the shore from the point off which the cutter lay rolling. They pulled
quietly for the spot, the oars sounding softly, the water lapping the
bows of the boat, and the wind bringing to their ears the muffled rote
as of a sand beach.
"Let her run," ordered Tab in an undertone. "Can you see the light?"
For a minute they rolled in darkness as before, and then again sighted
the signal, this time straight in shore. Jerry felt his heart beat as he
gave the order to run in, and a consciousness of romantic adventure,
lawless and wild, was like a sweet and exhilarating flavor in his mouth.
Such a deed on his native shores would have had an atmosphere of secret
villany about it, but here, in alien waters, on a foreign coast, under
the darkness of night, the romantic side was intensified a
thousand-fold. A whimsical feeling flitted through the back of his head
that he ought to be dressed differently for such an occasion; that he
should have had a shaggy black beard, a red sash stuck full of pistols,
and half a dozen cutlasses disposed promiscuously about his person. He
was not without a fleeting consciousness that some time he might at
home, to the old crowd of college boys, find a keen joy in telling of
this night, and--But the light flashed out again, this time so near that
the cutter lay full in the middle of the dark, fire-sprinkled path it
illumined; and Jerry's entire mind was called back to the business in
hand. He could in the light see the cheeks of the men in front of him as
they swayed with their rowing, the brass rowlocks of the cutter, and the
dripping blades of the oars. He strained his eyes toward the land, but
was blinded by the glare into which he looked; and on the instant a
voice, eager but subdued, hailed from the shore some twenty feet away.
"Hallo! Are you there, Mr. Taberman?"
"Here all right," answered Jerry. "Eyes in the boat!" he added sharply
to the men, every one of whom except Dave had turned to look ashore.
"Three good strokes now: Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!... Let her run!"
The nose of the cutter ground on a sand-beach; the bowsman sprang ashore
with the painter and held her, while Jerry clambered forward, steadying
himself with a hand on the shoulder of the rowers. On leaping to the
land, he was confronted by Mr. Wrenmarsh. That gentleman shifted the
lantern he held from his right hand to his left, and shook hands with
Taberman fervently.
"You're just in time," he said hurriedly. "We haven't a second to lose.
The boxes are right here on the edge of the grass. Come on with your
men. It'll take four of them for that biggest box."
Jerry called the four men who were nearest, and telling the rest to
stand by, he hurried up the beach. In the sand, by the light of the
lantern with which the archæologist came after him, he saw the print of
wheels leading up to a pile of rude wooden cases. Three of them were of
moderate size, but the fourth looked to Tab huge in the semi-darkness.
"How big is that thing?" he asked, touching it with his foot.
"Don't kick it!" Wrenmarsh responded quickly and sharply. "It's only
about a metre square and half as deep. I couldn't make it any smaller."
Jerry whistled with dismay.
"We may lose it overboard on the way to the Merle," he remarked cruelly.
Then without heeding the dismayed exclamation of the collector, he
ordered the men to take that first. "Put it as far astern as you can,"
he said. "I'm afraid you'll have to wade in with it."
"For God's sake hurry," cried Wrenmarsh. "I know that beastly carter has
put the custodi up to the job by this time. Only don't drop that case!"
he added, running along by the side of the bearers with the lantern
swinging wildly to and fro and bumping against his legs.
The case was evidently pretty heavy, and the men breathed deep as they
carried it across the loose sand. By dint of the men's wading in beside
the cutter the big box was safely deposited in the stern-sheets, and the
sailors went back for a new load. A second box was stowed without
trouble, but as the two others, which were fortunately the smallest,
were being lifted by two men each, Wrenmarsh clutched Taberman by the
arm.
"Look there!" he cried. "Look there! Quick, men! For God's sake, quick!"
Not more than a hundred yards away on the beach to the southward was an
advancing lantern. Suddenly it stopped.
"What is it?" asked Tab.
The men, spurred on by Wrenmarsh, were fairly running across the sand,
and Tab skurried along with them toward the boat.
"Hurry! Hurry!" was the breathless response of Wrenmarsh. "It's the
custodi and the police--those cursed _carabinieri_! I told you the
carter'd sell me out."
