"You, Ubbo!"
"Yes, suh, Marster Carpt'n." It was a short, very stout, and very black
negro who stood at attention before Captain Blaise.
"Where's your master?"
"Waitin', Carpt'n, suh. He sick, suh, but not so he die, he say, suh."
"And Miss Shiela?"
"Missy Shiela at de Governor's, suh. An' de missy know you come too,
suh. I been watchin', suh, for long time. I see de ship, suh, an' I know
you come over de bar, suh, to-night. An' I tell de marster, suh. An'
marster waitin', an' Missy Shiela waitin', Marster Carpt'n, to take um
away--to take um home, suh. He very sick, suh."
"After us, Ubbo."
We raced to where was the long-boat, screened under a bank. From her
crew we took four good men and followed Ubbo.
The roof of a low building loomed above the jungle growth. Ubbo uttered
a warning sound. We could hear the regular tread and presently a form
showed around the corner of the house. It was a negro in uniform with a
musket held carelessly over his shoulder.
Captain Blaise whispered to his men: "When he comes around again get
him. No noise. Choke him first." The four sailors leaped together when
next he appeared. In an instant almost it was done. They laid him on the
ground, threw his musket into the brush, and we entered the building.
On a cot beside an open window, with a reading-lamp at his head, lay a
tall man.
"Still alive, Gad," called Captain Blaise cheerily.
"Still alive, Blaise, and I reckon you did a neat job on that nigger
guard, for all I heard was a little gurgling. Yes, still alive. Still
alive, Blaise, thanks to Shiela's discrimination in the selection of the
Governor's nourishing cordials, and thanks no less to my boy Ubbo's
sleepless habits. But, old friend, you're none too soon. And don't waste
any time in getting Shiela. She is still at the Governor's. I bade her
stay there so they would not suspect. She has my sabre and duelling
pistols with her, by the way. And she'll bear a hand with them, if need
be. But who is this? Oh, this is Guy? I'm glad to know you, Guy."
A wreck of a tall, slender, handsome man, such a man he may have been in
his prime as was Captain Blaise, but older. A sporting, reckless sort he
may have been, but a man of manner and blood. Two of the crew bore him
out, though one would have sufficed. "Ubbo will show you where the
strong-box is, Blaise," he called on being borne off; and Ubbo led us
through the thick jungle to where, under a rock over which a little
water-fall played, a massive iron chest was buried. It took two stout
men of the crew to handle it.
We saw Mr. Cunningham and the strong-box safely to the long-boat and
then, with Ubbo, took station behind a hedge which bordered the
Governor's grounds. There was much going on there--music and people
strolling on the lawn. Captain Blaise pointed out the Governor to me,
and his son, and bade me notice also fifteen or twenty barefooted but
armed and uniformed negroes clustered between two rows of palms on the
farther side of the lawn.
"We'll wait here, with the hedge to protect us," said Captain Blaise,
and motioned to Ubbo. "Tell Miss Shiela that all's ready."
The negro slipped away. A short minute or so and Captain Blaise, who had
been peering like a man on watch on a bad night, gripped me nervously.
"Look, there she is!"
I looked. Never again would I have to be told to look. She was framed in
a low window off the veranda. The Governor's son was now close behind
her. Ubbo was standing on the lawn over near the musicians. We crept
nearer. Turning, as if accidentally, she saw him and called to him. "How
is your master, Ubbo, to-night?"
"Marster tell me to say he more happy to-night, Missy."
"Told you to say, Ubbo?"
"Yes, Missy, marster tell me to say."
"That's the signal, that sentence," whispered Captain Blaise.
"That's good. You can go, Ubbo." She smiled and chatted with the
Governor's son then.
"She can't have interpreted the message aright," I panted.
"Because she did not leap into the air? Trust her--she's Gadsden
Cunningham's, her own father's daughter."
In a few minutes she turned from the Governor's son to his father, from
him to her ladyship, and from her without haste to some less
distinguished member, and then in the most casual way in the world she
strolled inside and from our sight.
Hardly a minute later the signal came: a firefly's flash five times
together and three times repeated from the darkened upper story.
Ubbo was with us when the signal came. "Marster Carpt'n," he whispered,
and handed him a sabre and a pair of duelling pistols. "Missy send
um--an' dey loaded, both um, suh."
Captain Blaise, taking the sabre and passing me the pistols, ordered
Ubbo to show the way.
We skirted the grounds and entered by a rear gate a garden where were
all sorts of low-growing trees and high-growing shrubs to screen us as
we drew near the rear veranda. I saw the white gown with the dark blue
sash shining out from the shrubbery, and then the white and blue drew
back. I would have leaped out on the path to follow, but a restraining
hand was on my arm. "Wait, wait!" warned Captain Blaise.
