I wasthe first to be out on the rock, but Peter Bligh was close upon my heels, and, wonderful to tell, the Italian almost as quick as any of us. To what gate of the sea the staircase was carrying me I knew no more than the others. The time was gone by when anything in Czerny's house could surprise me; and when at the stairs' head we found that which looked for all the world like a great port-hole with a swing door of steel to shut it, I climbed through it without hesitation, and so stood in God's fresh air for the first time for nearly three days.
That this was the main gate to the sea I had all along surmised, and now proved surely. No sooner was I through the door than all the world seemed to spread out again before my eyes—the distant island, the shimmering sea, the blue sky shut to us through such long hours. The rock itself, where we gained foothold, lifted itself clear and dry above the breakers at my feet. There were steps leading down to the water's edge, a still pool wherein boats were warped, other crags of the reef defying the tides; these and the silence of the night everywhere; but of men I saw nothing. The bloody fight we had anticipated, blow for blow, and ringing alarm, the struggle for foothold on the rock, the challenge to Czerny's men—such things did not befall. We stood unchallenged on the plateau, and we stood alone.
I said that it was a miracle, and yet the Lord knows it was no miracle at all.
Let me try and describe this place for you that you may understand our situation more clearly, and how it befell that such a simple circumstance brought about such a strange turn of fortune. We had come up from the heart of the reef, as you know, and the staircase led out to a gate of steel opening in the face of a rocky crag, which stood well above the level even of the storm-seas. A lower plateau (unwashed by the sea) stood below the gate, and other crags jutted out of the sea and showed windows to the western sun. I made a bit of a map of the land and water thereby to keep it in my memory: and such as it is it will enable any one easily to get the position truly. If one places himself at the main gate of this house of wonders and puts Czerny's crew by the sword-fish reef, all will be plain to him.
The island lay perhaps a mile to the southward; and nearer to us, at a cable's length as I reckoned it, a group of rocky pinnacles in the open sea marked the door we had shut and the ladder by which Czerny's men went in to shelter. But the oddest thing of all was this, that the main gate to this house of wonders should be left unguarded at an hour so critical. Dark as it was, with only the soft grey light of a summer's night shimmering on sea and land, nevertheless the mere fact that we had passed unchallenged told me that we were alone. For why should two men let three pass up and raise no alarm when alarm might mean so much?
Could they not have struck us down as we came out, one by one, firing their guns to call comrades from the sea, and bringing a hundred more atop of us to end our chances there and then? Of course they could; and yet it was not done. No man hailed us; we had the breaking seas at our feet, the fresh air in our lungs, the spindrift wet upon our faces. And who was the more surprised, I at finding the gate unguarded or my comrades to discover that there was such a gate at all, the Lord only knows. Like three who stumbled upon a precipice we halted there at the sea's edge, and looked at one another to ask if such great good fortune could, indeed, be ours.
I have told you before that the Italian was at our heels when we gained the rock, and it was to him now that I addressed my question.
"You said there were two at the gate, Regnarte. Where are they, then, and what keeps them?"
He cracked his bony fingers many times, and began to gabble away vociferously in his own language—a tongue I like the sound of, but which no right-minded man should talk. When he came to some calmness and to a sane man's speech, he pointed to the pinnacles of the lesser gate and began to make the truth clear to me.
"You come lucky, sir, you come lucky, true! Hafmitz gone yonder; he and mate, too; he go to see why other men cry out!"
I saw it like a flash. The alarm had been given at the other end of the reef, and the two that should have guarded this, had put out in their boat to see what the matter was. If a man had wished to believe that Providence guided him that night, he could not have found a circumstance to help him farther on the road. I make no pretence to be what folks call a religious man, doing my duty without the hymn-books; but I believe, and always shall believe, that there was something more than mere chance on our way in all that venture, and so I set it down here once and for all. The fingers of the white man's God pointed the road for us; and we took it, fair or crooked let it prove to be.
"Luck! Luck's no word for it, my lads," said I. "If a man told such a thing ashore, who'd believe him? And yet it's true—true, as your own eyes tell you."
They had not found their tongues yet and none of them uttered a syllable. The wonders they had seen: that house of mystery lying like a palace of the story-books far down below the rolling Pacific; the surprise of it all; the picture of lights and rooms and of a woman's face; and now this plateau of rock with breakers at their feet and the island mists for their horizon; and, in the far distance, away upon the sword-fish reef, sights and sounds which quickened every pulse—who shall blame them if they could answer me never a word? They simply halted there and gazed spellbound across the shimmering water. I alone knew how far we stood from the end where safety lay.
Now, Peter Bligh was the first to give up his star-gazing; and, shaking himself like a great dog, he turned to me with a word of that common sense which he can speak sometimes.
"'Tis a miracle, truly, and a couple of doors to it," cried he, like one thinking keenly. "Nevertheless, I make bold to say that if they have a key to yonder hatch we are undone entirely, captain."
