The interval of waiting seemed interminable. The four in the boat, holding to the jutting pinnacle of rock with difficulty, could hear the lapping of the water in the wreck and the rush of the tide as it swept through the gullies of the reef. But they feared to speak, scarce dared to breathe fully, were oblivious of the hazard of their own situation, terrible only in the unusual stillness of the sea.
Yet Burke did not come, and gradually there crept upon them the chill of a great fear—the fear that the gold was swept out to the depths of the bay, and that their all-venturing emprise had brought them nothing but beggary and peril. Even Fisher, upon whose mind suspicion of half the truth had long weighed, forgot in that weird and passionate excitement, which the gain or loss of bullion ever excites, the impulses which had troubled him. The spell of expectation was too strong for them, the import of the moment too engrossing.
Now Burke was not in the wrecked cabin for more than five minutes, the anxiety of the men waiting having led them to magnify the moments ridiculously; and when he came on deck again, Kenner, who stood in the prow of the life-boat, could no longer restrain himself.
"Burke!" he shouted, "for God's sake, speak!—have ye found anything?"
To this shout of a question Burke gave no answer, but he beckoned them with his hand to come aboard; and Messenger and Kenner, leaving the other two to hold the boat against the rush of the tide, sprang up to the deck, and stood with him. The American was quivering with fear, but the Prince showed no emotion, though he said as he came to the broken booby-hatch—
"I'm supposing that it's worth our while to go below;" and with that he swung himself down the rope that Burke had hitched aft, and entered the saloon. But Kenner continued to stand upon the slippery deck, while the nerves of his face twitched, and he could not keep his hands still. A moment later Messenger clambered up as he descended, and burst into a hearty fit of sniggering laughter—the nervous result of the unspeakable strain,
"Good Heaven!" said Kenner, as he saw him, "can none of ye speak? Is the money there, or is it not? By gosh, my heart's going right round like a windmill! Man, it's more than I can bear!"
The Prince ceased to laugh, observing the other's strong distress, and gave him his hand.
"Kenner," said he, "come and look for yourself. So far as I can see every shilling of the bullion is just where I left it!"
"What!" cried Kenner; and with that he rolled over upon the deck in a faint, so that if Burke had not held him, he would have gone down into the sea. He was then a man worn with the want of food and with exposure; and although his dizziness passed away as he fell, they put him back into the life-boat, making that fast to the taffrail, and called the nigger aboard the yacht to help them. It was not a moment for words, and no man spoke; but the three went at once to the saloon and began their labour while night shielded them.
To the complete understanding of this remarkable preservation of the bullion the position of the yacht upon the reef is the key. She had run upon a small group of rocky islets standing, as the Admiralty chart shows, more than a mile from the tongue of land near Cape Celstigos. Her prow being caught in the claw-like grip of scissor-like projections of rock, the stern had swung round until it had rested upon a cup-shaped ridge which had raised it above the immediate wear of the sea, and left it exposed completely at the ebb, and scarce covered at the top of the tide. This being the position of the yacht as she struck, she had subsequently broken in two; but the stern of her, with its bulkhead intact, had sunk into the cup, and suffered little hurt beyond the ripping of the bottom and the flood of the water. Naturally, the heavy kegs of gold had stood unharmed; and as the grey light of the summer's night came down through the broken skylight those who looked saw the whole of the bullion stacked as they had left it; though one keg had burst, and ingots of gold shone with wondrous lustre among the wreckage upon the floor.
If this was the case with the gold, elsewhere in the fetid saloon the destruction was complete. The whole place reeked of damp and foulness; the fine upholstery was slime-hid and dripping; there was water gushing upon the floors. It was pitiable to see gaudy travelling bags with oozy mud upon them, and the little library of books washed to pulp; but for that the men had no eyes. They had already begun to work, and the damp of perspiration rolled off them as they hauled the kegs on deck, and passed them quickly to the rolling boat below. Nor did they cease or speak to one another until the longboat was drawing dangerously low in the water; and it was evident that repeated journeys would be necessary to save from the sea the rich freight it held for them. Then, in their common perplexity, they stayed their hands and faced the question.
"I tell you my opinion right here," cried Burke, who was the first to perceive the trouble. "If you put another keg on that ship, she'll go under—look at her now!"
"I've just thought it," said Messenger; "and there's ourselves to go aboard yet. When do you look for day?"
"I'm looking for it now," said Kenner; "you can't gainsay that there's light from the sun yonder."
He pointed to the higher headlands to the east of them, now beginning to shape in a cold steely light that passed slowly from hill to hill, and showed mist rising from the valleys. Dawn had come upon them as they worked, and as day spread upon the sea they began to realize that their haphazard method had not befriended them.
"It seems to me," said Messenger, as he sat upon the hatch and looked all around him despairingly, "that we haven't got the sense of a fly among us! This cargo won't be stored under three journeys, and the first is not to be made now. We should have run ashore with the dark."
"I guess that's so!" cried Burke, squirting the juice of his tobacco, which he had dried, over the taffrail; "there's no moving from here until night, and we're up in luck if there's none of 'em sight us from the shore afore then. What we've got to do now is to make her snug, and there ain't time to lose. If the sea rises, you'll be swimming agen."
In truth, their loitering had placed them in no pleasant situation. The sea was then still enough, a misty white fog rolling up from it with the sun; and it beat placidly with a long swell upon the outer reef, while a full sweet breeze came off the land, but with no strength. Their difficulty was to get a suitable anchorage with such a heavily laden craft, but they brought the boat, after some hazardous manœuvring, to the shoreward side of the crags, and there lay right under the rock-cradle upon which the poop of the yacht rested. It was agreed that one man should squat upon the higher rock through the tide to watch the coming of boats; and Fisher, being the more nimble, went first to this duty, while the others got at the biscuit and the rum for lack of any other breakfast.
For the space of an hour the situation in which the men found themselves was not unpleasant. There was a gentle warmth upon the sea and a soothing lap of the tide which conduced to rest. Fisher, who had diversified his watch by searching in the lockers of the saloon, had found there two boxes of cigars comparatively free of damp, and several bottles of liquor, with some cases of preserved fruits, which he passed down to the life-boat, while he himself made no poor meal, though he would willingly have bartered the whole of the yellow Chartreuse for a cup of sound coffee. The better fare, however, conduced to general content, and when Burke had asked to be roused on the approach of any ship whatsoever, the four in the boat slept soundly, as men wasted with excitement and with fear.
During the early hours of the morning Fisher, who had perched himself upon a cranny high up in the reef, watched the rolling tide and the empty face of the bay. Flowing slowly, yet with fiercer swish of water in the gullies, the sea rose about the needles of black rock, beginning to flow again upon the bullion, and to wash in the reeking saloon. The sun now shot a brilliant spread of dazzling light upon the distant woods and hills, and showed the hulls of fishing-boats away to the westward, where they came from Santa Marta, though he who saw them was in ignorance of this. Once, perhaps in the third hour of the morning watch, a small passenger steamer passed within a couple of miles of the reef; but Fisher crouched low upon his ledge as she went, and she made no sign that she had observed any thing. Then for a full hour more nothing but the dark shapes of far-distant luggers occupied the sea; and so it stood until the turn of the others had almost come. At this time, however, Fisher, suddenly standing right upon the pinnacle to get a better sweep of the sea, observed many miles distant, but unmistakable, the shape of a larger ship than any he had yet seen, and, wanting trust in himself to be sure of her description, he at once called to Burke.
"What is it?" said the latter, awaking drowsily at his call. "By thunder! I thought I'd a dozen Spaniards atop of me. Is it ez you see anything?"
"There's a ship steering in from N. by W.," said Fisher. "I think you'd better look at her."
The boat had now risen above the main ledge of rock, and Burke clambered up there with difficulty. When he had looked a moment at the distant ship, he gave a low whistle, and called up Messenger.
"What do you make of that?" he asked. "By the look of her she's British, and coming near in the bay if she can."
Messenger looked long and anxiously before he answered.
"I believe you're right," said he at last; "she's the cut of the Eclipse and she certainly seems to be coming in here. It's a tight place to face, but the first thing to do is to lie low; they could sight us through a glass now, and we must just hang on by our eyebrows. Down you go, Burke, while I think it out."
They both went down at his words, sitting hunched around the crag with their legs in the water; but first they shouted to Kenner in the boat to bring her as close under the rock as safety would permit, and they sent Fisher, to whom the new excitement was as meat and drink, back to the ship to help with the oars.
"Now," said Messenger, "the thing begins to shape itself. If they're coming here because news of our being ashore has got abroad, they'll steer straight for the reef, and we'll simply have to walk aboard them. On the other hand, they may be cruising round. Burke, is it to be stay or go?"
"Ez for me," said Burke, "I don't see where she's got tidings of us—leastwise, by this time. I should stay. If you go ashore now, what does it mean? Why, it means ez you'll have all the folk from five mile round come to look at you. At the worst, you can run it agen the ship's boat if she puts one out."
"Of course we can," cried Messenger. "And if we get a mile start, we can take the odds on shore; but we're going to have a bad ten minutes."
"But it's stay, I reckon," said Burke; "and a wash throw'd in with it. I'm up to my hips in salt!"
He spoke with no exaggeration; and for the next hour the pair of them, with their legs down into the sea, sat motionless, while a cruiser of the Melampus type—but whose name they could not read—steamed slowly across the bay. It was infinitely fortunate for them that the tide was nearly at its height when the ship passed by the reef, for the high water almost hid the wreck of the yacht, and the other stood away at least three miles from the shore; yet was every cable's length she made an agony to them.
When they had watched thus for half-an-hour, questioning each other as anxious men will, the cruiser ceased to steam opposite to the headland, and they observed that she was signalling; but now she moved again, and although the fear-stricken men scarce dared to speak of hope to each other, she ultimately steamed out of the bay, and was lost upon the eastern horizon.
So overwhelmingly fierce was the sun at twelve o'clock that the crew of the life-boat suffered intolerably. The early breeze of morning fell away altogether at eight bells, and a torrid, sweltering light poured down pitilessly upon the rock. In this, however, the men had fortune with them, since no boats from the shore came near the reef; and they lay unmolested, though suffering much, until the first welcome failing of the light. Then, with no more delay, they began to row with powerful strokes toward the further land, and to realize for the first time the import of the cargo they carried.
When they had come well into the bay, and lay upon their oars to consider upon a place of landing, the difficulties of the previous day readily recurred to them. It was clear that the Spaniards with whom they had been brought to a brawl would continue to look for them at the pool of the stream, and such a haven was no longer to be thought of. Yet a rapid survey of the bay had shown to them the outline of a village on its eastern side, and this they could not approach, nor the headland to the westward, which had the watch-tower upon its summit. And in this perplexity they remained for a long spell, while the boat drifted in the loom of the land.
"It just comes to this," said Messenger, when they had argued the matter for the tenth time, "we must find a place we can hold while one of us gets to Ferrol and brings a ship. For that purpose we shall want something a little stronger than bushes above us; and we don't look to camp in this ship it may be for a week, it may be for two. My own inclination sends me round the eastward headland, there to learn what's beyond the village; and if there's no ground likely, it won't kill us to pull back again."
"If my inclination led me, I should shift straight for a square meal and a long drink at the nearest bar," responded Kenner dolefully; but, finding that he had no sympathy from the others, who put the boat at once upon the course Messenger had indicated, he turned to the nigger and addressed him with sorrow, to which the man responded with a great show of teeth and an ambiguous "By golly!" He meant to convey the intimation that he was hungry; but so, indeed, were all of them, though there could be no leisure for food neither then nor for many hours; and they rowed in a determined silence right round the eastern headland, standing in the dark a couple of miles away from the village, and coming at length to a second bay, which was not so deep as the other; but had cliffs of repelling steepness and seemingly impregnable face.
Here they coasted for a half-mile or more, until at last the cliffs, though of equal height, were split into close ravines of whitish earth, and showed numberless inlets and tiny creeks—some of them with a stretch of sandy beach, some shoreless fjords. It was the work of an hour or more to explore the first half-dozen of these with any exactitude; but after many rejections and selections they put at last into a natural harbour which seemed to be cut by nature just for their own purpose. Not only did a channel of the sea, some eight feet wide, run into this haven, giving water even at the bottom of the tide, but the passage turned some thirty feet from the shore, and there disclosed a perfect fjord. Cliffs of great altitude almost shut out the sky; a still basin of water gave to the retreat all the aspect of a lagoon. It was in all things such a harbour as they might have prayed for; and when, they being just come to the head of it, the moon sent radiating beams down through the white cañon and a thousand pinnacles of rock glinted in the yellow light, there was a wild picturesqueness about their retreat which surpassed description.
Burke's first exclamation when the boat grounded was one of delight.
"If there's a finer spot for throwing the stuff ashore between here and Lisbon, I'll give you my share!" said he; and with that he sprang upon the beach, of which there was not three feet, and the others followed him, stretching themselves as men whose limbs were racked with cramp and confinement. To haul the ship up was not their purpose; but they forced her broadside to the sand, and then, at Messenger's dictation, they began to act.
"Now, boys," said he, and he spoke exultingly, "out with the stuff; there's another journey to be made before dawn, and the night's short enough, any way."
In half an hour kegs and cases lay piled upon the sand, and the life-boat stood high in the water. Then Burke, who had taken a hasty sounding, gave his advice for the disposition of the cargo with a readiness which again emphasized the quick working of a curiously ill-balanced brain.
"Look you," said he, "there's a rock bottom at the turn of the passage, and a pool two feet deep here. You couldn't want better if it had been made for you. Drop the stuff there, and there it lies till the Day of Judgment for all the sea'll do to it."
At these words they rolled the freight into the sea-pool, where it sank with a heavy splash; and then, scarce consenting to wait, as Burke insisted, for a cloud, which was coming up with a gentle westerly wind, to cover the moon, they pushed out heedlessly to sea, and by dawn a second load lay in the calm water of the cove, and the men prepared in the light of the day for their own concealment and for that of their boat.
As the morning light flooded their retreat, yet left it dim, for the sky above them where the cañon opened was black with rain clouds, they could begin to see their environment and its possibilities. On either side of them was a wall of rock, but on the left side the precipice was broken into irregular ridges. The first of these, at the height of five feet or less, appearing to form a rude path leading right through the cañon to the hill-land beyond it. It was this ledge which the quick eye of Messenger selected for the camping-place, and, having hauled himself up to it, he found by walking no more than fifty yards that there was a hollow under the rock where the whole of them could be in shelter and almost absolute concealment.
In such a retreat they camped during that day, feeding upon the biscuits and the fruit, and suffering their insatiable hunger for meat; but early in the night, leaving Kenner in charge of the haven, the other four put out again; and, holding off the land in their hope of escaping all observation, they came, after rowing for a couple of hours, within a quarter of a mile of the reef before they were able to observe it closely.
The moon had not yet risen; and the night was dark with storm cloud. The westerly wind, which had been increasing since the dawn, blew freshly, and they could see the silver of surf beating up upon the pinnacles and flecking them with foam. This deterred them in no way, but, having ceased to row for a spell that they might shape the best course possible to make the inner pool, they were suddenly startled by a low cry from Fisher, who had the tiller, and whose eyes were glued upon the reef.
"Prince," said he, "is that a man moving on the poop there, or can't I see straight?"
"By gosh! it is a man!" said Burke; and the nigger, chiming in, cried—
"Two men, sah, and a keg for to lug, by golly!"
If a shot had come among them, you could not have surprised them more sharply. For some moments they sat speechless, laying upon their oars, and watching the two fellows who were were well occupied hauling out one of their kegs into a boat anchored on the shoreward side of the islets; but whose mast stood above the ledge with a triced-up lug-sail flapping to the breeze. So busy were they that no sound of the approaching ship's boat had disturbed them; nor did they see her as she lay with her crew stupefied and wordless. And when they had lowered the keg of bullion, they disappeared into the cabin again, seemingly unconscious of observation or of danger. But Messenger had already made up his mind, and, pulling out his revolver, he said—
"Burke, if a man among them goes ashore living, the game's up. Have you got any cartridges in your belt?"
"I've half-a-dozen, and five in the shooting-iron," replied Burke. "What's the youngster got?"
"He'll stand by the boat," said Messenger quickly, "and come aboard only when I call him. Are you quite ready?"
"Ay, ay!" cried Burke; and upon that they shot the boat with rapid strokes to the inner pool of the reef, and sprang nimbly to the poop.
A lantern was burning in the depth of the cabin, and by its light they saw two men bending over a case of sovereigns which they had broken open, and whose dazzling contents held them spell-bound.
Though the light was dim enough, and burned flickeringly, the saloon shone with a dazzling radiance of brightness which was blinding to the eyes. Before the astonished men there lay a fortune of gold; a cube of sovereigns pressing thick upon each other; a mass of glittering, scintillating metal which was as a sun to the cabin. To bathe their hands in it, to pour it in cupfuls back to the treasure-box, to listen to the chink of it—this was the occupation of the two Spaniards upon whose vision such a sight had come, and it held them indifferent to sound and suspicion, cast upon them that inexplicable spell which is the potency of treasure. But to the others watching the spectacle was one which moved every impulse of greed; and, with clenched teeth and nerves playing, they prepared to leap down the ladder and begin the attack.
"Mark your man," said Messenger in a whisper, "and shoot straight! They'll have knives, and it's best fought apart. I go first."
He went lightly down the ladder as he spoke, and, the Spaniards immediately turning, he shot at the one upon the left hand; but the fellow raised his arm as the trigger fell, and the bullet split the bone of it and spent itself in the far cushions. The other, with a pitiful cry upon his lips, whipped out his knife and dropped under the wrecked table, where Burke shot at him twice; and each time he groaned as though the bullet had burned his body. Meanwhile the lantern had rolled over at the jar, and in the utter darkness (for they yet lacked the light of the moon) Messenger closed in upon the fellow who had been wounded, and hugged him in a fierce embrace, so that he bawled with the pain of the arm which was broken, and yet fought to hold off the revolver which was so near to his temple. Such a struggle could scarce have endured for two minutes but for the intervention of the man under the table, who, of a sudden, slashed with his knife at Messenger's legs, and cut one of them from the knee-cap to the shin. The smart of the wound and a touch of the knife in the other leg, compelled the Prince to let his man loose, and, flinging him with a great effort upon the floor, he deliberately shot at his body as he lay; but the pain had unnerved him, and at the fourth shot only did the Spaniard quiver and his limbs draw up in the contraction of death.
"BURKE SHOT AT HIM TWICE" (p. 184)
It was now a horrid scene. One of the Spaniards was dead, as they thought; the other hid behind the cases, craving for mercy and shaking in all his limbs. To shoot at this man was impossible, even had there been light by which to load; but the dark was unbroken, and they knew the hiding-place only when they saw gleaming eyes, as the eyes of a brute, shining up from the shadow, or heard the muttered prayer of one to whom death was very near. Others, perchance, would have let the man go, leaving him at the worst a prisoner upon the rock. But the lust of the gold and the terror of pursuit were upon the men; and, having whispered together, they suddenly stepped over the cases, and as the cowering sailor rose up to receive them Burke struck at his head with his revolver, and Messenger gripped his arm with all the strength left to him.
For some moments the three rocked in desperate embrace. Burke had missed his blow, and, staggering, had fallen across the chest of the Spaniard, who dug the nails of his left hand into his throat, and was threatening to choke him every time he renewed his grip. The very fall of the giant skipper prevented the Prince aiming a blow at the Spaniard's head, and he needed the strength of both his hands to cope with the tremendous arm which held the sheath-knife. Thus for a spell they rolled about on the floor, the one now as fierce as the two, enraged and hopeless in the terrible combat. Indeed, the daring of his struggle was beyond description; and Burke was upon the very point of unconsciousness when a chance move brought it to an end.
The great American was, as I have said, near to being choked. So strong was his agony that he rolled at last right round under the Spaniard's clutch; and, thus turning his body, the sheath of his knife struck Messenger's leg. Burke himself could not speak; but his partner felt the touch of the haft, and, holding to the doomed man's arm with one of his hands only, he drew Burke's blade from the sheath quickly, and with savage strength drove it into the soft body again and again. Yet still the man was not done with, for as the others rose up he of a sudden, in the horrid contraction of his muscles, slashed fiercely with the hand that held his knife; and at the stroke he laid open Burke's face from the temple to the chin, sending the huge scoundrel howling from the cabin to the deck, where he lay, with oaths upon his lips, near blinded with his blood. Thither Messenger followed him, white and sick with the shock of reaction, sweat gathering thick upon his forehead, his ragged clothes torn the more, his legs scarred and slashed—yet with his nerve as ready and his purpose as set as at the beginning of it.
"Burke!" he cried, when he came to the top of the companion, "where are you?—did you get cut, man?"
"Cut!" yelled Burke, "cut! Look at me; I guess there's coals on my cheek—burn his body! I'm blinded!"
Messenger bent down and looked at the upturned and hideous face. He shuddered as he saw it, and, pulling at his soft linen shirt at the throat, he tore off a great piece and bound op the wound clumsily, while the other howled childishly with the pain of it.
"That'll hold you till we're ashore," said the Prince, as he worked with deft fingers; "get into the boat and take a pull at the spirits—you, there, Joe! bring her in and come aboard."
"Aye, aye!" sang out the man, and with the words he brought the nose of the life-boat up to the rock, and Burke staggered into it, falling prone when he had made the step, and lying like a hulk by the bow-thwart. But the nigger jumped to the rock, and, descending the companion, began to haul up the remaining kegs; and at last, with prodigious labour, they raised the case of sovereigns, though the roughly fastened lid came off again, and sent many coins jingling upon the steps and to the floor.
