IN LIBERTY’S DEFENCE.
A low, guttural mutter of distant thunder shuddered through the air as
Harrington rushed into the night, and turning at the head of the street,
he saw the knotted snakes of the lightning flash and writhe, and vanish,
inextricable, on the slow-heaving wall of heavy thunder-cloud that filled
the western sky. Black poisonous vapors, the flying couriers of the
coming tempest, fled swiftly up the zenith, and half obscured the livid
and tottering moon; and projected in the yet unclouded purple east before
him, redly glimmered the large few stars. He did not pause, but strode
rapidly on, while the fitful gusts of the rising wind swept the dim,
deserted streets into storms of dust around him. It was a wild night, and
heaven and earth seemed to reel in the gathering darkness; but his soul
was unshaken, and he was strong to die.
The moon was hid before he had reached Beacon street, and a solid
blackness, lit only at intervals by wild, bright flashes of still distant
lightning, filled the lampless streets. Behind him, as he sped on, the
low ominous thunder shuddered through the black vast, and the dust swept
around him in rustling storms through the darkness. He met no one—every
person was safely housed, and even the watchmen had crept away into
sheltered nooks from the tempest.
A melancholy and funereal sound of bells tolled vaguely through the thick
air, striking the midnight hour, as he reached the head of State street.
The streaming gusts had lulled, and in dead silence, broken only by the
hollow tramp of his quick footfalls, and by an occasional muffled shudder
of rolling thunder, he sped over the deserted pavement, while ever and
anon the sudden blue of the lightning lit for a moment the dark bulks
of the looming buildings, and gleamed ghastfully on their multitude of
gilded signs to vanish into sightless darkness.
Soon he reached the wharf, and saw beyond the dim wilderness of masts
and yards, far out at sea, under the heavy canopy of cloud, a broad
half-sphere of clear purple sky with the moonlit level of the distant
ocean shining in lustrous silver beneath it. Again the lightning
quivered, bluely irradiating for an instant the dark vault into livid
violet, and as it vanished, and the darkness closed, a long, staggering
roll of heavy thunder resounded above him, and a few large drops of rain
fell.
Breaking into a run, he sped along the pier, and presently saw a vague
figure standing and looking toward him. It was Captain Fisher, dressed
in an oil-skin coat and tarpaulin, on which the sprinkling rain was
pattering.
“Here I am,” whispered Harrington. “Have they arrived?”
“Yes,” returned the Captain in a low voice. “We’re all here.”
“In then, and away at once,” returned Harrington, rushing along the pier
in advance of him to the boat.
They came upon it presently, and in a faint shimmer of blue lightning
Harrington saw Wentworth and Bagasse standing below him in the little
vessel. Letting himself down from the pier, he dropped lightly into it,
followed by the Captain.
“By Jove!” murmured Wentworth, with a low laugh, while the Captain was
unhampering the sails, “this is a bad night for our work.”
“No, it’s a good night,” whispered Harrington, glancing up at the hulls
of the two vessels between which the boat lay, to be sure that no one
was listening. “The storm is a real godsend, for it will be sure to drive
those fellows in doors, and I hope every man of them.”
“Ah, ze dam rain,” growled Bagasse. “She will wet our jacket for us.”
Harrington turned away, cast off the painter, and the boat moved out a
little way from her moorings.
“How’ll you have her, John?” whispered the Captain, referring to the
arrangement of the sails.
“There’ll be a streaming wind presently,” replied Harrington, with a
glance at the sky. “We’d better have two reefs in the mainsail and one in
the jib. Then she’ll drive.”
The Captain and Wentworth seized the halyards, and up went the sails.
Harrington took the tiller, and while they busied themselves at the
reefing nettles, the boat moved silently through the black water between
the long vista made by the dark hulls of the vessels on either side.