I sat upon a crag of the rock and tried to think of it all. Czerny's men would return in an hour, or two at the most, and the truth would be out. They would come—the seamen to the lesser gate, the others to this door of steel by which we sat—and, finding that knocking did not open, they would take such measures as they thought fit to blast the doors. A gun well fired might do as much if gun could be trained upon the reef. Once let them inside and it needed no clever tongue to say how it would fare with us or with those we sought to protect. No man, I said, would live to tell that story, or to carry the history of Edmond Czerny's life to a distant city. All that lay between us and life was this door of steel shutting like a port-hole in the solid rock. And could we hold it against, it might be one, it might be three hundred men? That was a question the night must answer.
"Regnarte," I said, upon an impulse, "you have guns in this house?"
He held up his fingers and opened them many times to express a great number.
"One, two, three hundred guns," said he. "Excellency has them all; but here one gun much bigger than that. You seamen, you shall know how to fire him, captain. Excellency say that no man take the gate while that gun there. Ah! the leg on the other boot now!"
Now he cracked his fingers all the time he said this, and shook his keys and danced about the plateau like a madman. For a while I could make neither head nor tail of what he meant; but presently he turned as though he would go down to the cabins again, and, standing upon the very threshold of the staircase, he showed me what I had never seen or should have looked for in twenty years—the barrel of a quick-firing gun and the steel turret which defended it.
"'Tis a pom-pom, or I'm a heathen nigger!" cries Peter Bligh, half mad at the sight of it. "A pom-pom, and a shield about it. The glory to Saint Patrick that shows me the wonder!"
And Dolly Venn, catching hold of my hand in like excitement, he says:
"Oh, Mr. Begg, oh, what luck, what luck at last!"
I crossed the plateau and saw the thing with my own eyes. It was a modern Krupp quick-firing gun, well kept, well fitted, well placed behind a shield of steel which might defend those who worked it against a hundred. Those who set it upon the rock so set it that not only the near sea but the second gate could be covered by its fire. It would sweep the water with a hail of lead, and leave unseen those that did the work. And the irony of it was chiefly this, that Edmond Czerny, seeking to defend the door of his house against all the world, now shut it upon himself.
"Yes," said I, at last, and I spoke almost like a man drunk with excitement; "give me shell for that, and we'll hold the gate against five hundred!"
The hope of it set every nerve in my body twitching; sweat, I say, began to roll down my face like rain.
"You have a magazine in this place," I continued, turning upon the Italian in a way that surprised him; "you have arms in this house and shot for that gun. Where are they, man, where are they?"
He stood stock-still with fright, and stammered out a broken reply.
"Excellency has the key, captain—I show you! Don't be angry, captain!"
He turned to enter the house again, and I followed him, as eager a man as ever hunted for that which might take a fellow-creature's life.
"Do you, Peter and Dolly, keep a watch here," said I, indicating the place, "while I go below with this man. We must hold the gate, lads, hold it with our lives! If the two yonder come back, be sure you close their mouths. You understand, Peter—close their mouths!"
"Aye, I understand, captain!" said he, very quietly. "They'll not sing hymns when I've done with them!"
I followed the Italian down the stairs, and we made for the great hall again. Many lights were burning there, and the figures of women passed in and out of the splendid rooms. At the far corner, opposite Miss Ruth's own apartment, the Italian came to a halt and began to gabble again.
"Excellency live here, sir," said he; "the gun-room—you go right through to him; but Excellency, he have the key. Me only doorman. I speak true, sir!"
I opened the door of the room he indicated, and feeling upon the wall switched on a lamp. It was the palace of a place, with great book-racks all round it, and arm-chairs as long as beds in every corner, and instruments and tables and pretty ornaments enough to furnish a mansion; but for none of these things had I eyes that night. Yonder, at the end of the room, a curtain opened above a door of iron; and through that door I saw at a glance the way to the gun-room lay. Ah, how my head tried to grapple with the trouble! The keys—where lay the keys? What chance or miracle would show me those? Was the key on Czerny's person or here in one of the drawers about? How much would I have paid to have been told that truly! But how to open it!
Now the Italian watched me with curious eyes as I went up to the door and drew the curtain back from it. A quick glance round the room did not show me what common sense was seeking—an iron safe in which Czerny's keys might lie. That he would keep the key of the armoury in the room, unless it were on his person, I had no doubt; and argument began to tell me that, after all, a safe might not be necessary. If alarm came it would come from the sea; or from the lower doors, which were locked against his devil's crew. I began to say that the keys would be in a drawer or bureau, and I was going to ransack every piece of furniture, when—and this seemed beyond all reason—I saw something shining bright upon a little table in the corner, and crossing the room I picked up the very thing for which a man might have offered the half of his fortune.
"Heaven above!" said I, "if this is it—if this isit———"
And why should it not have been? News of the wreck had come to the house like a sudden alarm leaping up in the night; the keys, which I held with greedy fingers, might they not have been in Czerny's hands when the bell clanged loudly through the startled corridors? I saw him, forgetful in his very greed, serving out rifles to his willing men, running up at hazard to be sure of the truth, leaving behind him that which might open his house to the world forever. And in my hand the fruit of his alarm was lying.
Ah, Heaven! it was the truth, and the door opened at my touch, and arms for a hundred men glittered in the dim light about me.