Of the bullion all, with the exception of two small kegs, was now either sunk in the white haven or stowed in the lifeboat; but one keg lay near the body of the dead Spaniard, and his left hand rested upon it. The light in the cabin was at this time somewhat better, and Messenger, taking a last look round, observed the forgotten plunder, and made a step forward to take it; but the upturned visage of the dead man was so repellent, there was such a distortion of feature and of form, that the observer was seized for the first time with uncontrollable terror, and he rushed from the cabin with a cry in his throat. The sharp air, for the west wind was now blowing strongly, nerved him again, but not to dare the saloon. He knew that he could not have looked upon that face again for ten kegs of the bullion, and he strove to send the nigger in his place. But the man howled out at the suggestion, and fell upon his knees imploringly.
"De Lord help me, sah, I not touch it! I not go there; he look at me, sah!"
"Then get up for a fool!" snarled Messenger; and he gave him three sound kicks, which sent him headlong into the longboat.
The wind now blew a full gale, and the sea was beginning to surge heavily upon the reef. Fisher, who had sat at the tiller of the longboat through the whole affair, and upon whom the fight had come as a revelation, compelling him to see of what kind were the men his friends, still kept the nose of the boat toward the centre of the pool; but Messenger called upon him to take an oar, and he obeyed as a man who hears, but can make no answer. The nigger was at the bow-thwart; and, thus manned, they backed out the ship to the rough of the open, and were preparing to row for the shore when a new idea arose.
"Hold her there!" cried Messenger. "I'd clean forgotten their boat; and that won't do at all. Back astern, stroke and paddle on, bow."
The Spaniards' "ketch" had been made fast in the inner channel, the painter being hitched to a boat-hook driven between a crevice. She now rode uneasily, labouring in the fresher wind. A dog curled up in the cuddy barked loudly as the longboat ran alongside.
"When we've got the keg, and before we let her go," said Messenger, when the ships touched, "we might see if there's any thing to eat aboard. Just climb up, Hal, and look; but don't be long about it."
Fisher went doggedly with the nigger, while the other held with boat-hooks to the shrouds of the smack. The sea was then so fresh that it was no easy matter to reach the ketch's deck, and, once there, the lad needed a seaman's feet to keep his hold. Yet this he scarcely noticed, for his thoughts were about the scene in the other cabin, and the light which it had thrown upon the character of the one man he called a friend. What desperate adventure was he embarked upon? he asked himself again and again. How came it that the companion who had shown through long years the placid face of an emotionless being had become of a sudden a madman or a fiend? The answer took in his mind a hundred shapes, but all of them reflected only his own helplessness, or seemed to tell him to hold his tongue and go through with it. There was no other course; yet he knew that now he stood alone, and fell to wondering about the future both of the others and of himself.
These things, I say, he thought as he rolled the keg to the lifeboat and searched the ship's cabin, wherein there was a stove burning with the embers of charcoal; but they passed for a moment from his mind when the dog came to him and barked a truce. The truth was that when he beat open the locker of the cabin, and took therefrom two great hunks of coarse meat, with a sack of biscuit, some rye bread, and another sack of potatoes, he knew the adventurer's joy at the prospect of food, and in that matter was at one with the others of the party. Thus it came that he found himself crying out childishly as he hurled the things down to the longboat and Messenger stored them.
"Don't forget the water, if you can lift it," cried the latter, "and throw any spare rope there is; we shall want it yonder."
This was a wise thought, and Fisher quickly rolled the two kegs from the waist of the ship to the side, and, with the nigger's help, got them aboard. Then, having also taken all the ropes they could lay hands upon, they pushed off and let go the ketch's painter, at which she drifted slowly for some moments until the current took her, and she went swirling away, with the dog barking pitifully at the taffrail. She was out of sight in five minutes, and then began that long and laborious row to the distant haven—a row which might never have been accomplished but for the fact that tide and current swept strongly under them, and that the wind, full from the west, eased their labour. Yet they dared not to sail, so strong was the breeze; and when they had rowed for an hour, the light on the headland beyond their bay was still afar off.
During this journey Burke lay in a state of semi-insensibility near the bows. Fisher had suggested giving him water, but Messenger intervened, crying to let him lie. He, for his part, cared nought whether the man lived or died: and all his hope was that of getting quickly to the creek where Kenner waited. After that the future would be apparent; but at the moment it was as doubtful as the night above them. With this in his mind he urged the others to greater effort; but scarce had he spoken when the rowers ceased suddenly to work and a cry broke from all of them.
For with his words a gun boomed out over the sea by the far headland, and a rocket left a fiery trail upon the curtain of the sky.
The gunshot and the flare of the rocket (as I say) stopped the rowers in their work. For a while they sat waiting for a second report, or for some light upon the origin of the first; and they did not move until an answering rocket leaped up from the headland in their bay, and another from the watch-tower upon the promontory at which they had first come ashore. These flights of fiery light drew a second gunshot from the sea, and at that Messenger made up his mind.
"There's either a ship ashore," said he, "or they've smelt out Kenner in his hole. That's bad for us, anyway, for there'll be coast-guards down on the beach, and ships about from somewhere. If I'm not mistaken, there are lights moving in the village yonder already."
"Be gor! plenty lanterns there, sah!" cried the nigger. "What you say 'bout this country, sah?—all cut-throat here by de profession, sah."
"There's no doubt about the lanterns," interposed Fisher; "and I believe I see a couple of small boats rounding the headland. It must be a ship ashore, and they're going to bring off the crew."
At this Messenger smiled.
"If there's any crew brought off to-night," said he, "Galicia isn't what I thought it. It's lucky for us any way. We may get through while they're flying at the other game."
The ship, which, as they came to know afterwards, had gone ashore in the shallows of the second bay, now fired more guns; bat the wind blew so strongly, sending spray clean over the longboat, even in the calmer water on the hither side of the reef, that they could but just hear them, and they began to row again. They had taken twenty strokes, perhaps, when the nigger let go the handle of his oar once more, and, with a "Lord have mercy!" covered his eyes. The others, looking over the side as he pointed, saw the corpse of a man turned upon its back, and showing a white face, over which the spray sported as if in victory. So close came the dead man to them that they could perceive the water rushing in and out of his opened mouth; but the eyes, fixed and lustreless, did not move at the touch of the sea, and the hair upon the forehead lay dank and streaming.
A second corpse—that of a woman, with black hair, and the mark of terror still binding the features to distortion—now touched gently against the prow of the longboat, only to be carried more swiftly out upon the broad of the bay to the waste of water and the loneliness of the night. For one moment the derelict body, about which there was a life-belt, hugged the shelter of the gunnel, then it went onward, passing out in the black swirl of the current to the fury of the breakers in the open. But the watching men, speaking no word one to the other, rowed on the faster, as though wishing to shut the sight from their eyes, and the horror of it from their minds.
(MAP)
[This above rough map, taken from a paper in the possession of Hal Fisher, is reproduced, as giving some idea of the position of Messenger and his party after the bullion was landed. It will be observed that there are three bays really on this part of the coast of Galicia, the men having come to shore in the centre bay, and finally taken refuge in the one upon the left hand.—Ed. "Sea-Wolves."]
They had now come well into their own bay, but two luggers passed them as they went, and they lay on their oars breathlessly; but were not seen, so keen were the wolves to reach the carcass of the ship. It was vastly harder work, this rowing in the bay, for the current flowed right round it and against them; and for more than an hour they pulled desperately, still observing lanterns upon the shore, and many lights over against the point by which the trouble was. They were now so near that the sound of voices came to their ears; and the cries as of men fighting, and others encouraging them, were to be heard above the sough of the wind. But the headland of the bay sheltered them from the rougher waves they had known in the open; and a final effort brought them to the cove and to the inner lagoon, where Kenner awaited them, though exceeding anxious for their coming and the safety of the camp.
"Hello!" said he, as he stood on the ribbon strip of beach and helped the boat up; "I was beginning to think you were took with convulsions. Where's old Burke?"
"On his back, there," said Messenger, springing to the sand, "and pretty bad at that. We'd better get him upstairs to begin on."
"By thunder!" exclaimed Kenner, when he saw him, the bandage blood-covered, and the man groaning heavily. "What's he been at? I guess there's half of his features wanting! You've had a stick-up, then?"
"As you say," said Messenger, "but the news will wait; we must get him on his back first. One of you hand up the canvas while I hold him."
"Wal," said Kenner, "that's the Spanish way of drawing teeth, I calculate. Poor old Burke! it'll be many a day before he can show at a soirée, any way. Did you get all the stuff?"
"We left a keg," said Messenger quickly, "which you can fetch if you'll roll a dead man over. Have you seen any thing of what's going out over yonder?"
"There's boats been by here three times in the hour, and the beach at the bottom of the bay is thick with men," replied Kenner. "I saw that by climbing up the rock, there, and holding on like a tenderfoot. I've no head for tall places."
"I'll look myself when the stuff's down," said Messenger; and with that the four of them hauled Burke to the ledge of rock, and, having given him some of the liquor, they bound up his face, using the sleeve of Kenner's shirt for the operation; and so they laid him upon the sheet of the longboat; he yet groaning, though his pain seemed less. After that it was half-an-hour's work to sink the gold in the creek and to store the few provisions they had taken from the Spaniards' boat; but the four worked with silent zeal, and Fisher not the least readily, since the rough philosophy he was master of told him again to go through with it.
When the bullion was quite sunk, and the longboat high in the water again. Messenger began to think of the scene being played in the bay without. Indeed, his attention was called to it before his own work was quite done, for the sky above the haven was suddenly lighted with a glowing red light, and this endured for some minutes before the four men were able to put the boat out and get to the bay. Kenner had reached the open, as he told them, by swarming along the face of the rock from ledge to ledge; but they rowed; and, having come into the bay, they saw at once from the loom of the land the striking development of the mystery. A great fire was now burning some half-a-mile from the opposite shore, and from the lapping tongues of red there stood up the masts of a fore-and-aft schooner which had come ashore near the point, and was then surrounded by fishing-boats and small craft, whose crews seemed waiting patiently until the beacon of the sea should be engulfed. A mighty holocaust it was, the sparks leaping up on the breeze and falling hissing to the breakers; the smoke rolling in clouds of inky blackness away to the hills, the red light striking upon the waters and showing the environing fleet, whose fierce shouts of triumph the watchers heard all plainly. And anon there came a movement in the drama, for two long, black-hulled boats of men appeared suddenly near to the glowing schooner; and at the sight of them the small ships ran up sails or put out oars and went scudding away, some to the near shore, some toward the haven of the four, others to round the point and gain the village, which was at the back of the ravine in which the survivors of the Semiramis had come to hide.
As the boats hurried in flight Messenger instantly saw the danger.
"We must clear in," said he, "and risk the ship, too. If any of them strike our hole, there's not a man among us who'll see the morning; and the boat's the difficulty."
"Fix her up some hundred yards down the creek, and trust to luck," said Kenner. "We can swarm in as I did."
"That's what I mean to do," said the other; "but there's no time to lose. If my eyes aren't blinded by the fire, that lugger, there, is making straight for our place."
The whole bay was now full of small boats, luggers, yawls, cutters, which scuttled away briskly before the advent of the pursuers. The majority of them were soon lost to view in the darker shadows of the far land, but many belonged to the village on the other side of the promontory; and a few—these principally row-boats of a large size—were steering, as Messenger first had observed, straight for the creek wherein the gold had been cast. This, however, was a wrong impression, and was quickly corrected. Presently the helm of the lugger which threatened the four was put down, and the craft lay with its nose pointing almost to the south of the bay. At the same moment the high land, to which the new course shaped, was lighted with the flare of many torches; and these gave illumination enough for the observers to see a party of men on horseback riding upon the cliffs; and at the head of the party was a woman, who seemed to be commanding those who followed.
Now before Messenger and the others had seen this they had brought their own craft into a deep fjord of the cliff, some quarter of a mile below their own haven; but the change of the other's course reassured them, and when they had lain a long while during the passing of the two boats, and the gradual clearing of the bay, they rowed back to their place of camping, and made fast their craft in a corner of the pool, where it was safe from the view of all those who should not expressly seek it. Thus they reached the chamber of the rock, and the place where Burke was; and for the first time since sundown could think of rest.
It had been a night eventful enough to be called, then and after, the terrible night; yet, with all their fatigue and overwhelming weariness, the four could not sleep. Burke lay almost insensible and stupefied where they had first put him; but the others, huddling over their cold food, and weighed down with the hazards of the situation, had no minds but for the metaphorical morrow with its possibilities and its dangers. And until the dawn they planned and schemed, and at every swish of water below them they looked to see a man-of-war's boat enter the cove.
Of the four Kenner appeared to suffer the deepest depression. He had said little since he saw the party of horsemen upon the cliff and the woman riding at the head of them; but when dawn was near, and Fisher and the nigger were at length lying in a heavy sleep upon the rocks, he turned to Messenger and spoke openly of his fears.
"Prince," said he, "do you remember three months ago at Monaco?"
"Perfectly," replied the other.
"And the Spanish woman?"
"I seem to recall some of your vapourings in that direction," Messenger answered languidly.
"Call 'em what you like. I'm referring to the witch with the teeth set in her head like glass in a brick wall—the woman and the girl with the pretty face. You've a mind to recollect them, perhaps?"
"Why should I remember them?"
"Didn't the youngster say that he saw the girl when he went ashore the other day?"
"You didn't believe that story, surely?" asked Messenger.
"I guess I did; and I'll tell you right here that the woman who rode on the cliffs to-night should have been her mother!"
"Should have been," said Messenger wearily; "how's that?"
"Because I know it I I can't tell you why, but I know it! Her name's the Countess Yvena, and I was with those who shot her husband in New Mexico."
The Prince, weary as he was, laughed outright at the story,
"Kenner," said he, "you should have been born a poet; you've got imagination! Now you speak of it, I remember your twaddle about having to meet her again, or something."
"That's what I know," said Kenner; "we'll meet again, and one of us will go under"
"It's a fine tale, man," interrupted the Prince, "but you're wasting breath on it. Didn't we arrange an hour ago that you were to get away to Ferrol as soon as the dark and the cut-throats round here will let you ?"
"That's so," replied Kenner; "but I'll have to return."
"Well, what of that? Where does the woman come in? Besides, you're dreaming the whole thing! You don't mean to tell me seriously that the person we saw to-night is the same as the one who ate oysters with her fingers in the gardens at Monaco three months ago?"
"Wal, you reassure a man. Like enough, the kid's story set me thinking of it, and I'm not myself"
"Are any of us any better off? " asked the Prince. "It's the want of food and rest; and we're not likely to get much of either until you return. But we trust in you. As I said an hour ago, if you can, with the aid of money, reach Ferrol in a couple of days, you'll find an American consul there. You won't forget that you wish to view the Basque provinces from the sea, and are seeking a yacht for that purpose. The smaller the ship you buy the better afterwards. We'll run round to Lisbon in the guise of mere pleasure-seekers, and then send you back to London to buy a steamer. Whatever they're doing there now in the way of taking us, they'll never look for our return; and a little good disguise should make the matter as easy as shelling peas."
"What if you're took before I can get back here?"
"I don't foresee anything of that sort. Europe's ringing with the tale of this robbery, of course. You may be quite sure that we're wanted in every big city, and there's employment for all the detectives living, and more. It's true that we've had a bit of a brawl with the shoremem here, but I don't think we've been sighted by any in authority; and while that continues to be so we're safe. The sharpest detective living can't have looked for the wreck of the yacht. If I was figuring this thing out on shore, I should expect the man who ran a cargo such as we ran to have shaped either for Buenos Ayres or for Rio. They may have searched the Spanish coast—like enough the iron-clad we saw yesterday was on that tack—but for our foundering, no, there will scarcely have been a man sharp enough to have foreseen that!"
"Wal," said Kenner, "you've hitched on to reason, and I'd shout glory with you if it wasn't for this notion of the woman which sticks in my head. Anyway, I start to-morrow night, and if I come back with a ship, you'll have nothing agen me. What I'm thinking of now is Burke."
"You're wasting time; he's a carcass like flint, and the heart of a bull. Three days should see him well: but come and look at him."
Upon this they both went to the place where the skipper was lying, and found him to be still feverish, but cooler, while he slept more restfully. When they had reassured themselves thus, the two, dawn having fully come, gave way to their fatigue, and, making what beds they could upon the hard rock, they fell to slumber at once and did not awake for many hours.
But on the following night, at the first fall of darkness, they put Kenner ashore some miles down the coast, and he, armed abundantly with sovereigns and carrying only his revolver, struck inland to gain the high road to Ferrol. And with him he took all the hope of the four that remained with the treasure, for upon his safety depended not only their success, but their very lives.
Seven days after the departure of Kenner from the haven the camp of the four who remained behind him with the treasure presented a sorry spectacle. Much of the food had already been consumed, and there remained little but biscuit and potatoes, and the spirit taken from the yacht and the locker of the life-boat; but the more part of the men's suffering was the result of the ceaseless watching and the nervous unrest which were the outcome of the situation. From the beginning Messenger had forbidden all prospecting; and had even sunk the boat in the pool for their greater security. The camp, too, was now pitched some hundred yards farther up the path which led through the cañon, a mighty convenient place having been found in one of the offshoots, which led into a little cavern of the cliff; from whose roof the stalactites were depending in many shapes. Here boulders were rolled to form a barrier; and, there being a natural chimney at the far end of the refuge, the men even ventured upon a fire, whereat they cooked the potatoes, and boiled their water in an ammunition case, which leaked abundantly, yet served their purpose. They had become by this time accustomed to the life, and had there been a plenitude of food would have suffered little from exposure in a climate where heat was the enemy, and the sun was welcomed chiefly at the setting.
Burke, the skipper, had by this time recovered almost completely from his wound. His gigantic constitution had helped him where other men would have died without a struggle, and though his face was yet bound up (and, as it proved, was horribly scarred), he continued to possess some of bis old recklessness, and the best part of bis characteristic profanity. Yet it was tedious, this watching and waiting, suspense and hope, fear and desperation; nor had the four any topic of conversation but such questions as "Where's Kenner now? Has he put to sea yet, do you think? Is he taken?"
I have said that the men lay hid in this cavernous concealment; but it is not to be thought that they had no sort of knowledge of that which was passing in the bay without. Every morning after the first meal, and again before sundown. Messenger and Fisher left the cave, and, striking through an exceeding narrow path they had discovered some fifty yards higher up the ravine, they climbed, with little difficulty, to a natural window in the face of the cliff, and there had the bay spread below them, and could see to the distant mountains of Asturia, with the whole panorama of hill and forest and luxurious wooded plain intervening. For the greater part of the day the bay itself lacked even the ornament of a single ship; but oftentimes, toward the setting of the sun, fishing-luggers were seen on the horizon, and a few passed in to the anchorage of the shallows. Yet no man showed himself upon the beach, and the men lived in a wild and unspeakable solitude, which almost magnified their fears.
Upon the fourth evening, and again upon the fifth, after Kenner's going, the wind blew savagely from the north-west, sending long white-topped breakers into the bay; and, the air being deliciously fresh at the window of watching, Messenger and the lad sat there long, not a little surprised at the sights they saw upon the shore when dark had come—and the gale rose with a thunder of noise and a dismal riot of wind at the flow of the tide. On both these nights no sooner was the day done than a clear white light, burning, apparently, from some boat moored in the offing, shone with great power at intervals of a minute, and continued thus to stand as a signal for many hours. On the second night, however, when the strange lantern had burned for no more than ten minutes, gun-shot suddenly was fired from the shore, and the light was instantly extinguished. At a later hour, when the moon struggled through the halo of cloud and showed the face of the country, Fisher pointed out that the woman who had been at the head of the horsemen three nights gone was again riding, but this time unattended, upon the cliffs; and when Messenger observed her, he recalled with some force Kenner's fears and his surmises.
"Hal," said he, "when you came across the girl in the hills the other day, did you really think you had seen her before?"
"I am sure of it; and she told me so," replied Fisher. "She was the girl who used to be with the woman we called the Spanish witch."
"That's odd—remarkably odd," said the other next. "I remember that the fellow of our hotel declared the Spanish woman to be a wrecker with a castle somewhere upon the northern shore of Spain. It would be almost grotesque to think he spoke the truth."
Fisher shrugged his shoulders. Since the day of the last visit to the wreck he had betrayed little enthusiasm in any thing. The hinges of his friendship still worked, but stiffly; and though the personal force of Messenger yet exercised a certain power, it was not the power of old time. And this change did not in any way escape the man. He had looked for something of the sort, but had thought to tide it over by pleasantry and artifice. Now, however, when it became clear that the lad distrusted him wholly, he became irritable and reserved with him.
"Come," said he, "you're a lively companion, I must say. What's the matter with you?"
"I was thinking of the men in the cabin," replied Fisher.
"Well, and what of them? Surely you didn't look for me to leave half a dozen kegs of gold, entrusted to my solemn care by those that have confidence in me, to the first knaves who try and steal it?"
"Not at all," said Fisher, trying to be unconvinced.
"Then what are you pulling a long face about? They tried to cut our throats, and we cut theirs. Perhaps you think we should now be under the sea, and they spend our money ashore?"
"Your money?" asked Fisher with emphasis.
Messenger turned upon him a look which might have withered a stouter than the lad.
"It's a nice question to ask a friend," said he.
Fisher was abashed of his own suspicion.
"Indeed," said he, "I'd gladly think all that's good of you!"
Messenger turned away in pretended anger.
"Hal," said he, after a pause, "when we come ashore safely with this money, you shall have the whole tale. If you can't trust me until then, go your way, and I'll go mine. I've stood without friends before; I can stand again."
"Oh!" said Fisher, whose heart was wrung boyishly, "it will never be that, Prince. Heaven knows there's little I wouldn't do for you; and I can never tell how much you've done for me."
"All I ask is your friendship, as it was, and your trust," said Messenger, who aped the sorrow of suspicion to perfection; "your trust until I can repay you with my story."
