For a moment after she spoke I experienced a sensation as if the
sound, comfortable earth had dropped away from beneath me, a sensation
of a great fall into a void. Then followed the impression that after
all, Betty was a stranger; that I did not know her at all.
“I won’t have George risking his life for me,” she repeated quietly.
“I—I’ll go back on board before that.”
I went from cold to warm. Freddy tried to speak and I silenced him
with a look. When I spoke, my voice was hoarse and heavy.
“Miss Baldwin, you will not go aboard until Brack is beaten, and the
yacht is in our possession. I am responsible to Chanler for your
safety.”
There followed a trying period of silence.
“Why—why, Mr. Pitt!” Betty finally tried to laugh, but the grimness of
my expression must have convinced her that laughter was out of place.
“That was the first rude speech you have made. Do you realize how rude
it was?”
I did not speak. Her solicitude for George had awakened in me an
anger, adamite and smoldering, which grew with each minute. George
must not risk his precious life! Freddy had risked his. I had risked
mine. But George must be protected at all costs! And why? Why, because
he meant so much to her that the lives of others, and her own safety,
were insignificant in comparison? I made an attempt to smile.
“Mr. Pitt! Gardy!” she cried, shrinking. “Don’t look at me that way.
What are you going to do?”
“I beg your pardon; I didn’t realize that I was looking at you in an
offensive manner.”
“What—are you—going—to—do?”
I looked at the ground. It did not take me long to make my plans. I
said—
“I’m going to pray that it’s a very dark night.”
From that moment the hearty camaraderie which had existed between us
was gone. We seemed to have been moved far apart. Betty once more was
Miss Baldwin; I was not Gardy, but Mr. Pitt. She literally drew away
from me and from a distance cast puzzled glances in my direction.
Then we became formally polite to one another. When we spoke it was as
if we had been but recently introduced, and we spoke only when it was
necessary. And Freddy wrinkled his freckled forehead and glanced from
Betty to me, frankly puzzled.
It was a long day for us all in the cave. When darkness finally began
to fall we greeted it with relief. Freddy, peering out at the
darkening sky, said:
“Well, your prayers have been answered all right: it’s going to be
dark enough to suit anybody. Now put me next, Brains; what’s your
stunt?”
“Brack doesn’t know that I’ve got this pistol,” I said.
“What of it?”
“As he thinks I’m unarmed—helpless—he won’t be on his guard—when I go
aboard tonight.”
“Oh!” It was Betty who exclaimed, but she smothered the exclamation
with her hand.
“What you going to do when you get on board?” asked Pierce.
“You’ll stay here with Miss Baldwin,” I continued, paying no attention
to his query. “If everything goes as I hope, George will come down and
bring you to the yacht.”
It was dark now and I prepared to leave.
“Hold on,” said Pierce. “What’s the use of your going swimming in that
cold water? You’d have to swim the river, and then out to the yacht,
and by the time you go on board you’d be so cold and stiff you
wouldn’t be any good. Tell you what let’s do; let’s paddle up in the
canoe, you ’n’ me. It’s so dark they’d never see us. Then you can get
on board, warm and supple, and fit to do something.”
There was much sense in his argument, and after discussing it for
awhile I agreed to it. Brack, of course, must not suspect Pierce’s
presence.
“As soon as I go over the side you’re to paddle off and be ready to
return to Miss Baldwin.”
“Sure. Anything you say, Brains.”
“Thank you,” said Betty stiffly, “but there will be no need for you to
come back here for me. Mr. Pitt, just as surely as you go away without
me I’ll leave this cave and go to the yacht alone. I mean it. I will
not be left here. You can take me in the canoe, too. I will be as safe
as Mr. Pierce.”
“You will stay right here,” said I.
“Will I!” she slipped past me, bounded through the brush, and stood
outside the cave, ready to run. “I can find the yacht. You can’t catch
me. Now, Mr. Pitt, what shall it be?”
Pierce promptly relieved the situation.
“We can land her at some point up there. That’ll be all right, won’t
it?”
“Ask her,” I said.
“Yes; that will be all right,” she replied promptly.
