Jeff could not remain thus for long. The tide is never still, but
dropping to its lowest level, immediately begins to rise again. There is
no motionless body in heaven and earth, and quiescence is intolerable to
the moving spirit of the universe. If it were true that his hopes could
not fall lower, they must certainly rise according to the changeless
laws of change. Three hours after nightfall marked the slack tide.
Jeff at first was not interested in the voice that he heard so dimly at
the head of the stone steps that led down to the corridor. Perhaps
Staritsa was coming to talk to him again, more likely it was merely the
conversation of some of the Governor’s guests walking in the gardens.
The language used was unknown to him; and at first the sound did not
arrest his brooding thoughts. But presently he started, and his eyes
opened wide.
He had heard a familiar voice. It was a girl’s voice, like a
low-murmuring stream and full of marvelous, gliding tones. He had often
heard it sound plaintive and appealing, but now, although it was
subdued, it was charged full of a bewitching coquetry such as he had
never imagined it could possess. At intervals a man answered her, rather
grimly but with rough familiarity and, unmistakable in his tone, a
certain gruff humor.
They spoke in a tongue he did not understand, and although he did not
discern a single familiar word, the larger import of the conversation
was not lost on him. The girl was employing all her feminine arts to win
some favor from his jailer. She was bewitching him with her voice,
charming him with the sheer music of her tones; and there was a
suggestiveness, an invitation all but veiled in her manner to which
Jeff, waiting in the darkness below, was keenly conscious. This girl
knew how to appeal to men. There was nothing coarse or obvious about her
coquetry; it was the kind which men regard as unconscious, and which is
therefore all the more flattering.
With the possible exception of the night of the Governor’s dance, he had
never heard her speak in this tone before; yet now that he heard her
distinctly he could not for an instant question her identity. This was
Molly, of course. Even in his moment of deepest despair he might have
known she would come.
Again she had proved to him her linguistic skill, in that she made
herself easily understood to the jailer. What was their common language
he did not know, but he assumed it was some coastwise jargon she had
picked up while traveling with her uncle. Evidently her purely feminine
language was likewise lucid to him, because she soon won her plea. His
tone indicated hesitating compliance with some request on the girl’s
part. Jeff’s guess was immediately confirmed by the rattle of a latch on
the prison door and the tramp of feet on the stone steps. Beams from a
lantern leaped about in the corridor, casting, running, chasing shadows
on the walls.
The yellow light showed two visitors beside the jailer. One was Molly,
of course—she who had never failed him. Jeff saw with mounting hope
that the other was the barrel-chested, unrefined old Yankee skipper,
Captain Skinner.
It was plain now that the girl’s charm had not been the only _sesame_.
She had had substantial aid in the shape of a prime sea otter skin which
the jailer now carried under his arm, the luster and beauty of which was
almost past imagining, as the lantern beams glided over the quivering,
shimmering fur. It was evidently an argument hard to answer.
“Impress it on him that piece of fur is a high price just for a farewell
word to Jeff,” Captain Skinner told the girl in English, as he paused in
front of the cell. “It’ll pay off his debt and get him back to Russia.”
The girl repeated Skinner’s message; then turning, talked through the
bars to the prisoner. Instead of speaking English, which Jeff had every
reason to expect she would do, she spoke in a tongue unknown to him,
evidently the same language with which she had addressed his keeper; and
at first he could conceive of no possible explanation for her strange
conduct. Yet in a moment he guessed the incredible truth. It was plain
now that this message-bearing was a ruse, and that she was repeating
unimportant tidings purely for the keeper’s benefit and to quiet his
suspicions. Evidently this midnight visit had another theme.
He nodded, pretending that he understood. The girl smiled, then turning,
spoke again to the jailer, and resting her white arm on the sleeve of
his uniform, drew him up beside her. Jeff’s eyes were not shadow-filled
now, and they glittered in the beams of the lantern that was now held
close to the bars. Obviously Molly had requested the jailer to throw his
light on the prisoner’s face—asking, probably, for a last clear view of
him before they parted—and urged by her moving touch, he had not been
able to refuse. Now on pretense of getting the light nearer, she
reached, thrilled him with the touch of her hand on his, and gently took
the lantern from him. Just for an instant she held it so that it shone
on Jeff’s face.