"You're very good to me," said Fisher; "and the only one that's ever been so."
Thus was the breach in some measure temporarily hidden, and upon the seventh night, there having been a stiff gale all day, the whole party were expecting the return of Kenner with a keen hope; and talked of it huddled round the puny fire of logs in their camp. They had had little food for some hours, and at Burke's miserable cry for meat they had determined upon a sortie at midnight, whatever might be the risk. The plan, however, was never perfected, for at the hour of nine, as they judged, there was a booming of a gun heard even in the cabin, and the two ran quickly up to the window of the cliff, and there saw a scene which had for them a sharp significance.
Upon a spot not three hundred yards removed from the shallows whereon the schooner had burned, a long, black coasting-steamer lay plain to be seen, with the surf thundering upon her; and, the light of the moon being rich and full, it was even possible to perceive the crew huddled in her stem, yet grievously washed by the floods of water which swept her. That, however, which was by far the more engrossing spectacle to Messenger was the sudden activity which the striking of this ship produced upon the shore; for no sooner had she fired a second gun than a whole fleet of boats seemed to shoot mysteriously from the high cliffs at the neck of the bay, and to be rowed with uncommon vigour toward the wreck. Ten minutes later the crews of these were swarming up to the poop of the beaten vessel, and it was possible to see the fierce fight for foothold which they made, many a man going overboard to the rolling swell, and many a one falling before the slash of knives and cudgels. But anon the attackers got full possession of the deck, and began to bundle out plunder of all sorts into the boats below, which were handled with consummate skill. And this occupation continued until a gunshot from the shore recalled the men from their work, and they returned to a place upon the beach where many torches awaited them, and a throng of men had gathered.
To the two watching at the window this spectacle was an amazing revelation. Messenger himself, gripped by the most profound gloom, did not speak a word during the whole of it; but when the lights upon the foreshore had disappeared, he turned to Fisher and said—
"That's an amazing spectacle yonder!"
"I'm of your opinion," said Fisher.
"And the tale of the Spanish woman at Monaco was true—she's a wrecker! Well, she must be a cute woman, and the coast-guard here must be a fine service—to make money in."
"I can hardly believe it," said Fisher, "though I've seen it with my own eyes."
"That I understand," said Messenger. "The whole thing has come upon me like a thunderclap. Why, look at it; we, who thought ourselves just about a hundred miles from anywhere, have plumped down upon a community of cut-throats, whose number it would be a waste of time to calculate. Don't you see that if one of these men saw us we shouldn't have ten minutes to live?"
"Would they be likely to guess about the bullion?" asked Fisher speculatively.
"Guess about it? What nonsense! Of course they would. The woman plays a double part. I can see the whole of it. She's got a gang round her here who deal with ships, and she spends the profits at Monaco. That's an idea to dream of, my boy; it's a stupendous idea! If I'd have met that creature twenty years ago, we might have made what the society papers call a pretty couple."
He had dropped into satire for a moment; but his mood quickly turned to one of great seriousness.
"Hal," said he, as they climbed down from the window of rock, "there's to be little sleep for us to-night. It's true we should look for Kenner now, but who can say whether he's afloat or ashore, alive or dead? and, as there may be days to wait, I want to know where the path which runs through the cliff here leads to. Did you notice that all the boats shot out from the shore not a mile below us? Well, if there's a camp there, the road, which we know nothing about, may lead to it; and in that case we might have a visit before morning. I dare not even think what they would do if they learned about the wreck."
"Is there time to get away with the gold now?" said Fisher.
"No, I don't think so; it seems to me that we ran an almighty risk every time we put the old boat out, though we didn't know it. Luck has been with us so far; we must trust to it a little longer."
They had now come to the cave again, and found Burke and the negro fast asleep. Embers of the wood glowed upon the rock; but these they doused, and, having made every thing trim for concealment, they took their pistols, a length of rope, and some spirit in one of the flasks, and set out quickly on their journey.
The night was one of wind and storm, the sky being scoured by cumulose clouds which permitted the moon's light but at intervals; and blasts whistled dismally through the gullies of the hills. During the first stage of the journey the path of the ravine which the man and the lad trod continued as a parallel of the sea; but at the distance of a third part of a mile or less from the camp there was a sharp turn of it; and there a more open way, bearing evidences of human handiwork, rose with an easy gradient toward the highland. The new road had a width of six feet even at the narrows of it, and was easy to walk upon, though strewn with boulders and often wet with the flashing cascades which gushed from the softer rock. As for the walls, they, in the moments when a glow of the moon's rays struck down into the chasm, shone with the fire of jasper and of quartz and of ore of antimony; and through the canopy of peaks the stars were seen clothed with an infinite brilliance and beauty.
I have said that the broader path appeared at the outset to lead to the highland and away from the sea, but a longer exploration of it disclosed many windings and labyrinthic passages; so that the two presently lost knowledge of their situation, or of the direction in which the way was carrying them. They now found it necessary to bring great caution to the work, more especially in the intervals when the path lay hid in utter darkness; and often they stood quite still to listen for the sound of voices or of others moving; but the place was possessed of a great silence, broken only by the sough of the wind and the splash of the water where the mountain streams fell toward the bay.
It must have been at a distance of at least a mile from the haven that the first decided change in the nature of the path was manifest. At this point there was a great increase of its steepness, the gradient being so sharp that it was a labour to walk upright; and there were even rugged steps which bore the stamp of antiquity upon them, and were so hid with rocks and stones that the possibility of their having been in common usage was out of the question. The ravine itself was now comparatively shallow, the walls being nowhere more than twenty or thirty feet in height, and they fell back so much at their summits that the shrubs and trees of the higher plain were clearly visible; and this new state was unaltered until at last, with longer flight of the almost impossible steps, the path ended in a great door of wood, upon the top of which a row of iron spikes was set.
At the foot of the door Messenger stopped, and, motioning to Fisher to crouch down, he listened with a strained ear for some minutes. In this place, as lower in the gully, there was singing of wind, which seemed almost to cry in the hills; but the gale was intermittent, and when both of them had listened patiently for more than a quarter of an hour, the sound of dipping oars came up as from some deep chasm behind the barrier. It was a momentary sound, and was lost again almost as they heard it; yet its import seemed considerable, and was deepened at another fall of the blast, in which the crying of men one to the other was unmistakably audible.
"Hark!" said Messenger in a whisper; "could that be any thing else but a man hailing from a boat? We appear to have come upon a colony."
"I wonder what's behind the door?" asked Fisher naturally.
"I'll tell you in five minutes," said the other, "if it's to be told at all. Give me a back while I shin up the rock here."
It was no very difficult work to obtain foothold on the rock at either side of the decaying gate, and when the Prince had once come within reach of the spikes, he held to them easily, standing with one foot upon a natural ledge, and using a loop of the rope hitched over the iron as a support for the other. But Fisher continued below and when Messenger did not speak for many minutes, he began to conclude that he had fathomed the secret of the voices.
"Prince," asked he at length in a whisper which was half a shout, "can you see anything?"
"Not so loud!" replied the other, bending down to answer. "I think there are men below, but I'll tell you presently. Take another twist with the rope and pull yourself up. That's it! Now what do you make of it?"
Fisher was then beside him, placed much as he was, but at the opposite post of the gate. At the first glance he could see little beyond the spikes, for the darkness was intense, and a great wall of cliff loomed up at a distance of some fifty yards from their standing-place; but when the bank of cloud passed off the face of the moon, the whole scene was illumined sharply. It was now clear that their path was a disused one, but formerly had led unchecked to a great creek of the sea; and the two were now looking down to this creek, but from a vast height, since the path broke into the northern wall of the fjord almost at its summit. Thus it was that they saw, both above and below their standing-place, the glow of light upon a lagoon-like basin of water; but directly beneath them the view downward was obstructed by a projecting roof, as of some building hugging to the very sides of the rock; and the stone parapet of this was not more than ten feet below them.
I, when reading the papers which deal with these moments of episode, have often thought that the whole future of the men who survived the Semiramis might have been different had Messenger quieted the curiosity which led him to cross this gate. If the projection of the roof had permitted him to see straight down into the creek, there can be no doubt that he had returned immediately to the haven, and rested there until Kenner's coming was a fact, or at least until there had been news of him; but, being unable to see more than deeply fissured walls of whitish rock and the top of a building of stone, he confessed that he felt no surer of the situation than he did at the outset, and the needs of a reconnoitre compelled him to go on. And with this intention he turned to Fisher when a new sound of voices came up to them from the chasm, and, dropping from his position, he said—
"That decides it; we are going over to inspect. Send down the rope with a loop in it, and leave it there to get back quickly if there's need; but you must tread like a cat, and for the life of you don't speak!"
"It's a big risk!" exclaimed Fisher, whose foresight in this matter was sharper than the other's, and who feared exceedingly. But the man was impatient.
"There's no risk if you do exactly as I do," said he. "Give me your end of the rope, and help me up again."
He was at the gate again with this, and there he hitched the line to a whole spike, and, forcing two others from their place—for the gate was exceedingly rotten—he swung himself lightly down, and gave a sign to the lad that he should come upon the parapet, Fisher following him nimbly with a silent activity which was characteristic of his strength; and the two quickly stood together upon the roof, and looked down sheer to the tremendous depths below.
The scene then spread below them was one so unlooked-for and so weird and so strange that they may well have contemplated it in silence for many minutes. There was, as they had thought, a vast chasm with a lake of water at the foot of it; but its depth when thus looked down upon seemed infinitely beyond anything they had anticipated; and the uprising walls of rock presented sheer precipices, which were amazing in their grandeur and their height. Yet was this work of nature of poor interest for them by the side of the human activity to be observed below. At the landward end of the creek, where there was the mouth of a tunnel leading, as they supposed, from the lagoon into the very heart of the cliff, a fleet of row-boats and of luggers lay moored; and the crews passed to and fro to puny and wharf-like ledges upon either side of the great orifice, which was all lit up by the flare of torches and echoing with the hailing of seamen and the buzz of voices. What with the flickering light upon the dark water, and the reek of the smoke, and the sight of savage faces, and the shout of orders, and the forbidding aspect of the vast passage, the whole came upon the two men watching like a revelation, and they lay spellbound and speechless, unable to turn back for very curiosity, yet afraid almost to move, lest a false step should cost them their lives;
They were (as I say) perched upon the roof of a stone building, encased in the very side of the cliff; but they perceived, when they looked from this, that a comparatively wide path ran along the side of the ravine some thirty feet below them, and the house, or whatever it was, upon which they stood had a frontage to the path; yet from its dilapidation they judged that it was now not used, and that thus their position was less dangerous than they had at first thought. So plain was this at last that Messenger began boldly to crawl the whole length of the parapet, and when he had come to the far end, he, crouching down very close upon the stone, beckoned the lad to follow him; and there they came together upon a wooden trap-door, half lifted from its resting-place, and so permitting them, when the light was good enough, to see the interior of the room below them. But they beheld only a windowless and reeking chamber, barred, it is true, against egress with stout iron bars, yet having its door open and squeaking upon its hinges ; and they were about to turn away when Fisher's quick eyes discovered that which they had not seen, but which conveyed so dismal a warning.
"Look," said he; "I could swear that a man lay in the corner by the door!"
"I can see nothing," said Messenger; "you're discovering the shadow of the trap."
"No, it isn't that; shift the trap gently and you'll see it for yourself."
They moved the wooden lid of the aperture, and then the sight was plain. A body lay upon the floor—across the very threshold, in fact—but it was the body of a dead man; and when the light was full enough they saw that the man was Parker, the humble mate of the Semiramis.
"Good God!" said Messenger, "it's the mate; how did he get in this hole?"
"He must have been saved from the ship," said Fisher. "Poor old Parker; he was one of the few decent ones among them."
"Well," said the man, "he'll want decent burial, any way; and I'll tell you that it's just about time we went back again."
"As you say," said Fisher, and at that he turned to crawl back from the place; but the movement was a clumsy one, and, striking the wooden trap-door with his arm, he sent it clattering and whirling to the water below. No sooner had it fallen than a shout went up from the depths, and the two knew how great their folly had been; for while they talked dawn had come, and their figures were observed by the horde below, who yelled with ferocity at the very sight of them.
While he stood, no longer crouching, but upright with defiance of the danger, Messenger took a swift survey of his environment. Immediately above him the rock rose to a height of thirty feet, but with a sheer face which forbade any attempt to swarm it; in front was the abyss, with a throng of men gesticulating and roaring like wolves who hunger at the bottom of it. His first thought, naturally, was one which hesitated about a return by the ravine which led to the haven, lest that should disclose their hiding-place; but, failing this, there was only the path twenty feet below him, and whether or no this would, even could they reach it, bring them to the sea he knew not. A rifle shot, which rang past his head and struck the rock with a sharp "ping," decided him.
"It must be the gate or nothing," said he; "and we'll have to run for it when we get down. Over you go, Hal, or they'll be hitting you!"
The fear of the latter words was not justified. The projection of the roof put the men momentarily out of sight, and Fisher was in comparative security when he grasped to pull himself up. One mighty haul he gave with his brawny arms, but not a second; for the spike had cut the strands of the line, and the lad rolled upon his back with a short length of it still in his hands.
In the face of this new disaster the two, for the moment, stood without idea or speech. So steep, indeed, so overhanging, was the rock on the hither side of the gate that it was idle even to venture the effort of climbing it; and no words from one man to the other were needed to express the whole of the danger. There it was in all its nakedness. Before them was the rock; below them was the chasm; and, as they soon learned, there were men now coming up the goat path toward the house in which they were. But at this Messenger began to run distractedly up and down the roof again, and as soon as he showed himself another bullet struck against the parapet; and the howls of the savage horde were louder and more fierce.
Now at this supremity of the crisis, and when two of the men running upon the path were within fifty paces of the stone house, but fortunately bearing no arms, Messenger looked up at the cliff above the end of the building which was furthest from the gate, and saw that it was less steep than the precipice which forbade his return to the haven. At any other time he would have deemed a man who attempted to climb it nothing less than a lunatic; but now, with a desperation which was born of the position, he clutched at this straw and dared the hazard.
"Hal," said he, "I'm going up the cliff, there. Will you come?"
"I'll try," said Fisher laconically; but the Prince gave him no opportunity for answer. He had already sprung up at the rock, clutching it with a fierce, nervous grip, and pulling himself from bush to bush with a frenzy which reckoned with no danger and was swift in its success. Indeed, before the lad himself could move, the other was half-way to the summit, hanging, as it seemed, against the perpendicular face of the rock, and above a precipice two hundred feet in depth; and still he went on where one would have said no man could go—on where a false step would have sent him reeling down to death on the crags below—and Fisher's head whirled at the sight, and be declared to himself that he could not follow, though his life hung upon the venture.
For my own part, I am led to believe that the younger man would never have dared this flight had it not been for the sudden appearance of one of the Spaniards at the trap-door in the roof. Just as he was in the throes of his hesitation, and stood trembling with his doubt, the head of a huge shoreman came up through the aperture and a deep exclamation burst from the fellow when he saw his prey. But Fisher was prompted only to action, and now, aroused to his situation, he took a running kick at the head, and as the Spaniard withdrew it, shouting horribly with his pain, the lad put his foot upon a protuberance of the rock and began boldly to climb it.
For the first few steps the way was easy, yet carried him from the shelter of the intervening roof, so that, had he cared to look, his eyes could have fathomed the whole depth of the chasm. But when, working from ledge to ledge until he had mounted some twenty feet of the forty, he came of a sudden to a bulging shelf which forced the upper part of his body from the rock, he thought that he must let go; and he seemed in his mind already to be whirling through the air and waiting the final shock of death. He had hoped that the strip of path running to the stone house would have hid the whole of the ravine's depth from him, but that was cut in this place under a projection of the cliff, and did not help him. And now he came to a ledge where he could neither go on nor retrace his steps; and as he held to a branch of a bush which began to tremble at its roots he knew that if he moved so much as a foot he would fall inevitably. In his terror he closed his eyes, and, with his head whirling as a sick man's, he waited for the end—and was very near to death when something hard struck him upon the arm, and he looked up, to see a short bar of iron with a rope swinging before him. At this he clutched, and three minutes after he was upon the bank above, lying flat, and feeling the ground with his hands to be sure that fancy had not cheated him.
"I'll give you a minute to get your head, and no more," said Messenger, who bent over him. "You should send a letter of thanks to the woman who owns this place for roping in the cliff with lines and posts. I pulled the last post up, and let the cord swing down to you. But we'll have to run for it; I can see men moving in the woods already."
"AT THIS HE CLUTCHED" (p. 224)
Fisher sat up at the last words, and perceived that they were upon the sward of a great park, with the cliffs of the sea stretching upon their right hand, but bordered thickly with woods of pines; while greater woods, principally of chestnut-trees, environed them upon their left. Between the coverts there was a great open space of grass, and behind them, at the distance of a third of a mile, the castle which they had seen from the other bay shone brightly in the first light of the sun. It was from a wood which ran almost to the very door of this rugged building that twenty or more men now appeared, shouting to the two, and running hard across the great green, which had the smoothness of a lawn.
"Come," said Messenger, when the men stood out plain to their sight, "I was something of a runner at Cambridge, and I know you are. You've got to do a mile now, and under 'five;' I'll trouble you to make the pace."
"I'll make it fast enough for a Spaniard, any way," said Fisher, as he started; and for the next ten minutes the men ran like hares, hearing wild shouts, but no reports of guns, behind them. When at length they came to the woods, the pursuing party was two-thirds of a mile away; but Messenger still held on, forcing his way through untrodden brushwood and thick coverts of thorns, until at last they came within view of the sea, and both stood to pant like horses that have run a race. Then they doubled back through the wood, but kept parallel with the shore, until at last they plunged into the dry bed of that which was never more than a rivulet; and finding it roofed with a thick canopy of leaves, they followed its course for some quarter of a mile. The gully carried them at length to a deeper pit, all fenced about with shrubs and saplings, and here they lay listening to distant shouting in the thickets, and to the call of men to men for directions or for orders.
During the whole of the heat of the mid-day hour, and on through the terrible afternoon, the two lay in their place of concealment, the furze thick above them, their bodies flat upon the ground as the bodies of the dead. Often they heard the voices of men quite near to them, and the crackling of the brushwood about spoke of the continuance of the search; but in the later afternoon the sounds ceased, and thence onward a rustling of aspens and the music of leaves alone disturbed the silence of the woodland.
It must have been very near to the hour of nine o'clock before Messenger, being well assured that the wood immediately about them was free of men, ventured to stand up and take a swift survey of his environment. Twilight had then almost given place to the dark of night; the sky was wanting clouds, and tree and wood and hill-land stood plain to be seen; there was stillness of the air which gave to every sound, even of an insect buzzing or a bat winging, a distinctness of poor omen to the two who lay hid. Yet the time for action had come, nor could it be delayed any longer, as both of them knew.
"Hal," whispered Messenger, when he had crawled once right round the pit, "I've lost my bearings altogether, man. There's north right between the thickets yonder, and the cove should lie a little to the east of it—but we're to find a path, God knows."
"And the place will swarm with men," said fisher.
"Of course, if they haven't thought better of it and gone to bed. But that's to be learnt. Do you see the hill with the big furze bush on the crest of it? I'm going as near to the top of that as I can get without drawing shot. While I'm gone, you crawl up to the green between the thickets there, and use your eyes for all you're worth. But you won't forget that if you're seen, you may as well say your prayers at once."
"How long shall you be gone?" asked Fisher, with a disregard to the question which showed that he was aware of its importance.
"Just as short a time as will tell me if I sleep here to-night or alongside old Burke."
"And if men should sight us?"
"Why, just run for it. A shot would bring a regiment down on us. You must use your wits, man; you can't be laying it down like lines upon a plan. But I'm hoping the road's clear."
All this he said in whisper, and at the last word he threw himself flat again, and began to crawl through the brushwood with a supple cleverness which was wonderful But Fisher did not wait to watch his path, seeking to imitate his litheness, and to reach the high thickets which lay to the north of the stream's bed. His was the fairer work, for he passed through a plantation of young trees which gave shelter to his movements, and the grass below him was almost free of briar. Yet he went with infinite caution, and his heart quaked at every snap of crag or rustle of leaf. When at the last he had come to the summit of the wooded hill, he felt his face wet with perspiration; and he lay for many minutes fighting for his breath before he looked out upon the scene below him.
It was as he had thought. From the place by the thicket there was view of the sea, then shining with silvery light, and unruffled; but the beach was not to be observed. And the lower lands around, both the park and the woods bordering upon it, were very clearly visible, no men being about them, nor any sign of watch or camp. And this was so plain that he had intention immediately to return to the place of the pit, when the sudden flash of a light between the trees compelled him to throw himself down once more, and to watch the path of the lantern (for so he judged it to be) with all the fear and expectancy he had known so often since the stranding of the yacht.
Whence came the light? By whom was it carried? An older man than he would have said that one of low stature bore it, since it swung but a handsbreadth from the ground; and in like manner it was plain that whoever carried the lantern had no thought of concealment, but advanced quickly through the thicket, as the dancing light gave witness. Presently, the rays went darting here and there upon fern and flower with lurches, which told that the one who used it ran; and there was much crushing of the dead leaves, and the sound of quick breathing. But the lad listening lay closer than eve r at this; and as the light steps were more clearly audible, it seemed to him that by a miracle alone could he escape observation and all that must accompany it.
When the lad was wondering, as we wonder in danger, where he would be, and under what conditions, in an hour's time, the lantern suddenly cast an aureola about him; and in the shadow he saw the face and figure of the girl of Monaco. She was passing swiftly, a mantilla half hiding her pretty head, her dress drawn up about her knees, in her right hand a whip, the great Dane at her heels—but at the lad's word, which he could not hold back, she stopped of a sudden, and thus they stood face to face. For a long time she did not speak, but the colour heightened upon her cheek as she saw upon whom she had come, and the lace upon her breast rose and fell while she listened to his rapid words.
