never send at all. But, look here; what’s all this yaller stuff?”
“Sulphur.”
“What, brimstone? Why, so it is. Think o’ their buying brimstone to lay down about their hot baths. I know!” cried Jem, slapping his thigh, “they uses it instead of coal, Mas’ Don; burns it to make the water hot.”
“No, no, Jem; that’s natural sulphur.”
“So’s all sulphur nat’ral.”
“But I mean this is where it is found, or comes.”
“G’long with you.”
“It is, Jem; and that water is naturally hot.”
“What, like it is at Bath?”
“To be sure.”
“Well, that caps all. Some one said so the other day aboard ship, but I didn’t believe it. Fancy a set o’ savages having hot water all ready for them. I say, though, Mas’ Don, it’s very nice.”
Just then Ngati came up smiling, but as Jem afterwards said, looking like a figure-head that was going to bite, and they were led off to awhareand furnished with a good substantial meal.
Chapter Twenty Nine.An unwelcome Recognition.“It arn’t bad,” said Jem; “but it’s puzzling.”“What is?” said Don, who was partaking of broiled fish with no little appetite.“Why, how savages like these here should know all about cooking.”The breakfast was eaten with an admiring circle of spectators at hand, while Ngati kept on going from Don to his tribesmen and back again, patting the lad’s shoulder, and seeming to play the part of showman with no little satisfaction to himself, but with the effect of making Jem wroth.“It’s all very well, Mas’ Don,” he said, with his mouth full; “but if he comes and says ‘my pakeha’ to me, I shall throw something at him.”“Oh, it’s all kindly meant, Jem.”“Oh, is it? I don’t know so much about that. If it is, why don’t they give us back our clothes? Suppose any of our fellows was to see us like this?”“I hope none of our fellows will see us, Jem.”“Tomati Paroni! Tomati Paroni!” shouted several of the men in chorus.“Hark at ’em!” cried Jem scornfully. “What does that mean?”The explanation was given directly, for the tattooed Englishmen came running up to thewhare.“Boats coming from the ship to search for you,” he said quickly, and then turned to Ngati and spoke a few words with the result that the chief rushed at the escaped pair, and signed to them to rise.“Yes,” said the Englishman, “you had better go with him and hide for a bit. We’ll let you know when they are gone.”“Tell them to give us our clothes,” said Jem sourly.“Yes, of course. They would tell tales,” said the Englishman; and he turned again to Ngati, who sent two men out of thewhareto return directly with the dried garments.Ngati signed to them to follow, and he led them, by a faintly marked track, in and out among the trees and the cleared patches which formed the natives’ gardens, and all the while carefully avoiding any openings through which the harbour could be seen.Every now and then he turned to speak volubly, but though he interpolated a few English words, his meaning would have been incomprehensible but for his gestures and the warnings nature kept giving of danger.For every here and there, as they wound in and out among the trees, they came upon soft, boggy places, where the ground was hot; and as the pressure of the foot sent hissing forth a jet of steam, it was evident that a step to right or left of the narrow track meant being plunged into a pool of heated mud of unknown depth.In other places the hot mud bubbled up in rounded pools, spitting, hissing, and bursting with faint cracks that were terribly suggestive of danger.Over these heated spots the fertility and growth of the plants was astounding. They seemed to be shooting up out of a natural hothouse, but where to attempt to pass them meant a terrible and instant death.“Look out, Mas’ Don! This here’s what I once heard a clown say, ‘It’s dangerous to be safe.’ I say, figgerhead, arn’t there no other way?”“Ship! Men! Catchee, catchee,” said Ngati, in a whisper.“Hear that, Mas’ Don? Any one’d think we was babbies. Ketchy, ketchy, indeed! You ask him if there arn’t no other way. I don’t like walking in a place that’s like so much hot soup.”“Be quiet, and follow. Hist! Hark!”Don stopped short, for, from a distance, came a faint hail, followed by another nearer, which seemed to be in answer.“They’re arter us, sir, and if we’re to be ketched I don’t mean to be ketched like this.”“What are you going to do, Jem?”“Do?” said Jem, unrolling his bundled-up clothes, and preparing to sit down, “make myself look like an ornery Chrishtun.”“Don’t sit down there, Jem!” cried Don, as Ngati gave a warning cry at the same moment, and started back.But they were too late, for Jem had chosen a delicately green mossy and ferny patch, and plumped himself down, to utter a cry of horror, and snatch at the extended hands. For the green ferny patch was a thin covering over a noisome hole full of black boiling mud, into which the poor fellow was settling as he was dragged out.“Fah!” ejaculated Jem, pinching his nose. “Here, I’ve had ’most enough o’ this place. Nice sort o’ spot this would be to turn a donkey out to graze. Why, you wouldn’t find nothing but the tips of his ears to-morrow morning.”Another hail rang out, and was answered in two places.