* * * * *
With this understanding we carried the canoe down to the water, and
with Betty in the middle, started up the fiord. As Pierce said, my
prayers for a dark night seemed to have been answered.
So complete was the darkness that twice we grounded, having run into
land which we were not able to see. The sound of the river current
warned us when we had reached the head of the bay, and carefully
following the shore we glided through the opening where I had seen
Brack’s boat disappear.
“There—there she is, right ahead of us,” whispered Pierce, and in the
inchoate darkness we made out a series of tiny lights, the gleam from
the _Wanderer’s_ cabin windows.
“She’s laying bows out with her stern near the shore on our port,”
whispered Pierce as we backed water and lay still. “Her starboard’s
toward us. There’s one ladder down at the stern and one at the bow,
port side. Better take the bow one; the cap’s more’n likely to be aft.
And there’s a good place to land Miss Baldwin, right here.”
We lay without moving or speaking for many long, distressful seconds.
“Mr. Pitt,” whispered Betty finally, “do you insist on going through
with your mad plan?”
“Yes.”
We were silent again.
“All right,” said Betty.
Pierce silently moved the canoe to the shore on our port side, the
shore toward which the _Wanderer’s_ stern was turned, and without a
word Betty stepped out.
“Pierce will come back here as soon as he sees me go over the side,” I
whispered.
She made no reply. Then we paddled silently away, steering for the
_Wanderer’s_ bow.
I was conscious now of nothing but a spirit of elation. There was not
a pang, not a fear in my thoughts. The old fright-chill along the
spine, which hitherto always had come to me when approaching danger,
was gone. I was like a boy turned loose for a holiday. All the
considerations which cause men to fear danger I had put away. All the
responsibilities which hold men to a cautious rôle in life had gone
from me. My responsibility toward Betty would be discharged when I had
removed for her the danger of Brack. And Betty cared so much for
George Chanler that she wouldn’t have him risk his life for her, and
consequently there was no reason why anything in the world mattered
much to me.
“Faster!” I whispered, digging viciously at the water. “Hurry up; I
want it over with.”
“Easy, Brains, easy.”
Pierce silently backed water. We were four or five lengths from the
_Wanderer’s_ starboard side, and though we were invisible in the
darkness the lights and white paint of the yacht revealed her outlines
and superstructure.
“There’s a boat in the water at the stern,” whispered Freddy. “Mebbe
it’d be a good thing to cut her loose in case we have to make a
getaway.”
“Cut nothing loose,” I whispered contentedly. “Move up to the bow
ladder and let’s have it over with quickly.”
He took a stroke forward then backed again.
“Hey! There he is; walking aft. See him? By the last light aft.”
“Yes,” I breathed, as I made out Captain Brack’s figure where Pierce
had indicated. “Now hurry and put me aboard, and I may surprise him.”
The canoe moved forward again. Pierce paddled in a semi-circle,
heading away from the _Wanderer’s_ side and curving back toward the
bows. The yacht was all dark forward, save from a single gleam from a
port-hole in George’s stateroom. Leaning well forward in the canoe I
held my hands thrust out before me, and presently my finger-tips
rested against the _Wanderer’s_ sharp bow.
“Here’s the ladder—right here,” whispered Pierce. I moved the canoe
backwards with my hands, and presently held the rope rungs of the
ladder in my grasp. I reached up high above my head and gripped a rope
rung firmly.
“Now hurry back to Miss Baldwin,” I whispered, and swung myself up.
Pierce did not answer at once.
“Do you hear?” I demanded.
“Oh, sure.”
I was well up the ladder then, but his tone prompted me to turn and
look down. Pierce, with his rifle under one arm, was tying the canoe
to the ladder. When, looking up, he saw that I had stopped and
observed him he started guiltily, then leaped resolutely onto the
ladder below me.
“Get off! Go back to the girl!” I commanded.
“I won’t,” said he. And we were hanging so, against the yacht’s sides,
when Betty’s voice called softly from the shore beyond the stern:
“Oh, Captain Brack! Quick, please. I’m tired and afraid. Hurry, hurry!
Take me aboard at once!”