Wecarried the shot to the stairs' head, each man working as though his own life were the price of willing labour. If Miss Ruth had tidings of the great good fortune the night had sent to us, she would neither stay our hands with questions nor wait for idle answers. For a moment I saw her, a figure to haunt a man, looking out from the door of her own room; but a long hour passed before I changed a word with her or knew if that which we had done would win her consent. Now, indeed, was Ruth Bellenden at the parting of the ways, and of all in Czerny's house her lot must have been the hardest to bear. She had blotted the page of her old life that night and it never would be rewritten. None the less, a woman's courage could show me a bright face and all that girlish gentleness which was her truest charm. Never once would she speak of her own trouble, but always lightly of ours; so that we three—little Ruth, Dr. Gray, and Jasper Begg—might have been friends met upon any common adventure, and not at the crisis of that desperate endeavour. And so I think it will befall in all the perilous days, that what is written in the story-books about loud exclamations and pale faces and all the rest of it is the property of the story-teller, and that in plain truth you find none of these things, but just silent actors and simple talk, and no more noise of the difficulty than the common day will bring. This, at least, is my memory of that never-to-be-forgotten night. To-morrow might give us life or death—a grave beneath the seas or mastership of that house of mystery; though of this no word passed between us, but briefly we gave each other the news and asked it in return.
"Captain," says the doctor, he being the first to speak, "they tell me you've struck a gun-store. Is it true or false?"
I told him that it was true, and making light of it—for I did not wish Miss Ruth to be upset before there was good reason—I named another thing.
"Yes," said I, "we shall defend ourselves if there's need, and give a good account, I hope. For the rest, we'll take it as we find it. I am trusting that Mister Czerny will listen to common sense and not risk bloodshed. If he does, the blame be on his own head, for I shall do my best to make it easy for him."
"I know you will—I know you will, Jasper," says little Ruth, closing her hand upon mine, and not caring much what the doctor thought of it, I'll be bound; "we can do no more than our duty, each of us. Mine is very hard, but I shall not turn from it—never, while I know that duty says, 'Go on!'"
"That I'm sure you won't, Miss Ruth," was my answer to her; "if ever duty justified man or woman it justifies you and I this night. Let us begin with that and all the rest is easy. What we are doing is done as much for the sake of our fellow-men as for ourselves. We work for a good end—to let the world know what Ken's Island harbours and to keep our fellow-men from such a place. Accomplish that much, and right and humanity owe us something, though it's not for me to speak of it, nor is this the time. My business is to hold this house against the devils who are pillaging the ship yonder. The sea-gate I can take care of, Miss Ruth. It's what's below in the pit that I fear."
She listened with a curiosity which drank in every word and yet was not satiated. Nevertheless, I believe but half of my story was plain to her. And who blames her for that? Was not it enough for such a bit of a girl to say, "My friends are with me. I trust them. They will win my liberty." The arguments were for the men—for Mister Gray and me, who sought a road in the darkness, but could not find one.
"Two doors to this house, captain," says the doctor, after a little while, "and one of them shut. So much I understand. Are you sure that the cavern below is empty, or do you still count men in it?"
"'Tis just neither way," said I, "and that's the worst of it, doctor. The sea's to be held while the shell lasts and perhaps afterwards; but if there are men down below, why, then it's another matter. I'm staking all on a throw. What more can I do?"
He leaned back upon the sofa and appeared to think of it. Presently he said:
"Captain, a man doesn't shoot with his foot, does he?"
And then, not waiting for me to answer, he goes on:
"Why, no; he shoots with his hand. Just you plant me in the passage and give me a gun. I'll keep the door for you—by Jove, I will!"
Now, I saw that this promise frightened Miss Ruth more than she would say, for it was the first time that it occurred to her that men might come out of the pit. But she was just the one to turn it with a laugh, and crying, "What folly! what folly!" she called out at the same time for little Rosamunda, and began to think of that which I had clean forgotten.
"Jasper," says she, "you will never make a general—never, never! Why, where's your commissariat? Would you starve your crew and think nothing of it? Oh, we shall feed Mister Bligh, and then it will be easy," says she, prettily.
I made no objection to this, for it was evident that she wished to conceal her fears from us; but I knew that the doctor was wise, and before I left him there was a rifle at his side and twenty rounds to go with it.
If there is any sound at the door, fire that gun
"If there is any sound at the door, fire that gun."
"If there's any sound at the door of the corridor—as much as a scratch," said I, "fire that gun. I shall be with you before the smoke's lifted, and you will need me, doctor—indeed, you will!"
I left him upon this and went up, more anxious than I would have confessed, to my shipmates at the gate. I found them standing together in the moonlight, which shone clear and golden upon a gentle sea, and gave points of fire to the rocky headlands of Ken's Island. So still it was, such a scene of wonder and of beauty, that but for the words which greeted me, and the dark figures peering across the water, and something very terrible on the distant reef, I might have believed myself keeping a lonely watch in the glory of a summer's night. That delusion the East denied. I knew the truth even before Mister Bligh named it.
"They've fired the ship, captain—fired the ship!" says he, with just anger. "Aye, Heaven do to them as they've done to those poor creatures! Did man ever hear of such a villainy—to fire a good ship in her misfortune? It would be a sin against an honest rope to hang such a crew as that!"