The wind was in the lull preceding the tempest, but it was sufficient
to belly the sail, and push them with silent swiftness before it. Large
drops of rain plashed on the little vessel and in the dark water as
they went on. Presently, Bagasse, with a Frenchman’s aversion to wet,
went forward muttering, and crept into the cuddy. The Captain sat on
the thwart with the mainsheet in his hand, and Wentworth beside him.
Harrington, with one hand on the tiller, was silently brooding on the
ghostly effect of the dark hulls and piers on either side, which made the
place seem like the black wharves of Acheron.
Silently, amidst the soft plashing of the sprinkling rain, they glided
out into the salt smell of the open harbor, and as the blue lightning
shook over the broad vault and dark sea, they saw a boat with several
rowers shoot across their bows at a distance of about thirty yards. It
was the harbor police, and their boat at once hove to.
“Hallo there,” roared a rough voice over the waters—“who’s that, and
where are you bound such a night as this?”
“It’s me, Belcher,” shouted the Captain. “Eldad Fisher and the Polly Ann.
Goin’ down on business.”
The Polly Ann glided past the police boat as he spoke.
“All right,” returned Belcher, with a laugh. “Great night though to go on
business, ’Dad. Row, men.”
The oars at once fell with a roll in the rullocks, as the Captain would
have phrased it, and the police boat shot away.
Nothing was said in the Polly Ann, and she moved on with a steady motion,
the drawing wind pulling her bulging sail. The Captain had lit his short
pipe, and had turned with his face to the west, watching for the breeze.
Harrington sat in silence solemnly brooding on the strange scene around
him. Overhead a rack of solid darkness; underneath the inky swells of
the wide sea, like a sea of weltering shadow, which broke as the boat
clove its silent way into a flow of soft gloomy phosphorescent fire from
her prow and in her wake; before him the uncouth crouching figure of the
Captain, with the red glow of his pipe momently lighting his cheek in
little flashes, and giving his face the grim, leathern look of some weird
Charon piloting them over the sullen lake of Death; and beyond in the
far distance, below the sombre canopy, that shape of clear sky, smaller
now, with the silver level of the sea beneath it, calm and lustrous as
the ocean of Eternity. A sense of sombre sweetness melted into the young
man’s heart, as he gazed over the solemn and awful flood of shadow to
that melancholy glory far away. He thought of that last hour with her;
of their proud and exulting parting; he thought of her standing now,
graceful and radiant as a Greek goddess, and noble in her widowhood,
dreaming of him with the mellow light of the holy room around her, while
he drifted on over the sullen water toward that bright line of jasper,
like one drifting from eternal Night to the ocean of eternal Day.
A moment, and the heavy canopy closed down over the clear horizon, and
all was impenetrable darkness. The wind freshened with a long, mysterious
sigh, the sails swelled and strained, and the boat began to rush with
the water gurgling and brattling around her bows, and flowing swiftly
past her sides and from her stern in a brighter gloom of phosphorescent
fire. Except that strange senescent light, and the red glow of the
revolving beacon far down the harbor, which every little while glared in
the darkness like a sombre eye, there was no glimmer on all the black
expanse under the vast and hollow vault of sooty cloud.
Suddenly, while the broad blue shuttle of the lightning shook over the
wild and livid sea, the solid darkness of the rack split with a crash in
a long, bright jagged crack of fire, and closed again with a tremendous
trampling roar. At once through the blackness, the headlong torrent
dropped hissing and seething on the water, the heavy wind streamed
staggering down, shook the craft, stopped and reeled, rose howling in
a mighty forward gale, and amidst the cataract rushing of the rain,
the heeling boat tore like a fury through the level sea with the spray
flying over her bows, and the wash rippling in at her gunnel. On she
fled, leaning down with her bulging sails strained as though they would
burst from the bolt-ropes, the water swishing swiftly past her side and
rushing from her stern in phosphorescent gloom, the rain plashing in
clattering riot on her planks and canvas, and the whole inky flood beaten
into myriad-millioned jets of springing flame around her. Again shook the
broad blue shuttle of the lightning, illuminating the darkness for an
instant with a ghastly bloom, and showing the wild shapes of the clouds,
and again through the following blackness burst the roar of the tumbling
thunder, dying away in the sweeping rush of the headlong wind, and the
voluminous plash and clatter of the falling torrent. Not a word was
spoken on board the flying boat. The Captain sat grimly holding the tail
of the mainsheet, ready to let fly at a moment’s warning; and Wentworth,
with a tin-pail in his hands, baled out the water as fast as it came in,
while Harrington, bare-headed, for he had taken off his felt-hat to wrap
around his pistol that it might be kept dry, and tucked both into his
bosom, sat grasping the tiller, drenched, like every one on board, save
the mackintoshed Captain and Bagasse, to the skin, his soul throbbing
with stern glory in the splendid terrors of the storm. So, amidst
wind and rain and darkness, and the incessant bursts of lightnings,
rosy-purple now, and the tumbling roll of thunder, the boat held her
flying course through seething flood and showering spray.