"I saw your light," said Fisher bluntly, assuming that she knew of his situation, "and feared that the gang was upon us again. My friend and I are lying down in the brushwood yonder, but we are nearly dead with fatigue and want of food. If you could show us a safe road to the shore, I could not thank you enough."
They stood, as I have said, face to face, the boy and the girl; and yet there was between them that understanding which flashes up instinctively in the young day of life; and they knew that words were not wanting upon the seal of their confidence. He, for his part, put his safety into her hands as readily as he would have put it into the hands of one he had known since childhood; and when she answered him, she did so without any fear or pretence of ignorance.
"I know all your story," said she. "They were saying at the house that you had gone into the woods by the other bay, and they are searching for you there. But I saw you come here from my window this morning, and I waited for the dark to help you. They are still watching upon the beach, but that is a mile from here."
She extinguished the lantern with her words, but not before he had asked her—
"Why do you do this for us?"
"I do it for you," she replied quite simply; "you cannot understand, but I have never had a friend. My own people are a shame to me. My life is all loneliness. God only knows what it is"
She spoke with such an infinite tenderness that Fisher caught her hand in his, and held it to his lips; and the touch of it sent him trembling.
"Would to God I could repay you," said he, "but I have nothing to offer but my gratitude, and what that is words could not tell you. I shall remember it to my last day"
"And I shall remember you," said she, still permitting him to hold her; "I could never forget you have given me happiness, and I have known so little."
Her note of sorrow struck in the lad a whole chord of fine chivalry. Standing as he did with her hand in his, and her hot breath upon his cheeks, almost feeling the rapid beating of her heart as she pressed against him, looking down into eyes that glowed with Southern passion, he vowed that he would return again whatever lot fate put upon him; and telling her this, regardless of time or place, he of a sudden drew her yet closer to him, and their lips met in the first kiss he had ever put upon the lips of woman. And for long moments she clung to him with tears upon her cheeks, and gladness at her heart, while the fire-flies played and the leaves trembled in the first flush of a warm breeze, and the woods were still in all the beauty of a summer's night.
The moment was long drawn, yet she, disengaging herself from his embrace, was the first to come to her senses.
"We are both forgetting," said she; "and we stand where we must not forget. I am going to lead you through the private garden to the shore. I can do no more, and if the men return from the other end of the bay, it may only be leading you to danger. But it is all I can do."
"I am sure of it," said Fisher, "and we must take our chance. I shall tell Messenger all you have done."
"Indeed no," said she, "it was done for you. If you do not forget, that is all I ask."
There was no need for his answer. Yet he vowed again and again, as men vow, that he would never forget, and that he would come again to thank her, as he could not thank her then. Thus, hand in hand, they crept towards the hill whereon Messenger's watch had been, and to him it seemed that he told her the history of his life, and that he had found one who had caused a whole world of dreams to open before him enchantingly. But she, going on with quick steps, led him at last to the hill, and to the man who was already coming towards the thicket for an understanding of the delay.
"Well," said Messenger, observing the two, "you appear to be occupied. Is this the young lady you spoke of a week ago?"
"Yes," said Fisher simply; "this is the second time she has done us a service. She has just promised to take us through the private garden to the beach, which she thinks is free of men."
The Prince, looking upon the pair, did not even ask himself is it safe to go? He had reckoned up the chances at a thought, as the lad and the Spanish girl came towards him; and now he only thanked her with that infinite courtesy he was master of at any moment. But this being done, she led them quickly through the nearer of the woods until they came to a great wall of stone; and in this she unlocked a great iron door, and so they passed through a garden in which there were many arbours and fountains, until they stood at the summit of a rough flight of stone stairs; and here she left them before the man could speak another word to her, or the lad could touch her hand again.
The steps brought them upon the beach, which they found quite deserted; but walking quickly towards their own haven, as they judged, they presently saw the dark shape of a ship's boat; and they observed instantly that it was the longboat, in which the nigger, Joe, rowed, and Burke sat at the tiller.
At this sight, the fact being clear beyond dispute, Messenger stood quite still and stamped angrily with his foot upon the sand.
"Curse them!" said he; "they're showing full in the light!" With this he began to run along the shore, and the skipper, seeing him, gave a low whistle and put the boat's head toward the beach. She touched a moment later; but as the four greeted each other a great shout rose up from the sand, and a horde of men, swarming fiercely about the party, had laid the whole of them flat upon their backs and bound them before they realized even whence the attack came.
When the work was done, and the four Englishmen lay upon the beach, stiff with the ropes which bound them, the Spaniards who had achieved such a quick capture began to display their exultation with deep guttural cries. Some stood above the captives and uttered the shrill exclamations for many minutes; others ran along the beach calling loudly to their fellows on the cliffs above that the work was done; others, again, brought torches, which they thrust almost into the faces of the prisoners under the pretence of examining them. Nor was the band lacking the picturesque—numbering, as Messenger computed, at least thirty men, all armed with the cuchillo and with muskets, and clothed in garments which represented at once the tawdry splendour of the southern taste and the warmer fashion of the mountain country. Here were rateros in the gaudy cloaks of the Iberian; hulking seamen in long mantles of rich and faded silk; bearded men whose sashes shone with hues of intense red and aggressive yellow; swarthy Galicians in the black zamarra; simple peasants who capered in the torch-light; even boys who yodledat the victory. And for a long space they kept up the tow-row and the din, and threatened the bound men with their knives or their cudgels.
That there was any merit in the capture is not to be conceded. Messenger's own record, from which this present account is chiefly written, establishes the simplicity of it. "I lay it," says he, "entirely to my own folly in getting upon the roof of the rock-house that we were taken. The Spaniards must have watched for us upon the shore all day, and Burke's madness in coming out of the haven gave them the clue they waited for. When they did spring upon us, it was with the dash of a cavalry charge. I had three men upon my back and three at my throat before I could put a hand upon my pistol; and scarce had I touched the floor when a fellow whipped a slip-knot round my arms, and pinned them so that the rope cut my flesh."
The record of the others is to the same effect; and in one matter, at any rate, their thoughts were very similar. That this was the supremity of their disaster was as plain to them as the faces of the swarthy horde who gibbered upon the sand; but whether the Spaniards had actually come upon the gold—or, indeed, knew any thing of its history—they could not tell. It was sufficient for them that they were irreparably in the power of a babbling crew who seemed to restrain themselves from immediate murder with personal pain; and they could only conclude, with overwhelming bitterness, that chance had written for them this blunt termination of their emprise, and that they among them would be lucky who lived to see another sun.
As the moments passed this latter thought became their only one in the presence of the immediate danger from the exulting Spaniards. Some of these, in the play of their humour, now began to thrash the bodies of the bound with their heavy wooden clubs; others thrust their torches very near to the faces of the prone men, or threatened them with their cuchillos. It is scarce possible, in fact, to believe that the end of the four would not have come quickly had there not been the intervention of one in authority, a giant of a man, in a capa edged with fur and a fine sombrero, at the sound of whose voice the mob fell back and stood silent. But he, coming up to Messenger and making him a profound bow, seemed to be finding apology; and when he had doffed his hat many times, he turned about and spoke to a man at his elbow, and at that the cords which held the necks and the ankles of the captives were cut, and the four of them were lifted into two boats which had been rowed to the sand during the mêlée.
The first of these, a pretty craft finished like a yacht's boat, took Messenger and Fisher; the second, a plainer ship, but one holding at least twenty men, had Burke and the nigger. And the boats being thus laden, the Spaniards rowed quickly up the bay, and Messenger's hope sank low when he observed that their course was for the lagoon he had fled from in the morning, and that the men who had debouched upon them were also those who had cried to one another in the door of the tunnel.
During this short voyage the boat which carried Burke fell rapidly behind the lighter craft wherein Messenger was, he sitting at the stern with the big man beside him, and Fisher lying, in the greatest state of fear he had ever known, at the bows. Both of them now had the shackles of the rope only upon their hands, yet thought of any attempt to turn the situation by leaping from the boat was out of their minds, and would, at the best, have been idle thought. As for the elder man, his quick-scheming mind already ran upon a dozen ways and means, yet he could shape nothing until time should tell him more explicitly how the position lay; and, in the expectation of light, he turned to the Spaniard and asked him in French—
"Where are you taking us?"
"Sabe Dios, quien sabe," replied the fellow stoically.
Messenger, not having a phrase of Spanish to understand the sarcasm, ventured the thing again, this time in English.
"Do you belong to the palace on the hill?"
The man responded with a "Perdone, señor," and another smile, showing, had there been light by which to see them, a fine row of brown teeth. Then he pointed with abundant gesticulation toward the haven, and seemed to wish to say that the position of the prisoners caused suffering to himself. But Messenger, believing that he was understood, went on with his talk.
"You seem to have a pretty collection of vagabonds at your beck and call," said he. "I'm afraid this will cost you dear. We're expecting a ship from Ferrol to-morrow, and the English consul there will know where to look for us. You play a dangerous game!"
To his intense surprise the Spaniard laughed right out at this remark.
"Possibly," said he, in the English of the Palais Royal—"possibly; but we play him with the pistol in the pocket, señor. Your pardon, I speak what the English call the warning—you be exhorted of me and take him."
"Oh, then, you're the chief," said Messenger, looking at him closely, "and the owner of the place, I presume?"
"It is mine, and yet—as you speak—it is not mine. I serve my mistress there are thirty years; I will serve her thirty more—ojala!"
"Are we going to her now?"
"No, se sabe. I tell you in the come-and-by" (he meant the by-and-by). "I am but the servant; the servant cannot make speak when the mistress does not speak—not at all, by no means!"
Messenger observed at this the cunning of the man, and lapsed into silence. The boat had now swung round into the creek of the sea; and they began to row through a great gorge which rose up, infinitely grand in the moonlight, to a height of at least three hundred feet above the beach. The steep and stony walls of this were half hid by the pines and clinging plants which thrived generously upon it; yet there were stretches where the quartz-like ore gave a sheen as of burnished silver, and the lagoon itself shone like a mirror where the soft light fell. For the third part of a mile, at the least, the boat glided silently below the home of eagles and the wood-capped peaks, meeting no other craft; nor was there any sign of men until, with a sudden turn, the mouth of the tunnel came to their view, and a dozen rough fellows, gathered upon the small wall at the edge, hailed the boat^s crew, and were answered with a hail again.
"Hola! que tal?" The cry was repeated thrice, and each time the echo of the sound boomed in the tunnel, and seemed to roll away to the very heart of the hills. At its second repetition the boat had come up to a great cave-like aperture, and, being rowed straight on, a weighty darkness closed the scene from the men's eyes; and they could distinguish only the glitter of rude lamps, which showed, in their limited aureola, walls green with slime, and water which shone black as the environing darkness. But, and this after the fashion of the creek without, the tunnel trended, when it had continued for some two hundred yards, sharply to the right; and as the boat swung round on the bend she came up to a small wooden platform in the wall, and there was held by a couple of seamen who carried lanterns in their hands, and appeared to be waiting for the party.
The exchange of greeting between the Spaniards was very brief. The man in authority at once stepped upon the platform and bade the Englishmen follow him through a wicket of iron set in the rock; and when they had so done, they were in a narrow passage of brick feebly lighted by oil lamps. The passage inclined upward at a very sharp angle, and was so low that a stooping posture was necessary to those who walked in it; but the Spaniards set a quick pace up the incline, and presently they emerged upon a stone court-yard with exceeding high walls; and thence, passing another gate into a block of buildings, they continued through several corridors until at last they stood within the castle itself, as they surmised; and the guide bade them wait in the charge of three of the others who had accompanied him.
So far as Messenger could observe in the dim light the building in which they now were had walls of immense thickness, and betrayed its age in every arch and pillar. Above them a roof of stone sculptured with rich tracery gave evidence of Moorish influence, and the slender columns which supported it had much of the delicacy which is conspicuous at Granada. Yet the vast hall, or ante-room, or whatever it was, possessed scant ornament of furniture, though towering gates, emblazoned with shining brass, and many images with lamps burning upon them, were a testimony of abiding care. The aspect of it, indeed, was one of sumptuous luxury, and led the imagination on quickly to depict gorgeous scenes behind the gates, whence came the murmur of fountains splashing and the low hum of voices.
In this hall the two prisoners—for Burke and the nigger were not brought there—waited for the space of ten minutes, standing moodily before their guides. At the end of that time one of the brass gates was opened, and the Spaniard returned, beckoning them to follow him. Nor did he appear to anticipate any attempt to escape, being alone with them after they had passed from the hall, and stopping a moment to cut the ropes which bound their hands. They were now in a lofty passage lit by lamps of bronze, and so thickly carpeted that the footfall was noiseless; a passage upon whose walls strange allegories, depicted with the brilliant colouring of the Spanish school, were lavished; and from the great corridor they passed to a circular and gilt-domed ante-chamber, where fountains bubbled up from the outstretched arms of nereids; and light fell cunningly upon marble basins and the sun-fish which swarmed in them. Never had either of them seen a chamber so perfect in its harmonious colouring, so seductive in its lounges, so suggestive of ultimate placidity of life; but hardly had they come into it when the great Spaniard threw open curtains which hid one of the panels of its apse, and the pair of them stood in the presence of the Spanish woman.
The room was a lofty one, lighted by many candles set in a chandelier of Venetian glass; its panelled walls were decorated by sombre portraits. At its upper end an archway hung with curtains cut it off from a smaller apartment, which was just seen through open woodwork delicately carved; and there was a gallery running along one of its sides with other doors leading into it. Yet was the most striking feature of the chamber the crone-like hag sitting in a low chair, surrounded by great Danes, who snarled at the new-comers. As the light from a reading-lamp shone upon her face, the Spanish woman, whom Messenger had last seen for any certainty at Monaco, presented a countenance no less repulsive than upon the day of their first meeting. Her thick ropy black hair fell upon her shoulders in the fashion of the school-girl; her arms seemed as muscular as those of a strong man; her face was brown with the burn of the sun; her eyes shone with an unnatural lustre, and flashed light here and there as the eyes of an eagle. And as the two stood before her she searched them with her gaze so that they could scarce face her, and were conscious of a mysterious subtlety and power of which they had not known the like.
When the big Spaniard had withdrawn, the woman spoke in English which had hardly a fault, but with a voice that grated on the ear like an unresolved discord.
"Well, Mr. Arnold Messenger," said she, "it is our privilege to meet again!"
At this Messenger started imperceptibly, but answered quickly—
"Madame, I do not remember that we have met before."
"No?" she said, with emphasis, using a great fan of ostrich feathers cunningly. "Then you have lost your memory with your money—what a double misfortune!"
Now when she said this the man felt a twitch of every nerve in his body. That the woman knew his name was ill chance enough; but that she made no disguise whatever of the other knowledge threw him so thoroughly off his mental balance that he answered her with a lie which was as clumsy as it was useless.
"Madame," said he, with a great simulation of regret, "my memory I may recover; but the money is now in the Atlantic, though by what means you heard of it I cannot conceive."
"By what means!" said she. "Indeed, you do little credit to your reputation. Here is your life and a description of your recent achievements in a dozen papers—Spanish, French, and English. They say that you are the most cunning"
"It's very good of them," said Messenger lightly, and feeling the ground more surely; "let us accept their opinion gratefully, and go on to speak of other things. I will begin by asking you a question: Why have you brought us here?"
"To have the pleasure of seeing the first rogue in Europe," she replied, with a slight laugh.
"Is your curiosity gratified?"
"Nay," said she, "you are not ill-looking, not by any means; and I think you must be clever. I am glad that you have come to no harm."
She said this with as much unconcern as though she were weighing the life of a fowl; but the man replied, with a shrug of his shoulders—
"I think it was well that you did; there are others in Ferrol who have not yet the pleasure of your hospitality; they may return any moment, and will know exactly where to seek us."
"And the money?" she exclaimed, with the same harsh laugh.
"The money is out in the sea," said Messenger doggedly.
"As the young man here will tell me, too, no doubt!" she continued, turning to Fisher, who had listened to the conversation with surprise at every word of it; and when she had looked at him with her sharp eyes, she added—"A pretty boy; but not clever, I fear. These things should not be heard by one so young."
Upon this she touched a bell at her side, and a Spanish servant, dressed in ceremonious black, instantly appeared.
"Conduct this gentleman to his room!" said she; and the man beckoned to Fisher, who followed him from the apartment without finding a word, since he was yet hoping that he would find in the place one who alone interested him of all those he had seen in Spain. But when he was gone, the woman bade Messenger sit, and took up her words at once.
"Well," said she, "I am sorry not to find you clever. It was not worthy of you to lie so clumsily, seeing how little it serves you. A falsehood should be the last resort of genius like yours. Had you not better tell me at once where the money is?"
"On what terms?" asked Messenger, with a slight betrayal of eagerness.
She leaned back upon her seat and looked straight at him.
"Your life,'* said she, "and, as you will wish it, that of the boy."
Messenger could sit no longer.
"Madame," said he, standing before her, and holding back his passion with effort, "we are wasting our time. You must have the poorest opinion of me to propose that. I refuse, of course."
It was a critical moment, as he felt. Though ostensibly alone, he could see the savage eyes of men peering through the woodwork at the far end of the chamber; and even from holes in the face of a portrait quite near to him a man was glancing. Whether or no the next moment would bring death to him he did not know; but suddenly he played his only card—though for one instant he had the idea of killing the woman as she sat, and trusting to the after-minutes for his opportunity. But she only looked at him with an infinite power of penetration; and her hand hovered upon the bell at her side.
"You are a bold man," said she presently. "I must really make up my mind about you."
"When you do that," said Messenger, "I counsel you to look all round. You cannot think that you and the nature of your profession are unknown to me, or that I have taken no precautions. My friend Jake Williams"—he remembered Kenner's story, luckily—"has already had some acquaintance with you in America. I expect him on the coast with fifty men every hour, and he will first seek me here."
She shrugged her shoulders, but her right hand still was dangerously near to the bell.
"Jake Williams, did you say?" she asked.
"No other," he answered.
"Ah!" said she, "then he is the man spoken of by the journals as Jake Kenner; and is he coming back?"
"Certainly," said he; "and as he knows a little of your past it might be troublesome if he missed us."
He said this slowly and impressively, as he hoped; but the woman, having heard his words, did not, to his surprise, give him any immediate answer.
In the silence which followed upon his speech, the deep breathing of the Spaniards was heard more clearly. He was perfectly aware of her thoughts as she sat, all drawn up in her chair, a black cape drawn over her shoulders, and her ravenous eyes seeing nothing but pictures which the mind gave her. He knew that she was weighing the measure of the risk which would follow upon his death; and was debating at the same time the possibility of finding the money without his aid. Had he been in her place he would have taken the bolder course unhesitatingly, and no man from the Semiramis would have lived an hour; but he could not forget that she was a woman, and women have caution rather than boldness in any work to which they may set their hands. When at last she spoke, her words ran well with his surmises.
"Well," said she, taking up the point as though there had been no pause, "it was wise of you to send the American to Ferrol. He and I have scores to settle; but, mon ami, is it not probable that he is already on his way to England in the custody of the police?"
"Perfectly possible," replied Messenger, who grasped the point instantly, "but that will make no difference to us; he will have delivered our letters to others."
"And the others will cry abroad that you are on this coast, with a million of money, or as much of it as you saved from the wreck, to protect you from me. What a clever idea!"
"It is not clever," said Messenger, shrugging his shoulders; "but it is our last card. If we sink, I am perfectly determined that you shall not have a shilling, unless"
"Unless what?"
"Unless you help us. And I will make you this offer: I will pay you one-third of the whole sum got out of the wreck if you will put your men at our disposal for a week, and allow us in the meantime the shelter of this house. Pray think it out calmly. If we are out of the way, you may find the bullion; but the greater probability is that you will never find it. And if you should be so lucky, our friends, who will presently discover our absence, will immediately make the whole story public, with your share in it the loudest talked about. A moment's consideration should convince you that your whole interest lies with us."
At this she looked up at him, a smile withering upon her hard drawn face.
"That's very well said," she cried, "but there are holes in your argument. Let me remind you that we may find what is missing before the sun rises. Do you think that we shall sit here idly and wait your pleasure? Indeed, you don't, for you are not such a fool."
"I shall risk any thing you may do," said Messenger; "it's the one risk I must take. Otherwise I have rather the best case, and can afford to laugh at your efforts."
He had grown bolder as he felt her wavering and saw that she made no movement as though she would touch the gong at her side. But the Spaniards were still pressing upon the grating, and at this last speech of his he could hear the murmuring of their whispering. As for the woman, his words turned her from her quieter mood to one of ostensible anger.
"I would not begin to laugh yet!" she snapped; "there is time for that. I have done with you now, to-morrow I shall know my mind. But don't forget that I have offered you your life and that of the boy"
"Or that I claim the lives of the others," said Messenger, in a burst of lofty generosity which fell in exactly with the part he was acting.
"You claim!' she answered, her anger growing, "you claim! ha! I shall be compelled to teach you a lesson! As I live, you are the first man that has dared to argue with me in my own house"
"Let us hope I shall not be the last," exclaimed Messenger, who saw that he had won the deal; "argument, madame, is the doorstep to reason."
"You are impertinent," she said, rising. "Next time we meet I shall take means to bring you to better behaviour!"