“I say, Mas’ Don, they’re hunting for us, and we shall have to run.”He made signs to the chief indicative of a desire to run, but Ngati shook his head, and pointed onward.They followed on, listening to the shouts, which came nearer, till Ngati suddenly took a sharp turn round a great buttress of lava, and entered a wild, narrow, forbidding-looking chasm, where on either side the black, jagged masses of rock were piled up several hundred feet, and made glorious by streams which coursed among the delicately green ferns.“Look’s damp,” said Jem, as Ngati led them on for about fifty yards, and then began to climb, his companions following him, till he reached a shelf about a hundred feet up, and beckoned to them to come.“Does he think this here’s the rigging of a ship, and want us to set sail?” grumbled Jem. “Here, I say, what’s the good of our coming there?”The chief stamped his foot, and made an imperious gesture, which brought them to his side.He pointed to a hole in the face of the precipice, and signed to them to go in.“Men—boat,” he said, pointing, and then clapping his hand to his ear as a distant hail came like a whisper up the gully, which was almost at right angles to the beach.“He wants us to hide here, Jem,” said Don; and he went up to the entrance and looked in. A hot, steamy breath of air came like a puff into his face, and a strange low moaning noise fell upon his ear, followed by a faint whistle, that was strongly suggestive of some one being already in hiding.“I suppose that’s where they keeps their coals, Mas’ Don,” said Jem. “So we’ve got to hide in the coal-cellar. Why not start off and run?”“We should be seen,” said Don anxiously. “Don’t let us do anything rash.”“But p’r’aps it’s rash to go in there, my lad. How do we know it isn’t a trap, or that it’s safe to go in?”“We must trust our hosts, Jem,” replied Don. “They have behaved very well to us so far.”There was another hail from the party ashore, and still Jem hesitated.“I don’t know but what we might walk straight away, Mas’ Don,” he said, glancing down at the garb he wore. “If any of our fellows saw us at a distance they’d say we was savages, and take no notice.”“Not of our white faces, Jem? Come, don’t be obstinate; I’m going on.”“Oh, well, sir, if you go on, o’ course I must follow, and look arter you; but I don’t like it. The place looks treacherous. Ugh! Wurra! Wurra! Wurra!”That repeated word represents most nearly the shudder given by Jem Wimble as he followed Don into the cave, the chief pointing for them to go farther in, and then dropping rapidly down from point to point till he was at the bottom, Jem peering over the edge of the shelf, and watching him till he had disappeared.“Arn’t gone to tell them where we are, have he, Mas’ Don?”“No, Jem. How suspicious you are!”“Ah, so’ll you be when you get as old as I am,” said Jem, creeping back to where Don was standing, looking inward. “Well, what sort of a place is it, Mas’ Don?”“I can’t see in far, but the cavern seems to go right in, like a long crooked passage.”“Crooked enough, and long enough,” grumbled Jem. “Hark!”Don listened, and heard a faint hail.“They’re coming along searching for us, I suppose.”“I didn’t mean that sound; I meant this. There, listen again.”Don took a step into the cave, but went no farther, for Jem gripped his arm.“Take care, my lad. ’Tarn’t safe. Hear that noise?”“Yes; it is like some animal breathing hard.”“And we’ve got no pistols nor cutlashes. It’s a lion, I know.”“There are no lions here, Jem.”“Arn’t there? Then it’s a tiger. I know un. I’ve seen ’em. Hark!”“But there are no tigers, nor any other fierce beasts here, Jem.”“Now, how can you be so obstinate, Mas’ Don, when you can hear ’em whistling, and sighing and breathing hard right in yonder. No, no, not a step farther do you go.”“Don’t be so foolish, Jem.”“’Tarn’t foolish, Mas’ Don; and look here: I’m going to take advantage of them being asleep to put on my proper costoom, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll do just the same.”Don hesitated, but Jem took advantage of a handy seat-like piece of rock, and altered his dress rapidly, an example that, after a moment or two of hesitation, Don followed.“Dry as a bone,” said Jem. “Come, that’s better. I feels like a human being now. Just before I felt like a chap outside one of the shows at our fair.”He doubled up the blanket he had been wearing, and threw it over his arm; while Don folded his, and laid it down, so that he could peer over the edge of the shelf, and command the entrance to the ravine.But all was perfectly silent and deserted, and, after waiting some time, he rose, and went a little way inside the cavern.“Don’t! Don’t be so precious rash, Mas’ Don,” cried Jem pettishly, as, urged on by his curiosity, Don went slowly, step by step, toward what seemed to be a dark blue veil of mist, which shut off farther view into the cave.“I don’t think there’s anything to mind, or they wouldn’t have told us to hide here.”“But you don’t know, my lad. There may be dangerous wild critters in there as you never heard tell on. Graffems, and dragons, and beasts with stings in their tails—cockatoos.”“Nonsense! Cockatrices,” said Don laughing.“Well, it’s all the same. Now, do be advised, Mas’ Don, and stop here.”