At the headlong velocity with which she flew, with the wind right abaft
and a level sea beneath her hull, it could not take her long to reach the
port to which the hand of Harrington steered her. It was perhaps hardly
half an hour before, in a sheeting flood of rose and purple lightning, he
saw the large, humpy mass of the island loom up from the sea before him.
The darkness fell, followed by the thunder, and the boat sped on. Soon
came another sheet of lightning, and this time, much nearer the island
now, he saw the house upon it, and caught a glimpse of two boats lying
at the wharf on the southern side of the shore. The rain had begun to
slacken, and the wind to abate its violence. He waited a moment till the
thunder had rolled away, and then called the Captain to him.
“Captain,” said he, “settle away the sails, call Bagasse, and out with
the oars. I am going to run the boat to the northwestern side of the
island, out of sight of the fellow we’re after.”
The captain sprang away, cast off the main-sheet, while Wentworth seized
the jib, and amidst the clank and rattle of hoops and halyards, the sails
were settled and clewed, and the boat swung masterless upon the brine.
Bagasse came creeping out of the cuddy at the call of Wentworth, and
Harrington securing the tiller rose and came forward.
“Hah!” said the Frenchman, hoarsely, “I haf my jacket dry! Br-r-r! It is
ze night of ze old devail wis his tonnerre and light and rain watair.”
And with a shrug, he looked out on the black expanse around him, and held
out his hand to see how much rain was falling.
“The rain is nearly over,” said Harrington, observing his motion, as he
stooped to take up an oar. “Can you row, Bagasse?”
“Oh, yes; I row vair fine,” returned the fencing-master, taking up
another, and seating himself.
They all took their places, Harrington at the stroke-oar, the blades fell
into the water, and the boat turned and shot to the northwestern side of
the island. A few minutes’ rowing brought them to the shore, and at the
word of command they rested, backing water, and keeping within about ten
yards’ distance from the strand. At that moment the lightning blazed,
showing them the little beach covered with a mass of huge pebbles, and
the steep acclivity just beyond which led to the grassy summit of the
island.
A few moments’ discussion ensued, Harrington having suggested that
perhaps it would be better to make the attack by rowing up to the boat of
the kidnappers, instead of going across the island as he had intended.
Presently it was decided to carry out the original plan, as if the guard
saw a boat approaching, he might summon his fellows, and thus necessitate
a conflict.
“Now, friends, attention,” said Harrington. “Captain, take my oar.”
The Captain who sat by his side with one oar, took the other, and
Harrington stepping past the other two, turned and faced them all.
“Listen,” said he. “I am now going on shore to reconnoitre, which can
be best done by one person. If there is only one man in the boat, I can
easily handle him. If there are more, I will return and we will all go
up together; for though I am loth to imperil your lives, we must not put
success at hazard. Stay here, and wait for me. On no account leave the
boat, till I come to you. Remember now, for if you come on shore when I
have left you, it may cost me my life. Bagasse, I trust you, old soldier,
to see that I am obeyed.”
He uttered the last sentence in French, that Bagasse might not mistake
him.
