IN HIS OWN NET
The _Chita_ was moored a little way down the beach of the bay, with
her dinghy attached to shore and rail so as to make a gangway to the
land. Lang hoisted himself aboard. A big figure loomed up on the deck,
and a big bony hand was thrust out to him.
“Did you get him?” Morrison demanded anxiously.
“No, I didn’t,” Lang responded. “I shot at him twice. Afraid I missed
him. It was getting too dark and——”
“It doesn’t matter. He can’t escape us. We’ll have him to-morrow. Eva
says you’ve found the emeralds. You’ve got a story of adventure to
tell.” He hesitated. “Doctor Lang, the service you’ve done us has been
incredible. You’ll get your reward, I hope.”
“I’m not worrying about my reward,” said Lang. He sank on a deck seat,
feeling utterly played out. He heard Morrison going on, endlessly, it
seemed, expressing his gratitude, his admiration, and he wished
irritably that he would stop. Eva also suddenly appeared out of the
lighted cabin.
“Have you such things as hot water aboard, and soap, and so on?” he
roused himself to interrupt. “Also a razor and any clothes that you
can lend me. I’ve slept and tramped and swum and mined in these
till——”
“Of course. Of course,” Morrison warmly assured him. “I’ll fix you up.
Come with me. When you’ve finished, Eva’ll have something for us to
eat, and you can tell us your adventures. You must be starved, man!”
he ejaculated, staring, as they went down into the cabin light. “You
look as if you’d been through all the mills of the gods.”
Lang felt like it. They left him alone in a little cubby-hole called a
bathroom with his toilet facilities. He managed to wash and to shave
after a fashion, cutting himself several times, and to change to a
suit of Morrison’s, coat and trousers, several sizes too large for
him. His eyes and head ached, his hands trembled, and he thought he
needed food.
He thought he was ravenously hungry, but when he came out to the
spread table in the cabin he could not eat. There was tinned
salmon—the sight of it nauseated him. Never again in his life would he
eat anything out of a can. But he knew that he ought to take food. He
swallowed coffee eagerly, and tried to eat a little corn bread—getting
it down with difficulty. They urged things on him with anxious
solicitude; they were greatly distressed that he could not eat.
It was heavily on his mind that he ought to explain to Morrison his
disappearance from Panama; and he began to tell the story, feeling not
quite certain of his words. It seemed to turn out a very funny story;
Morrison presently roared with laughter at the account of his straits
aboard the _Lake Tahoe_. Lang could not see the humor of it. He almost
lost his temper, and switched to the story of his meeting with Carroll
in Valparaiso. In another minute, he hardly knew by what transition,
he found himself describing his shipwreck.
He was terribly tired. He wished that they would leave him alone. He
leaned his head back against the wall for a moment, was afraid that he
would go to sleep, and tried to collect himself.
“That’s not the most interesting thing,” he recommenced. “It’s what I
found. Went right through it—the glacier, you know. Broke the glacier
gate, as you called it. More than emeralds—far more important, to an
arch-arch’logist. Camp of dead Indians, prehistoric men—copper
knives—stone clubs—frozen solid. A carrier party—no mine
there—historically more precious than rubies—I mean emeralds——”
He leaned his head back involuntarily and the words seemed to melt on
his lips. He wanted extremely to be let alone for a minute, to rest
and collect himself. Some one was pulling at him. He muttered angrily
without opening his eyes; and then they did let him alone at last.
Light was shining on him when he opened his eyes, and not the light of
lamps. Dazed, he found himself lying on the cabin divan, his coat and
boots off, his head on a cushion and blankets wrapped about him. As he
stirred he heard a faint sound, and Eva’s face appeared above him.
And, drunk still with sleep, he put up his arm almost unconsciously,
and drew it down to his own, as he had done once before.
“I’ve been asleep,” he muttered. “It isn’t morning?”
“It’s just after ten o’clock,” she laughed.
She seemed delighted, but Lang was struck with horror. Impossible that
he could have slept so, ever since last sunset. He sat up, caught a
glimpse of the mountainside and the glacier through the window, and
the memory of the past day crashed back into him.
“Carroll—Louie? What’s happened?” he exclaimed.
“Nothing’s happened. We’ve been taking turns on guard all night. All’s
well. I’ve been keeping your breakfast hot for you.”
She gave his head a little squeeze, and darted off to the tiny galley
where a gasoline stove burned. Once the _Chita_ had been equipped with
electric light and heat, but these fittings had long since gone into
disrepair.
Lang hurriedly put on Morrison’s coat again, and his own boots, which
they had cleaned and oiled for him out of their hardened stiffness.
Hearing voices, Morrison came down from the deck.
“You’ve a great capacity for sleep, young man,” he observed. “Thank
Heaven for it. You were on the raw edge last night—pretty close to
collapse. How do you feel?”
Lang felt rested, and said so. He felt marvelously recuperated, in
fact. There was a stiffness in his legs, but his brain was clear, he
was full of energy, and he was ravenously hungry.
“I’ve been up the hill, but no sign of Carrero—or Carroll,” said
Morrison. “He took a shot at us in the night, though—a long-range
shot, fired away up the shore. I couldn’t see the flash. But look what
I’ve got here.”
He opened a door into one of the tiny cabins of the _Chita_, and
revealed Louie the Lope stretched in the berth, covered with a
blanket. The young gangster moved his head slightly and moaned.
“Found him lying in a heap just on the shore this morning,” said
Morrison, regarding Louie with aversion. “He’s pretty sick. He’s had a
bad cold coming on for several days; I thought it might run to
pneumonia. And then your knocking him out, and his lying out in the
damp all night, didn’t do him any good. I had almost to carry him
aboard.”