It was the Governor and his son hurrying around the corner of the
veranda. "I do not believe it," the Governor was saying. "I cannot
credit it. That could not have been his ship which was reported still
off the bar at dark--a clumsy galliot of a craft she was described; and
besides, he would not dare, a whole squadron cruising within an hour's
sail."
"But he is gone, and we found the guard was overpowered. He does not
even know how it happened, and his ship is even now moored in the
lagoon, and he himself was with Hassan less than an hour ago. Hassan
will say no more until he gets his advance money in the morning. But if
we move now, he is caught like a rat in a trap. Why not send word to the
squadron? The wind is from the sea again and increasing, and he cannot
now recross the bar. If we could get hold of Cunningham's nigger, he'll
know something. Perhaps we can make him tell. I've sent Charlotte to
watch her." He ran to the corner of the veranda. "O Ubbo! Where in the
devil is he? O Ubbo! Only a few minutes ago he was talking to her out
front. Ubbo! O Ubbo!"
A mulatto girl came hurrying from within the house. "The American missy,
I cannot find her. She not in her room, suh."
"What!" The fat old potentate almost jumped into the air.
But the son kept his head. "Not in her room, Charlotte? And Ubbo gone,
too? Had I not better make the guard ready, sir?"
"Yes, yes; have the guard fall in."
They rushed around the corner of the veranda and we leaped into the
lighted path. She, too, stepped out into the light. "Captain Blaise, oh,
Captain Blaise, you don't know what courage you give us."
"Miss Shiela, you don't know what joy you give us.
"Still the same--but--but who is this?" she cried out like a surprised
child. And then she seemed to know without being told, for "Oh-h, of
course, this is Guy," she said, and smiled as if she had an hour to
smile in, and gave me both hands.
"Come," said Captain Blaise abruptly. And down the rear path we hurried,
and, circling the garden, entered the hedged path to the lagoon bank.
All went well until we had to pass the walk which crossed our path from
the front lawn. Here the light of a row of hanging lanterns fell on us.
And they saw us, the Governor and his son and the assembled guards, and
came charging down across the lawn after us. But only two abreast could
they come down the path.
"The boat is now but a hundred yards away, Miss Shiela," said Captain
Blaise. "Guy will take you there. Go you, too, Ubbo." I took her hand
and we raced to the bank, where I handed her to a place beside her
father in the boat.
"And what are you going to do now?" she asked.
"I? Why, I must go back to help Captain Blaise."
"Oh, of course. But hurry back. And be careful, won't you?"
I ran up the path and was soon at his elbow. The column was crowding
down the path, and so soon after coming from the bright light, possibly
they could not see clearly when he swung. However it was, one groaned
and slid down. He cut again and the head of the column stopped dead.
"What's wrong?" came a voice, the Governor's. "What are you stopping
for?"
"Won't you step this way and find out?" jeered Captain Blaise.
"What! only one man?"
The hedge lining the path was waist high, trimmed flat and wide, but I
never suspected what was coming until I saw the flash and felt the ting
of the bullet on my cheek. "Drop!" warned Captain Blaise, but I had no
mind to drop. I held one of Mr. Cunningham's duelling pistols ready for
the next shot. I saw it and fired, to the right of and just above the
flash. I had half seen how he had rested his elbow on the hedge and
carried his head to one side when he fired that first shot. There was
the crash of a body through the hedge. And then a silence.
"You got him, I think," said Captain Blaise.
I had been spun half around by the shock of something or other, and now
I was once more facing the path squarely, and a thought of those red and
blue and gold uniforms jammed in there gave me an idea. "Ready, men!" I
called out. "Steady! Aim!--and be sure you fire low." No more than that,
when in the Governor's guard there was the wildest scrambling and
trampling to get to the rear.
And we left them falling rearward over each other and ran for the
landing. The men were waiting on their oars. We leaped in, and Captain
Blaise took the tiller ropes. "Give way!" he ordered.
Mr. Cunningham was lying on cushions in the bottom of the boat. I was
still laughing, and he rolled his head, I thought, to look at me.
"Where did that skunk get you, Guy?" asked Captain Blaise.
"Why, I didn't know that he got me at all."
"Feel on your cheek."
There was blood, not much, trickling down my right cheek.
"You'd better attend to it."
"Yes, sir."
Warm fingers met mine. It was her silk scarf which she was pressing
into my hand. I thrust it in my left breast, then took my own
handkerchief and held it to my cheek.
I was chuckling to myself as I fancied the Governor's guards tumbling
over each other in their retreat, when Captain Blaise broke in on me.
"Aren't you laughing rather soon? You're not over your troubles yet."
"Troubles, sir? Troubles?" It was not at all like him, and his voice,
too, was unwontedly harsh. "Troubles?" I almost laughed aloud again. He
did not understand--I had only to lean forward to gaze into her eyes. I
had only to reach out to clasp her hand. Troubles? Well, possibly so,
but I smiled to myself in the dark.