It was only a minute before the men had reached the boat, and hurriedly
stowed the boxes they carried. Taberman and Wrenmarsh scrambled in, and
Jerry, sitting in a distorted and cramped position behind the big box,
got hold of the lines. The men pushed off, and got into their places
anyhow. Just as Tab opened his lips to order the men to give way, a
peremptory voice came to them from the shore to the south. The light had
not advanced from where they had seen it stop, but it had gone waving
wildly up and down the beach as if the bearers had encountered some
impassable obstacle and sought in vain for a place which would allow a
passage.
"_Aspetta!_" bawled the voice. "_Aspetta nel nomme del Re!_"
"What's that?" asked Jerry.
"They're calling us to stand--in the king's name," Mr. Wrenmarsh
returned with sullen nervousness.
"Head the boat 'round," cried Tab. "Why the devil don't they come down
if they want us?"
"I can't imagine," the collector answered.
"Perhaps they're afraid of us; but I don't think that can be it."
"_Aspetta!_" thundered the voice on shore more savagely. "_Aspetta o
tiriamo!_"
"By Jove! The sands!" cried Wrenmarsh. "There's a brook there--the
bottom's quicksand. They daren't try to cross."
"Quicksand?" echoed Tab. "How'd they come there, then?"
"They must have thought we were on the other side of the stream. They've
come up on the wrong bank, and now they can't get over."
Bang! There was a quick, loud report, and Jerry heard the _wht_ of a
carbine ball close astern.
"Great Scott!" he shouted. "Douse that glim! Pull! Pull!"
Wrenmarsh seized the lantern and dipped it overboard, an effective if
irregular way of quenching it.
Bang! Bang! Two more shots. One of the men, Hunter, pulling on the third
thwart, afterward swore that he felt the wind of the second bullet.
Bang!
"Pull hard, men! Steady!" cried Jerry.
A man of race and training, while in a crisis of this sort he feels more
excitement than his thicker-skinned fellows, displays more outward
coolness. Social development means the power of self-control, especially
when any sense of responsibility is involved. Taberman was inwardly wild
with the stirring emotions of an experience such as he not only had
never encountered but of which he had heard in a hundred ways which lent
associations to heighten the effect; yet he did not lose for a moment
his sense of having the men to care for. He kept his head, and called
the stroke for the rowers. They showed by their tendency to pull wildly
how near they were to demoralization, and Jerry urged them to steadiness
with language of the most picturesque emphasis.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Three shots. At the third there was a sharp rap, as if
the cutter had been hit by a pebble, and a queer little squeak of
splintering wood. Tab started up, but instantly sat down again, catching
at the yoke-line he had half let fall.
"Close call," Wrenmarsh said nervously.
"Yes," Jerry answered laconically. "Stroke! Stroke! Steady!"
At the instant he had heard the sound of the ball on the wood of the
boat, he had felt a sharp twinge in his left arm, as if the muscle had
been suddenly tweaked off the bone by a pair of white-hot pincers. The
pain was exquisite, but he forced himself to keep calm, and beyond the
first involuntary spring he gave no indication that he had been hit. In
a sort of double consciousness he kept saying to himself that he
wondered how severe the hurt was, and at the same time he seemed to be
lifted by sheer will and excitement above even the physical feeling of
the moment.
"Steady!" he said, and was queerly conscious of a sort of exultation
that his voice was so strong and natural. "We're 'most out of range."
Other shots followed, but they splashed harmlessly astern. The darkness
was a shelter, and although the carbines flashed again and again from
the shore, no more damage was done on board the cutter. Ahead of them
Tab, holding himself together grimly, saw the red and green
sailing-lights of the Merle, and realized that at the sound of the
firing Gonzague must have run the yacht in shore.
"Ahoy!" Jerry called.
Tears of pain suffused his eyes in spite of him, and made the colored
lights big and blurry, as if they were the glaring orbs of some huge
dragon.
"Hollá!" came Gonzague's voice. "A'right, sair!" and with a deafening
boom of canvas the schooner luffed up.
Jerry put his right arm behind him, his left hanging limply, and
getting hold of the rudder-yoke he laid the cutter alongside the yacht.
He and Wrenmarsh got up to the deck, a davit was turned out-board as a
crane and the boxes hoisted, and then the boat slung up.
Faint and savage with pain, Jerry still fought with himself to keep up,
and to fulfill his duties as commander. He remembered that his order for
the Merle to lie to where she was had been disregarded; and though he
was inwardly glad that the yacht had been brought to meet the cutter, he
felt that discipline was discipline, and he was in no mood to let any
infringement of orders go unnoted. He called Gonzague.