Lang would not have minded killing Louie, but the idea of disease
aroused all his medical instincts. He put his hand on the gunman’s
forehead, felt his pulse. Louie muttered something, and appeared only
semiconscious.
“Not much fever,” said Lang. “A little concussion, maybe, from the
blow on the head. I think he’ll be all right. I’ll look after him
later. I’ve wasted too much time already, sleeping.”
His stomach almost shrieked for food, in fact, and his breakfast was
waiting for him. There was no trouble now about appetite. He had to
restrain himself lest he eat too much. He devoured Chilean maize mush,
corn bread, potatoes, pork, with ravenous relish, while Eva served
him, and at the end he felt more than ever invigorated. It was the
first really square meal he had eaten since Valparaiso.
“Now, we can’t both leave the ship,” he said to Morrison. “Carroll
might circle back on us, Eva can’t be left here alone. You’ll stay on
guard. I’ll scout up the hill a little. If I need you I’ll fire two
shots rapidly. I suppose you’ve got a rifle to spare?”
He had two, and Lang’s plan was so obviously right that he could not
make any objection. Only he stipulated that if Lang found nothing in
the course of half an hour he should come back and give Morrison his
turn.
It was a fair day for once. There was no fog, no wind, and the sun
almost shone by moments from the gray sky. Lang crossed the boat
bridge to shore, clambered up the side of the ravine, and started up
the long slope.
He felt full of elation; full of confidence. It was not likely that he
would find any trace of the fugitive so near the beach, but he
searched carefully into all the copses and thickets as he worked up
the shore, till he came to his old camp.
He half expected to find that Carroll had spent the night there, but
he found no sign of it. The fire still smoldered, burning far down
into the coal seam now, and all the earth about it was heated. He
turned in the direction he had followed the night before, moving
warily now, expectant every instant of a shot from ambush, but he had
gone several hundred yards before he found any trace of his man.
Then, all at once, he saw him. He saw him from a distance, and with
such a shock that he half raised the rifle. But Carroll’s posture was
reassurance enough.
He hastened up. Carroll was lying face down at the edge of a clump of
cedar, his hat off, his limbs sprawling. He looked dead, but there was
life in his pulse when Lang touched his wrist.
The emeralds! Lang felt his pockets, turned him over. They were empty.
He ran his hands all over the man’s body. There was no bulging package
anywhere, no loose stones about his clothing.
He was dumfounded. He had never dreamed of such a check. There was a
bullet wound in Carroll’s head, no doubt from the last shot that Lang
had fired into the thicket. He must have staggered several yards
afterward. He had thrown the stones away, or dropped them. One
trousers leg was stiff with blood, too. That was from Lang’s first
shot, and probably Carroll had cached the jewels immediately after
finding himself wounded.
Lang looked about on the ground, moved the body to see if anything was
under it. The earth was overgrown with moss and ferns. That little
silk package would be lost like a needle in straw. It might be
anywhere within half a mile. Carroll alone could tell what he had done
with it.
After casting wildly about for several yards, he came back and for the
first time examined Carroll’s wound. The bullet had entered the skull
almost above the ear, rather high. It had not emerged, but Lang could
feel that it was just below the skin near the opposite temple.
It was not necessarily fatal. He had seen such a case before in his
Boston clinic. He had operated then, and with success. He sat down by
the unconscious man and fell into a profound study, and for the time
the emeralds passed out of his mind.
He remembered to fire the double signal shot, and relapsed into
thought again. If he only had a trephine—the little drill that cuts a
round piece out of bone! He heard Morrison halloing from a distance,
responded, and presently the explorer came up, panting, holding a
cocked Winchester at the ready. His eye fell instantly on the
prostrate figure.
“Dead?” he asked quickly. “Have you got the stones?”
“The stones? I don’t know where they are,” responded Lang. “No, he
isn’t dead. He’s lost, or hidden them somewhere—Lord knows where.”
Morrison cursed. His eyes roved wildly.
“My God!” he exclaimed. “We’ve got to get them! Is he going to die?
Can’t you revive him with a strong stimulant or something so that he
can speak before he dies? Surely it’s possible?”
The situation was so exactly the reverse of the former one aboard the
_Cavite_ that Lang, in spite of his abstraction, could not refrain
from a short laugh. Morrison did not see the point.
“Even if it kills him!” he insisted, reinforcing the analogy.
“Very likely he hid the emeralds shortly after I hit him in the leg,”
said Lang. “Look here! I’ll show you what’s happened. My bullet went
through his skull. He must have been knocked senseless by the shock,
but he came to, and staggered some distance. Maybe he got rid of the
stones then, and his gun, too, for I don’t see it. Then he became
unconscious again, but not from the wound directly. A blood clot has
formed on the surface of the brain where the bullet entered, and it’s
that which is paralyzing him. He might survive the bullet wound.”
“What, right through the brain?” ejaculated the explorer.
“Oh, yes. It often happens. I suppose you’ve got some sort of medical
or surgical kit aboard? You wouldn’t have a trephine, of course. Got a
surgical saw? Any anæsthetics and disinfectants?”
“Six ounces of ether and a bottle of iodine,” responded Morrison.
“I’ve got some forceps and scissors and sterilized cotton, and a very
fine, sharp hack saw. What are you thinking of doing?”
“I’m going to operate,” said Lang decisively. “I’m going to remove
that blood clot. It’ll restore consciousness almost surely, when he
comes out of the anæsthetic, and there’s a good chance that he’ll
recover. We can’t take him aboard. It would kill him. I’ll operate at
my old camp. Help me carry him up there, and then go back to the boat
and bring up your surgical kit, and a razor and soap and clean towels
and basins and all the biggest kettles you have for heating water.
Bring Eva—Miss Morrison along, too, if she has the nerve. I’ll need
both of you to help.”