“It shall be so, my captain, since you command it,” returned the
Frenchman, in the same language.
“Good,” said Harrington. “Now row me in.”
They bent to the oars in silence, and with one stroke the boat shot in
five yards, and with a vigorous leap from the prow, Harrington sprang
the other five, landed safely, and ran swiftly up the acclivity. The
lightning blazed as he reached the summit, and they saw him sink down.
The next instant the darkness fell with a peal of thunder, and he had
vanished. So thick was the night, that he could not be seen after the
lightning failed.
Left to himself, Harrington, with his body bent low, ran swiftly over
the wet, coarse grass, past the dark bulk of the silent house, in the
outbuilding of which a dim lamp glimmered, and toward the wooden pier.
The lightning blazed rosy-purple as he was midway, and fearful of being
seen, he dropped prone. The next instant he rose in darkness, and ran on.
Presently he approached the pier, and dropping on his hands and knees,
he crept down to it, and vaguely saw the two boats, schooner-rigged, and
both secured to the wharf at the foot of a short ladder running down to
the water. Sinking still lower, he crept to the edge of the wharf, lay
flat, and gazed at the boats, through the dense darkness, with straining
eyes. In a moment the lightning flashed again, and he saw a single man
standing in one of the vessels, looking out to sea, with his back to him,
and his hands in the pockets of a sou’wester. At a glance, Harrington
knew, by the look of his figure, that he was a sailor, and overjoyed that
he had but one to deal with, he instantly rose, drew his pistol from his
breast, put on his hat, and with a noiseless step glided down the pier to
the ladder.
The man turned just as he was within two or three yards of it, and saw
him.
“Oh, it’s one o’ ye at last,” he growled, mistaking him for a comrade.
“Egod, it’s about time for some o’ ye to bear a hand in this dog’s watch
I’ve had of it.”
Harrington’s answer was to swing himself from the top of the ladder into
the boat, which rocked beneath him. At that instant the lightning shook
out in vivid rose and purple, illuminating his stern bearded face and
stalwart form, and the man, burly fellow though he was, started violently.
“Who are you? What d’ye want here?” he demanded.
“I want that negro in the cuddy. Hurry!” said Harrington, abruptly.
The man clapped his hand to his waist for his knife. Harrington clutched
his throat, and held the pistol to his temple.
“Take your hand from that knife or I’ll shoot you,” he said, sternly.
Aghast at the terrible gripe on his throat, and the touch of the cold
pistol-barrel on his brow, the man let his hand drop, and would have sunk
upon his knees only that Harrington upheld him.
“Mercy!” he gasped.
“Stand up,” said Harrington, releasing him.
The man stood up with shaking knees, trembling with terror.
“Go forward and take that negro from the cuddy,” ordered Harrington.
The man paused an instant, then went forward, followed by Harrington, and
sprang for the ladder. But the long arm clutched him by the throat, and
again the terrified wretch felt the pistol-barrel on his brow.
“Attempt that again and you die,” said Harrington. “Now take out the
negro. Quick!”
Shaking with affright, the man stooped, opened the cuddy doors, and
dragged out Antony, feet bound together, and arms lashed above the elbows
to his side.
“Oh, Marster Harrington,” cried the delighted fugitive; “oh, I knowed you
was comin’ right along. Never guv it up, Marster Harrington.”
“Silence, Antony,” said his savior. “Take your knife and cut those
cords,” he added, to the other.
The man instantly obeyed, and the fugitive scrambled to his feet. The
lightning blazed, and showed his lank figure, and his skull-like face
wildly lighted with joy.
“Put up your knife, and sit down in the bottom of the boat where you
are,” said Harrington to the man.
The man obeyed without a moment’s hesitation. He was almost frightened
out of his wits by this terrible armed apparition.
“Now, Antony, can you walk?” asked Harrington.
“Yes, Marster; fus’rate,” returned the fugitive, with a ghostly caper,
which proved that the ropes on his ankles, and his cramped position in
the cuddy, had not materially impaired his circulation.