When she had said this, she tapped twice upon the table with her fan; then withdrew herself behind a panel which flew open at the touch of her hand, and was gone from sight. She had flaunted away in a burst of anger, and her exit had been in some part melodramatic; but the man for whose benefit the performance was designed stood quite unmoved. He thought only that he had taken her measure, and found it rather shallow. For her threats he did not care a snap of the fingers; and, to his infinite satisfaction, he foresaw the moment when the end of the bargaining should restore to him all that yesterday seemed lost. With the woman's aid he would reach South America in the faces of all the British warships that floated; with her assistance he would put his heel on the schemes for his capture and grind them to shreds. A dream of success floated up from the thought and held him motionless. The first ambition which had prompted the great flight from London was potent again with all its aims and possibility. He could have hugged himself at the luck which sent him to such a shore and such a haven.
He was aroused from the contemplation of these visions by the sudden discovery that a servant stood at his side—a waiting-man, dressed sombrely in black, but with knee-breeches, and silver buckles upon his shoes. Whence the fellow had come he did not know; but he looked at the gratings, where he had seen the eyes of many men a few minutes before, and did not now behold a single face. The crowd of janissaries had vanished as a picture from a lantern-cloth; the room beyond was in utter darkness; only the one servant waited for him, and appeared to be impatient that he should go. Another man might have contemplated, under such circumstances, a quick dash for liberty; but he was too wise. Though he could not see them, he felt that many eyes watched him; that he had but to raise a hand, and he would be struck down as he stood.
Convinced of this, he followed the lackey from the room, and, passing to a narrow stair case, he mounted many flights of stairs, going upward, upward, until at last the man opened a heavy wooden door, which swung upon valves, and intimated to him that this was his apartment. As he stepped into the room the door was locked behind him; but a cheery greeting reassured him, and he made the welcome discovery that he was caged with the others of his party, and that they had looked upon him as dead.
The first to speak was Burke.
"Hello, my dandelion!" said he; "so you've riz up, after all? Wal, you always were a shiner! How did you leave the she-devil in the black toggery? Did she ask particler after my health?"
"I'm sorry to say she forgot to mention you," replied the Prince; "she was too busy debating me. Where's the nigger?"
"Here, sah," cried Joe from a dark corner of the place; "quite flat, sah, or fall out of the window, sah. Slap-up fine thing in windows; no trouble to open him; you go long way, heels up, sah, if you don't mind your eye!"
The light was very dim, but his meaning was plain, for the room in which the four had been shut was at the top of one of the towers of the castle, and the whole of its right-hand side was open to the air, there being a parapet not more than six inches high to prevent any man stepping from the prison and going straight down to the flags of the court a hundred feet below. Beyond this startling eccentricity of casement the place had nothing uncommon, being built with thick stone walls and heavy beams above; but there was a table in the centre of it, upon which some bottles of common Spanish wine, together with a supper of meat and bread, were set; and the floor was strewn with rushes.
"Well," said Messenger, after he had looked all round, "this wouldn't be the place to give a small and early in—eh, Burke? Not quite the 'Metropole', is it? What's the wine like?"
"Forked lightning coloured up with sulphur!" said Burke. "I took a sup jess now—not more than a quart—and it only wanted a bit of string to spin me!"
"And, Hal," continued the Prince, turning to Fisher, who sat upon a bench looking with infinite disgust at the fatty meat upon the table, "you don't tell me how you fared!"
"I didn't fare at all," said Fisher. "The man brought me up here and shut me in; that was the beginning and the end of it."
"I wish to Heaven it was the end of it!" cried the other. "Do you know what she wants, Burke? She asks for the whole of the cash in return for a free passage for the four of us. I call that modest!"
When Burke heard this, he sat up wonderingly.
"All the stuff?" he asked.
"Every sovereign of it!" said Messenger.
"I'd burn her old body to blazes before I'd give her ninepence!" said Burke. "What ken she do?"
"She may do many things. To begin with, she might poison us"
"Blind me, I never thought of that when I swabbed up the vitriol! What did you say?"
"I said that I would give her one-third in return for her help."
"You did foolish! What is there ez'll prevent her banking the cash and then stretching you?"
"A little something which occurred to me before I made the offer. If she accepts my conditions, I shall send two of you to Ferrol to look for Kenner; and, wanting him, to do his business."
"That's right along cute! Did it occur to you, belike, that there was a way out of this hole?"
"Just as much a way out as there would be from Bow Street if the pair of us were there now."
"She came to know of the business from the papers, I'm supposing?"
"Exactly. The mate of the Admiral was picked up, as I thought, and half the police in Europe are tracking us."
"Wal, I reckon I saw it from the first. You must have been blind to let the man go!"
"If I'd have done any thing else, the crew would have turned. It was the best thing possible."
"Maybe; but if it was me ez had drawn a bead on him, he'd be among the martyrs now. Do you think the old girl will take the third?"
"I'll tell you better in the morning. I'm full of sleep now; and I'm going to take a drink of that sulphuric acid. This place is productive of thirst."
"Wal," said Burke, settling down at his length, "look out for fireworks; and if you're waking, call me early"
"If we're waking!" said the other with a momentary gloom. "It's just possible that we may not wake."
Fisher and the nigger had been asleep toward the end of the talk; and though the bed of rushes did not suggest the quiet of dreams, the others, who had scarce closed their eyes during two days and nights, now endeavoured to imitate them. The fact that the prison lacked a wall was in no way to be regretted in the heat of the early morning hours; and, for the matter of that, the spires and domes of the castle, shining below them in a flood of moonlight, gave rest to the eye and a picture of exceeding beauty. From the great arch, which lacked glass, they could look over the spread of the park away to the rippling sheen of the sea, and to the hill above the haven where their money lay. Nor was it to their comfort that they observed torches flaring here and there like elf-fires upon the beach; and saw, on the more open swards of the downs, companies of men moving from place to place; and heard the shrill crying echoing from hill to hill as the signals were given or answered. Such a spectacle suggested many things, to Messenger, at any rate; and he, knowing the large probability that their haven would be discovered, saw in its discovery the corollary of his own death and of those with him. For it was as certain as the rise of the moon that, once she had her hand upon the bullion, the Spanish woman would give no quarter, nor parley for a moment with the outcasts over whom chance had given her the mastery.
Such logical forebodings held the man from sleep for many hours. He sat watching the path of the torches, which appeared and disappeared like a Jack-o'-lantern. Oftentimes his heart quaked as he heard some unusually loud hail, and he said to himself: "They have found the creek." He was cold with a piercing chill at the mere sight of a lugger in the offing. But his fears, for that night at the least, were quieted in the middle watch when, of a sudden, the British warship which had been cruising on the coast anchored in the bay; and the lights upon the beach were instantly extinguished, while parties of Spaniards came running up to the great house and crowded into the court-yards. Then a deep stillness succeeded, and, believing that the danger was past, he lay upon the mattress of rushes and slept with profound languor for many hours.
When he awoke, he found himself, to his unutterable surprise, in another room. He had observed the change as he opened his eyes and saw, in place of the bare stone and the rushes, a panelled ceiling of oak and the posts of a wooden bed upon which he lay. He was now in a room which had some stamp of civilisation—an arm-chair of leather, a table with books upon it, a glass above the chimney, and a timepiece set above his bed. He saw then that it was five o'clock, and, by the fall of the sun's rays and the heat, he knew that he had slept for twelve hours, and that the wine which he had taken had compelled him to the utter oblivion. Indeed, he felt a great weariness in his limbs, a difficulty to set out events in order in his mind; and when he rose to his feet, giddiness seized upon him, and he reeled into the chair. Do what he would, he could conjure no ordered picture of the yestereve; could bring his brain to no recollection of the absolute circumstances of the day he had passed through. Nothing but the ephemeral and flitting impressions of scenes and persons could he grasp; and for a long while he sat with the vacuous stare of the demented or the wandering.
The awakening from this state of mental coma was a violent one. He had walked round his room twice, taking scant observation of its contents, and then had turned to gaze upon the greensward of a small but highly walled court upon which his windows gave. He could look from his casement down upon the whole face of this enclosure, over whose grass high chestnut-trees cast a welcome shade, and suggested by the lazy rustling of their leaves that the atmosphere was not sleeping even under the sun's rays. At the first there was nothing in the grass court to interest him in any way or to call his mind to coherence; but at the second look his blood seemed to freeze within him, and he caught at the window for support. For the body of Burke, the skipper, was hanging from the lowest branch of the hither tree, and swayed upon the rope which held it, so that there was no doubt of the man's death, though his face was hidden by the foliage, and little but his legs could be seen.
"THE BODY OF BURKE, THE SKIPPER, WAS HANGING FROM THE LOWEST BRANCH" (p. 259)
The sight, as I have said, brought Messenger's mind instantly to its work. Under the shock the events of the night recurred to him quickly. He remembered every word he had spoken to the woman; he could narrate again his last conversation with the man whose body now hung from the tree; nice points of argument with himself were again before him. And of these the first he discussed was the point which the hideous sight in the courtyard suggested to him. Why had the woman hanged Burke? There was only one suggestion possible. She had done it to frighten the three who lived. It was the lesson she was to teach him. But it had no such sequence for a man of his feeling, at any rate. Another would have thought, if but for a moment, tenderly of one who had worked with him, sharing possibilities and dangers, evil luck and good chance, hard board and free fare; but Messenger had no such thought. "There is one less to share," said he; and he flung himself in his chair again, but this time to think with unclouded mind.
The woman had not found the money; that was clear; and if the British cruiser were still in the offing, she had probably ceased to search for it. He asked himself, what if he could make terms, and trust to the after-days to make them better terms? She was only an adventuress, after all; once he were in possession of substance, it were ill luck if he could not play the stronger hand. He did not forget, however, that any moment might take from him the power of barter at all. If she found the creek, then he would hang with Burke. He must act, therefore, on the inspiration if he would save his neck and Fisher's. It was curious that in all his scheming this thought of the lad came to him, yet come it did; and he knew that if he had seen the boy's body hanging where Burke's was the sight would have been almost unbearable to him. But he seemed to feel that Fisher still lived; and, desiring to speak to the woman quickly, he beat upon the door, and after continued knocking it was opened, and the Spaniard stood before him.
Somewhat to his surprise, the man desired no intimation of his object. No sooner had he appeared than he nodded greeting to the prisoner, and at once led the way from the chamber. They passed together down a long corridor of stone, and, thence seeming to come into the main building again, they continued on through a vast room whose oaken walls were hung with armour, and so through a suite of gilded but faded apartments until they reached the hall of fountains and the room where the woman had sat at her first reception.
It was not in this room that Messenger was now received, but in a smaller chamber behind the panel which had opened so mysteriously at the woman's touch on the previous evening. Here sat the crone perched up in a great arm-chair, but she was not alone. A ragged man, who carried a ragged cap in his hand, stood at her side, and was talking to her with a wealth of gesture which implied an exciting narrative. Nor did she betray any surprise that the Englishman had come suddenly to her; rather, she welcomed him, and at once began to speak.
"I was about to send for you," said she. "There is news from the hills, and bad news, I fear. A company of carabineers left Vivero at dawn, and is now encamped five miles from here. There is an Englishman at the head of it, and as far as I can learn this house is its destination."
At this news the Prince paled for the second time since he had left London.
"Are you quite sure of your information?" he asked.
"As sure as I can be from the words of this messenger. He thinks that another company has left Ferrol, and that the hills are full of men. We may expect a visit any time between now and midnight!"
Messenger took a turn up the room, his hands plunged into his pockets, and his teeth pressing hard into his lips. For the moment his mind reeled as the danger seemed to close him, look where he would; but suddenly he stopped before the woman, and asked another question.
"Tell me," said he, "have you any way leading from this house which is not likely to be a high-road for troops?"
She laughed at the simplicity of the question.
"Do you think," she cried, "that I would live in any place where I could be taken like a rat in a trap?"
"I didn't suppose it for a moment," said he; "but, that being so, I am going to tell you where the money is, and we will make the flight together."
"It is the only possible course," said she, answering Messenger with like frankness; "there is trouble for both of us, though I cannot tell at present how far I am involved in it."
"I gather from your words," said he, "that this house is the immediate object of the attack. Could you hold out here while we got the money hid inland? They will scarcely force your doors if you refuse to admit them."
She laughed with harsh note.
"Mon ami" she cried, "you do not know the carabineers of Spain! If it is as I think, and my acquaintances in Madrid have been talking too loudly about me, these men have come here on a double purpose. The first part of it is to arrest you; the second, to do me a similar kindness. It is your presence upon the coast that has set the hornets loose. The Spanish Government has known about my work for ten years; it might have moved in another ten if the Englishmen in the city had not cried incessantly for action. For me, were you not here, the future would be simple; I should set out to-night or to-morrow for Vienna, and return here with the new year. After such a display of enthusiasm as this they would leave me in peace for another generation."
"But now the case is different," he exclaimed, interrupting her; "there is a million of money in the creek off your foreshore, and it has to be got into the hills without a moment's delay. How far off did you say the troops were?"
"The man says three miles; but they have camped in the village for the night. Where their camp is, and who they are, I am now going to ride out and learn for myself. Luckily, the English ship weighed anchor and left an hour ago. I shall know the best and worst of it by nightfall. Before that you and I can arrange in a word; the moment we put the hills between us and these men—I suggest that we strike for my other house near Finisterre after concealing ourselves until the troops have something to report—we divide what is to be divided, and take different roads"
"It is a fair offer," said he, "and I accept it. But I must stipulate that you continue to give me the service of your men until my share is shipped at the first port where that is possible."
"That was understood," she exclaimed, as she rose; "we are losing minutes which may be wanted. You will now take the men necessary to bring the money here while I am riding to Goozadoyre. By my return every thing should be ready for us to leave at midnight. I sent my daughter to Carcubion this morning with three servants. There is nothing more I can command here until you have done your work."
"I'm sure of that," said he; "but I must ask for the assistance of my friends. I presume you have not seized the others as you served Burke."
"I served him—sapristi! I had nothing to do with it. He struck down one of my servants in his room, and they killed him in a brawl. He was not clever, and I wonder that you regret him—you who are so clever!"
He muttered something in reply which was not audible, for his busy brain was asking the question, Was the woman cheating him with a fine tissue of lies, or was she honest? Though his intuitive faculty prompted him to hesitation, he drew from the one fact that he was no longer a prisoner the conclusion that the woman's policy toward him had completely changed; and when he followed her into the courtyard of the castle, that conclusion became more powerful. Twenty men mounted on sturdy black ponies, and all armed with guns, waited for her, and greeted her appearance with loud shouts. That they had something to tell her was apparent, and when a burly man at the head of them had poured out a volley of protestation, she turned and said—
"They fear a night march, and that is what I fear. You have not a minute to lose. I shall not ride to the village yet, but when we have prepared every thing, we will go together. Here are your friends!"
"Can you trust the men," he asked, "in the work at the creek?"
"If I could not," said she, "it would bode ill for the venture, don't you think?"
Fisher and the negro had come out with her words, and stood seemingly amazed at their liberation; but it was no moment for history. While yet they greeted Messenger, the Spaniard whom the woman called Fernando, he who had been in authority on the night of the capture, brought two ponies into the courtyard and began a hurried confabulation. At the end of it the woman spoke again—
"I can think," she cried, "of no better plan than this: let the boy here and the man with him accompany the boats, while you ride with me to the heights. I can offer you no better security."
"I do not ask any," said he; "but are you wise to waste time? Why should you not get the shelter of the hills at once? "
"Because," said she, with a slightly contemptuous laugh, "we may not be the only tenants of them; I prefer to see danger before I turn my back upon it."
"That's so," he replied. "I'm talking like a fool. Are the boats ready?"
She answered affirmatively, while he turned to Fisher and spoke quickly.
"Hal," said he, "go down with the man, here, and show him the creek. Stand by him while he ships the money; and, whatever happens, don't take your eyes off it if he'll let you keep them on. You understand?"
Fisher nodded his head, being still full of his amazement, and turned to follow the Spaniard; but the other sprang upon the saddle of the pony, and rode out of the gate by the woman's side. It was a curious and, in some measure, ill-assorted cavalcade that now defiled over the greensward of the park. Twenty men, some with capes and some with jerkins, some with sombreros, some with the broad-brimmed hats of seamen, some with embroidered jackets of velvet, some with sheepskins, but all horsemen of consummate ability, hugged close to the side of the woman who led them, she sitting hunched upon the back of a thick-set grey cob. Slung upon their shoulders were the antique but picturesque muskets; long knives dangled at their belts, revolvers were in their holsters. Habitually given to chatter and to noise, they came out now in great silence, riding at a gentle canter through the park of the castle to the high plane of grass-land which gave them a view of the sea; and they stood upon the plateau to watch the coming of the boats from the haven of the tunnel to the creek wherein the survivors of the Semiramis had found refuge. At the end of an hour they observed the boats to return; and as the signal appointed was made by the leading craft Messenger's heart leaped with the fever of his excitement.
Until this time it is to be doubted if the Spanish woman had believed the story which she had read in the English and other papers. She might have hoped that some money was brought from the wreck of the yacht to the shore; but that the vast treasure named was saved in any considerable part she could not believe. At this moment, however, a revelation appeared to come upon her; her whole face lighted up with a savage smile of joy; and, reaching out from her pony, she kissed Messenger upon either cheek, as is the fashion of the Spaniards.
"Oh, my friend," said she, "if I had known you ten years ago!" With this vague intimation of her pleasure, she suddenly cried out to the Spaniards; and, at her word, they spread abroad over the park, and, galloping with an irresistible dash and impetuosity, the whole party swept inland toward the distant woods and hills.
After the first wild sweep of freedom the escort gradually reined in its horses, and drew back to an easy canter. Mounted men had left earlier in the direction of Vivero, and others were on the hill-tops, watching for a view of the suspected troops; but, notwithstanding this, the party divided when it came to the woods at the edge of the first bay, which had been the Englishman's haven, and so was split up until but two men rode with Messenger and the woman. She, evidently, had planned to ride for the summit of the great promontory which the wrecked men had seen from the yacht; but she led the way with infinite caution, and her readiness and positive lack of all sense of danger stood out so unmistakably that the Prince seemed to lean upon her intellect as a child leans upon a strong man's.
A mile from the shore the path lay through a wood of pines, there being a mossy bed to deaden the sound of horses' tramping, and a luxurious canopy of leaves, through which the setting sun streamed redly. Here the woman reined in her pony and listened a moment.
"Do you hear any sound?" she asked.
"None," said Messenger, who had drawn rein with her.
"You have no ears," said she; "listen again, and tell me."
"Except for the bird whistling," said he, "I hear nothing."
She laughed at him.
"The bird whistling is my man Pedro!" said she. "We can go on—slowly."
The wood continued for a third of a mile or more, the path through it beginning to rise when they had gone a hundred yards, and thence mounting with a severe gradient, which the ponies attacked with the skill of habit, until it became but a ribbon-way against a hill-side. After this they entered a second wood, and, coming to the edge of it, they behe1d, both upon the seaboard and inland, the country lying below them at a great depth, and the sea itself—still, with the glassy surface of a lake. But—and this only was of moment to them—in the hollow where the first village was the sky-blue coats and red breeches of a company of lancers shone conspicuous in the clear light; and these men were leading out their horses, and presently, being mounted in haste, they galloped away quickly in the direction of the shore.
As the eyes of Messenger turned toward the sea the explanation of this action was given to him. A coasting-steamer, flying some flag which he could not read, was running very close in upon the foreland; and near, in pursuit of her, stood the British cruiser which had haunted the bay of the haven for so many days. From the high ground whence they looked down upon the scene it was possible to observe both the danger of the flying ship and the commotion upon the shore which her appearance had brought about. Scores of wild men now flocked from the village to the sea; others, already standing upon the sandy beach, were waving their arms and scurrying hither and thither, as though they could help the one ship on or arrest the pursuit of the other; the lancers themselves were riding along the low land, and appeared to be waiting for the cruiser to drive the crew of the steamer ashore. The latter vessel was now forced in so close upon the land that the probability of her striking the rocks of the promontory was apparent even to Messenger; but before he could give words to his thoughts the woman at his side spoke them for him.
"Voyez-vous mon ami," said she, "here is news."
"I was thinking so," he answered. "I wonder if Kenner is aboard her?"
"We shall know soon," she cried. "Look at that!"
The exclamation followed a crash of shot from the pursuing vessel, and as the shell fell into the sea before the steamer's bows she dropped anchor and lowered her flag. At the same moment a boat was put off from her side, and three men entered it, the foremost being Kenner. He had hoped to reach the shore before the long-boat, now let go by the other, could come up with him; but as his men bent their backs to the work the woman cried, and this time with feeling.
"Look!" she said; "my score against your friend is about to be paid. If he puts ashore on those sands, Heaven help him!"
"He cannot escape the mounted men, any way," said Messenger. "Well, he was always a tenderfoot. I looked for him to come five days ago."
He spoke callously, though he felt much, and truly Kenner's position was critical. The cruiser's boat was coming in toward the shore at a great pace; his own men were struggling with the current, which swept their dingy toward the neck of the peninsula. Their first intention of landing, and doubtlessly of making a dash for the hills, was checked when they perceived the troop of cavalry, now standing prominent upon the beach; and while they hesitated, the seamen of the cruiser drew up to them with long and powerful strokes.
Thus the position stood when Kenner—no longer able to tolerate the suspense—leaped boldly from his dingy to the sea, and began to swim toward the sands. A great cry from the shoremen followed his venture; and as he came in the shallows where he could walk the cry was taken up again, as a cry of warning.
"Wait for it now," said the Spanish woman; "he is on the death-patch, and the lancers have had their ride for nothing."
The scene was exciting almost beyond endurance, even viewed from the distant height of the hill as they viewed it.