“But I want to know what it’s like farther in.”Don went slowly forward into the dim mist, and Jem followed, murmuring bitterly at his being so rash.“Mind!” he cried suddenly, as a louder whistle than ordinary came from the depths of the cave, and the sound was so weird and strange that Don stopped short.The noise was not repeated, but the peculiar hissing went on, and, as if from a great distance, there came gurglings and rushing sounds, as if from water.“I know we shall get in somewhere, and not get out again, Mas’ Don. There now, hark at that!”“It’s only hot water, the same as we heard gurgling in our bath,” said Don, still progressing.“Well, suppose it is. The more reason for your not going. P’r’aps this is where it comes from first, and nice place it must be where all that water’s made hot. Let’s go back, and wait close at the front.”“No; let’s go a little farther, Jem.”“Why, I’m so hot now, my lad, I feel as if I was being steamed like a tater. Here, let’s get back, and—”“Hist!”Don caught his arm, for there was another whistle, and not from the depths of the dark steamy cave, but from outside, evidently below the mouth of the cave, as if some one was climbing up.The whistle was answered, and the two fugitives crept back a little more into the darkness.“Ahoy! Come up here, sir!” shouted a familiar voice, and a hail came back.“Here’s a hole in the rocks up here,” came plainly now.“Ramsden,” whispered Don in Jem’s ear.They stole back a little more into the gloom, Jem offering no opposition now, for it seemed to them, so plainly could they see the bright greenish-hued daylight, and the configuration of the cavern’s mouth, that so sure as any one climbed up to the shelf and looked in they would be seen.Impressed by this, Don whispered to Jem to come farther in, and they were about to back farther, when there was a rustling sound, and the figure of a man appeared standing up perfectly black against the light; but though his features were not visible, they knew him by his configuration, and that their guess at the voice was right.“He sees us,” thought Don, and he stood as if turned to stone, one hand touching the warm rocky side of the cave, and the other resting upon Jem’s shoulder.The man was motionless as they, and his appearance exercised an effect upon them like fascination, as he stood peering forward, and seeming to fix them with his eyes, which had the stronger fancied effect upon them for not being seen.“Wonder whether it would kill a man to hit him straight in the chest, and drive him off that rock down into the gully below,” said Jem to himself. “I should like to do it.”Then he shrank back as if he had been struck, for the sinister scoundrel shouted loudly,—“Ahoy there! Now, then out you come. I can see you hiding.”
“It arn’t bad,” said Jem; “but it’s puzzling.”
“What is?” said Don, who was partaking of broiled fish with no little appetite.
“Why, how savages like these here should know all about cooking.”
The breakfast was eaten with an admiring circle of spectators at hand, while Ngati kept on going from Don to his tribesmen and back again, patting the lad’s shoulder, and seeming to play the part of showman with no little satisfaction to himself, but with the effect of making Jem wroth.
“It’s all very well, Mas’ Don,” he said, with his mouth full; “but if he comes and says ‘my pakeha’ to me, I shall throw something at him.”
“Oh, it’s all kindly meant, Jem.”
“Oh, is it? I don’t know so much about that. If it is, why don’t they give us back our clothes? Suppose any of our fellows was to see us like this?”
“I hope none of our fellows will see us, Jem.”
“Tomati Paroni! Tomati Paroni!” shouted several of the men in chorus.
“Hark at ’em!” cried Jem scornfully. “What does that mean?”
The explanation was given directly, for the tattooed Englishmen came running up to thewhare.
“Boats coming from the ship to search for you,” he said quickly, and then turned to Ngati and spoke a few words with the result that the chief rushed at the escaped pair, and signed to them to rise.
“Yes,” said the Englishman, “you had better go with him and hide for a bit. We’ll let you know when they are gone.”
“Tell them to give us our clothes,” said Jem sourly.
“Yes, of course. They would tell tales,” said the Englishman; and he turned again to Ngati, who sent two men out of thewhareto return directly with the dried garments.
Ngati signed to them to follow, and he led them, by a faintly marked track, in and out among the trees and the cleared patches which formed the natives’ gardens, and all the while carefully avoiding any openings through which the harbour could be seen.
Every now and then he turned to speak volubly, but though he interpolated a few English words, his meaning would have been incomprehensible but for his gestures and the warnings nature kept giving of danger.
For every here and there, as they wound in and out among the trees, they came upon soft, boggy places, where the ground was hot; and as the pressure of the foot sent hissing forth a jet of steam, it was evident that a step to right or left of the narrow track meant being plunged into a pool of heated mud of unknown depth.
