THE FIGHT IN THE PIRATE’S CABIN.
Although the words of warning uttered by the pirate were deliberate and
emphatic, there was not a sound while he was speaking them to denote that
they were true. Nevertheless, he had spoken the truth; and he had gaged
the moment of interruption so exactly that even as he ceased speaking the
door which communicated with the outer cabin was burst open, and three
men, followed by several others, leaped in upon them.
But short as was the warning, short as was the time of preparation on
the part of the detective and his companions, they were none the less
prepared.
The foremost of the men who entered the cabin thus unceremoniously was a
giant in stature, and Nick saw at a glance that he could not be one of
the members of the regular crew, since no mention had been made to him of
a person of such gigantic proportions. And here it was that the detective
gained a momentary advantage, by reason of the fact that he had arrayed
himself in the costume of the pirate chieftain; and it was that moment of
time which brought about the final result.
When the giant burst into the room he beheld two individuals who seemed
to him to be his chief. One was seated upon a chair, to which he was
tightly bound; the other was almost directly in front of him.
For one instant he halted, dismayed, not knowing what to do.
But Captain Sparkle cried out to him from his chair—a quick command in
French, which was as serviceable to the giant as a full and complete
explanation could have been. Nevertheless, that instant of hesitation
worked his ruin, for, although it was only instantaneous, it still
afforded the detective time to gather himself for the attack.
As the giant sprang toward him. Nick stooped and darted past his guard,
under his extended arms, and he seized him around his massive body in a
grip as powerful as the giant himself could have exerted. They were oddly
matched, these two. The giant towered over the detective like a Goliath
over a David. The scene had the appearance of a full-grown man fighting
with a half-grown boy.
But the giant was, nevertheless, lifted bodily from his feet, and he hung
there, struggling vainly to touch his toes or his heels to the deck, for,
like certain animals we know about, his defensive powers were fruitless
if he could not get his feet to the ground.
He bellowed like a bull at first, until the pressure of Nick’s powerful
arms squeezed him into silence. He swung his arms about him like the
blades of a windmill, and he kicked frantically with his feet in an
effort to bring the detective down. His huge, animallike face turned
red, then purple, then black. Blood oozed from his nostrils and mouth;
and then, like the snapping of a whip in the distance, his ribs cracked
under the awful pressure which Nick put upon them.
Instantly his hold upon the detective relaxed; his flaying arms dropped
to his sides, useless; he gasped, and then, as Nick released him, he fell
in a heap to the floor of the cabin, uttering howl after howl of rage and
anguish. Like all brutes of gigantic strength, once conquered, he could
fight no more, and he remained where he had fallen, moaning, helpless,
whipped—and whipped into a bleeding mass of flesh by the mere pressure of
the great detective’s muscular arms.
Then Nick turned like a flash toward the others.
Five of the attacking party were down and out, laid where they were by
the hammering fists of Maxwell Kane and Chick, for there had been no
time or opportunity to make use of their revolvers, which happened to
be inside their pockets when the onslaught occurred. Four more men were
pressing the two fighters into one corner of the cabin, and were almost
at the point of getting the upper hand of them, when Nick rushed to their
assistance.
But the fighting powers of the pirates was short-lived after that
happened.
Nick Carter’s fist caught one of them under the ear; another went down
from a blow against the side of his jaw; a third was knocked squarely
into Chick’s arms by a kick in the small of his back from Nick’s foot,
and the fourth, dismayed by what was happening around him, lost his
head just long enough to give Kane an opening, and he received a
well-directed blow on the end of his nose which finished him.
The fight was over, and there was no remnant of one left in any of the
men who had entered that cabin so bravely to capture Nick Carter and his
friends. There had been ten in all, against three; but now those ten men
were bound and speedily rendered helpless, and the three stood over them,
comparatively uninjured.
It is true that Kane wore a discolored lump on his right cheek, and that
Chick was nursing the knuckles of his right hand tenderly; but otherwise
they were uninjured.
And all this time Captain Sparkle had been compelled to sit idly by, a
spectator of the downfall of his followers. However, when Nick Carter
looked toward him he was smiling.
“Well, captain,” said the detective, “what do you think about being free
now?”
“I think,” replied the pirate, with a broader smile, “that the moment
will have to be postponed because of unavoidable circumstances.”
“Quite right,” said the detective.
The ten men captured by the detective, assisted by Maxwell Kane and
Chick, proved to be the entire complement of the pirate crew; they
included every man who acted under the orders of Captain Sparkle.
Seven of these comprised the crew of the _Shadow_ and three were those
who remained on shore at the strange harbor where she was in the habit of
lying by, out of the sight and the ken of the world at large.
And this harbor was a strange one, indeed. It lies considerably to the
eastward of Hempstead Bay, and any one of those who read can readily
discover the spot if he will take the trouble to journey there.
There is a place where boulders and rocks and reefs jut out of the water
at low tide, capped at the outer end of the fringe by one huge one, so
that the general appearance of the formation has led the residents along
the shore near there to name them the Sow and Pigs. Between these two
projections of rocks is a deep and narrow way, through which a vessel
built after the model of the _Shadow_ may pass at certain conditions of
the tides.
At the base of it, or against the shore, it dips into the bluff somewhat
more than a hundred feet, with a high sand-bank on either side; a barren,
abrupt, precipitous bank fringed by stunted verdure, which grows down
almost to the water’s edge.
It was here that the detective discovered the _Shadow_ to be moored. An
excavation had been made in the bank on one side, and within it were
found the effects taken from the _Goalong_ and the _Harkaway_; on board
the cruiser, of course, were still all the articles stolen from the
_Aurora_.
And the pirate craft—the _Shadow_?
She was all that has been claimed for her. She had herself been stolen
from her builders in France, at the very time when she was about to be
delivered to a Russian prince, for whom she had been built. Operated by
electricity, derived from storage batteries, which were supplied by a
charging dynamo so that she never ran out of power, she was fleet and
powerful, and half a submarine; that is, she could sink and rise again
without remaining for a long time immersed; and she could skim swiftly
along the surface of the water with only her turrets showing above it.
Madame Cadillac did not follow her husband to prison. She returned to
France, a sadder and a much wiser woman. The count—he who was called
Jean—disappeared from the club-house that night.
It was thought that he had somehow discovered the absence of Kane and the
detective from the _Goalong_, and that he decided that it would be good
policy to decamp. At all events, that is what he did do.
“Too bad!” murmured Nick. “That fellow will be up to mischief yet.”