I stepped forward to the water's edge that I might see the thing more clearly. Looming up upon that fair horizon were wreathing clouds of smoke and crimson flames, and in the heart of it all the outline of the ship these fiends had doomed. No picture ever painted could present that woful scene or describe its magnificence as we saw it from the watch-tower of the reef. It was, indeed, as though the very heavens were on fire, while the sea all about the burning hull shone like a pool of molten gold in which strange shapes moved and the shadows of living things were to be seen. Now licking the quivering masts, now blown aside in tongue-shaped jets, the lambent flame spurted from every crack and crevice, leaped up from every port-hole of that splendid steamer. I saw that her minutes were numbered, and I said that before the dawn broke she would sink, a mass of embers, into the hissing breakers.
"Good Lord, Mister Bligh!" cried I, the seaman's habit coming to me at the dreadful spectacle, "was ever such a thing heard of? And the poor people aboard—what of them now? What haven may they look for?"
"They've put the men ashore, sir," said Dolly Venn, hardly able to speak for his anxiety. "I saw two boat-loads go across to the bay while Mister Bligh was piling the ammunition. They've sent them to die on the island. And we so helpless that we must just look on like schoolgirls. Oh! I'd give all I've got to be over yonder with a hundred bluejackets at my elbow. Think of it, sir! Just a hundred, and cutlasses in their hands."
"Aye," said I, "and a tree for every rogue that rows a boat yonder. Well, my lad, thinking's no good this night, nor can you get the bluejackets by whistling. We haven't all served our time in a Queen's ship, Dolly, and we're just plain seamen; but we'll try and speak a word to Edmond Czerny by-and-bye, or I'll never speak another. Now, help me with your young eyes, will you, and tell me if that's a ship's gig yonder, or if itisn't———"
He said that it was a ship's gig, and he pointed out that which I had not seen before—a steam yacht lying off to the east of us and waiting for some of her crew to go aboard. Edmond Czerny would be on deck there, I thought, watching the hounds he had sent to the work; and if that spectacle of death and destruction did not gratify him, then nothing would in all the world. And surely such a sight even he had not beheld in all his years. That shimmering molten sea, the island catching the reflected lights and making its own pictures of them; the distant forests, whose trees lifted fiery branches and leaves of flame; the mist-clouds raining blood and gold, the burning steamer, the great arena of fire-flecked sea and the small-boats swimming upon it—what more of delight or devilry could Ken's Island give this vulture of the deep?
So much the night would show us as Providence willed and good hearts might determine.
Now, I have told you that little Dolly Venn had served in the Naval Reserve and knew more of gunnery than the most of us. To this, I bear witness, we owed much that night.
"You've got a skipper's part, Dolly, lad," said I, "and yon gig begins the trouble, if my eyes don't deceive me. Why, she's coming in here, lad, straight to this very door, just as fast as oars can bring her. And there's more to follow—a fleet of them, as any lubber could tell you."
"'Tis like a fête and gala on the old stinking Liffey," says Peter Bligh, peering with me across the busy sea. "A dozen boats, and every one of them full. I'd give something to see Mister Jacob to-night; indeed, and I would, captain. We are over few for such an 'out and home' as this."
It was rare to see Peter Bligh serious, but he had the right to be that night, and I was the last to blame him. Consider our situation and ask what others would have felt, placed as we were—four willing men upon a bit of craggy rock rising sheer out of a thousand fathom sea, and commanded to hold the gate for our lives and for another life more precious against all the riff-raff that Ken's Island could send against us. Out on the shimmering sea I counted twelve boats with my own eyes, and knew that every one of them was full of cut-throats. In the half of an hour or sooner that devil's crew would knock at our gate and demand to come in. Whatever way we answered them, however clever we might be, was it reason to suppose that we could hold the rock against such odds, hold it until help came when help was so distant? I say that it was not. By all the chances, by every right reason, we should have been cut down where we stood, and our bodies swimming in the sea before the sun shone again on Ken's Island and its mysteries. And if this truth was present in my mind, how should it be absent from the minds of the others? Brave faces they showed me, bright words they spoke; but I knew what these concealed. We stood together for a woman's sake; we knew what the price might be and made no complaint of it.
"We are over few, Peter," said I, "but over few is better than many when the heart is right. Just you drink up that grog and put yourself where there is not so much of your precious body in the moonlight. It will be Dolly's place at the gun, and mine to help him. There is this in my mind, Peter, that we've no right to shoot fellow-creatures unless they call upon us so to do. When the gig comes up I'll give them a fair challenge before the volley's fired. After that it's up and at them, for Miss Ruth's sake. You will not forget, Peter, that if we can hold this place until help comes, belike we'll carry Miss Ruth to Europe and shut down this devil's den forever. If that's not work good enough to put heart into a man, I don't know what is. Aye, my lads," said I to them all, "tell yourselves that you are here and acting for the sake of one who did you many a kindness in the old time; and mind you shoot straight," says I, "and don't go wasting honest lead when there's carrion waiting for it."
They answered "Aye, aye!" and Dolly, leaping up to the gun, began to give his orders just for all the world as though he skippered the ship and I was but a passenger.