In other places the hot mud bubbled up in rounded pools, spitting, hissing, and bursting with faint cracks that were terribly suggestive of danger.
Over these heated spots the fertility and growth of the plants was astounding. They seemed to be shooting up out of a natural hothouse, but where to attempt to pass them meant a terrible and instant death.
“Look out, Mas’ Don! This here’s what I once heard a clown say, ‘It’s dangerous to be safe.’ I say, figgerhead, arn’t there no other way?”
“Ship! Men! Catchee, catchee,” said Ngati, in a whisper.
“Hear that, Mas’ Don? Any one’d think we was babbies. Ketchy, ketchy, indeed! You ask him if there arn’t no other way. I don’t like walking in a place that’s like so much hot soup.”
“Be quiet, and follow. Hist! Hark!”
Don stopped short, for, from a distance, came a faint hail, followed by another nearer, which seemed to be in answer.
“They’re arter us, sir, and if we’re to be ketched I don’t mean to be ketched like this.”
“What are you going to do, Jem?”
“Do?” said Jem, unrolling his bundled-up clothes, and preparing to sit down, “make myself look like an ornery Chrishtun.”
“Don’t sit down there, Jem!” cried Don, as Ngati gave a warning cry at the same moment, and started back.
But they were too late, for Jem had chosen a delicately green mossy and ferny patch, and plumped himself down, to utter a cry of horror, and snatch at the extended hands. For the green ferny patch was a thin covering over a noisome hole full of black boiling mud, into which the poor fellow was settling as he was dragged out.
“Fah!” ejaculated Jem, pinching his nose. “Here, I’ve had ’most enough o’ this place. Nice sort o’ spot this would be to turn a donkey out to graze. Why, you wouldn’t find nothing but the tips of his ears to-morrow morning.”
Another hail rang out, and was answered in two places.
“I say, Mas’ Don, they’re hunting for us, and we shall have to run.”
He made signs to the chief indicative of a desire to run, but Ngati shook his head, and pointed onward.
They followed on, listening to the shouts, which came nearer, till Ngati suddenly took a sharp turn round a great buttress of lava, and entered a wild, narrow, forbidding-looking chasm, where on either side the black, jagged masses of rock were piled up several hundred feet, and made glorious by streams which coursed among the delicately green ferns.
“Look’s damp,” said Jem, as Ngati led them on for about fifty yards, and then began to climb, his companions following him, till he reached a shelf about a hundred feet up, and beckoned to them to come.
“Does he think this here’s the rigging of a ship, and want us to set sail?” grumbled Jem. “Here, I say, what’s the good of our coming there?”
The chief stamped his foot, and made an imperious gesture, which brought them to his side.
He pointed to a hole in the face of the precipice, and signed to them to go in.
“Men—boat,” he said, pointing, and then clapping his hand to his ear as a distant hail came like a whisper up the gully, which was almost at right angles to the beach.
“He wants us to hide here, Jem,” said Don; and he went up to the entrance and looked in. A hot, steamy breath of air came like a puff into his face, and a strange low moaning noise fell upon his ear, followed by a faint whistle, that was strongly suggestive of some one being already in hiding.
“I suppose that’s where they keeps their coals, Mas’ Don,” said Jem. “So we’ve got to hide in the coal-cellar. Why not start off and run?”
“We should be seen,” said Don anxiously. “Don’t let us do anything rash.”
“But p’r’aps it’s rash to go in there, my lad. How do we know it isn’t a trap, or that it’s safe to go in?”
“We must trust our hosts, Jem,” replied Don. “They have behaved very well to us so far.”
There was another hail from the party ashore, and still Jem hesitated.
“I don’t know but what we might walk straight away, Mas’ Don,” he said, glancing down at the garb he wore. “If any of our fellows saw us at a distance they’d say we was savages, and take no notice.”
“Not of our white faces, Jem? Come, don’t be obstinate; I’m going on.”
“Oh, well, sir, if you go on, o’ course I must follow, and look arter you; but I don’t like it. The place looks treacherous. Ugh! Wurra! Wurra! Wurra!”
That repeated word represents most nearly the shudder given by Jem Wimble as he followed Don into the cave, the chief pointing for them to go farther in, and then dropping rapidly down from point to point till he was at the bottom, Jem peering over the edge of the shelf, and watching him till he had disappeared.
“Arn’t gone to tell them where we are, have he, Mas’ Don?”
“No, Jem. How suspicious you are!”
“Ah, so’ll you be when you get as old as I am,” said Jem, creeping back to where Don was standing, looking inward. “Well, what sort of a place is it, Mas’ Don?”
“I can’t see in far, but the cavern seems to go right in, like a long crooked passage.”