There, upon the sand, the water lapping about his knees, Kenner swayed and hesitated, while the men of the beach bellowed their warnings, and the pursuing boat drew so near that a seaman at the bows rose to clutch the hunted man. Driven by a hundred impulses and fears, the American at last made two or three quick steps in the endeavour to throw himself flat upon the water; but he tripped in the effort, and reeled so that he dropped at last upon his knees, and was engulfed to his waist. In that supreme moment his pitiful cry rose up from the water, and echoed from hill to hill, the death-cry of a man who fears death alone. Even the shouts of the others were hushed in the face of his overwhelming peril, and it was pitiful to look upon his violent struggles as, inch by inch, the sand gripped him, and he saw himself going down to the oozing grave at his feet. And the irony of it was that none could give him help, not even the men of the ship's boat who had come to arrest him—for the place wherein he sank had not a foot of water over it, and the boat grounded upon its edge, leaving the seamen to watch his doom. Thus, with one long, piercing scream, he went down; and as the waters closed above his head, the spell of the grim scene was broken, and the men upon the beach, who had held nerveless, began to move again. The lancers returned toward the village, the Spanish woman whipped up her pony and began to descend from their place of watching.
"It was a strange meeting," said she, "that of your friend and myself; but life is full of these things. We must think of ourselves now. Let us haste, for dark is coming down."
The woman rode for some way in silence and with great caution in the precipitous descent. She did not seem to fear any immediate press of danger from the neighbourship of the troops, and when Messenger asked her, she answered curtly—
"We have the best of them by an hour, and that is enough. They have something to report now, and may sleep on it." After that she left it to her pony to feel his way down the hill-side, and did not even press him to the canter when they entered the woods again.
She had said that night was coming down upon them; but as yet there was only a shimmer of twilight seen through the canopy of branches, though the breeze sang with a melancholy note in the heights of the pines, and the grass rustled with the uneasiness it betrays often at sunset. Otherwise the woods were very still; no living soul seemed to tread them; the multitudinous birds were roosting, the herds of hogs were lying lazily upon the sward, even the streams trickled lazily, as bums wearying for rest. At any other time the scene would have glowed with an infinite charm for all who enjoyed it; but the two who now beheld it were harassed by so many thoughts, so many hopes, even by so many fears, that its beauties escaped them. They only rode on in mutual silence—glad of the solitude and of its meaning.
They must have now come within a mile and a half of the castle, and had reached an open clearing where they had some view of the wood-capped heights of their own bay. Here the woman drew rein for the first time on the homeward journey, and looked up expectantly to the highest of the peaks which towered above her home. A thin, cloud-like reek of smoke was rising up from it; and as they stood to observe it the cloud broke into bright flame, such as would exude from kindled logs. This beacon, rapidly becoming a bush of light, was quickly answered by the flare of a second fire on the nearer hill; and soon from peak to peak and valley to valley the signal flashed—woods lighting up as fairy scenes where the glow spread upon them; the granite rocks all ruddy as ore of ruby where they stood incarnadined; the chasms of quartz and marble and granite glowing with a sheen of a thousand lights in the play of the flames which shot up from crags and ridges, from the swards of the forests and the open faces of the woodland glades.
The desolate land had, indeed, become alive with the life of its beacons. Though no man was seen upon the hills, though the silence of nightfall yet lingered in the woods. Messenger felt that many watched near to him, that unseen hands were working to the safety of the woman, and thus to his own security. He scarce hazarded the question, "Of what moment is the signal?" as he rested upon the pony's back and watched the path of the fire. But she, when she had remained motionless for many minutes, of a sudden set spurs to her beast, and as he laboured after her she gave him the explanation.
"They have lit the fires—there is danger in the hills, then. Du courage, mon ami! It will be a clever fellow who shall lay hands upon me in my own house. But ride, ride!—ride as I ride!"
She set the good example with her words, and never man rode as she rode, sweeping through the labyrinthine path at a mad gallop, which was like to the gallop of a phantom. Messenger had a fine knowledge of horsemanship, but scarce could he keep with her as she dashed, by thicket and bramble and through the darkening groves, onward to the flickering lights which now marked the work of her own men in the park of the castle. Nor was her mad flight a mere freak of excitement, as the man at one time thought; for scarce were they come to the last thicket which lay between them and the open park when five mounted carabineers, whose dark-blue coats looked black in the failing light, forced their horses upon their path, and called loudly for them to stop. So sudden was their appearance that the woman had hardly drawn rein and pulled her pony upon its haunches when both she and Messenger were among the company, and their leader rode forward to lay his hands upon the Englishman. But at this the hag rose upon her stirrups like a fury, and, striking the man across the face with the butt-end of her whip, she felled him to the ground at the blow.
As the man fell his four companions stood back dumb before the fury of the crone. But she, cursing them fiercely in Spanish, drew two pistols from her holsters with amazing readiness. One she gave to Messenger, and, with the other in her bridle-hand, she cackled—
"Follow where I lead, and shoot when I shoot! I count upon you!"
The readiness of the woman was as remarkable in this vital moment as it had been all along. While she yet spake the words she wheeled her pony round and galloped back for twenty yards; but there she wheeled again, and set spurs to the brute so that it bounded forward with the agony; while the man imitated her, and, driving his horse forward headlong, he rode at the four. So irresistible was the charge that the carabineers instinctively held back in their saddles as the witch neared them—a horrid figure of a woman screeching with uncontrollable rage—but she, as she swung outward from her pommel, fired twice at their horses, and the brutes reared and plunged before her, and galloped madly into the woods. Of the others Messenger shot one in the forehead, whereon the man's horse raced away with him, dragging a corpse at the saddle; but the fourth, in no wise fear-stricken, let the pair pass him, and then loosed rein for the pursuit.
The vigour and courage of the charge had now carried the pursued into the open park, where the veldt was smooth as a green, and the ponies flew on with the mad gallop of fear. The carabineer at their heels had pulled a pistol from his holster, but had no skill in shooting from the saddle, and his bullets skimmed the ground, or whistled high in the air, or were buried in the turf immediately before him. Yet still he held on, and, shouting loudly with the intense heat of chase, he was presently answered in loud whoops from the woods by the sea, whence came a company of lancers at the gallop. They were the men from Vivero, and it was evident that they had seen the woman as she rode, and were set to the pursuit of her. But at the sight of them she laughed again with her wild harsh laugh, and her pony, as if in sympathy, bounded forward in the momentous race which was to save the lives of the pursued or to put them and the bullion at the mercy of the Spaniards.
The two, as I have said, were now upon the fine stretch of lawn-like land which ran up to the moat on that side of the castle where the keep was. Inspired by the near proximity of stables, and by knowledge of the environment, the ponies here gathered themselves together, as rabbits that press upon a warren, and snorted with the freshness of their pace and their own pleasure at it. Yet, with all their efforts, they would scarce have outpaced the troopers had not the shoremen come to their aid, and at the very moment when the aid was needed sorely. Scarce, indeed, were the riders come into the park than a great crying went up from the purlieus of the mansion; wild arrieros and hillmen came crowding upon the wooden bridge which stood across the moat for lack of drawbridge, and yelled lustily encouragement to the pursued and oaths upon the pursuers. Then, running some for their muskets and some for their pistols, they threw themselves flat upon the grass, and began to pick off the galloping cavalry with a skill which could be looked for only among nomads of the hills.
At this sight the Spanish woman cut her pony fiercely with the whip, and took new heart. She had been riding for some time crouched down upon her brute's neck, fearing the pistol bullets of the carabineers; but when her own men began to shoot, she sat upright again, and screeched approval with a reckless flow of curses and encouragements which must have been heard away upon the sea. And in her exulting joy she circled about Messenger, so speedy beyond his was her pony, and shared with him her anticipations.
"Once beyond the bridge, mon ami, there is safety— safety! Let them follow me then! I have a hundred men at the gates, and another hundred upon the hills. Let them come if they care nothing for their lives! Holy Virgin, what music!"
It was the music of musketry that she spoke of—the music of a rattling volley fired by the mercenaries upon the grass-land. And so well did they shoot that twenty of the horsemen reeled back in their saddles with the echo of the report, and twenty more at the least fell headlong upon the turf with dead or dying brutes beneath them. Then for the first time the troopers checked their pace, and, swerving right and left from the deadly attack, they reined in for consultation. But this was the woman's opportunity. As a second volley flashed upon the failing light she rode furiously across the gravel pathway which led to the bridge; and, Messenger being at her heels, they presently drew up among their men with a great clatter of stones and ponies reeking; and were welcomed with guttural shouts that rang through court and cloister as the cry of a victorious army.
In the first unrestrained reaction of success the pandemonium that arose in the inner quadrangle of the castle was beyond words. Muleteers, serving-men, shepherds, masters of coasters, hillmen, babbled and gesticulated with a vigour which defied all the woman's demand for silence. Of the vast throng not a half were armed with guns or pistols; but the swarthy majority flourished shillalahs or plain clubs, or the shining cuchillos, and seemed bent upon an immediate sortie to the destruction of the cavalry, or of anything or anybody that they might hap upon. And now they swarmed about Messenger and the woman, whose reeking ponies were half hid in a cloud of steam, and demanded orders, or suggested them, or reeled off oaths, or uttered shrill "olés" with all the awakened spirit of the rarely awakened Spaniard.
Such a scene might have been prolonged even to the morning had it not been for the near presence of the pursuing cavalry in the park. Even above the clamour of the horde, and while the woman was commanding silence in vain, there came the sharp sound of shooting, coupled with the duller reports of the old smooth-bore guns with which many of the Spaniards were armed. And again after that, while a semblance of a hush had fallen upon the company, there were those that came into the quadrangle, carrying dead or dying, and calling out that the troopers had begun to shoot, and were advancing rapidly to the very gardens of the mansion. Then only was the woman heard, and as she gave her orders her voice rang out with the penetration of a bugle-note.
"Call them in," she cried in Spanish, "call them in, and stand by the bridge! At the shot of the pistol let the chains go! Fernando, is all ready below?—then take your place here, and hold the gate as you would hold your lives!"
They had blown a horn almost with her order, and at that signal the mob without ran in quickly over the bridge, and came raging into the courtyard, some showing wounds, others telling of men shot and of escapes. But the lancers mounted again and came swiftly over the turf toward the suspended bridge, a young officer leading them with drawn sword.
"Now," said the woman, as she watched their advance with a grim smile upon her blackened features, "now—let them swim!" and with that she fired her revolver at the boy leader when his horse had actually set foot upon the boards, and as he fell forward she gave a fiendish cry, and, the chains being let go, horse and man fell crashing into the moat. A dozen troopers, unable to check their advance, rolled over upon them, so that presently horses and men surged together in the water, and the screams of anger and of pain rose up from the ditch. In the same moment the great gates of the castle clanged upon their hinges, and shouts of defiance again echoed in the courtyard.
The shutting of the gates closed the first scene of the strange contest. The soldiers in the park had no artillery with them, and it is to be doubted if they would have used them had there been a dozen batteries. They had come across from Vivero looking for nothing but the capture of certain Englishmen said to be upon the coast; and the woman was misinformed in the particulars of their wish to arrest her. They had no such wish or instruction, but had been drawn suddenly into this serious brawl whereby they had lost forty of their men; and now there was no one armed with a sufficient measure of authority to know what steps to take; and they remained aimlessly riding before the gates, and waiting for those who should come up from Ferrol. That help, and a force large enough to make poor work of the Countess Ivena's resistance, was within a mile of them, they knew; and although they had a certain hope from the presence of a Spanish gunboat which now fired a signal gun in the bay, they had, perforce, to remain idle while the mob within the gates mocked them, and even fired shots from the bastions.
NOW—LET THEM SWIM!" (p. 281)
To this delay, and the wide dispersement of the troops in the valleys about the great house, the Spanish woman and Messenger owed their immediate safety. As the mob of pseudo-serfs swarmed in the great quadrangle the woman called her right-hand, Fernando, to her, and, entering the hall of fountains by a wicket from the cloisters of the quadrangle, she stopped a moment to drink a prodigious draught of water, while the Englishman dipped his face in the marble basin, and tried to concentrate his mind upon the danger which stood all about him—in the hills, in the valleys, in the company, even upon the sea. Kenner had come, truly—but to what an end! The woman had promised him safety; but what were her words worth? He lived; but how soon would the law put a hand upon him? Only the one thought—the money, writ large as in golden letters—maintained him in that feverish excitement and unrest upon which he lived then, and which tightened his nerves so that they twitched as the nerves of an epileptic.
From such reckonings with gloom and possibility the voice of the woman recalled him.
"This is no hour to loiter," said she, "and they wait for us. Everything goes as I hoped. We shall be miles in the hills before sunset, and by to-morrow night these troops will return to report my house empty. Did I not tell you that I would never be taken here? Sapristi! they have an equal task before them in the mountains! Come, mon ami, we will sup yet in the woods above Mondonedo!"
"They have brought the kegs from the creek, then?" he asked, as he brushed his wet hair from his forehead.
"Every one of them," she replied, "and they are now loading the mules. Oh, it's glorious! and I do not grudge you your triumph, mon cher! I did not believe, could not—you understand?"
"Perfectly; I doubt if I believe it myself, even now. But I am ready."
As she talked she had poured out two glasses of strong liquor, and, putting a cigar-box before him, she offered him a light, while she rolled herself a cigarette with incredible rapidity. Then she strode from the apartment, and he followed her through the gate by which he had first reached her house. In the smaller outer courtyard two men, who carried lanterns, waited at the iron door of the inclined passage which led to the tunnel in the creek; and, immediately entering by the narrow archway, they shut out the sound of voices as they locked the wicket, and quickly descended to the cavernous depths below.
Once in the tunnel a vast silence reigned. Two sentinels—rough Spaniards, whose hair flowed over their shoulders, and whose curious apron-like dresses were covered with many beads of coral and of silver—stood at the seaward entrance, armed with rifles. The flicker of a few torches cast an amber light upon rough, bearded seamen, who lay with their guns in postures of defence upon the edge of the narrow quay. It was along this quay that the woman, lighted by a single torch-bearer, now went with a ready step; and, coming out of the cavern at length upon the landward side, showed the inner and final lagoon, which stood as a tiny natural harbour in the very depths of her own grounds.
Here, as Messenger soon observed, was the haven of her seclusion. High walls of rock edged about the lagoon on every side; trees grew thickly upon the cliffs of it; there were innumerable small warehouses of stone built at varying heights above it; and on the southern side a steep path, cut through the rock ages gone by some falling rivulet, was now hewn out into a hill road, upon which a drove of mules, whose bells lacked their clappers, had been tethered.
In this place the woman hid what plunder the wolves brought her from the sea; and here, now, the two black boats were moored, while a dozen sturdy arrieros, armed to the teeth, dragged the kegs from them and bound them to the backs of the mules. And here Fisher and the negro worked by torch-light like navvies, transmitting their energy to the others, who hauled and pulled, and muttered oaths almost with every action.
At the coming of the party, which was quickly put across the pool in a punt waiting for it, Fisher sprang up and greeted Messenger warmly.
"I'm glad you've come," said he; "it's been a dreadful time! There's a boat from the Spanish ship cruising in the bay, and we expect her every minute. We shan't have all the stuff loaded for another half-hour yet!"
"Is it all there?" asked the Prince, who jerked out his words with significant emphasis.
"Every ounce of it; and we had luck with us. The Spanish ship anchored ten minutes after we had come into the cove. What I want to know now is: How are you going to get the two large cases on a mule's back? You might as well ask him to trot off with a Cathedral!"
"We'll see to that; get the rest loaded. I must speak to her about it. Hal, it's a crushing business!"
"Old man, that's true! I seem to be living with my head on fire. Heaven knows where we'll all be to-morrow!"
"Out of this, anyway; but I see that she's bringing barrels up. She's quick, isn't she? She must have seen the big cases as we crossed. I never knew a woman with such a head!"
"Nor I!" said Fisher, who had an eye for the beautiful.
The woman, as they saw, had anticipated their difficulty. At her direction the great cases of sovereigns were broken open, and as the Spaniards stood a moment dazzled by the brightness of the gold under the torches' light, she, too, raised her hands dramatically, and then, with a stamp of her foot, recalled them to their work. They obeyed her like children obey a strong man; but the sovereigns were still being heaped into the smaller barrels when there was a low whistle from the tunnel, and all the workers springing upright, doused their torches in the water as by a common impulse.
"What is it?" asked Messenger, as he, with the others, lay flat upon the quay and listened. He was answered by a rippling of the water in the pool, and a distant sound of oars. He waited, breathing with an effort, and the sound became more distinct—the boat was coming up the creek to the tunnel, and the Spaniards were whispering among themselves. Then the woman, putting her hand upon his as he drew a pistol, spoke.
"Hold that back, if you don't want a hundred men in here," said she; "it's a government boat from the bay, and they are making their last voyage."
The boat was now very near to the tunnel's mouth, yet so perfect was the silence of the Spaniards, all of whom had withdrawn into the inner lagoon, that the creek might have been the home of desolation rather than of men. Not a sound, scarce a breath, was heard; but the sailors in the boat began to discuss the situation, and presently lit a blue flare in the tunnel, though even then the bend of it prevented them seeing the garrison, which was now waiting with high-strung eagerness. Yet by what means his friends were going to cope with the danger, or to obliterate it, Messenger could not tell. Not a man of the defending party had a gun raised; not one drew a knife; they only lay crouching upon the rock, with expectant grins upon their swarthy faces, and their heads down almost to a level with the water.
Was the boat coming on or going back? The question was vital to them, the pause exasperating. Their nerves were now so knit-up that they moved restlessly in spite of themselves, and the deep gasps of men trying to hush their breathing was distinctly to be heard. They knew well that if they permitted escape to the attackers they might as well give themselves over to the soldiers at once. And they could hear the bated discussions, the low talk, the arguments of those who unwittingly stood so near to death: and still the boat did not advance, while the flare died down, and darkness reigned again. Then, suddenly, the whole of the watchers gave a simultaneous movement of unrest, and crouched as beasts that await their prey. The boat was rippling onward; was being punted, in the light of a lantern, through the tunnel; and, as the water from its prow lapped the stonework the Spaniards prepared quickly for action.
It was at this moment that the woman's design first became apparent to Messenger. He saw, as some of the Spaniards crawled swiftly into the cavern, what he had not seen before. A great portcullis of iron covered the shoreward end of the tunnel, which here had comparatively a small arch, and this portcullis was now to do the work which neither knife nor pistol could do. It was at the best a rough contrivance, drawn up with chains which turned about iron drums; but the spikes at the lower end of it were heavy as pike-heads, and the weight of it was to be measured in tons. Toward such a trap the long-boat now came slowly, and the party watched as they would have watched a snake waiting to spring upon a rabbit.
At the very head of the tunnel, less than a half of the boat being in the lagoon, the rowers ceased to work, and stood under the death-trap while they lighted another flare. As the brilliant blue light flashed up, and the whole of the Spaniards instantly became visible, the sixteen seamen in the craft uttered a loud shout of triumph, and sprang to their oars again; but it was their last action. In that instant the Spanish woman, with hands clenched and streaming hair, cried out in a shrill treble voice which rang through the cave, and the great portcullis, being let go at the drums, fell, with a grating of iron and a horrid crash, upon the boat and its crew, and the shout of triumph became a shout of agony.
The fall of the iron gate split the long-boat as a hammer will split a nut. One of the lance-like bars actually drove through the body of a burly seaman sitting amidships, and, cleaving his skull, ultimately pinned him upon the bottom of the pool as a moth is pinned upon a board. The craft herself was shivered and crashed down upon the hard rocks, and, being cut almost in half, the two ends of her rose up all splintered, and were chased furiously by the seamen, now at their last extremity. Of these four were held down under the sluice of the tunnel, but two rose on the seaward side of the portcullis, and ten in the pool, and all of them, swimming or clutching wreckage, or seeking to come to the quay, cried out for mercy most pitifully.
As well might they have clamoured for the fall of the sky. Urged on by the Spanish woman, who shouted incessantly: "Cut them down! cut them down!" the defenders began to use their clubs and knives with savage jubilation. Where a face showed above the water they struck at it; they beat and cut the hands of the driven men who held to the quay; they dived boldly into the water and stabbed those who had harbourage at the fragments of the broken boat. In ten minutes there was not a cry, not a sound, where there had been uproar. Only a breathless throng of savage men, whose clothes were in many cases dripping upon their backs, whose hands were weary with the pursuit of the butchery.
Thus was the peril from the sea turned, and at the end of another hour, it being then near to eleven o'clock, the whole of the money had been bound to the backs of the mules, and the party moved from up the steep road from the creek, and soon gained the wooded heights at the back of the castle.
The night was clear, with a fine flood of moonlight, and after the first ascent to the heights the path became narrow, running through a great ravine of the mountains, which so sheltered it that its security from all but the hillmen was unquestionable. It was, in truth, a path which nature might have cut for the peculiar protection of those in the great house below it; and while Messenger wondered at first that the soldiers knew nothing of it, he had no surprise when ultimately he had traced it to its end.
The cavalcade which now mounted this hidden way was by no means an unpicturesque one. At the head of it there walked six men with guns upon their shoulders, men dressed in the finery of velvet and silver-broidered habiliments. Behind them came sixteen mules, lacking the customary bells, but bedecked with fine ribbons and rosettes, as are all the mules of Spain. The arrieros, or muleteers, sat in many cases upon the top of the kegs and packages which the mules bore; but others of them walked, cracking their whips at the difficult places, and muttering the "Macho, macho, macho-o," which is the national encouragement to horse or ass. In the rear of the mules the Spanish woman. Messenger, and Fisher rode upon ponies; while six more personal attendants, armed with rifles, followed them. The nigger, Joe, whipped in the whole, sitting upon a sturdy "burro," like a sable Sancho upon a Spanish ass.
For a mile, or even more, the curious procession marched in silence, but when it had gained the first woods, which stood between two of the nearer mountains, the woman reined in her pony, and surveyed the scene spread out below her. Straight down, as it were, at her feet she could look in the courtyard of her home, where there were now many lanterns, and soldiers tethering horses, and the flash of polished helmets. Out upon the sea the masthead lights of the two warships burned brightly; in the park the flare of fires showed the new camps of the shoremen. But the whole spectacle excited the woman to merriment rather than to concern.