"We'll put Regnarte in front," says he, "so that we can keep an eye on him. Let Peter hail them from where he's standing now; the rock covers him, captain, and the shield will take care of you and me. And oh?" says he, "I do wish it would begin—for my fingers are just itching!"
"Let them itch, lad, let them itch," was my answer; "here's the gig by the point, and they won't trouble you with that complaint long. Do you, Peter, give them a hail when I cry, 'Now!' If they stop, well and good; if they come on—why, you won't be asking them to walk right in!" says I.
He took my meaning and set to work like the brave man that he was. Very deliberately and carefully I saw him slip out of his coat and fold it up neatly at his feet. He had a rifle in his hand and a pile of ammunition on the floor, and now he opened his Remington and began to fill it. For my part, I stood by the gun's shield, and from that place, covered by a ring of steel, I looked out across the awaking sea. Impatience, doubt, hope, fear—these I forgot in the minutes which passed while the gig crept slowly across that silver pool. The silence was so great that a man might almost breathe it. Slow, to be sure, she was; and every man who has waited at a post of danger knows what it means to see a strange sail creeping up to you foot by foot, and to be asking yourself a dozen times over whether she be friend or enemy, a welcome consort or a rogue disguised. But there is an end to all things, even to the minutes of such suspense; and I bear witness that I never heard sweeter music than the ringing hail which Mister Bligh sent across the still sea to the eight men in the gig, and to any other his message might concern.
"Ahoy!" cries he, "and what may you be wanting, my hearties, and what flag do you sail under?"
Now, if ever a hail out of the night surprised eight men, this was the occasion and this the scene of it. They had come back from the pillaged ship believing that the sea-gate of the house stood open to them and that friends held it in all security. And here upon the threshold a strange voice hails them; they are asked a question which turns every ear towards the rock, sends every man's hand to the gun beside him. Instantly, their own vile deeds accusing them, they cry, "Discovery!" They tell each other, I make sure, that Czerny's house is in the possession of strangers. They are stark mad with curiosity, and unable for a spell to say a word to us.
They would not speak a word, I say; their oars were still, their boat drifted lazily to the drowsy tide. If they peered with all their eyes a the rock from which the voice came, but little consolation had they of the spectacle. The shadows spoke no truth, the gate hid the unknown; they could read no message there. Neither willing to go back nor to advance, they sat gaping in the boat. How could they know what anxious ears and itching hands waited for their reply?
A voice at last, crying harshly across the ripple of the water, broke the spell and set every tongue free again. Aye, it was good to hear them speak.
"Bob Williams," cries the voice. "What ho! my ancient! I guess that's you, Bob Williams."
"And I guess it isn't," roars Peter Bligh, half mad, like a true Irishman, at the thought of a fight. "It isn't Bob Williams, and be derned to you! Are you going ashore to Ken's Island or will you swim awhile? It's good water for bathing," says he, "and no charge for the machine. Aye," says he, "by the look of you cold water would not hurt your skins."
Well, they had nothing to say to this; but we could hear them parleying among themselves. And presently; another longboat pulling up to them, the two together drifted in the open and then, without a word, began to row away to the lesser reef, whose gate I had shut not an hour ago. This I saw with very great alarm; for it came to me in an instant that if they could force the trap—and there were enough of them to do that, seeing that they had rifles in their hands—the whole of the lower rooms would swarm with their fellows presently, and I did not doubt that the house would be taken.
"Dolly," cried I, appealing to the lad, when, the Lord knows, my own head should have been the one to lead, "Dolly," cried I, "they'll force the gate—and what then,Dolly———?"
He had leapt up when the ship moved off, and now, drawing me back, with nervous fingers he began to show me what a man-of-war had taught him.
"No, sir, no," says he, wildly, "no, it's not that. Help me and I'll tell you—and oh, Mister Begg, don't you see that this gun was put here to cover that very place?" says he.
Well, I had seen it, though in the stress of recent events it had slipped my memory; and yet it would have been as plain as the nose on the face to any gunner, even to the youngest. For if Czerny must hold his house against the world, how should he hold it with one door of two open to the sea? That devilish gun, swung there on a peak of the rock, could sweep the waters, turn where you might. It was going to sweep the lesser gate to-night.
"Round with her and quick about it," cries Dolly Venn, and never a gladder cry have I heard him utter. "They're coming ashore, captain. They are on the rock already."
I stood up to make sure of it, and saw four men leap from the gig to the rock which it was life or death for us to hold. And to Dolly I said:
"Let go, lad; let go, in Heaven's name!"
He stood to the gun; and clear above all other sounds of the night the sharp reports rang out. That peaceful, sleeping sea awoke to an hour the like to which Ken's Island will never know again. We cast the glove to Edmond Czerny and powder spake our message. Henceforth it was his day or ours, life or death, the gallows or the sea.