“Crooked enough, and long enough,” grumbled Jem. “Hark!”
Don listened, and heard a faint hail.
“They’re coming along searching for us, I suppose.”
“I didn’t mean that sound; I meant this. There, listen again.”
Don took a step into the cave, but went no farther, for Jem gripped his arm.
“Take care, my lad. ’Tarn’t safe. Hear that noise?”
“Yes; it is like some animal breathing hard.”
“And we’ve got no pistols nor cutlashes. It’s a lion, I know.”
“There are no lions here, Jem.”
“Arn’t there? Then it’s a tiger. I know un. I’ve seen ’em. Hark!”
“But there are no tigers, nor any other fierce beasts here, Jem.”
“Now, how can you be so obstinate, Mas’ Don, when you can hear ’em whistling, and sighing and breathing hard right in yonder. No, no, not a step farther do you go.”
“Don’t be so foolish, Jem.”
“’Tarn’t foolish, Mas’ Don; and look here: I’m going to take advantage of them being asleep to put on my proper costoom, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll do just the same.”
Don hesitated, but Jem took advantage of a handy seat-like piece of rock, and altered his dress rapidly, an example that, after a moment or two of hesitation, Don followed.
“Dry as a bone,” said Jem. “Come, that’s better. I feels like a human being now. Just before I felt like a chap outside one of the shows at our fair.”
He doubled up the blanket he had been wearing, and threw it over his arm; while Don folded his, and laid it down, so that he could peer over the edge of the shelf, and command the entrance to the ravine.
But all was perfectly silent and deserted, and, after waiting some time, he rose, and went a little way inside the cavern.
“Don’t! Don’t be so precious rash, Mas’ Don,” cried Jem pettishly, as, urged on by his curiosity, Don went slowly, step by step, toward what seemed to be a dark blue veil of mist, which shut off farther view into the cave.
“I don’t think there’s anything to mind, or they wouldn’t have told us to hide here.”
“But you don’t know, my lad. There may be dangerous wild critters in there as you never heard tell on. Graffems, and dragons, and beasts with stings in their tails—cockatoos.”
“Nonsense! Cockatrices,” said Don laughing.
“Well, it’s all the same. Now, do be advised, Mas’ Don, and stop here.”
“But I want to know what it’s like farther in.”
Don went slowly forward into the dim mist, and Jem followed, murmuring bitterly at his being so rash.
“Mind!” he cried suddenly, as a louder whistle than ordinary came from the depths of the cave, and the sound was so weird and strange that Don stopped short.
The noise was not repeated, but the peculiar hissing went on, and, as if from a great distance, there came gurglings and rushing sounds, as if from water.
“I know we shall get in somewhere, and not get out again, Mas’ Don. There now, hark at that!”
“It’s only hot water, the same as we heard gurgling in our bath,” said Don, still progressing.
“Well, suppose it is. The more reason for your not going. P’r’aps this is where it comes from first, and nice place it must be where all that water’s made hot. Let’s go back, and wait close at the front.”
“No; let’s go a little farther, Jem.”
“Why, I’m so hot now, my lad, I feel as if I was being steamed like a tater. Here, let’s get back, and—”
“Hist!”
Don caught his arm, for there was another whistle, and not from the depths of the dark steamy cave, but from outside, evidently below the mouth of the cave, as if some one was climbing up.
The whistle was answered, and the two fugitives crept back a little more into the darkness.
“Ahoy! Come up here, sir!” shouted a familiar voice, and a hail came back.
“Here’s a hole in the rocks up here,” came plainly now.
“Ramsden,” whispered Don in Jem’s ear.
They stole back a little more into the gloom, Jem offering no opposition now, for it seemed to them, so plainly could they see the bright greenish-hued daylight, and the configuration of the cavern’s mouth, that so sure as any one climbed up to the shelf and looked in they would be seen.
Impressed by this, Don whispered to Jem to come farther in, and they were about to back farther, when there was a rustling sound, and the figure of a man appeared standing up perfectly black against the light; but though his features were not visible, they knew him by his configuration, and that their guess at the voice was right.
“He sees us,” thought Don, and he stood as if turned to stone, one hand touching the warm rocky side of the cave, and the other resting upon Jem’s shoulder.
The man was motionless as they, and his appearance exercised an effect upon them like fascination, as he stood peering forward, and seeming to fix them with his eyes, which had the stronger fancied effect upon them for not being seen.
“Wonder whether it would kill a man to hit him straight in the chest, and drive him off that rock down into the gully below,” said Jem to himself. “I should like to do it.”
Then he shrank back as if he had been struck, for the sinister scoundrel shouted loudly,—
“Ahoy there! Now, then out you come. I can see you hiding.”