"Let them do their worst!" said she mockingly. "I will return before the year has run, and reckon with them."
"If they don't reckon with you first," said Messenger.
"Pshaw!" she cried, "it will be the affair of the month. I have friends at Madrid who will think of me—and ministries, mon ami, ministries fall! Let us get on while the light holds, for day must find us many miles from here."
"I hope it will," said the man; "the stake is big, and is worth the danger."
"Danger! You talk always of danger. There is no more danger now—I tell you so, and I am no optimist. Let us go."
She gave rein to her pony, and he turned with her; but as she spoke there came from the heights above them a weird, wild cry, which echoed in all the hills, and died away with a long-drawn sob, most pitiful to hear.
So mournful was it, so long did its vibration ring in the heights, that the whole of the riders stopped abruptly, waiting to hear its repetition; but although they halted for many minutes, the cry was not raised again, nor was there any sound save of the restless sway of the pines and the tremble of the grasses. To the Spaniards the very silence was ominous, the portent of ghostly visitation or of mountain spirit. They knew that they had little to fear from any human enemy in the almost inaccessible pass; but their faith was chiefly in omens, and they began to beat their breasts, or to recite their rosaries, while one or two fell upon their knees and did not hide their panic. Even the woman herself was for a moment bewildered, and could find no words, only looking at Messenger enquiringly.
"What, in Heaven's name, was that?" she asked him presently. "Was it the cry of a beast? It ran down my spine like cold water!"
"I should say that it was the shout of some hillman gone out of his wits at the sight of the fires," said he; but he only told her half the truth, for he was sure that he had heard the cry before, although he could not now recall the precise circumstances.
"I've lived here half my life," said she, "and never heard its like. It was no human cry, or the men would make light of it. Look at them now!"
The spectacle was unmistakably odd, for the cut-throats, who had devoted the previous hour to the gratification of their savage lust for murder, now prayed with the feverish piety of the fanatic; and the simpler muleteers stood grovelling with their fears.
"When they have quite finished their exercise," said Messenger, as he watched them contemptuously, for he had begun to recover himself, "they might as well get on, unless they wish for the company of the men below. At this rate morning will trap us in the woods here!"
"You are quite right," said she. "But I must admit that it was strange. I have never heard any thing so wild."
The woman's superstition had undoubtedly done for her what human danger could not have done. For the first time since the Englishman had known her she had lost her readiness; and when, at last, she began to shout at her servants, it was with but a half of her earlier vigour. Nor did she after this give any immediate sign that she had forgotten the episode, for she rode a long way in silence; while the others, equally dumb, followed her thoughtfully. To Messenger the cry had been the echoing of some voice of the unremembered past; to Fisher it was a cry which seemed to utter a warning that the end of the hazardous venture was near, though for this he had no reason save the shallow faith which every man in his own way gives to omen.
The strange company had now reached the summit of the pass, and traversed a dark road through an exceedingly close wood, on either side of which bold, treeless rocks, with insurmountable precipices, made a natural fortress. The one danger of pursuit lay, so far as Messenger could see, in the possibility of the troopers bursting the portcullis of the lagoon; and as he went on, and the pace of the mules seemed every minute to be more exasperating, he found himself listening for the tramp of infantry or the whinnying of horses.
"You seem to make the poorest way," said he. "What if they come up here from the house? we are no better then than rats in a trap!"
"If they come up!" she cried, with her grim laugh. "If they cut through six-inch iron bars and two doors of steel in twenty minutes—let them!"
"But they will certainly find the road before daylight—and then?"
"Mon ami, let me answer you in the old proverb: 'He who despises a woman's counsel is a fool!' Do you judge of me so poorly as to believe that I have not thought of that?"
"I merely point out what occurs to me; but I will take your word for it. I must say the same of the road ahead of us. Suppose that is closed by troops"
She laughed again unrestrainedly.
"Wait until you have passed it," said she, "and you shall tell me then what sort of a road for troops you find it; but we are near the bridge, and I am going to show you why no one shall follow me here."
As she spoke they had emerged from the wood, and stood upon the edge of an immense ravine, which seemed utterly to block egress from the amphitheatre. Long grass and weeds grew upon the bank of the precipice, down which the man of weakened nerve might scarce trust himself to look. The pines were thick even to the border of the chasm. But the muleteers, turning their beasts dexterously upon the brink of the abyss, marched for more than a quarter of a mile at the very side of it, and then came suddenly upon a small drawbridge of iron suspended upon chains from the far side.
Across this bridge the cavalcade went quickly at the woman's orders; but the last of the serving-men, when they had made the transit, worked briskly at a rude windlass, and drew the structure up perpendicular against their own side of the ravine. The whole danger of the pursuit was thus cut off, so far as the rear of the little expedition went; and from that time the spirits of the Spaniards rose, and they began even to hum their ballads and to smoke the indispensable cigarrito. The way had become an ideal one. Luxurious grass was beneath their feet; the strong scent of rich flowers and of hay came up to them upon the refreshing breeze; the hills around shone like domes and spires of marble in the glorious moonlight. Above all, they had put their first barrier between themselves and their enemies; and the road to freedom seemed open.
"Well," said Messenger, as he urged his pony to the trot, and rode on with the woman, who now put herself at the head of the company, "I admit that I was wrong. The place seems honeycombed with paths. If all the road is like this, we should reach Finisterre. I wish I could be as sanguine as you are."
"Hope, my friend," said she in answer, "is the keynote of enterprise. I told you that our real dangers will begin when we leave the mountains; but I think they are to be met. Directly we are in the open we shall break up, and make for my châlet in twos and threes. If any are taken, well, that will be a misfortune; but it must be faced."
"How far will the troops follow us?"
"They—they will return to their quarters at the first opportunity. A Spanish carabineer does not follow any one. He is the guardian of law and order—when it come in his way; otherwise be assumes that all is well with the world. Of course this is a more serious case, for men have been killed. But we forget an émeute very quickly in Spain, especially if we have friends; and I have many."
"And once at Finisterre?"
"We shall get a ship and sail for the Adriatic, and after that for the East, if you will listen to me. All you Englishmen run for shelter to America. It is your mistake. I have a haven near Scutari where no government could find me. We will share it until this is forgotten; then, perhaps, we will return here."
He shrugged his shoulders, for the prospect was not to his liking. But this he did not tell her, since they were now beginning to skirt a low hill, upon which one of the beacon-fires still burned.
The deep red light cast a lurid glow upon the pine forests beneath. When the men turned at length and entered a wooded ravine which led from the amphitheatre between the heights to the outer country, the flicker of it was strong, lighting even the tangled depths of the forest path. By the light of such a rude lantern they emerged from the valley, to come upon a narrow ledge running around the outer side of the hill, and, this being no more than three feet wide, with woods upon the left hand and a deep precipice upon the right, the march was slow, and not a little hazardous.
Below this ledge of rock a long and fertile valley, dotted with hamlets and pastures, spread for many miles. Even by the moon's light the land had a fair aspect; the breeze upon the heights was exhilarating as strong wine. The Spaniards, trusting in the sure steps of the mules, did not even come down from their saddles; the woman set a brisk pace, now gossiping to Messenger behind her with the flippancy of a girl of twenty. Nor did a remote possibility of peril appear to threaten them when the first signal of their ultimate hazard rose up on the night air.
It was the repetition of the wild, weird cry they had heard in the first of the woods.
Suddenly, with the piercing wail and long-drawn sob, the cry rose in the forest above the goat track. Once, twice, thrice they heard it, with stiffening of limbs and hearts palpitating. Then it was echoed back from the depths below them in the cry of a strong man hailing a friend.
"Halloa!" said the invisible voice, "halloa-oa-oa! Billy, where are you? Show yourself, Billy!"
If one risen from the dead had confronted Messenger, he could not have been struck with a greater fear than the horrible, overwhelming panic which now came upon him; for the second voice he recognized as the voice of Mike Brennan, the drunken mate of the tug Admiral whom he had last seen drawn down to the waters of the North Sea. As the cry of one coming from the deep of death to claim justice upon the living were the words to him; and to the Spanish woman and her men they were as an inexplicable omen, which struck them with terror to their very marrows.
"Oh, Holy Mother! what is it? what does it mean? where does it come from?" she cried; and as in answer to her the wail rose again with a long-drawn sob of "Ayo, ayo, ayo!" and then a horrid shriek of laughter, which was like a knife in the ear of those that heard it. Plaintive moaning and piercing cries followed upon the laughter, and were answered again by the shout of the burly voice below; but the unmistakably human note of this did nothing to reassure the Spaniards upon the ledge. Terror beyond control now seized upon them. Some shouted out as if in agony; others tried to turn their mules upon the path, and were with difficulty restrained; some fell into pious ejaculations; others, again, to deep and guttural curses. And while they stood, struck with apprehension of the unseen, lights began to move in the valley below, soldiers came from the houses, the orders to fall in were heard in pure Spanish, horses were saddled quickly, and troops were soon perceived gathering in the single street of the solitary hamlet. The company, by a supreme ill-chance, had chosen for the passage of the ledge the very hour when a troop of mounted carabineers and a large body of infantry had bivouacked in the plain below it!
The appearance of the soldiers quelled somewhat the panic of the fugitives. It was clear that, after all that the enemy was man, and no ghostly apparition. No sooner were the troops visible beyond possibility of doubt than the woman shook her fears from her as leaves from a tree, and began to command again.
"Cowards!" she cried, with a curious forgetfulness of her own state five minutes gone, "cowards! will you let them shoot you as you ride? Where is your courage? Do you fear a handful of carabineers, who are as dirt beneath your feet? I have shame for you."
But to Messenger she said—
"This is the moment. The second bridge is three hundred yards from here. Once past that the danger is no more. But we must run the gauntlet, and some will fall. How light it is; a curse upon it! I never saw such a night."
"You didn't look to find men here—at least you never mentioned it to me," said he, biting his lip in his perplexity.
"I did not look for the unexpected," she said in answer. "These men are returning, and not going; they have tired of the business yonder, and are getting home again. I could not foresee that. Their laziness has trapped us, and now they will shoot."
"If the light would only fail," said he next, "it would be as easy as walking along a road. I can't make it out; we seem to be focussed in the very centre of it. And what a light!"
She could not answer him, for as she turned about her startled exclamation was joined to his.
"Great God!" said he, "the wood is on fire!"
A deep lurid light glowed upon him as he spoke; it cast a crimson flush upon the darker shadows of the wood; it lit up the face of the precipice with an unsurpassable brilliancy. The fire kindled as a beacon on the hill-top had set flame to the surrounding thickets; and now from grass to grass, and bush to bush, and tree to tree the devastation leaped with insatiable tongue. Even at the cramped station of the goat track the company could follow its path—the path of radiant light and rolling smoke and horrid roaring. It was as if some huge volcano had begun to vomit flames of wood, to wrap in its far-reaching light the stately pines, the coniferæ, the spreading chestnut, the climbing creepers. Now hissing, now crackling, now marking its way with the bursting asunder of rock and root, the fire crept on, bridging chasms, enveloping thickets, running swiftly to the summits of the loftiest trunks, sending the birds screaming and circling above it, driving the swine headlong into chasms and ravines, painting the sky with a quivering scarlet beneath which the mighty clouds of smoke lay as hills and mountains raised magically in the ether.
Soon the hither valley was incarnadined; the troop of horsemen stood clear to be viewed as in the sun's light; the river shone as with red of blood; the flocks rushed wildly from pasture to pasture in unrestrained terror; the bells of the churches began to ring; the sleeping hamlets awoke. But those upon the ledge, for the most part dumb with their terror, could only rush on headlong toward the distant bridge, which would carry them from the amphitheatre of the hills; and as they went the fire crept slowly down to them, flakes of burning matter fell upon their mules, red-hot branches struck their faces; they were in danger of immediate suffocation from the vapour and the smoke which began to roll around them.
To the soldiers in the valley the spectacle was one for profound amazement. They had been sent to hunt down the Spanish woman and the English fugitives, but here was nature doing the work. And they stood dumb with astonishment, while the mules cried upon the path above, and the woman roared for the mule-men to push on, and the fire came down and yet down, so that at last it burned upon the very edge of the goat-track, and men and mules and ponies began to fall headlong to the rocks below. And thus it stood that of the sixteen mules, seven had rolled into the valley, and there were but eight men left of the whole company when the small plateau which led to the ledge across the second chasm came in sight.
At this plateau a great ravine opened irregularly, having a breadth of thirty yards where the bridge was, but almost closing upon its summit, so that the fire raging above dropped burning flakes upon the woodwork of the bridge, and threatened every moment to consume it; while boughs and chunks of flaming wood and red-hot stones and dying beasts were heaped pell-mell upon the open plane of rock which gave access to the passage.
To this semblance of shelter came at last the woman and Messenger and Fisher; but the nigger had gone over, and the number of mules was five, with but six men of the whole Spanish company. These now fell gasping upon the secure shelter of the plateau, and cried for the death which they felt must so surely come to them. But Messenger, almost falling from his pony, began to moan pitifully, and held to Fisher with a nervous grip which was eloquent of his fate. Fire had struck him in the face, and he was then quite blind.
"Hal!" he cried, as he clutched the strong hand held out to him, "I have lost my eyes! Hal, I'm blind, man, blind! my brain's burning! Let me have your hands! Oh, what darkness! my eyes are gone!"
"It can't be as bad as that, old man!" cried Fisher, who held the extended hands with a firm grip; "Cling to me now, for we must cross the bridge. It won't last another ten minutes. Did you ever hear such a pandemonium as that old hag is making?"
"Where is she?" asked the other, holding to the lad with terrible desperation; "where are they all? Is the money safe? Don't you see that I'm in darkness? My brain's burning; I can't bear it; there's fire in my eyes now! Great Heaven, what pain!"
"The woman is now flogging the mule-men with her whip—at least the five that are left," said Fisher. "They won't face the fire, and she's making them. Can't you hear her voice? But this is no place to stop, money or no money; the rocks are heating, and the bridge is beginning to burn."
"I'll stand by the woman, any way!" said Messenger, suddenly drawing back; "we will sink or swim together. She's stood by me; and there's five hundred thousand pounds in it! Do you hear? I say the money's there; take me to it. I'll see it through! Where's Burke? And old Kenner? Halloa, there, Kenner! Why don't you hail, man? You always were a tenderfoot, Kenner; you think on liquor. Ha! ha! drown your old carcase in it! Take me to the woman, lad; do you hear?"
Fisher, regardless of his delirium, quickly led him across the bridge, telling him that the way to the money lay there. It was a short passage, but the soldiers in the valley fired a volley vainly at them as they went; and the woodwork burned in places so fiercely that the soles of their feet were scorched. When they had come to the other side, the man dropped exhausted upon a grass bank; but the other stood up to watch the Spanish hag, who had compelled the muleteers now to venture upon the transit. She herself waited until the six men and the five beasts were treading the structure before she rode boldly upon it, and, still commanding harshly, drove the terrified men forward toward the dangerous place where the fire burned most fiercely, and the wood was crackling briskly, as wood long dry and ready for the flame.
Had the bridge strength left for their passage? The question must have been put by a hundred men who watched the passage from the valley below, for this was the supreme moment of the fire, when the hills stood up with amazing clearness in the flood of light, and the valley of the rocks was red with a dazzling radiance as of the glow of jewels. The whole path of the burning in the wood now showed in a crimson field of ash of trees and grasses that shone red with the consuming heat. A few coverts—and these containing many great trees—yet burned about the chasm as torches, exceeding brilliant and fierce in their fires. The bridge itself was alight with flame; and men, both upon it and below it, heard themselves breathing in the moment of the peril.
It is just possible, had the Spaniards and the woman dared the passage on foot, that they had come to safety. The timidity of horse or mule in the face of fire is a fact as old as man; and it was the terror of the mules that ultimately brought the end of the venture. Although the arrieros had blindfolded the quaking brutes with strips torn from the shirts upon their backs, they were driven to the dangerous place only with a measure of extreme cruelty; and so soon as the tongue of the flame was blown near to the first of them the beast reared straight up, and fell back upon the one that followed him. A moment after, the pair of them, with their packs and riders, went bounding down to the crags of rock below, turning twice in the air as they went. Of the three behind two endeavoured to wheel about upon the narrow planking, but broke away the balustrade, and fell quickly; while the last stood immovable, nor would whip nor words move him. Thus it came that the road was barred to the Spanish woman, who sat raving upon her pony, the light showing on her as upon some beldame screeching; and while she stood, the fire got firmer hold upon the bridge; and at last it broke, with a fountain of sparks and a rush of flame and a great crash of blinding light; and beams and men and beast went down to the darkness of the valley.
And this was the end of it, and of the man's hope; for as the bridge fell it took the woman with it in a sea of flame, and her cry of death rang out horridly in the hills; but the cry was answered again by one far up in the heights who wailed, as they had first heard him, a weird, sobbing cry as of a doomed soul.
It was early on the morning of the second day after the passage of the bridge when Fisher and Messenger began in any way to think of their future, or, for the matter of that, of escape from the place in which they found themselves. The crossing of the ravine had brought them to a great valley, which, for all the life in it, was a valley of silence, of dark woods and pools, and even of tiny cataracts where a river plunged from the higher mountains in its path to the sea. But impassable precipices shut them in on all sides; and while this made for their protection from pursuit, the way of escape from the place of solitude was altogether hid from them.
To the lad the danger of the situation was plain from the beginning; but though many hours had passed, the man was still in darkness. Blindness, utter and hopeless, had come upon him, and he knew that never again would the veil be taken from his eyes. He could only lie upon the grass of a little wood to which the other had led him, and there shiver with his pain, scarce daring to ask, What has happened? where are the others? what is our situation? But Fisher tended him all through with hands as gentle as those of a loving woman. He bound his eyes with wet rags; he brought him abundantly of the luscious fruit that lay ripening everywhere around them; and he told him, in the best spirit of the consoler, that all would be well sooner or later.
This was well enough for the moment, but soon it was evident that, if the man did not arouse himself before many hours passed, the two of them would die where they lay of sheer starvation. The nuts and the roots and the fruits were the poorest sustenance to men bruised in mind and in body; the shock of the terrible night compelled nature to call for strong remedies; and though brandy was found in the bottle in Messenger's pocket, it was all insufficient for the more serious need. Thus it came that, after the man had slept for a few hours on the second night, Fisher spoke to him earnestly at dawn, and besought him to take heart for the journey.
"Look here," he said: "I'd sooner see you in the hands of the Spanish soldiers than lying in this state. At least they'd relieve your pain, and I can do nothing—nothing at all!"
"What you could do you've done," said Messenger. "I should have died if it had not been for you. There's weight in my eyes enough to kill a man. I shall never see again!"
"Who can say that?" exclaimed Fisher earnestly. "Once we're back in civilization who knows what cannot be done for you? But, old man, we'll starve here."
"If it wasn't for you," said he earnestly, "I'd cut my throat. What have I got to look to—years in a country I don't know, and me blind. Could anything be worse than that?"
"You say that now; but when the danger's past, you'll think otherwise. You've always your head. Prince, and I can be your eyes."
"Ah!" said he, a sudden flush of a blind man's hope coming to him, "you'll be a friend to me now—now that I want it, Hal. And look: you're making me think again. If we could get on the road, I've money in my pocket! I filled up with sovereigns and ingots when the cases burst. I must hold at least a thousand pounds' worth of the stuff!"
He pulled out from the rags about his breast a yellow bar of gold, and from the pockets of his trousers there came a handful of sovereigns, and then another, which he spread upon the turf and counted thrice.
"How much does it come to?" he asked, beginning to count again, and feeling about for the gold with a wild touch. "Is it a hundred in all? I've been weighed down with it like a sack, but I brought it through. Hal, man, you won't cheat me now?"
"Cheat you!" cried Fisher, starting back. "Cheat you—God forbid!"
"Ah, I knew you wouldn't, but my head's going with my eyes. You don't know what sight is to a man; but I'm learning. Give me the stuff again."
He gathered it all up to him again, thrusting the ingot into his breast, while he counted the sovereigns with a wolf-like eagerness and mechanically tore the bandage from his eyes, revealing a forehead from which the flesh had gone; but his scorched and withered pupils stared into vacancy and gave him no light. Then he gnashed his teeth, and dug his hands into the grass, and foam came upon his lips.
"I will see, by Heaven!" he cried. "I'll have light—light, I tell you! Man, it's all dark—dark as death!"
His frenzy was the frenzy of the moment; but the paroxysm had robbed him of the money, which now rolled all around him, and he sat hugging his knees and chattering, while Fisher bound up his head again with the rag damped in the river. Then the lad picked up the sovereigns from the grass and pressed them gently upon him.
"Here is your money," said he. "Had you not better put it back in your clothes?"
But the man had sobered down again.
"No," said he; "it's nothing to me now. You hold to it. I was mad just now, and said things which you'll forget. Tell me: how did the woman go down?"
"She went down when the bridge burned through. She was at the far end of it, and could not move either way. Didn't you hear her cry out?"
"Yes, I must have. What a voice she had! Ha, ha! we should have made a pretty pair! So the hag knocked her brains out on the stones! Well, they were very good brains. I never met her like all the world through; she had the wits of ten men. What do you think she told me? That this place of hers was worth three thousand a year from the wrecks that came ashore alone. It seems that she and her people have lived here for years; it's a family place, and there never was one of them that didn't wreck. She was the last of her line. Her husband, a Mexican, was shot in his own country a few years ago. But she must have lived a life! There's not a man within five miles that wasn't in league with her; and they brought the stuff from the ships into that lagoon of hers until they could sell it inland. That light we saw in the bay was a false light she put out to lure boats. Think of that in this day! Ah! it's enough to make you tingle, isn't it? And it was all her work!"
