IN THE SAME GRAVE WITH SKAGGS
Down in the village of Aratat there were signs of a vast commotion.
Early risers and the guards were flying from house to house, shouting
the news. The citizens piled from their couches and raced pell-mell into
the streets, unbelieving, demoralised. With one accord they rushed to
the water front--men, women and children. Consternation was succeeded by
utter panic. Rasula's wild shouts went unheeded. He screamed and fought
to secure order among his people, but his efforts were as nought against
the storm of terror that confronted him.
Outside the harbour lay the low, savage-looking ship. Its guns were
pointed directly at the helpless town; its decks were swarming with
white-clothed men; it was alive and it glowered with rage in its evil
eyes.
The plague was forgotten! The strategy that had driven off the ships of
peace was lost in the face of this ugly creature of war. No man
grovelled on the dock with the convulsions of death; no man hearkened to
the bitter, impotent words of the single wise man among them. Rasula's
reign of strategy was ended.
Howling like a madman, he tried to drive the company's tug out to meet
the sailors and urge them to keep away from the pest-ridden island. It
was like pleading with a mountain avalanche.
"They will not fire! They dare not!" he was shrieking, as he dashed back
and forth along the dock. "It is chance! They do not come for Chase!
Believe in me! The tug! The tug! They must not land!" But others were
raging even more wildly than he, and they were calling upon Allah for
help, for mercy; they were shrieking maledictions upon themselves and
screaming praises to the sinister thing of death that glowered upon them
from its spaceless lair.
The crash of the long-unused six-pounder at the château, followed almost
immediately by a great roar from one of the cruiser's guns, brought the
panic to a crisis.
The islanders scattered like chaff before the wind, looking wild-eyed
over their shoulders in dread of the pursuing cannon-ball, dodging in
and out among the houses and off into the foothills.
Rasula, undaunted but crazed with disappointment, stuck to his colours
on the deserted dock. He cursed and raved and begged. In time, two or
three of the more canny, realising that safety lay in an early peace
offering, ventured out beside him. Others followed their example and
still others slunk trembling to the fore, their voices ready to protest
innocence and friendship and loyalty.
They had heard of the merciless American gunner and they knew, in their
souls, that he could shoot the island into atoms before nightfall.
The native lawyer harangued them and cursed them and at last brought
them to understand, in a feeble way, that no harm could come to them if
they faced the situation boldly. The Americans would not land on British
soil; it would precipitate war with England. They would not dare to
attempt a bombardment: Chase was a liar, a mountebank, a dog! After
shouting himself hoarse in his frenzy of despair, he finally succeeded
in forcing the men to get up steam in the company's tug. All this time,
the officers of the American warship were dividing their attention
between land and sea. Another vessel was coming up out of the misty
horizon. The men on board knew it to be a British man-of-war! At last
steam was up in the tug. A hundred or more of the islanders had ventured
from their hiding places and were again huddled upon the dock.
Suddenly the throng separated as if by magic, opening a narrow path down
which three white men approached the startled Rasula. A hundred eager
hands were extended, a hundred voices cried out for mercy, a hundred
Mohammedans beat their heads in abject submission.
Hollingsworth Chase, Lord Deppingham and a familiar figure in an
ill-fitting red jacket and forage cap strode firmly, defiantly between
the rows of humble Japatites. Close behind them came a tall, resolute
grenadier of the Rapp-Thorberg army.
"Make way there, make way!" Mr. Bowles was crying, brandishing the
antique broadsword that had come down to Wyckholme from the dark ages.
"Stand aside for the British Government! Make way for the American!"
Rasula's jaw hung limp in the face of this amazing exhibition of courage
on the part of the enemy. He could not at first believe his eyes.
Hoarse, inarticulate cries came from his froth-covered lips. He was
glaring insanely at the calm, triumphant face of the man from Brodney's,
who was now advancing upon him with the assurance of a conqueror.
"You see, Rasula, I have called for the cruiser and it has come at my
bidding." Turning to the crowd that surged up from behind, cowed and
cringing, Chase said: "It rests with you. If I give the word, that ship
will blow you from the face of the earth. I am your friend, people. I
would you no harm, but good. You have been misled by Rasula. Rasula, you
are not a fool. You can save yourself, even now. I am here as the
servant of these people, not as their master. I intend to remain here
until I am called back by the man who sent me to you. You have----"
Rasula uttered a shriek of rage. He had been crouching back among his
cohorts, panting with fury. Now he sprang forward, murder in his eyes.
His arm was raised and a great pistol was levelled at the breast of the
man who faced him so coolly, so confidently. Deppingham shouted and took
a step forward to divert the aim of the frenzied lawyer.
A revolver cracked behind the tall American and Rasula stopped in his
tracks. There was a great hole in his forehead; his eyes were bursting;
he staggered backward, his knees gave way; and, as the blood filled the
hole and streamed down his face, he sank to the ground--dead!
The soldier from Rapp-Thorberg, a smoking pistol in his hand, the other
raised to his helmet, stepped to the side of Hollingsworth Chase.
"By order of Her Serene Highness, sir," he said quietly.