Chapter Thirty.A Determined Enemy.Don drew a long breath and took a step forward to march out and give himself up, but Jem’s hands clasped him round, a pair of lips were placed to his ear, and the yard-man’s voice whispered,—“Stand fast. All sham. He can’t see.”Don paused, wondering, and watched the dark figure in the entrance to the cave, without dismay now, till, to his surprise, the man began to whistle softly.“Likely place too,” he muttered. “Are you coming up here, sir?”“What is it?”“Likely looking cave, sir; runs right in; looks as if they might be hiding in here.”There was a rattling and rustling of stones and growth, and then the man at the entrance stooped down and held out his hands to assist some one to ascend, the result being that the broad heavy figure of Bosun Jones came into view.“Not likely to be here, my lad, even if they were in hiding; but this is a wild goose chase. They’re dead as dead.”“P’r’aps so, sir; but I think they’re in hiding somewhere. Praps here.”“Humph! No. Poor fellows, they were drowned.”“No, sir, I don’t think it,” said Ramsden. “Those niggers looked as if they knew something, and that tattooed fellow who has run away from Norfolk Island has encouraged them to desert. As like as not they may be in here listening to all I say.”“Well then, go in and fetch them out,” said the boatswain. “You can go in while I have a rest.”Don’s heart beat fast at those words, for he heard a loud hissing sound beside him, caused by Jem drawing in his breath; and the next moment, as he held his arm, he felt a thrill, for it seemed as if Jem’s muscles had tightened up suddenly.Then there was a hot breath upon his cheek, and a tickling sensation in his ear beyond; Jem’s lips seemed to settle themselves against it, and the tickling sensation was renewed, as Jem whispered,—“I’ve cleared my decks for action, Mas’ Don. It was that beggar as told on us. You stand aside when he comes on.”Don twisted his head round, caught Jem by the shoulder, and favoured him with the same buzzing sensation as he whispered,—“What are you going to do?”Jem re-applied his lips to Don’s ear.“I’m going to make him very sorry he ever come to sea. Once I gets hold of him I’ll make him feel like a walnut in a door.”“Don’t look a very cheerful place, Mr Jones,” came from the mouth of the cavern.“Afraid to go in?”“Afraid, sir? You never knew me afraid.”“Well, in you go and fetch them out,” said the boatswain with a laugh. “If you don’t come back I shall know that the Maoris have got you, and are saving you for the pot.”From where Don and Jem stood in the darkness they could see their spying sinister friend give quite a start; but he laughed off the impression the boatswain’s words had made, and began to come cautiously on, feeling his way as a man does who has just left the bright sunshine to enter a dark place.Jem uttered a loud hiss as he drew his breath, and Ramsden heard it and stopped.“Mr Jones,” he said sharply.“Well?”“Think there’s any big snakes here? I heard a hiss.”“Only steam from a hot spring. No snakes in this country.”“Oh!” ejaculated Ramsden: and he came cautiously on.Don felt Jem’s arm begin to twitch, and discovery seemed imminent. For a few moments he was irresolute, but, knowing that if they were to escape they must remain unseen, he let his hand slide down to Jem’s wrist, caught it firmly, and began to back farther into the cave.For a few moments he had to drag hard at his companion but, as if yielding to silently communicated superior orders Jem followed him slowly, step by step, with the greatest of caution, and in utter silence.The floor of the cave was wonderfully smooth, the rock feeling as if it had been worn by the constant passage over it of water, and using their bare feet as guides, and feeling with them every step, they backed in as fast as Ramsden approached, being as it were between two dangers, that of recapture, and the hidden perils, whatever they might be, of the cave.It was nerve-stirring work, for all beyond was intense darkness, out of which, as they backed farther and farther in, came strange whisperings, guttural gurglings, which sounded to Don as if the inhabitants of the place were retiring angrily before their disturbers, till, driven to bay in some corner, they turned and attacked.But still Don held tightly by Jem’s wrist, and mastering his dread of the unknown, crept softly in, turning from time to time to watch Ramsden, who came on as if some instinct told him that those he sought for were there.“Found ’em?” shouted the boatswain; and his voice taught the hiding pair that the cave went far in beyond them, for the sound went muttering by, and seemed to die away as if far down a long passage.“Not yet, but I think I can hear ’em,” replied Ramsden.“You can hear a self-satisfied fool talking,” said the boatswain, ill-humouredly.“So can Mr Jones,” muttered the man. “Hear you. That’s what I can hear.”“What are you muttering about?”