“Very well,” replied Harrington. “Now go up that ladder, and wait on the
wharf till I come to you.”
The man groaned, but Antony, with a chuckle, instantly grasped the steps,
crept up the ladder, and stood on the pier.
“Now,” said Harrington, turning to the squatting wretch, “you follow him.”
The man rose, trembling, and began to ascend, but he had only gone three
steps when he felt the vice-like hand gripe his leg.
“Turn round and sit down on the ladder,” said Harrington, standing on the
deck of the cuddy.
The man obeyed, and in the flash of purple lightning that came at that
instant, sat livid, with glaring eyes, palsied with terror.
Harrington stuck his pistol between the buttoned lapels of his coat,
clutched the man’s thigh with one hand, thus pinning him to the seat, and
held out the other hand to him.
“Give me your knife,” he said, imperatively.
“You’re not going to murder me,” gasped the sailor.
“No,” said Harrington, curtly.
The man panted hard, and gave him the knife. Still holding him by the
thigh, Harrington grasped the ladder with the hand in which he held the
knife, put one foot on the lower step, drew the boat round broadside to
with the other, and bore heavily on the gunnel.
“What are ye doin’?” stammered the sailor. “She’s takin’ in water with
your bearin’ on her.”
“I am capsizing your boat so that you can’t follow me,” coolly replied
Harrington, amidst the gurgling rush of the water with which the boat was
nearly full.
The man stared, breathing hard and trembling. Presently the boat toppled
softly and slowly over and her masts splashed on the water. Harrington
at once cut the rope which secured her, and she began to recede on the
weltering swells.
Changing his position, Harrington put out his foot and drawing the other
boat to him, began to press on the gunnel.
“You’re not goin’ to capsize that boat, too,” gasped the man.
Harrington did not answer, but bore down heavily, and the boat filled and
toppled down with a splash. As it went over, the man gave a smothered
yell, frantically dashed both hands on his tarpaulin, and with a sudden
desperate effort tore himself free from the gripe which held him,
scrambled up the ladder, and with loud shouts ran madly for the house.
Harrington nearly fell from his hold into the water, and in the endeavor
to save himself, his pistol dropped from the lappel and was gone.
Recovering, he cut the rope which secured the capsized boat to the pier,
and in his haste thoughtlessly flinging away the knife, sprang up the
ladder.
“Quick Antony,” he cried, “fly, for they’ll be after us.”
They rushed together up the pier, and fled past the house, just as
the entire gang poured from the outbuilding. At that moment the vivid
lightning blazed broad, and the wild yells and the sudden furious
thudding of feet behind them told them that they were seen.
“Run, Antony, run for your life!” cried Harrington.
Spurred by his fear of being retaken, the fugitive ran by Harrington’s
side as fast as he did. Had he fallen behind, the young man would
instantly have caught him up, and ran with him, but he did not. Together
they reached the steep sloping edge of the island and plunged furiously
down. But to the sudden horror of Harrington, Antony, impelled by some
strange confusion of fear, instead of heading down with him to the left
toward the boat, swerved in his descent obliquely away to the right and
sped at a frantic pace in that direction toward the water. It was a
moment before Harrington could stop in his headlong velocity, wheel, and
rush after him, and in that moment Antony got the start of him at least
thirty yards, and ran like a race-horse. Flying after him, Harrington
heard the feet of the pursuers tearing down the slope, and close behind.
Suddenly down went Antony on the large pebbles close to the edge of the
water. The next instant Harrington reached him, turned, and through the
darkness saw his enemies coming fast, and not more than forty yards
distant. With one rapid glance to the right, he looked through the thick
darkness for the boat, saw it not, and knew that the battle was now with
him, and with him alone.
“Lie still, Antony; don’t move,” he cried, stepping close to the prone
body and standing with his back to the sea, like a lion at bay.