"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded fiercely. "Didn't I give
orders to keep the yacht hove to till I came out?"
"Yes, sair," Gonzague answered contritely, stroking his stiff white
mustache with nervous fingers, "bot I heer de shotin' ashore, an'"--
"That made no difference. I'm ashamed that an old seaman like you should
disobey orders simply because he heard a row ashore. Go forward. I shall
mark you in the log."
The old man took himself off without a word. However much he was likely
to feel the sting of this reproof, he was not the man to fail to
respect the mate for it, and of this Tab might be assured when he had
the calmness to think things over.
Jerry gave the helmsman the course for Naples, and the Merle swung off
on her return. Then he started to go below, but now that the need of
immediate action was over he suddenly turned sick and dizzy. He put out
his uninjured arm with a quick clutch at Mr. Wrenmarsh.
"Give me--your arm," he said weakly. "I'm--I'm hit, you know, and things
go round."
"Hit!" echoed the collector. "Where? Is it serious?"
"Arm," answered Jerry. "Help me get below."
The archæologist supported Jerry to the companion, and then almost
carried him down the steps. He tried to place him on the transom, but
Taberman stubbornly walked half the length of the cabin, and sank into a
chair by the table. His lips seemed to him queerly stiff as he twisted
them into a wry smile.
"Mustn't bleed on the cushions, y' know," he said feebly. "Call
Gonzague."
Wrenmarsh shouted the name explosively, hovering solicitously over
Jerry, and in a moment the Provençal appeared. Jerry made a mighty
effort to pull himself together.
"Here, Gonzague," he said, "get the medicine-chest, and strip my coat
off. I've got to be fixed. I want some hot water and a b. and s. Beg
your--pardon," he added, turning slowly to Mr. Wrenmarsh, and confusedly
wishing that the cabin would not turn so much faster than he could. "I'm
forgetting. This gentleman's to have Jack's--the captain's stateroom.
Will you have anything to drink? 'Fraid I'm poor host, but"--
"No, no," cried the archæologist. "That's all right. The brandy,
Gonzague, quick!"
A brandy and soda put fresh life into Jerry, who still tried to be
polite, and protested that the collector should not bother.
"You'll find me a first-class chirurgeon," responded the other. "Where's
the medicine-chest, Gonzague?"
He proved remarkably ready and efficient and kindly withal. He stripped
off Jerry's jacket and cut away the shirt-sleeve, to discover a two-inch
sliver of African oak from the gunwale of the cutter stabbed into a
jagged hole in the forearm. He probed and cut and trimmed with the skill
of a trained surgeon, while Jerry, pale and with set teeth, bore it all
with Spartan firmness until everything was over, and then, as he tried
to rise when the last bandage was in place, fainted dead away.
When the plucky mate had been brought round and stowed away in his
berth, Gonzague again took charge of the Merle, and dropped her anchor
once more in the harbor of Naples at about eight o'clock in the morning.
Just before Mr. Wrenmarsh turned in for the night, he put his head into
the door of Jerry's stateroom to ask if he could do anything for him.
"No, thank you," Jerry returned. "Much obliged; but the man by my door
will hear if I want anything. I'm all right now. I'm jolly much obliged
to you for fixing me up."
"'Pon my word, Table--Taberman, you're the most extraordinary man for a
Bostonian I ever saw. Good-night."
"Good-night," Jerry responded. Then he chuckled, and added, "But
Boston's full of better men than I am, if you'd only stayed there to see
'em."
[Illustration: Decoration]
Chapter Twelve
AT VERGIL'S TOMB
"I never could touch it," Katrine said, with an emphatic shake of her
head. "I should think a baby brought up on goat's milk would run round
and bleat. Why, I think the idea of it is horrid!"
Her eyes sparkled and her whole air was full of a delicious animation,
so that it was no wonder Jack threw back his head and laughed, as much
in sheer admiration as from amusement. He was in high spirits this
morning, the excitement of a mighty resolve stirring in his blood.
"How do you know that you haven't been having goat's milk at the hotel?"
he demanded. "Aren't you afraid you'll begin to break out in a baa
yourself all of a sudden?"
"Why, how rude you are!" she cried, her dimples deepening and shoaling.
"Of course they wouldn't dare to give it to us, and we should know it if
they did!"