“I think I can hear ’em, sir. Now then, you two, give up. It’ll be the worse for you if you don’t.”Don’s hand tightened on his companion’s wrist, and they stood fast, for Ramsden was stopping in a bent attitude, listening.There was nothing to be heard but the whisperings and gurglings, and then they saw him draw his cutlass and come on.Jem’s muscles gave another jerk, but he suffered himself to be drawn farther and farther into the cave, till they must have been quite two hundred yards from the mouth; and now, for the first time, the almost straight line which it had formed, changed, and they lost sight of the entrance, but could see the shadow of their enemy cast upon the glistening wall of the place, down which the water seemed to drip, giving it the look of glass.All at once Don, as he crept back, felt his left foot, instead of encountering the smooth rock floor, go down, and as he quickly withdrew it and felt nearer to him, it was to touch the edge of what seemed a great crack crossing the floor diagonally.As he paused, he felt that it might be a “fault” of a few inches in width or depth, or a vast chasm going right down into the bowels of the mountain!“There’s a hole here,” he whispered to Jem. “Hold my hand.”Jem gripped him firmly, and he reached out with one leg, and felt over the side outward and downward; and, just as he was coming to the conclusion that the place was terribly deep, and a shudder at the danger was running through him, he found that he could touch bottom.He was in the act of recovering himself, so as to try how wide the crack or fault might be, when a peculiar strangling sensation attacked him, and he felt that he was falling.The next thing he felt was Jem’s lips to his ear, and feeling his whisper,—“Hold on, lad. What’s the matter?”He panted and drew his breath in a catching way for a few minutes before whispering back,—“Nothing. Only a sudden giddiness.”Jem made no comment, but gripped his hand tightly, and they stood listening, for the shadow cast faintly on the walls was motionless, and it was evident that their enemy was listening.“I’m going on, Ramsden,” said the boatswain. “Come along!”“All right, sir. Join you as soon as I’ve got my prisoners.”“Hold ’em tight,” shouted the boatswain, and then there was a loud rustling sound, followed by the words faintly heard, “Look sharp. It’s of no use fooling there.”Don could hear Ramsden mutter something, but he did not seem to be coming on; and mastering the dull, sluggish feeling, accompanied by a throbbing headache, the lad stole cautiously back to where he could look round and see their approaching enemy between them and the light.To his intense surprise he found the man had his back to them, and was retiring; but as he watched, Ramsden made an angry gesticulation, turned sharply and came on again, but seemed to catch his foot against a projecting piece of rock, stumble and fall forward, his cutlass flying two or three yards on before him with a loud jingling noise.What followed riveted Don to the spot.
Don drew a long breath and took a step forward to march out and give himself up, but Jem’s hands clasped him round, a pair of lips were placed to his ear, and the yard-man’s voice whispered,—
“Stand fast. All sham. He can’t see.”
Don paused, wondering, and watched the dark figure in the entrance to the cave, without dismay now, till, to his surprise, the man began to whistle softly.
“Likely place too,” he muttered. “Are you coming up here, sir?”
“What is it?”
“Likely looking cave, sir; runs right in; looks as if they might be hiding in here.”
There was a rattling and rustling of stones and growth, and then the man at the entrance stooped down and held out his hands to assist some one to ascend, the result being that the broad heavy figure of Bosun Jones came into view.
“Not likely to be here, my lad, even if they were in hiding; but this is a wild goose chase. They’re dead as dead.”
“P’r’aps so, sir; but I think they’re in hiding somewhere. Praps here.”
“Humph! No. Poor fellows, they were drowned.”
“No, sir, I don’t think it,” said Ramsden. “Those niggers looked as if they knew something, and that tattooed fellow who has run away from Norfolk Island has encouraged them to desert. As like as not they may be in here listening to all I say.”
“Well then, go in and fetch them out,” said the boatswain. “You can go in while I have a rest.”
Don’s heart beat fast at those words, for he heard a loud hissing sound beside him, caused by Jem drawing in his breath; and the next moment, as he held his arm, he felt a thrill, for it seemed as if Jem’s muscles had tightened up suddenly.
Then there was a hot breath upon his cheek, and a tickling sensation in his ear beyond; Jem’s lips seemed to settle themselves against it, and the tickling sensation was renewed, as Jem whispered,—
“I’ve cleared my decks for action, Mas’ Don. It was that beggar as told on us. You stand aside when he comes on.”
Don twisted his head round, caught Jem by the shoulder, and favoured him with the same buzzing sensation as he whispered,—
“What are you going to do?”
Jem re-applied his lips to Don’s ear.
“I’m going to make him very sorry he ever come to sea. Once I gets hold of him I’ll make him feel like a walnut in a door.”
“Don’t look a very cheerful place, Mr Jones,” came from the mouth of the cavern.
“Afraid to go in?”
“Afraid, sir? You never knew me afraid.”
“Well, in you go and fetch them out,” said the boatswain with a laugh. “If you don’t come back I shall know that the Maoris have got you, and are saving you for the pot.”
