IN THE MEANTIME.
_Dr. Fabos Hears the News._
We rowed to the yacht without an instant’s delay and made known the good
news to the crew. Their cheers must certainly have been heard by half
the population of Villa do Porto. Quite convinced that the Jap would
fetch me out of the trap, Captain Larry had ordered a supper to be
prepared in the cabin, and hardly were we aboard when the corks were
popping and the hot meats served. It was touching to witness the good
fellows’ delight, expressed in twenty ways as seamen will—this man by
loud oaths, another by stupefied silence, a third by incoherent roaring,
a fourth by the exclamatory desire that he might not find salvation. A
man learns by misfortune by what measure of love his friends estimate
him. In my case I learned it upon the deck of the _White Wings_, and
have never forgotten the lesson.
Okyada, be sure, was the hero of the hour, and we had him down to the
cabin immediately, and there pledged him in our saki that comes to us by
way of Rheims. So much there was to tell upon both sides that neither
side knew where to begin. Strangely elated myself, and suffering from
the reaction of the nerves which sets a man walking upon air, I told
them very briefly that I had been trapped to the hills, not by
stratagem, but by force, and that if they had come an hour later, it
would have been to a sepulchre. On their side, the strident voice of
Timothy related twenty circumstances in a breath, and unfailingly began
in the middle of his story and concluded with the beginning.
“We presented ourselves to the authorities as ye ordered us to do, and
bad cess to them, they had no English at all to speak of. That was after
me friend, Larry, had hunted the innkeeper round the town for to keep
him humble in spirit. I went to the Consul’s man and says I, ‘’Tis an
Englishman I am upon the high seas though of another nation ashore, and
treat us civilly,’ says I, ‘or be damned if I don’t wipe the floor with
ye.’ ’Twas a mellow-faced party, and not to be made much of. The
gendarmes were no better. There was wan av them that had a likeness to
the Apostle John, but divil a word of a sane man’s gospel could I get
out of the fellow. The tale went that ye had gone to St. Michael’s, and
’twas by your own will that ye went. I made my compliments to the man
who said it, and told him he was a liar. Ean, me bhoy, your friend
Fordibras and his friend the Hebrew Jew have bought this island body and
soul. The very cable shakes hands with them. We had to go to St.
Michael’s to send a bit of a message at all.”
I interrupted him sharply.
“Did you send the cables, then, Timothy?”
“Would I be after not sending them? And me friend in his grave! They
went the day before yesterday. ’Twill be like new wine to Dr. Ean, says
I, dead or alive. So we sailed to St. Michael’s. Your fine fellow of a
Jap, he was alone twenty hours in the hills. Man, he has the eyes, the
ears, the feet of a serpent, and if he’s not a match for the Jew divil,
may I never drink champagne again.”
I assented a little gravely. His news meant very much to me. You must
know that, before I landed at Villa do Porto at all, I had entrusted to
Timothy and to Captain Larry certain messages which were to be cabled to
Europe in the gravest emergency only. These messages would tell Scotland
Yard; they would make known to the Government and to the Admiralty, and
even more important than these, to the great diamond houses, that which
I knew of the Jew, Val Imroth, and of his doings upon the high seas.
From this time forth the warships of three nations would be scouring the
ocean for such witnesses to my story as only the ocean could betray. If,
from one point of view, I welcomed the thought, a shadow already lay
upon my satisfaction. For if Imroth were arrested, and with him the man
known as General Fordibras, what, then, of Joan and her fortunes? These
men, I believed, were capable of any infamy. They might well sacrifice
the child to their desire for vengeance upon the man who had discovered
them. They might even bring her to the bar of a Court of Justice,
charged as an accomplice in these gigantic thefts they had committed so
many years. To this end they had put my stolen jewels about her neck,
and so baited their devilish trap from the earliest hours. I am
convinced now that their ultimate object was murder—when it could be
safely done, and when the whole of my story was known to them.