"I wonder they didn'tfall foul of us us when we came ashore?" asked Fisher, encouraging him to talk.
"So they would have done if we'd come in the daylight. The night saved us—and the rock. It wanted quick eyes to pick out the poop in the cradle if you didn't look for it; and, as you saw yourself, ships gave the reef a wide berth. That's nothing against the hag, for once she heard of Englishmen being ashore, and her men got a glass on me, she put two and two together and made it four. If it hadn't been for the voice, we'd be half-way on the road to Finisterre, sure and safe! There was a curse in that cry. I said it when first I heard it."
"It was Billy, the mad boy, who uttered it," said Fisher thoughtfully. "He must have come off safe from the ship, and we never knew it."
"That's true," said the other. "We'd never have found the nigger and the long-boat but for the firing. Well, it's all ended now, and we're adrift again. There was a curse upon it from the start."
"There must have been," was Fisher's answer.
"And now my eyes are burned out, and you're going to say I brought it on me!" said the man savagely. "You're ready with your tongue when there's that talk. If ever I come to decent land again, I'll put a white tie on you and send you out to croak! You'd make a fortune out of the old women; you're just the build. But give me men, I say, and curse all twaddle!"
Fisher let him talk, for this was his mood. Presently he came to quiet again, and said—
"Where are we now? What's the place like?"
"It seems to me to be a forest between the hills," said Fisher. "There's a wood to your left and a great stretch of grassland in front of us. But, for all the way I see out, we might be in a basin."
"There must be a road," said the man impatiently, "or the woman wouldn't have come here. What's that singing noise I hear?—it's falling water, isn't it?"
"I went that way last night," said Fisher; "there is a river, but it rushes down like a cataract."
"Then follow it," said the Prince, "follow it through. The road should lie where it breaches the hills. That's sense, isn't it? I'm strong enough now; and dark here or dark there, what's the odds?"
"I think you're right," exclaimed Fisher, who had become timid before the other's brusqueness; "but, Prince, you're very bitter with me."
"Bitter!" said the man, who had stood up at his words; "bitter with you? No, not that; you stand between me and death. Let me hold your hands—let me hold them tight. I've no eyes, and the darkness presses down upon me; you'll be my eyes now. Heaven knows, you're the only one in my life that I ever cared to see twice—man, I just loved you."
"Then we'll face it together," said the other, "if you'll have me for a friend, Prince."
The Prince laughed at the suggestion.
"Hal," said he, "it looks as if I had no choice—I must just put up with you. Let me lean upon your arm. I feel as if I were going downhill; the ground sinks away from me wherever I put my feet. I'll be better when I've walked a spell. What's the road like in front?"
"There's a dingle full of long grass and a mass of flowers. The place is as wild as a jungle, and almost dark with shadow of the trees."
"Are you sure there's no one in sight?"
"Not a living soul."
"Well, I'm keen of hearing, and I think you're right; but there'll be work to do when we get out into the open. You won't forget that they'll watch the road like a trap; and I don't see what's to prevent us being taken."
"We shall die here, any way," said Fisher; "we may as well face it, if it's only on the odd chance."
They had come into the depths of the thicket, and their boots were dyed with the gold of the flowers upon which they trod. Long marsh grass, from which sprang orchids and ox-eyes and ivies abundantly, led them down a silent avenue, where birds of rich plumage rose up, startled at their coming, and a myriad flies buzzed ceaselessly about them. Then they struck the river where it narrowed until it became a stream not fifteen yards wide, scouring between rugged banks of white earth toward the lower end of the silent valley.
At a break in the banks of this swiftly flowing stream they lay down to quench their thirst, and when the man's eyes had been again bound up in the wetted rag, he threw himself upon the ground as he was wont to do in the old time, and listened with ear intent for the sound of men moving or of voices. When he had satisfied himself that no such sounds were to be heard, he rose up more cheerfully, and prepared to continue the journey.
"It's clear," he said, as the pair of them tramped along briskly in spite of their fatigue, "that the woman used this river as her road out of the hills; and we must use it, too. How, I can't tell you now, but the way will show presently."
Fisher thought so, too, but he only said "Yes," for anxiety was pressing upon him, and weariness and hunger. He thought often that he could not drag his weary limbs another step, and he walked mechanically for nearly an hour, while the stream alternately ran between high banks of rock or spread itself abroad in the valley, broadening until it swept the long grasses and the lilies, and washed the leaves of the overhanging trees. At last, however, and when the exhausted men had come under the very shadow of the great hill which stood as a barrier between them and the outer world, it narrowed again, running between high ramparts of rock straight toward the headland.
Some time before the two had reached this place Fisher had uttered an exclamation whose dominant note was one of surprise; but to the man's quick enquiry: "What is it?" he made no answer, only hurrying him on. When he stopped ultimately, it was upon the border of a pool in which the water swirled fiercely before it entered the cutting, and in this pool a rude punt, almost round in shape, was moored. There was only a pole in the ship, and a big locker at one end of it; but it was, beyond doubt, the last resort of the woman, and the means between herself and secret flight from the castle. The sight of it was as wine to the lad.
"Prince!" he cried with exceeding joy, "you've eyes now for ten of us! Here's what you were looking for—a punt against the bank, and a pole in it!"
"I was expecting it half-an-hour ago," said Messenger. "Well, we'll just get in, and leave the rest to chance. Is the river swift?"
"It runs like a mill."
"All the better; where the woman went we may go. Just place me where I can hold tight, and keep her in the centre of the stream. If there's going to be any shooting, I prefer to be on my back."
He was guided in, and set comfortably, with his back against the locker, almost as he spoke; and then Fisher rolled up his sleeves and cast free the mooring. A gentle push drove the punt from the bank, but the stream caught it as a match, and sent it whirling wildly round, with the spray foaming around it, and the water wetting the two to their skins.
At one time Fisher declared that their venture would end where it began; but he had seen something of river work, and when he had recovered himself from the first shock, he contrived to get a hold for his pole, and sent the rickety craft rocking into the deep of the stream. It was carried thence swiftly between the high banks, and from that moment the peril of the journey began.
Of this Messenger himself knew nothing. He experienced only the sensation of swift travel through the air; he heard the harsh grating when the tub struck the bank, or bounded off the embossment of a jutting rock; he was conscious that his companion was in the throes of ceaseless work and activity. But to Fisher the picture was very different. Though the heavy wooden tub was abnormally strong, he thought every moment to see her crushed into splinters as the rapids drove her onward at a headlong pace, and the river-bed inclined until the stream itself was like a roaring torrent.
As the craft thus was forced onward the banks upon either side of the river became higher, until it seemed as if the punt were being carried into the very bowels of the earth. Deep and dark and infinitely green the torrent ran in its rocky bed, sinking and yet sinking until it fell, as it were, under the shadow of the hill, and all that could be seen from the boat were precipices of stone, and great heights which no man could ascend. But yet its course was straight as the rule upon the line, and the ship kept from wreckage upon the bank with the least touch of the skilfully handled pole. Then, quickly the light in the abyss failed; a tremendous roaring, as of a mighty cascade, rang in the ears of the two; they were plunged into utter darkness, and the cries died upon their lips as the punt bounded onward with shocks innumerable, and great crashes, and the sound of wood splintering.
The truth was that they had entered a tunnel, cut by nature, under the great hill which was one of the ramparts of the valley; and they now voyaged through the bowels of the earth. Fisher, indeed, had seen the orifice of the subterranean way long before he had reached it, but had waited until they were near to the approach before he had called to Messenger to throw himself flat, and, on his part, had hauled in his pole and lain down, holding to the crossplanks with all his strength. From that time both the nature of the passage and the manner of it were hidden from him. He could tell little beyond the terror of the transit when, in the darkness, he felt the boat spinning round and round like a top; or striking the rock with fearful concussion; or flying downward like a ship upon the fall of a sea. And he wondered that the punt held together, that she was not shivered like a glass falling upon stone, that he did not feel the water about his ears and mouth, and come to the unutterable struggle for life and breath in that tomb of horror and of noise.
"THE RAPIDS DROVE HER ONWARDS AT A HEADLONG PACE" (p. 318)
All this went through his mind like a dream, for the duration of the passage was brief. When it seemed that he could endure the thunderous echoing in his ears no longer, when the crashing of the boat was most violent, when the water poured over him in a cascade, light flashed upon his eyes, a brown burned landscape spread out before him, he saw a thicket with a green bank of grass before it, a village lying in a hollow upon his right hand, a distant view of purple hills and white-misted sky. And at this he stood up again and grasped his pole, as the punt was swung gently through meadow-land.
"Prince," he cried joyfully, "we're through it now; here's the open country again!"
"What do you see?" asked the man, sitting up.
"A great stretch of burned meadow-land, and a wood upon the left bank—but halloa!"
"Well"
"There are two soldiers lying by the river!"
The punt was now travelling so swiftly that the lad had scarce time to throw himself down before the whole of the danger was apparent. The two infantry-men were lying upon a bank of grass at the border of a thicket; their rifles were nesting against the trunk of a chestnut-tree; there were the embers of a fire smouldering; a couple of empty wine-bottles had rolled from the place of picnic to the very edge of the stream; but the men themselves were fast in sleep, their heads covered with their forage-caps, and their sandals showing in the grass as the shoes of men who lie flat upon their backs in the enjoyment of unbroken rest.
"Prince," said he," there are only two of them, and they're sleeping!"
"Are you sure of that?" whispered Messenger.
"There's no doubt of it. I can see their feet sticking up in the grass, and they've pulled their hats over their eyes."
"Then set the boat in the straight, and drop when you're near enough. If she's in the middle of the stream, she should go down easy. What's the river here?"
"Twenty yards, and thick with rushes," replied Fisher; "but the current's huge."
"All the better; we'll go the faster!"
He said no more, but waited expectantly while Fisher kept the craft off the reeds, and let her go swinging down the very centre of the water-way. They were now within fifty yards of the sentries; but still the sleepers lay motionless, the flies buzzing about their ears, the shade deep upon their faces. Would they wake? The lad's brain was on fire as he asked the question.
At the very foot of the thicket's bank, bush and bramble flourished, spreading upon the water. The river here ran almost at a level with the meadows, but was thick with weeds at it's shallow sides; and when the punt came quite to the place where the sentries lay, she touched the long grasses and ground over them with a sound of scraping which made the two within her shiver as men struck with cold. So loud was the noise of her passage that one of the sentries turned in his sleep, and then sat up on his hams dreamily. Had it not been for the thick bush which lay between the stream and his camping-place the voyage would have ended upon the spot; but it chanced that the tangle of weeds held the punt momentarily still; the noise ceased; the man saw nothing; he kicked his companion, swore at him, drank something from a bottle, and composed himself to sleep again. Then Fisher, who lay in the prow like a cat, used his arms with silent strength, and thrust the unwieldy tub again into the stream, where she was caught quickly and whirled onward through the meadows of maize to the heart of the great valley below the mountains.
For another hour the weary men endured the confinement of the punt and the full heat of the unclouded sun. They said little to one another, for the reaction of the excitement was strong upon them; nor did they see a single soldier, or pass any other village, until they were three or four miles from the first coming-out of the tunnel. But, an hour after noon they entered a great pool, which Fisher called a glade of the waters—a pool arched over with poplars and tropic-like leaves, and bordered with ripe green banks which were almost hid by the blue and the scarlet and the yellow of innumerable flowers. So seductive was the haven, so full of dreamy, silence, so alluring to one who could scarce stand with fatigue, that Fisher brought the punt against its banks, and, not daring to tell all its delights to a man who could see none of them, he said—
"There's a fine place to land, if yon think it's time."
"It's time enough, if the place is right," said the man. "What will there be on the banks here?"
"There's an open wood to your left hand, and a thicket upon the far shore. From what I can see of it a road should pass near the trees here."
"Let's get out, then. I shall die of cramp if I lie here another hour; but you'll have to set my feet on the banks, and you won't be leaving me—to reconnoitre or any thing like that?"
"I'll not leave you a minute," said Fisher; "it's my promise."
The man mumbled something and took the hand stretched out to him. His fear of solitude was, both then and for months afterwards, one of the most curious symptoms of his infliction. The dark in which henceforth he was to live so acted upon his nerves that he could hardly compel himself to let Fisher leave him even for the space of a minute. He slept with his companion's arm near to his; and now, when he had come ashore, and lay down upon the soft grass, he had no rest until the lad took one of his hands and held it. And so, with their heads pillowed upon the grass, and the shade of the willows to give them cool, the two, worn and weary, and very near to tears, slept though the heat of the day, and until the angelus was ringing in the villages.
In looking back upon the many scenes which I have been able to set about the tragedy of Arnold Messenger and his associates, I mind me that I have spoken little—nor was other course possible—of the English and the European view of this most daring emprise, and of the means which the authorities in many countries took to combat it. Yet, for the fuller understanding of the ultimate issue, and for the realization of many things now lying in mystery, it is necessary that something should be said upon pages well back in the record, and upon certain episodes which are but mentioned in the writing.
For these things English newspapers are my clearest authority, and I find in them a very exact account of much that I have dealt with, and of other matters about which Messenger himself had no complete knowledge. He, on his part, was not able, until he met the Spanish woman, to understand how pursuit first came upon him; wanting the information simply because he did not know that the Irish mate of the tug Admiral was picked up, with Conyers, whom he had freed, by the steamer that loomed upon the horizon at the very moment the little vessel cocked her stern above the North Sea. Had this been plain to him he would have anticipated the sequence. The two men, being carried by the steamer to Bergen, wired thence news of the deed to London, and the whole city was stirred almost as by the story of a war.
To Capel, Martingale & Co. the tidings came as a blow which shook the house to its foundations. The head himself, shamed at the fall of his nephew, Sydney Capel, was henceforth little else but a broken man whose wits were gone. But his partners worked like slaves to avert their loss, and to hunt down those responsible for it. All the vast influence of the great firm was brought to bear upon governments and upon police. Skilled detectives left for Lisbon, for Paris, for Monte-Video. Cruisers were sent to scour the North Sea, the common belief being that Kenner's yacht was running for Holland or for Norway; other cruisers searched the Channel; others, again, the coast of Ireland, though these were few, since no man seems to have anticipated the yacht's flight round the capes of Scotland.
How it came about that the Nero sighted the Semiramis and pursued her I have already told; but the curious cessation of the pursuit at the moment of its seeming triumph is a mystery with the simplest solution. The vessel broke her screw-shaft when she was within an ace of victory. The huge mass of metal, rioting in the aft cabins, split skin and plates until the miracle stood that the ship continued to float. She was brought to Bordeaux with the utmost difficulty, and thence she sent home news of her work, though that was known already at the Admiralty, and other cruisers searched the French coast and the northern shore of Spain. It was one of these, as we have seen, which anchored ultimately in the very bay where the fugitives were harboured; and although its men came at length upon the wreckage in the cradle of the reef, they did not do so until the money was ashore, and the Englishmen were hid in the shelter of the castle.
From this moment the scent was, as goes the schoolboy saying, hot to excitement. The authorities in London waited to hear every day of the capture of the bullion and of the missing crew. Capel, Martingale & Co., who had recently negotiated a Spanish loan, brought pressure to bear at Madrid; and companies of soldiers were sent up from Vivero and Finisterre. With each of these there was an English detective, and for the better purposes of identification no less an agent than Mike Brennan, the former mate of the Admiral, was sent with the company of infantry which watched the burning of the bridge. He it was who had heard the daft lad Billy calling in the hills, and he had recognized the voice and answered the cry, to the fear and panic of the doomed muleteers.
When the end of the venture came, it was the general impression among the Spanish soldiers that all, with the woman, had perished in the great fire, which is talked of to-day in hushed whispers by the peasantry, and will be tradition to their children's children. But as there was a possibility that Messenger had escaped the search was continued for some weeks. The chasm was bridged again; sentries were posted about the whole amphitheatre of hills; the silent valley was searched from end to end; and the matter ended by the officer in charge of the troops sending to Madrid his emphatic opinion that the Englishmen never crossed the bridge, since there was no way of escape over the ramparts of the hills for man or for beast. The supposition that there was a possible passage through the tunnel never entered his head. Doggedly he formed an opinion, as Spaniards do, and no human argument would have turned him from it.
Thus it happened that London heaved a sigh of disappointment in the belief that a prince of rogues would not figure in her law Courts, and began to ask, What of the money? And it was consoled as, almost ingot by ingot, the bullion was restored to the firm from whom it had been stolen. Some of it was found in the inner lagoon of the woman's house; much in the valley below the goat-track, where the peril of the flight had begun; and the remaining cases—or rather their contents, for the cases were shivered to splinters—in the ravine and among the embers of the fallen bridge. When the amount thus regained was estimated at its value, the firm considered themselves the losers of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Of this sum a great part had been pillaged by the Spanish soldiers; the servants of the woman had not neglected to snap up what they could; Messenger had a fraction; the peasantry slyly pocketed many a sovereign, and continued for the best part of a year after the tragedy to spend their leisure in the valley of the disaster taming logs and cutting grasses in the hope that gold would be found. But the soldiers were sent to their quarters in the month following the supreme disaster, and they went willingly, as men who had accomplished a great work, and must recreate long, lest their strength should fail them or their energy become chronic.
When Fisher awoke by the banks of the silent pool, it was with a start and an exclamation upon his lips. A hand had touched him gently upon the shoulder, and he sprang to his feet, thinking that the soldiers had entrapped him while he slept. But he met the gaze only of a white-haired old man, whose cassock and bands proclaimed him to be a priest; and he heard a gentle voice speaking quickly in bad French.
"Ne vous dérangez pas," cried the old fellow, as he put his hand upon the lad's shoulder; "et taisez vous. I did know Madame—sans doute; sans doute." And then, with an attempt, exceedingly poor, to speak English, he continued: "Trust upon me, I come for friend—the soldiers, ah, no good, no good, no good!" and he shook his head as though the conviction was painful to him.
Messenger had started up at the first word he spoke; and when he found that Fisher was not near him his distress was uncontrollable. He shouted loudly, with a very bitter cry, and when the lad ran up to him, he began to ask many questions at a breath.
"Why do you leave me?" said he savagely. "You know I can't move a hand. Who were you talking to? I heard another voice."
At this the old priest spoke for himself, much as he had done to Fisher; but he gave a cry when he saw that the man was blind, and gabbled sympathy in Spanish. To this Messenger answered in French, asking—
"Why have you come here; is it to help us?"
"I heard of the trouble at the castle, and of the presence of Englishmen there," said the priest, speaking in the same tongue. "Madame was very kind to me. Her friends are my friends. An hour ago one of my people saw you sleeping here, and came running to my house. And I am here. Consider me your servant as I was hers."
"We want food and rest, and shelter from these sharks in sandals," said Messenger none too pleasantly; "will you give us that?"
"I will do to you as I would to a son," cried the old man; "I am the servant of God and the brother of the outcast; if you trust me, you shall come out of Spain. If you stay here, the troopers will pass in a few hours, and you will go to Madrid with them. The choice must be yours. What I do is done for Madame. I have lost a great friend; no man had a greater. She was such a woman as we shall not see again, my children. God rest her soul!"
Messenger heard the tale through, and bit his nails.
"What's he like to look at?" he asked Fisher in a whisper. "Can you read him at all?"
"He seems to me to be about eighty, and has the whitest hair I ever saw. It's a face to trust. And we've no choice that I see," said he again, as the other still thought upon it. "We'll be taken here for a certainty before noon tomorrow."
"Very well; that seems sense, and we may as well face this risk as another. But keep your eyes open, and call out if you see anything. I'm just dying for want of food."
With this he turned to the old man who had appeared in their path so strangely, and he answered with less of brusqueness.
"We accept your offer," said he, "and put our lives in your hands. When you give them back to us, we shall find means to thank you substantially. If, on the other hand, you have come here with a tale, we shall be equally ready in settling the account. We are both near gone for want of food and drink, and we'll thank you to hurry."
"As I do to you, so may God do to me," said the old man with fervent benevolence; and at that he tucked his skirts about his legs, and set a brisk pace down the woodland path. A very short walk brought them to the head of the thicket; but the priest kept the shelter of its outskirts for some ten minutes before he struck across a marshy meadow, and came upon the back of a village which was almost hid in a clump of chestnuts. His own house was not a road's breadth from the little spire which stuck up among the green of the trees; and when he entered it, he did so by the garden, bringing the men ultimately to his sitting-room without observance from any one. But he showed them at the window of the apartment how much they owed to him. A company of lancers was about the door of the venta; and, at a later hour, carabineers passed through the village on the road to Ferrol.
In this old priest's house the fugitives were sheltered for three weeks, receiving from him a simple hospitality and a large sympathy. At the end of the second week, there was brought to them the girl Inez, who looked to this old man alone for shelter, and who was being sent by him to a convent at Cadiz. The child had many hours of better happiness than she had ever known as she walked with Fisher in the high-walled garden near the church; and while in the spell of her company, and telling her that their hope could lie only in a future which should begin after years had sped, the lad built up the purpose of his life, it was yet his greatest bitterness that friendship must drive him alike from her and from civilisation. And she, clinging to him as one drawn suddenly from the outer world to befriend her, urged upon him the claim of the blind man; and even with kisses upon her lips, he held himself straight in the difficult paths he had chosen.
Thus weeks of a delicious happiness passed all too quickly; and when the time was ripe, Hal brushing away with his lips the childish tears which fell abundantly, went with the priest and Messenger; and the two being disguised as peasants, they came safely to Vigo, where their money and his influence procured them passage to Monte-Video.
In that city I met them, two months after they had landed; and there had this story from them, as I have set it out. The man was still blind; the lad waited on him like a brother.
"I could not leave him now," said he. "He has no eyes but mine."
Yet no writing could convey the note of pity in his voice as he spoke the words.
THE END
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