Then without warning, with a motion swift as bird’s flight, she dashed
the lantern against the bars of the cell.
Jeff was only aware of a swift trail of light, a sudden bright flicker
that showed the whole scene in minute detail, and then overwhelming
darkness.
In that final glimpse Jeff had discerned certain things of considerable
moment to him. He saw first the look of grotesque amazement on the
jailer’s face; evidently this lantern-breaking was not in the bargain he
made. In the same glance he saw that Captain Skinner’s wish had come
true, and he was getting into action at last. In the final gleam before
the darkness obliterated everything he saw the old skipper with
outspread arms, come diving through the air.
The darkness that dropped down was absolutely blinding; and only such
sound as reached him through the bars conveyed to Jeff what was taking
place in the corridor. He heard the distinct impact of Skinner’s head
against the jailer’s back, and the thud of their bodies on the floor.
These sounds were all but obscured by a queer gobbling sound, largely
unintelligible except that it was not unlike the utterances heard when
human breathing is summarily shut off. This was followed by other noises
that might have been made by struggling bodies rolling about the floor
and against the walls.
It was a strange sensation to Jeff to stand helpless behind the bars in
the presence of an unseen battle. This was the kind of thing that reacts
violently on human nerves. He was glad when the more heavy sounds
abruptly ceased, and the corridor lay in silence except for the subdued
whisper of troubled breathing. A moment later he heard the scratch of a
matchhead against the wall, followed by its soft explosion as it
ignited.
Molly had scratched that match, and she had not broken it in the
attempt. Neither did she have to scratch it twice, and so firm was her
hand that it burned with a candle’s steady flame. Thus the fact that her
face was stark white did not seem to argue scattered faculties.
Presumably oblivious to the scene about her she now lighted the lantern,
holding it high and touching the little torch to its wick.
The jailer was at present lying prone in the corridor; and his
usefulness had for the time being departed wholly. He was plainly
unconscious, and furthermore he was now being confined against such time
as he should waken. Captain Skinner had produced cords from his
pockets—indicating that this enterprise had been worked out in
considerable detail—and he not only bound the man’s hands and feet, but
also tied a handkerchief in his mouth. Skinner was a sailor, used to
handling ropes, so it seemed likely that the work was thoroughly and
satisfactorily done.
The skipper’s next act was to unhook the key ring from the fallen
jailer’s belt and unlock Jeff’s cell. “Get a jump on,” he cautioned the
late prisoner. They put out the light, took the steps of the corridor
two at a time, and glided through the darkened gardens. “We’ve got to
get back to the ship before that bloody guard-mount.”
Jeff did not understand fully, but he paused not at all to ask
questions. Still with his arms bound behind him he followed his friends
through the shadows and on to the deck of the ship. And now it became
apparent that this night’s activities had not in the least been confined
to the prison, and that the main business of the evening had occurred on
the ship itself.
As soon as Jeff stepped aboard he detected a pleasant rumble in the
bowels of the ship which had great meaning for him; and he noticed also
that the ship quivered slightly in its place at the quay. At first he
saw no signs of the guards, but on the way down to the engine room in
search of tools to break his bonds, he encountered all four of them
lying side by side in a passage. They moved their eyes toward him as he
walked by, but they did not speak. The practiced skill with which
Captain Skinner had pinioned the unfortunate jailer could not be
misunderstood.
As the mess boy filed at his wristlets, Jeff was told the larger aspects
of the night’s work. The ship had been put in running order in record
time, and it was plain that Captain Skinner had purposely deceived
Yanovisk when he had told him, the preceding afternoon, that repair work
would last a fortnight. In reality there had been very little to do; but
he had thus put the Russian off his guard. Now the giant of steam
thundered in the boilers. Led by Captain Skinner, the crew had procured
all the armament aboard, made a concerted attack on the guard, disarmed
them in silence, and stored them below for safe-keeping.
Even now, Captain Skinner was on the bridge, calling down commands to
his men. The gang was taken in, the screw churned the waters, and the
ship moved grandly out to sea.