“You sent the cables two days ago, Timothy—and what then?” I asked him,
not wishing to make too much of it before them. “Have you had any reply
from Murray?”
Captain Larry intervened, pointing out that the cables had been sent
from St. Michael’s.
“We had to get the ship back, sir,” he said. “I was determined not to
leave this place without you if we waited here a twelvemonth. As for the
authorities, it was, as Mr. McShanus says, all blubber and fingers, and
the General’s money hot in their pockets. When we got back from St.
Michael’s, the little Jap came down to the harbour with his story. You
were up in the hills, he said, and there was a spring to be dammed to
get you out. He had done what he could, rolling the rocks into the water
with his own hands until he could hardly stand upright for fatigue, but
we sent a boat’s crew up last night and another to-night, and they
played bowls with the stones like the good men they are. I would have
gone down with your servant, but he’d the conceit to go alone. It’s
natural to such a man—no words, no fuss, just a coil of rope about his
waist and a couple of revolvers in his hands. He took the Scotch
boatswain because he says Scotchmen give nothing away—‘Honourable
Englishmen too much tongue,’ he says. I left it with him, because I
believe he spoke the straight truth. When he had gone up we posted a
couple of men on the shore here, and Mr. McShanus and I took our stand
at the cliff’s head. We hadn’t been there more than half an hour when
the first of the rifle-shots was fired. We saw a number of men on the
hill-side, and they had fired a rifle for a signal, as we supposed, to
others on the shore below. By-and-by we heard another rifle-shot, but
saw no one. A little while after that you came down.”
I told them that there were two men stone dead at the entrance to the
tunnel, and this astonished them greatly. We could only surmise that the
Jew’s sentinels had quarrelled amongst themselves, and that the second
of the shots had been fired by a wounded man as his comrade emerged from
the tunnel. Be it as it might, the hazardous nature of my escape became
plainer every moment. It needed but Larry’s intimation that a steamer
had left the island two hours ago to tell me that my life had been saved
almost as by a miracle.
“They have heard from Europe that the game is up, and are running to
another haven,” I said. “There was no longer anything to be got from me,
so out came their pistols. If they touch at any port north of Tangier,
the police will lay hands upon them. That is not likely. My own opinion
is that they are running for the great ship which we saw drifting out
there in mid-Atlantic. If it is correct, the game becomes exciting. We
can leave no message which can be safely delivered. Should the
Government send a cruiser, the officer of it will hardly set out for a
blind-man’s bluff. If we had coal enough ourselves——”
Captain Larry interrupted me with scarce an apology.
“That was one of my reasons for going to St. Michael’s, doctor. Mr.
McShanus will tell you that we were lucky. We filled our bunkers—at a
stiff price, but still we filled them. The yacht is ready to put to sea
this instant if you so desire it.”
His news both amazed and troubled me. I will not deny that I had been
much tempted to stand by the island until I had definite news of Joan
Fordibras and her safety. And now the clear call came to embark without
an instant’s delay upon a quest which I owed both to myself and to
humanity. Undoubtedly I believed that the Jew had taken refuge upon the
Diamond Ship. Behind that belief there stood the black fear that he
might have carried the child with him to be a hostage for himself and
his fellow rogues, and to stand between my justice and his punishment.
This I knew to be possible. And if it were so, God help her amid that
crew of cut-throats and rogues, hidden from justice upon the
unfrequented waters of the Southern Ocean.
But it might not be so, and pursuit of them might leave her to perils as
great, and insult as sure, in one or other of those criminal dens the
rogues had built for themselves in the cities of Europe. Surely was it a
memorable hour and manifest of destiny when it found the yacht ready to
put to sea without delay.
“Captain,” said I, “do the men understand that this is a voyage from
which none of us may return?”
“They so understand it, Dr. Fabos.”
“And do they consent willingly?”
“Turn back, and you are upon the brink of a mutiny.”
“Then let us go in God’s name,” said I; “now, this very hour, let us do
that duty to which we are called.”