There were four men upon the rock when the gun began to spurt its vomit of shot across the sea, and two of them fell almost with the first report. I saw a third dragging himself across the crags and pressing a hand madly against every stone as though to quench some burning flame; a fourth crouched down and began to cry to his fellows in the boats for mercy's sake to put in for him; but before they could lift a hand or ship an oar the fire was among them; and skimming the waves for a moment, then carrying beyond them, it caught them as a hail of burning steel at last and shut their lips forever. Aye, how shall I tell you of it truly—the worming, tortured men, the gaping wounds they showed, the madness which sent them headlong into the sea, the sagging boat dipping beneath them, the despair, the terror, when death came like a whirlwind? These things I shut from my eyes; I would not see them. The sharp reports, the words of agony, the oaths, the ferocious threats—they came and went as a storm upon the wind. And afterwards when silence fell, and I beheld the silver sea, the island wreathed in mists, ships' boats in the distance like dots upon the water, the ebbing flames where the steamer burned, the woods wherein honest seamen suffered in the death-trance from which but few would waken, I turned to my comrades and, hand linked in hand, I said, "Well done!"
Itwas just after dawn that Miss Ruth came up from her room below and found me at my lonely post on the plateau of the watch-tower rock. Dolly Venn was fast asleep by that time, and Peter Bligh and the carpenter no less willing for a spell of rest. I had sent them to their beds when it was plain to me that, whatever might come after, the night had nothing more in store for us; and though heavy with sleep myself I put it by for duty's sake.
Now, I was watching all alone, my rifle between my knees and my eyes upon the breaking skies, when I heard a quick step behind me, and, turning round, I saw Miss Ruth herself, and felt her gentle hand upon my shoulder.
"I couldn't sleep, Jasper," said she, a little sadly I thought. "You are not angry with me for being here, Jasper?"
It blew cold with the dawn, and I was glad to see that she had wrapped her head in a warm white woollen shawl—for these little things stick in a man's memory—and that her dress was such as a woman might wear in that bleak place. She had dark rings about her eyes—which I have always said could look at you as the eyes of no other woman in all the world; and I began to think how odd it was that we two, whom fortune had cast out to this lonely rock together, should have said so little to each other, spoken such rare words since the ship put me ashore at the gate of her island home.
"Miss Ruth," said I, "it's small wonder what you tell me. This night is never to be forgotten by you and I, surely. Sometimes, even now, I think that I am dreaming it all. Why, look at it. Not two months ago I was in London hiring a ship from Philips, Westbury, and Co. You, I believed, were away in the Pacific, where all things beautiful should be. I saw you, Miss Ruth, in an island home, happy and contented, as it was the wish of us all that you should be. There were never lighter hearts on a quarterdeck than those which set out to do your bidding. 'It's Miss Ruth's fancy,' we told ourselves, 'that her friends should bring a message from the West, and be ready to serve her if she has the mind to employ them.' What other need could we think of? Be sure no whisper of this devil's house or of yonder island where honest men will die to-day was heard by any man among us. We came to do your bidding as you had asked us. It was for you to say 'go' or 'stay.' We never thought what the truth would be—even now it seems to me a horrid nightmare which a man remembers when he is waking."
She drew a little closer to me, and stood gazing wistfully across the westward seas, beyond which lay home and liberty. Perchance her thoughts were away to the pretty town of Nice, where she had given her love to the man who had betrayed her, and had dreamed, as young girls will, of all that marriage and afterwards might mean to her.
"If it were only that, Jasper," she said, slowly, "just a dream and nothing more! But we know that it is not. Ah, think, if these things mean so much to you, what they have meant to me. I came away from Europe believing that heaven would open at my feet. I said that a good man loved me, and I gave myself heart and soul to him. Just a silly little girl I was, who never asked questions, and trusted—yes, trusted all who said they loved her. And then the truth, and a weary woman to hear it! From little things which I would not see, it came speaking to me in greater things which I dare not pass by, until I knew—knew the best and the worst of it! And all my castles came tumbling down, and the picture was shut out, and I thought it was forever. The message I spoke to the sea would never be answered, or would be answered when I no longer lived to hear it spoken. Do you blame a woman's weakness? Was I wrong to believe that you would forget the promise?"
"I never forgot it, Miss Ruth," was my answer, "never for a moment. 'May-be,' said I to Peter Bligh, 'she'll laugh when I go ashore;may-be—butit is a thousand to one againstthat—she'llhave need of me.' When I saw Ken's Island looming off my port-bow, why I said, 'It's just such a picture of a place as a rich man would pitch upon for an island home. It's a garden land,' said I, 'a sunny haven in this good Pacific sea.' Judge how far I was from the truth, Miss Ruth, how little I knew of this prison-house that, God helping me, shall stand open to the world before many days have come and gone."
She was silent for a spell, for her eyes were searching the distant island, and she seemed to be scanning its fog-bound heights and misty valleys as though to read that secret of the night of which I hoped no man had told her.
"The ship that came ashore last night, Jasper?" she asked, of a sudden. "What have they done to the ship?"
I put my hand upon her arm and led her forward to the sea's edge, whence we could espy both the sword-fish reef and the ashes of her bungalow at the island's heart. The day had broken by this time, quick and beautiful as ever in the Pacific Ocean. Sunny waves rolled up to our very feet. There were glittering caps of rock gleaming above the island of death. Czerny's yacht lay, the picture of a ship, eastward in the offing. The longboats, twelve of them, and each loaded with its devil's crew, drifted round and round the master's ship; but never a man that went aboard from them.
