Natalie swayed and would have fallen had not Mrs. Goring run from her
hiding place to catch and support her. Barry recalled Vandersee's
express order that Mrs. Goring should not show herself prematurely, and
he mentioned it softly. The elder woman smiled at him and replied:
"It matters nothing now, Captain. The trap is sprung."
Barry and Gordon looked again at the wreck, and the force of those quiet
words was made apparent, for in that hushed, breathless moment Leyden
sprang up and stood on the ruined deck of the _Barang_. His face was
alight with greed, and as he turned and the sunlight played upon him,
triumph flashed in his eyes. He stayed to signal another message of
self-praise to Natalie, and then for the first time he saw Mrs. Goring
on board his own vessel. The swift change in his aspect was terrible.
Fury replaced the smooth satisfaction of a few seconds before, and he
seemed on the point of springing into his launch again to visit his fury
on the woman. But cupidity proved too strong. He turned again to enter
the wrecked companionway, for somewhere beneath those shattered timbers
lay, to his belief, fifteen bags of the gold dust that he had
jeopardized his immortal soul to get.
His men alongside evinced lively signs of uneasiness in the silent,
gruesome creek, and they held the launch off at the length of a boathook
as if afraid of closer contact. Their eyes were raised to follow their
master, and then it was that the watchers on the schooner saw Houten's
launch slide out from her nook and, gathering speed, shoot swiftly over
and run aboard the other launch. Leyden's men uttered one chorused,
uncertain growl of alarm, then they found themselves under the rifles
and bayonets of twice their number of capable, stolid Dutch sailors.
They were silenced; but the one sound they had made recalled Leyden in
haste from the shattered companionway, startled and increasingly
suspicious. He glared at the strange launch, almost on a level with
himself, owing to the listing over of the brigantine and the burning
down of her bulwarks; and he turned white with fear and passion at sight
of Houten, big, imperturbable, motionless, gazing up at him with beady
eyes glittering from out of his placid, fat face.
With the instinct and movements of the rat he had been compared to,
Leyden flashed around as if to seek an outlet that need not be won over
such a barrier as Houten. He sprang across the deck, and a cry of
jubilation burst from his lips. There was no boat there; no foes to bar
his way except the river. But at the next step he stopped in new fear;
for from behind a burned stanchion, to which clung pieces of charred
planking, peeped six inches of a rifle muzzle, and the cold round hole
in the end was aimed at his heart.
Still no human being came into sight on that creepily weird wreck.
Leyden took fright now with no pretence at concealing it; for at his
ensuing move he came up to one of the great water tanks, and out of the
manhole peered another cold blue tube, held unwaveringly at his head. He
turned again, darting towards the stern; and here he was met full front
by the cool, smiling, unarmed person of Vandersee, stepping out of the
companionway and barring the way.
Then it was that Leyden realized to the full the strength and
completeness of the trap that had snared him in the moment of his
highest hopes. He screamed his rage at the unimpressed being before him
and pulled a pistol from his pocket.
"So it's you, is it?" he shrieked. "The devil reward you for dogging me,
you Dutch fool!" He brought up his pistol, aimed at Vandersee's body,
and the onlookers on the schooner held their breath in fear. Barry
tugged futilely at his own weapon; Mrs. Goring turned white; a gasp
burst from all four. Then as if sent from the Gods of Justice a shot
rang out, and Vandersee still stood. Those who had watched closely only
saw Leyden's weapon fly from his hand simultaneously with a sharp jet
of fire somewhere in the boat alongside; the report came a fraction of
time later, and then, curling lazily up from Houten's great, ham-like
hand, was a tiny wreath of smoke. The huge trader moved not an inch; his
face altered not a bit; immovable as a statue, unruffled as the Sphinx,
he still stared up at the wreck. Vandersee stood still, showing no
surprise, nor apparently interested in the least in the little piece of
clever gun-play that his big compatriot had accomplished. But Leyden now
showed all the traits of the cornered rat. His pistol spun away from his
numbed fingers, and dumbly he seemed to sense that it had been shot out
of his grip by a snap bullet fired from Houten's hip. He saw no weapon,
but Houten's hand could easily conceal such a trifle as a pistol. He
wrung his tingling fingers once, then with a snarl that was more than a
curse he sprang at Vandersee, snatching a hunting knife from his shirt
as he sprang.
Lookers-on could comprehend the scene in its entirety; and with Leyden's
tigerish leap another element came in. Out from the blackened jungle
pealed the cries of savages, and a flight of arrows directed against
Houten's launch gave ample evidence of the side the bowmen favored.