"Good God!" gasped Chase, passing his hand across his brow. For a full
minute there was no sound to be heard on the pier except the lapping of
the waves. Deppingham, repressing a shudder, addressed the stunned
natives.
"Take the body away. May that be the end of all assassins!"
* * * * *
The _King's Own_ came alongside the American vessel in less than an
hour. Accompanied by the British agent, Mr. Bowles, Chase and Deppingham
left the dock in the company's tug and steamed out toward the two
monsters. The American had made no move to send men ashore, nor had the
British agent deemed it wise to ask aid of the Yankees in view of the
fact that a vessel of his own nation was approaching.
Standing on the forward deck of the swift little tug, Chase
unconcernedly accounted for the timely arrival of the two cruisers.
"Three weeks ago I sent out letters by the mail steamer, to be delivered
to the English or American commanders, wherever they might be found.
Undoubtedly they were met with in the same port. That is why I was so
positive that help would come, sooner or later. It was very simple. Lord
Deppingham, merely a case of foresightedness. I knew that we'd need help
and I knew that if I brought the cruisers my power over these people
would never be disturbed again."
"My word!" exclaimed the admiring Bowles.
"Chase, you may be theatric, but you are the most dependable chap the
world has ever known," said Deppingham, and he meant it.
The warships remained off the harbour all that day. Officers from both
ships were landed and escorted to the château, where joy reigned
supreme, notwithstanding the fact that the grandchildren of the old men
of the island were morally certain that their cause was lost. The
British captain undertook to straighten out matters on the island. He
consented to leave a small detachment of marines in the town to protect
Chase and the bank, and he promised the head men of the village, whom he
had brought aboard the ship, that no mercy would be shown if he or the
American captain was compelled to make a second visit in response to a
call for aid. To a man the islanders pledged fealty to the cause of
peace and justice: they shouted the names of Chase and Allah in the same
breath, and demanded of the latter that He preserve the former's beard
for all eternity.
The _King's Own_ was to convey the liberated heirs, their goods and
chattels, their servants and their penates (if any were left inviolate)
to Aden, whither the cruiser was bound. At that port a P. & O. steamer
would pick them up. One white man elected to stay on the island with
Hollingsworth Chase, who steadfastly refused to desert his post until
Sir John Brodney indicated that his mission was completed. That one man
was the wearer of the red jacket, the bearer of the King's commission in
Japat, the undaunted Mr. Bowles, won over from his desire to sit once
more on the banks of the Serpentine and to dine forever in the Old
Cheshire Cheese.
The Princess Genevra, the wistful light deepening hourly in her
blue-grey eyes, avoided being alone with the man whom she was leaving
behind. She had made up her mind to accept the fate inevitable; he had
reconciled himself to the ending of an impossible dream. There was
nothing more to say, except farewell. She may have bled in her soul for
him and for the happiness that was dying as the minutes crept on to the
hour of parting, but she carefully, deliberately concealed the wounds
from all those who stood by and questioned with their eyes.
She was a princess of Rapp-Thorberg!
The last day dawned. The sun smiled down upon them. The soft breeze of
the sea whispered the curse of destiny into their ears; it crooned the
song of heritage; it called her back to the fastnesses where love may
not venture in.
The château was in a state of upheaval; the exodus was beginning.
Servants and luggage had departed on their way to the dock. Palanquins
were waiting to carry the lords and ladies of the castle down to the
sea. The Princess waited until the last moment. She went to him. He was
standing apart from the rest, coldly indifferent to the pangs he was
suffering.
"I shall love you always," she said simply, giving him her hand.
"Always, Hollingsworth." Her eyes were wide and hopeless, her lips were
white.
He bowed his head. "May God give you all the happiness that I wish for
you," he said. "The End!"
She looked steadily into his eyes for a long time, searching his soul
for the hope that never dies. Then she gently withdrew her hands and
stood away from him, humbled in her own soul.
"Yes," she whispered. "Good-bye."
He straightened his shoulders and drew a deep breath through compressed
nostrils. "Good-bye! God bless you," was all that he said.
She left him standing there; the wall between them was too high, too
impregnable for even Love to storm.
Lady Deppingham came to him there a moment later. "I am sorry," she said
tenderly. "Is there no hope?"
"There is no hope--for _her_!" he said bitterly. "She was condemned too
long ago."
On the pier they said good-bye to him. He was laughing as gaily and as
blithely as if the world held no sorrows in all its mighty grasp.
"I'll look you up in London," he said to the Deppinghams. "Remember, the
real trial is yet to come. Good-bye, Browne. Good-bye, all! You _may_
come again another day!"
The launch slipped away from the pier. He and Bowles stood there, side
by side, pale-faced but smiling, waving their handkerchiefs. He felt
that Genevra was still looking into his eyes, even when the launch crept
up under the walls of the distant ship.
Slowly the great vessel got under way. The American cruiser was already
low on the horizon. There was a single shot from the _King's Own_: a
reverberating farewell!
Hollingsworth Chase turned away at last. There were tears in his eyes
and there were tears in those of Mr. Bowles.
"Bowles," said he, "it's a rotten shame they didn't think to say
good-bye to old man Skaggs. He's in the same grave with us."
[Illustration]