"The ship," said I, "is where many a good ship has gone before: a thousand fathoms down by yonder cruel reef. As for those that sailed her, they live or die on Ken's Island, mistress. Last night in my watch I heard them crying like wild beasts that hunger drives. Those who do not sleep to-day herd together on yonder beach. I counted nine of them not half an hour since."
She tried to see with me, looking across the water; and presently she said:
"There are men there and women, too—oh, Jasper, think of it, women!"
"Ah!" said I, "I have been thinking of it for an hour or more, ever since I first made a signal to them. So much comes of being a seaman, who can speak to folks when others are dumb. If they read my message aright, they'll not stay on Ken's Island to sleep, be sure of it; but I doubt that they'll dare it, Miss Ruth. Poor souls; their need is sore, indeed!"
"And our own, Jasper," says she, "is our own less? You are brave men, and you have all a woman's trust and gratitude; but, Jasper, when my husband comes, what will you say to him? They are a hundred and we are but five, shut up in this prison of the sea! We may live here forever and no help come to us. We may even die here, Jasper. There are things I will not either name or think of. But, oh, Jasper," says she, "if we could save those poor people!"
It was always thus with her—nine thoughts for others and not the half of one for herself. What she meant by the things she would not name or speak of, I could hardly guess; but it was in my head that she meant to indicate the corridors below and that unknown danger which iron doors shut down. I had been a clearer-headed man that morning if I could have put away from me my doubt of what the depths were hiding from us. But I hid it from her always. A truce of self-deception shut out the question as one we neither cared to hear nor answer.
"Miss Ruth," said I, speaking very slowly, "those people have a boat, for you can see it on yon sands. Let them find the courage to float it, and it is even possible that Dolly Venn and I can do the rest. We should be thirteen men then, and glad of the number. I won't hide it from you that we are a pitiful handful to face such a horde as lingers yonder. Why, think of it. Your husband keeps them off the yacht, that's clear to a child's eye. What harbour, then, is open to them? The island—yes, there's that! They can go and sleep the death-sleep on the island, as many an honest man before them. But they will have something to say to Czerny first if I know anything of their quality! Our plight is bad enough; but I wouldn't be in your husband's shoes to-day for all the money in London City. We may pull through—there would be rasher promises than that; but Edmond Czerny will never see a white man's town again—no, not if he lives a hundred years!"
"It would be justice, God's justice," said she, very slowly; "there is that in the world always, Jasper. Whatever may be in store for me, I should like to think that I had done my duty as you are doing yours."
"We won't talk of that;" said I; "the day is dark, but the sunshine follows after. Some day, in some home across the sea, we'll tell each other how we held Ken's Island against a hundred. It may be that, dear friend; God knows, it may be that!"
* * *
It was five o'clock in the morning by my watch when I signalled for the second time to the people on the beach, and half-past five when first they answered me. Until that time I had not wished to awake Dolly Venn or Mister Bligh; but now when it began to come to me that I might, indeed, save these poor driven folks and add to the garrison which held the house, sleep was banished from my eyes and I had the strength and heart of ten. No longer could I doubt that my signals were seen and read by some sailor on that distant shore. Driven out, as they must have been, by the awful fogs which loomed over Ken's Island, gasping for their lives at the water's edge, who shall blame their hesitation or exclaim upon that delay? Over the sea they beheld a white flag waving. Was it the flag which friend or foe had raised? There, from that craggy rock, help was offered them. Could they believe such good fortune, those who seemed to have but minutes to live?
Well, Dolly Venn came up to me, and Peter Bligh, half awake from sleep; and all standing together (Seth Barker keeping watch below) I told them how we stood and pointed out that which might follow after.
"There'll be no attack from Czerny's men with the light," said I; "for so much is plain reason. If there's murder done out yonder, look for it on Czerny's yacht when his friends would go aboard. Why, see, lads, there are a hundred and twenty men, at the lowest reckoning, drifting yonder in open boats. Who's to feed them, who's to house them? They can go ashore on Ken's Island and dance to the sleep-music; but they are not the sort to do that, from what we've seen of them! No, they'll have it out with Edmond Czerny; they'll want to know the reason why! And let the wind blow more than a capful," said I, "and by the Lord above me not a man among them will see to-morrow's sun! Does that put heart into you, Peter, or does it not? There are folks to save over there, Peter Bligh," says I, "and we'll save them yet!" His reply was an earnest "God grant it!" and from that moment the sleep left his eyes, and standing by my side, as he had stood many a day on the bridge of the Southern Cross, he began to read the signals and to interpret them aloud as the old-time duty prompted him.
"Eight men and a woman, and one long-boat," says he; "sickness among them and no arms. 'Tis to know if they shall put off now or wait for the dark. You'll be answering that, captain."
"Let them come, let them come," said I; "how's the dark to help them? Will they live a day in the fogs we know of? And what sort of a port is Ken's Island in the sleep-time for any Christian man? If Czerny murders them on the high seas, so much the more against him when his day comes. Let them come, Peter, and the Lord help them, poor wretches!"