Barry touched Gordon's arm, and together they emptied their pistols into
the trees, a useless expenditure of ammunition at that distance. But
their efforts were unnecessary; the trap required no bolstering; for
with the first cries from the jungle came an answering shout, and behind
the ridge where Rolfe and Little and old Bill Blunt lay appeared these
watchful guards with a dozen Dutch seamen alongside them; and the arrows
had barely reached their mark, harmless, when a single, blasting volley
of musketry drove the intruding natives shrieking to cover, never to
risk another attack.
The little incident had taken but a few seconds, yet when rifles ceased
barking and silence again enveloped the gloomy creek, the deadly grapple
on the wreck had reached its climax. Leyden was upon Vandersee's breast,
one hand clutching desperately at his throat, the other gripping a
murderous knife yet unable to use it, for the big Hollander had a grip
on the wrist that could not be broken.
"Like a rat!" muttered Gordon. "Lord lean to Justice!"
Barry suddenly found Natalie in need of support, for her courage, once
past the crisis, was not proof against the sort of soul-revolting
conflict she was now forced to witness. Barry drew her to him with an
arm about her shoulders, and she rested against him with a little sigh
of relief. His own eyes refused to leave the scene on his old ship; but
beside him he heard voices, and he knew that Mrs. Goring too had found
the stress too great and had sought comfort in Gordon's arms. Yet those
two people had reason, too strong to be downed, for witnessing Leyden's
atonement; and while on that blasted and corpse-like wreck two men
fought, one in awful, cold, remorseless silence, the other with broken
screams of insane fury that availed him nothing, Mrs. Goring murmured
between racking sobs:
"Not vengeance for my pain, dear God! Only repayment for the golden
years he stole from the man who loved me!"
The sobs ceased, and the murmuring hushed, and the two women were spared
the rest. With a terrific outburst of shrill railing against everything
human or divine that could have any possible hand in his defeat, Leyden
gathered superhuman strength out of his desperation and tore loose his
knife hand. His other hand, at Vandersee's throat, had grown white and
numb from its own efforts that had not changed the Hollander's
expression one bit; but now, in a last swift up-stroke of the knife, the
cornered rat saw victory beckoning to him.
He drove in his thrust, and Barry went cold at sight of it. He wondered
angrily at Houten's indifference. The great trader stood in his launch
as unruffled as if in his office; his men, although they retained their
rifles in hand, offered to use them for no other purpose than keeping
their prisoners quiet. And just beside them, that murderous blade
swished through the air fair aimed at Vandersee's breast. Then the big
Hollander stepped back, and stumbled.
"Gone!" Barry and Gordon cried hoarsely together. Yet they saw Houten in
his old, apparently indifferent attitude, and could not force
themselves to move. Men sprang into full sight where Rolfe and his
party were, and they, too, remained in their places. The thing was
uncanny: the colossal trader exercised a compelling influence over
everybody about him, bordering upon the supernatural. Not a hand was
raised in Vandersee's vital peril. Then the utter confidence of the man
was revealed.
With his stumble Vandersee drew back from his antagonist three feet, and
Leyden plunged forward, tripped by his own balked impetus. The knife
flashed upwards, missing its mark by a foot, and while yet the sun
played on the steel in midair Vandersee recovered, smiling now with
terrible assurance, and his great bulk leaned, his long, powerful arms
enwrapped his foe in a hug that paralyzed every limb. The knife fell
through Leyden's clutching fingers, and the point quivered for a moment
in Vandersee's shoulder before it fell to disappear through the broken
planks. The next breath brought both men heavily against a gaunt,
charred stanchion, and Leyden's terrified cry pealed over the water.
Alongside the wreck, on the schooner, ashore, wherever a man was
stationed, faces looked on in fascination. Still Houten stood in his
place, his placid visage regarding the conflict unmoved; no line of his
immense figure revealing anything in him save a sort of bovine
indifference in the result. In a flash everything was changed in him.
The sudden impact of those two struggling bodies was the final strain
the stanchion could bear; the blackened timber burst into splinters, and
Vandersee and his foe crashed through and pitched headlong into the
swirling current of the creek entrance.
Then Houten's real interest was shown, and swiftly. His guttural voice
barked a brief order in Dutch, the concealed men on the wreck sprang
into sight and covered Leyden's men in the launch, and like the dart of
a shark Houten drove his own craft out into the stream after the
vanished combatants, his great red face gone ashy, his beady eyes
gleaming anxiously.