From where Don and Jem stood in the darkness they could see their spying sinister friend give quite a start; but he laughed off the impression the boatswain’s words had made, and began to come cautiously on, feeling his way as a man does who has just left the bright sunshine to enter a dark place.
Jem uttered a loud hiss as he drew his breath, and Ramsden heard it and stopped.
“Mr Jones,” he said sharply.
“Well?”
“Think there’s any big snakes here? I heard a hiss.”
“Only steam from a hot spring. No snakes in this country.”
“Oh!” ejaculated Ramsden: and he came cautiously on.
Don felt Jem’s arm begin to twitch, and discovery seemed imminent. For a few moments he was irresolute, but, knowing that if they were to escape they must remain unseen, he let his hand slide down to Jem’s wrist, caught it firmly, and began to back farther into the cave.
For a few moments he had to drag hard at his companion but, as if yielding to silently communicated superior orders Jem followed him slowly, step by step, with the greatest of caution, and in utter silence.
The floor of the cave was wonderfully smooth, the rock feeling as if it had been worn by the constant passage over it of water, and using their bare feet as guides, and feeling with them every step, they backed in as fast as Ramsden approached, being as it were between two dangers, that of recapture, and the hidden perils, whatever they might be, of the cave.
It was nerve-stirring work, for all beyond was intense darkness, out of which, as they backed farther and farther in, came strange whisperings, guttural gurglings, which sounded to Don as if the inhabitants of the place were retiring angrily before their disturbers, till, driven to bay in some corner, they turned and attacked.
But still Don held tightly by Jem’s wrist, and mastering his dread of the unknown, crept softly in, turning from time to time to watch Ramsden, who came on as if some instinct told him that those he sought for were there.
“Found ’em?” shouted the boatswain; and his voice taught the hiding pair that the cave went far in beyond them, for the sound went muttering by, and seemed to die away as if far down a long passage.
“Not yet, but I think I can hear ’em,” replied Ramsden.
“You can hear a self-satisfied fool talking,” said the boatswain, ill-humouredly.
“So can Mr Jones,” muttered the man. “Hear you. That’s what I can hear.”
“What are you muttering about?”
“I think I can hear ’em, sir. Now then, you two, give up. It’ll be the worse for you if you don’t.”
Don’s hand tightened on his companion’s wrist, and they stood fast, for Ramsden was stopping in a bent attitude, listening.
There was nothing to be heard but the whisperings and gurglings, and then they saw him draw his cutlass and come on.
Jem’s muscles gave another jerk, but he suffered himself to be drawn farther and farther into the cave, till they must have been quite two hundred yards from the mouth; and now, for the first time, the almost straight line which it had formed, changed, and they lost sight of the entrance, but could see the shadow of their enemy cast upon the glistening wall of the place, down which the water seemed to drip, giving it the look of glass.
All at once Don, as he crept back, felt his left foot, instead of encountering the smooth rock floor, go down, and as he quickly withdrew it and felt nearer to him, it was to touch the edge of what seemed a great crack crossing the floor diagonally.
As he paused, he felt that it might be a “fault” of a few inches in width or depth, or a vast chasm going right down into the bowels of the mountain!
“There’s a hole here,” he whispered to Jem. “Hold my hand.”
Jem gripped him firmly, and he reached out with one leg, and felt over the side outward and downward; and, just as he was coming to the conclusion that the place was terribly deep, and a shudder at the danger was running through him, he found that he could touch bottom.
He was in the act of recovering himself, so as to try how wide the crack or fault might be, when a peculiar strangling sensation attacked him, and he felt that he was falling.
The next thing he felt was Jem’s lips to his ear, and feeling his whisper,—
“Hold on, lad. What’s the matter?”
He panted and drew his breath in a catching way for a few minutes before whispering back,—
“Nothing. Only a sudden giddiness.”
Jem made no comment, but gripped his hand tightly, and they stood listening, for the shadow cast faintly on the walls was motionless, and it was evident that their enemy was listening.
“I’m going on, Ramsden,” said the boatswain. “Come along!”
“All right, sir. Join you as soon as I’ve got my prisoners.”
“Hold ’em tight,” shouted the boatswain, and then there was a loud rustling sound, followed by the words faintly heard, “Look sharp. It’s of no use fooling there.”
Don could hear Ramsden mutter something, but he did not seem to be coming on; and mastering the dull, sluggish feeling, accompanied by a throbbing headache, the lad stole cautiously back to where he could look round and see their approaching enemy between them and the light.
To his intense surprise he found the man had his back to them, and was retiring; but as he watched, Ramsden made an angry gesticulation, turned sharply and came on again, but seemed to catch his foot against a projecting piece of rock, stumble and fall forward, his cutlass flying two or three yards on before him with a loud jingling noise.
What followed riveted Don to the spot.