They were coming. Had it been, not on those loose stones, or in the
night, but in broad daylight or on a fair field, not those seven, no,
nor twice their number, could have stood unvanquished before that agile
vigor, that dauntless spirit of assault, that roused and terrible
magnetic front of war. For this was one of those rare men whose presence
in a battle is worth a thousand brands, and who carry death in their arm,
and victory in their eye. This was the Cid Rodrigo Diaz, at the wind of
whose sword-sweep ranks fled and fell. This was Roland, storm of dread
with the pine-branch in his grasp among the cloven swarms at Ronceval.
This was Tancred, arm of fate among a thousand foes at Dosylæum. This
was Gaston when with forty knights at his back he drove before him one
hundred thousand weaponed Jacqueric. All that ever Paladin did in blazing
powess was in him to do. But there, on the brink of the salt flood,
unarmed, in the murk night, on the rough ground, with seven knived hands
to conquer—oh, hopeless hour of doom and ruin!—oh, forlorn death-grapple
of the brave!
They came in a body—they spread from right to left in an arc of
murder—they poised for the simultaneous rush—he swayed back for the
cleaving spring. But at that instant, with a tremendous staggering clap
of thunder, which rent the sky with fifty glittering cracks of fire, and
stunned them all, the whole heaven, deep and vast and broad, and earth
and air and sea, upburst in a long and lingering rosy flood of living
flame. In that instant, as in a magic dream, he saw the boat far down the
beach, rise with a peal of cries and a silent lift of oars, and shoot
in silence to the shore—he saw the great sea sink and swell in vast and
weltering lustrous shadow—he saw the seven assassins standing crouched
with gleaming knives around him—he saw the deep heavens open up in rosy
light to God. The next instant the darkness fell like the shutting of an
eye; a surge of strength rushed like the blood of the whole race to his
heart—and with a terrific bound he fell upon his foes.
Brief and awful was that battle. At the first leap he went through them
like a thunderbolt, and two went down crashing senseless on the pebbles.
Turning with a flying spring, he charged them as they huddled in a fierce
knot of five, and dead thumped the sluff of the French kick, and the
thud of the English blow. It was not more than a quarter of a minute
in which he raged among their astounded junto, but in that quarter of
a minute something like a sense that this was a statue of solid iron,
preternaturally endowed with animate life, and flying among them with
limbs of agile destruction, burst through their terrified souls. Down
they went in swift succession, kicked and dashed and whirled hither and
thither in crashing overthrow, and not a man rose more than to crawl,
after he once fell. The last of the seven was a brawny wretch, who made a
headlong rush and found no man in the place where there was one a second
before, but instead two crushing hands that jarred the marrow in his
bones as they fell from behind around his bull neck, and swung him off
his feet to dash him howling a dozen paces distant on the rocky strand.
Not more than a quarter of a minute, and at the tail of it came Bagasse
with cries of fury, and the leaps of a Zouave, brandishing his cavalry
sabre; and fast behind him Wentworth, springing like a panther, with a
pistol in each hand; and behind him the Captain, with his loaden stave.
But the field was won! Groans and curses of anguish resounding from it
in all directions. One bruised assassin feebly tottering away from it
through the darkness; three more weakly crawling over the stones on their
hands and knees; and the other three lying half senseless where the
mighty limbs of Harrington had hurled them.
Yes, the field was won, but after the battle there was going to be
massacre. For the fierce Celtic blood of Bagasse was up, and standing
only for an instant, he swung up his sabre and dashed with a yell upon a
wretch who was essaying to rise. Harrington sprang and caught him by the
wrist.
“No, Bagasse,” he cried. “Spare them. They are hurt enough already.”
Bagasse stood for an instant, panting, then turned sullenly away.
At that moment the Captain, who had stood looking in blank stupefaction
on the prostrate bodies, burst into screams of eldritch merriment,
brandishing his stave, and capering like mad.
Wentworth, meanwhile, was hugging the panting Harrington, almost wild
with exulting joy.