The young people were being driven in a Neapolitan _vettura_ to the
tomb of Vergil. Jack had mentioned the spot that morning at breakfast as
being well worth a visit, if only for the view, and said that the ladies
ought to see it. Mrs. Fairhew had, for reasons perhaps not wholly
unconnected with remembrances of her own youth and the late Mr. Fairhew,
declined to make the jaunt, on the score that it was too hot and that
she had a thousand trifles to attend to. She had refused her niece's
prompt offer of assistance, and so left that young woman free to accept
Jack's invitation that she take the drive with him.
Their talk was light enough, the lighter because Jack at least hardly
dared to venture to be serious lest he betray how terribly in earnest he
was. The sight of a little flock of goats, which had scattered at the
pistol-like crack of their driver's whip, had given them a theme for a
moment. The agile brown animals skipped along the gutters, assailed by
the effervescent profanity of their conductor, a half-naked, slim-limbed
lad browner than the beasts themselves; and with more detonations of the
whiplash the carriage whirled up the hill with hardly diminished speed
as the grade grew steeper. Through picturesque, squalid streets, braver
in their poverty than many a splendid thoroughfare, through nooks that
seemed to be private courtyards with entire families disposed about
them, the carriage took its way noisily; it turned now to the left, now
to the right, continually ascending; it brought them to the top of
narrow ways down which they looked as through a kaleidoscope gleaming
with a confusion of gay colors; it seemed about to land them on the roof
of some building which lay directly before them, and then at the last
moment whisked around some unseen corner and carried them still higher.
"Isn't it wonderful," Katrine said. "I never saw such a city. I feel
almost as if we were in a flying-machine,--we keep going up so and see
such wonderful sights all the time. Oh, do look down that street! Did
you ever see such colors?"
"It is stunning," Castleport answered, his eyes on her face.
"You didn't look at it at all," she said half pouting, as the carriage
whirled them past.
"Oh, I could see it all in your eyes," he returned. "You don't know what
excellent mirrors they are."
"What nonsense! How silly you are this morning!"
Her color deepened, however, and Jack did not feel that his remark had
missed fire. He smiled to himself, and just then the carriage brought
up with a jerk on the left side of the way, in front of a small green
door in a gray retaining-wall. Over the door was printed in black
letters: _Tomba di Virgilio_.
"Here we are," Jack said.
He got out with the field-glasses he had brought, and extended his hand
to assist Katrine. She hardly touched his arm with her finger-tips, but
the air was electric, and he felt the thrill like a pulse of warm blood
from head to foot. He did not speak to the driver, but with a manner
that made that piratical Neapolitan regard him with a new respect simply
ordered him in the sign-language of the town to remain in waiting. A
soldier came slouching out of a shop near by wherein he was evidently
lounging, took the prescribed gate-fees, and then opened the narrow
door. This disclosed a staircase, strait and steep, cut from the living
rock, which led upward and to the right.
They climbed the stone stairs without speaking, but at the top the
wonderful beauty of the view which burst upon them called from Katrine
an involuntary exclamation of surprise and delight. Below them,
red-roofed and multi-colored, Naples lay bathed in the strong white
light of the southern sun; beyond, marvelously blue and ruffled by a
gentle breeze, the waters of the bay flashed and sparkled; and beyond
again, farther yet, stood purple Capri and the piled-up southern shore,
luminous and mistily azure. To the eastward, brooding and tragic, yet
with a thrilling beauty of its own in softly flowing curves and wavering
outline, showed Vesuvius, and stupendous as it was, seemed crouching
sinister and awful, the incarnation of pitiless power.
Jack focused the glasses, and handed them to Katrine. Then he began to
point here and there, showing her the different things of interest
visible from the spur of the hill on which they were standing. As she
was looking toward the Mole and the New Harbor, suddenly she uttered a
little cry of surprise.
"There's the Merle," she said. "I'm sure it is. At least she's flying
the American flag."
"Yes," Jack responded. "That's she, fast enough."
"Doesn't it seem like a bit of home to see her down there?" Katrine went
on. "I think it was perfectly wonderful that Mr. Drake let you take her
this summer."
Jack gave a quick movement of the shoulders, and then set his lips
together more firmly.
"I shall have to tell her the whole thing," he thought to himself. Aloud
he said, "I shouldn't have been here when you were if it hadn't been
for having the Merle."
"I suppose not," she answered, and the change in her tone showed most
clearly that she understood in the words more than met the ear.