I was using my arms with every word, and trying to make my meaning clear to the poor folks on the beach. So far they had been content to answer me with questions; but now, all at once, they ceased to signal, and a black object riding above the surf told me that they had risked all and were afloat, be the danger what it might. At the same moment a sharp cry from Dolly Venn turned my eyes to Czerny's yacht; and I saw his devils rowing their boats for the open water of the bay, and I knew that murder was in their minds, and that the hour had come when every veil was to be cast aside and their purpose declared against all humanity.
"Clear the gun and stand by," was my order to the others; "we'll give them something to take home with them, and it sha'n't be pippins! Can you range them, Dolly, or must you wait? There's no time to lose, my lad, if honest lives are to be saved this day."
He went to work without a word, charging his magazine and training the gun eastwards towards the advancing boats. If he did not fire at once, it was because he doubted his range; and here was his difficulty, that by sweeping round to the east and coming at the refugees upon a new course, Czerny's lot might yet cheat us and do the infernal work they intended. Indeed, the poor people in the longboat were just racing for their lives; and whether we could help them or whether they must perish time alone would show. Yard by yard, painfully, laboriously, they pushed towards the rock; yard by yard the devil's crew were bearing down upon them. And still Dolly kept his shot; the gun had nothing to say to them. No crueller sight you could plan or imagine. It was as though we were permitting poor driven people to be slaughtered before our very eyes.
"Fire, Dolly, lad!" cried I, at last—"fire, for pity's sake! Will you see them die before our very eyes?"
His fingers trembled upon the gun. He had all the heart to do it; but still he would not fire.
"I can't," says he, half mad at his confession; "the gun won't do it—it's cruel, captain—cruel to see it—they're half a mile out of range. And the others dropping their oars. Look at that. A man's down, and another is trying to take hisplace———"
It was true as I live. From some cause or other, I could only surmise, the longboat lay drifting with the tide and one of Czerny's boats, far ahead of its fellows, was almost atop of her.
"They're done!" cries Peter Bligh, with an oath, "done entirely. God rest their souls. They'll never make therock———"
We believed it surely. The refugees were done; the pirates had unsheathed their knives for the butcher's work. I saw no human help could save them; and saying it a voice from the open door behind me gave the lie to Peter Bligh, and named a miracle.
"'Tis the others that need your prayers, Mister Bligh—Czerny's lot are sinkingsure———"
I looked round and found Seth Barker at my elbow. His orders had been to watch the gate of the corridor below. I asked him what brought him there, and he told me something which sent my heart into my mouth.
"There's knocking down below and strange voices, sir. No danger, says Mister Gray, but a fact you should know of. Belike they'll pass on, sir, and please God they'll leave the engine for their own sakes."
"Does Mister Gray say that?" asked I. "Does he fear for the engine?"
"If it stops, we're all dead men for want of breath, the doctor says."
"Then it sha'n't stop," said I, "for here's a man that will open the trap if two or twenty stand below."
He had quickened my pulse with his tale, for the truth of it I could not deny; and it seemed to me that danger began to close in upon us, turn where we might, and that the outcome must be the worst, the very worst a man could picture. If I had any satisfaction, any consolation of that wearing hour, it was the sight I beheld out there upon the hither sea, where Czerny's boat drifted upon its prey—yet so drifted that a child might have said, "She's done with; she's sinking."
"Flushed, by all that's wonderful," cries Peter Bligh, with a tremendous oath; "aye, down to oblivion, and an honest man's curse go with you. The rogue's done, my lads; she's done for, certain."
We stood close together and watched the scene with burning eyes. Dolly Venn chattered away about a shot that must have struck the boat last night and burst her seams. I cared nothing for the reasons, but took the facts as the sea showed them to me. Be the cause what it might, those who would have dealt out death to the refugees were going down to eternity now, their arms in their hands, their mad desire still to be read in every gesture. When the truth came swift upon them, when the seas began to break right in across their beam, then, I say, they leaped up mad with fear, and then only forgot their prey. For think what that must have meant to them, the very boat sinking beneath them; their comrades far away; the waves lapping their feet; the sure knowledge that they must die, every man of them within hail of those very woods wherein so many had perished for their pleasure. Aye, it came upon them swiftly enough, and the good boat, making a brave effort to battle with the swell, went down headlong anon, and the cries of twelve drowning men echoed even in the distant island's hills. That which had been a placid sea with two ships' boats was still a placid sea though but one boat swam there. I beheld horrible faces looking upward through the blinding spindrift; I saw arms thrust out above the foam-flecked waters; I witnessed all that fearful struggle for life and air and the sun's bright light; and then, aye, then the scene changed awfully, and silence came upon all, and the sun was still shining, and the untroubled deep lapped gently at our feet.
* * *
The twelve had perished; but the nine were saved. Stand awe-struck as we might, seeing the hand of God in this deliverance, the truth of it remained to put new heart into us and to hide that scene from our eyes. There, pursued no longer, was the island boat. Glad voices hailed us, wan figures stood up to clasp our hands; we lifted a woman to the rocks; we ran hither, thither, for help and comfort for them. But nine in all, they were our human salvage, our prize, our treasure of honest lives. And we had snatched them from the brigand crew, and henceforth they would stand with us, shoulder to shoulder, until the day were won or lost and Ken's Island gave up its mysteries, or gathered us for that last great sleep-time from which there is no waking.