“By all the gods!” he shouted, bursting away and roaring with laughter,
“was there ever the like of this! Seven to one, and he flogs the life out
of them! Oh, Froissart, where are you! Sieur Jehan Froissart, why did you
die! Come back, you old clerk of chivalry, and write it down! Seven to
one, and there they lie!” And Wentworth bent himself double in a fresh
convulsion of merriment.
“He fit ’em,” hooted the Captain, prancing deliriously, “he fit ’em
all. Glory hallelujah, world without end, amen.” And with a halloo, he
subsided, and walked from body to body, bending curiously over each, and
dropping cheerful suggestions to the sufferers, as to the sort of medical
treatment they would better employ.
“Bagasse,” panted Harrington, grasping the Frenchman’s hand, “I owe you
this victory. Your training stood me in good stead with these fellows.”
“Ah, Missr Harrington,” returned Bagasse, tapping him on the chest with
the hilt of the sabre, “you do me mush credit. Zat was done vair brown.”
“I’ll bet it was,” corroborated Wentworth. “They’ll remember it to
their graves, the cowardly ruffians. Had they knives? They had, eh?” he
continued, as Harrington bent his head in assent. “But why didn’t you
shoot them?”
“I lost my pistol,” replied Harrington, breathing hard.
“And fought them bare-handed,” said Wentworth. “You infernal dastards,”
he roared, turning toward the crawling wretches, “you deserve to be
slaughtered, every hound of you. Yes, crawl off, you jackals of slavery.
Curse you! I hate you.”
“Richard, Richard,” said Harrington, feebly, “don’t talk so. It’s enough
to have half-killed the poor fellows, without abusing them. Heaven knows
I wouldn’t have harmed them if it hadn’t been necessary. But let us not
stain victory with insulting them in their misery.”
“Insulting them!” snapped Wentworth. “Come, I like that. Insulting
kidnappers! By Jove, it’s not possible! Suppose they had killed you. I
swear, Harrington, it was the merest chance that we came—though, to be
sure, our coming was coming too late. We heard the running and shouting,
and didn’t dare to leave the boat till we knew what it meant, and where
you were. But if I’d only heard your pistol, I tell you I’d have been on
shore, orders or no orders. Then the next thing, we saw you in the flash,
with the scoundrels around you, and we put for the spot at once. The
infernal ruffians!”
“Come, come,” murmured Harrington, ending this hasty colloquy, which
had not occupied more than three or four minutes, “let’s be off. I am
breathed a little, and I feel exhausted, and want to lie down.”
“But where’s Antony?” said Wentworth.
“Oh, here he is,” replied Harrington, turning to the fugitive, who in
blind obedience to his unrevoked command, still lay upon the stones near
the sea. “Get up, Antony. You’re safe forever, I hope, poor fellow.”
The fugitive instantly rose, and followed the little party over the
shingle, delightedly sniffing in the salt air.
“There’s no possibility of those wretches following us in the condition
they’re in, and that’s a comfort,” said Wentworth.
“None, whatever,” replied Harrington, in an exhausted voice. “Besides, I
capsized all the boats on the island.”
“By Jupiter!” exclaimed Wentworth. “Bagasse—Captain—do you hear that?
He has capsized all the boats on the island! Oh, well, there’s no use
in saying another word, for of all the trumps in this world you’re the
trumpiest, Harrington!”
Bagasse and the Captain joined in with excited questions as to how he
did it, and Harrington gave them a hasty account of the whole procedure
as they went together along the shingle. Soon amidst great hilarity they
reached the Polly Ann, lying bound to the rocks by a grapnel, which the
Captain had flung as he rushed from her to Harrington’s rescue. Antony
got in first and squatted down forward on the deck of the cuddy, then the
others, and last Harrington, who went aft to the tiller and sat down. For
a minute all was activity, then amidst the clank and rattle of hoops and
halyards up went the mainsail and jib, the reefing nettles were unclewed,
the canvas filled languidly, and the boat moved away from the shore with
a faint brattle over the dark, lifting swells.