After they had stood for a time in admiration of the magnificent view
before them, they turned to go to the tomb, twenty yards away. The
uneven path, bordered by beautiful wild poppies and violets, was shaded
by gnarled fig and plum trees. A splendid stone-pine rose superb on the
left, crowned by its dome-shaped cluster of branches.
"Oh," Katrine cried, "it's perfectly beautiful, isn't it? It makes you
feel solemn, it's so lovely."
"Yes," he assented, and unwonted emotion left him with no word to add.
"Just look at those flowers," she went on. "What a pity it is that we
don't have them like that at home."
"It's a fitting place for Vergil to be buried in, isn't it?" Jack said.
"I thought you would like it."
"It is a place I shall remember all my life," she replied. Her eyes met
his as she spoke, and her glance fell with quick consciousness. Before
he could speak, she added hurriedly, "Is this the tomb?"
"Yes," he answered, entirely undisturbed by any chilling scholastic
doubts on the subject, "this is the tomb."
Before them was a lowly structure of old rubble, four square, and a
narrow door, at which the path, with a sudden dip, came to an end.
"Will you go in?" he said, standing aside.
Katrine entered, and he followed. The place was as simple within as
without. The floor seemed to be of beaten earth; the single room, or
_cella_, was lighted by a small window, and it contained only two or
three cinerary urns of dark red clay, which leaned against the wall
opposite the door. Above these, in brown letters on a tablet of white
marble, was an inscription set there by the Academy of France.
The pair stood silent for a minute, Katrine reading the tablet, and
Jack, his head bared, standing beside her. As she turned her head she
caught for a second time his glance. She colored, and moved quickly to
the small window.
"Isn't the view wonderful!" she said, as if she had caught at the first
words that came into her mind.
"Yes," he returned absently. "Fine, isn't it?"
She looked a moment out of the window, and then, avoiding his eyes, she
turned back to the Latin distich cut in the tablet, and by tradition
assigned to Vergil himself:--
Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces.
"You'll think I am unspeakably stupid," she said, "but I confess I
cannot make it out. 'Mantua gave me birth,' I can read that."
"'The Calabrian winds carried me away,'" Jack went on.
"Oh, yes; but I don't understand the Parthenope."
"That's Naples," he answered. "'Naples holds me.'"
"Oh, is that it? I know the rest. 'I sang pastures, fields, leaders.'"
"Good! You shall have an A in the examination in spite of Parthenope,"
he assured her. "Perhaps 'heroes' is a better word for _duces_, though."
"I'm afraid I don't deserve an A," she laughed, "but I am satisfied if I
pass at all."
As they came out of the tomb Jack picked a spray from the beautiful
laurel growing beside the entrance, and held it out to her. She took it
with a murmured word of thanks, and put it in her gown. Not far away on
the right of the path was a rude seat or bench, shaded by fig and olive
trees, and partially screened from the path by dwarf plums. It was
slightly higher than the way by which they had come.
"Here," Jack said, "let's go up and rest a bit. The view is worth
seeing."
They turned to the seat and took their places in silence. The view was
not perceptibly different from that which they had on the path, but as
Jack looked at Katrine and Katrine cast down her eyes, this was not a
matter which they were likely to notice.
"Katrine," the captain began,--for they had come, almost by insensible
degrees, to call each other by their Christian names,--"I've got to tell
you something. It isn't altogether pleasant for me, but it's only fair
that you should know."
She looked up at him in evident surprise and with some disquiet.
"Why, what is it?" she asked. "I hope it isn't anything really
terrible."
He hesitated, and began to scrape the ground with his foot nervously.
"I--er--Well, to be honest, I don't know exactly how to tell you so you
won't be too hard on me," he answered frankly.
"Is it so bad?" she queried in a tone which showed some concern under
its assumed lightness.
"What in the world have you been doing? You haven't been murdering
anybody, I hope."
"What would you say," asked Jack, "what would you think of a man that
acted like this? Suppose a case. Suppose the chap was, in the first
place, in America. Suppose he had a friend, a friend he cared a lot
about, one he thought more of than anybody else in the world, and that
friend was on this side. Suppose the man's property was all tied up,--in
trust, you know,--and he'd promised not to borrow, so he couldn't
honorably raise the money to come over unless his trustee would let him.
The trustee, we'll say, is a nice old fellow,--really nice, you know,
only rather crotchety,--who wouldn't hear a word of the chap's going."
He stopped as if for encouragement, and Katrine, with evident
appreciation of this, murmured, "Yes, I understand."