On board the schooner Barry drove his men to boat-falls in hasty
endeavor to get a boat over; but the effort could have only proved
fruitless, for the stream ran like a mill race around those writhing,
twisting grasses that endlessly bent, straightened, and twined, and the
undertow was appalling. Houten's launch rounded the _Barang's_ stern and
the trader searched the waters with outthrust head that contrasted
strongly with his previous attitude of nonchalance.
Something rolled upwards on the surface at the very edge of the grasses
and disappeared again. In a few seconds it appeared again, and now
Vandersee's red, strangling face emerged from the water. The launch shot
towards him and picked him up, twenty yards from the spot where he had
plunged in grips with Leyden. When he regained his breath, he pointed
inshore beside the wreck, and the launch put back. Still there came no
sight of Leyden; and soon the boat headed for the schooner, Vandersee's
men bringing Leyden's launch in response to an order. And the two burly
Hollanders came on board the _Padang_ in quiet mood, mounted to the poop
and met their friends with a subdued, almost sorrowful smile. Mrs.
Goring and Gordon could not restrain their anxiety, however, and
Vandersee answered their looks of inquiry.
"It is finished," he said very seriously. "Not by my hand, but by the
inevitable hand of Justice. We fell beside that weed bank, and separated
as we struck the water. I came up outside the eddy; being the heavier
the current had more action on me; but he plunged deep into the grass. I
went down again to try to release him, but it was out of my hands then."
Vandersee shuddered slightly, then his soft, placid smile returned, full
of quiet reverence for the name he now used. "God had taken vengeance
from me and had substituted his infallible Justice. Leyden lies down
there under that bank, with a rope of weed about his neck that no
strength of mine could break."
"It iss better so!" grumbled Houten, after a silence that thrilled. He
stepped over to Gordon, took his hand in a short, warm grip, then gently
put him aside, and gathered Mrs. Goring into his tremendous arms,
kissing her on the lips and soothing her with rough, kindly whispers.
Barry felt the general stress and knew that it was not yet time for
further questions. He knew that much remained a mystery; and much would
doubtless be cleared up in the good time of these two inscrutable
Dutchmen. He dully wondered just who or what Mrs. Goring could be, for
he had seen three men successively take her in a warm embrace, with no
sign of resentment in either. He simply left it with the rest to be
explained, and felt a swift and grateful glow pervade him in the close
and confident proximity of Natalie, who had relaxed with a little shiver
into his arms, her fair face hiding its trouble on his breast, her sunny
hair caressing his cheek.
"Come, Captain, let me take her below," said Mrs. Goring at length,
coming forward with her own brave face composed to calmness. "She will
soon get over this experience now that it is finished."
Barry helped Natalie inside the companionway, and as Mrs. Goring took
her in charge, the girl lifted her face to Barry and gave him a wan
smile that nevertheless carried its message to him. He, all unversed in
such matters, suddenly found knowledge and stooped to kiss her lips;
then as suddenly restrained himself, with all the past in his mind, and
pressed his kiss on her hand instead. Mrs. Goring seemed to flash
approval to him, then took her charge to her cabin, leaving the skipper
to rejoin the men and gather up the remaining threads of the situation.
Over on the creek shore Houten's launch was taking on board Rolfe and
Little and their party, having returned for them after seeing Leyden's
men secured. Farther along the bank a party of naval seamen were waiting
for a big steam pinnace speeding up the river from its downstream
concealment. Leyden's own steam launch had been commandeered into the
service, and was taking up the scattered guards from the farther bank;
somewhere in the blue and yellow haze of the sea beyond the river
sounded the hoarse, prolonged blast of a steamship's siren; and Houten
was giving expert first aid to the knife-cut in Vandersee's shoulder,
while that stolid individual insisted in shame-tinged gutturals that it
was nothing.
"Here iss the captain now," rumbled Houten as Barry appeared. "In a
leedle while we are reatty to leave, yes. If you can hoist oop Leyden's
launch und make t'ings snug for sea, my boat und Hendrik's will be taken
oop by der gunboat now oudside waiting for us."
"Yes, Captain Barry," rejoined Vandersee, with his old suave smile, "and
I owe you some explanation before we leave. If you will get the schooner
ready, it will give the ladies time to recover a little, and when my
sister is herself again, everything shall be made clear to you which
appears puzzling now."
"Your sister?" exclaimed Barry.
"Yes, Captain, Mrs. Goring as you know her, or Miss Vandersee as she is,
is my sister. Mr. Houten is our uncle, also. Perhaps you will connect
things slightly now, by the time we are ready," replied Vandersee,
while Cornelius Houten chuckled deep down in his cavernous chest and
shot a twinkle from his beady eyes at the astonished skipper.