WE GO ABOARD, BUT RETURN AGAIN
We made the ship safely when twenty minutes were passed, and ten
minutes later, Mister Jacob and Peter Bligh were in my cabin with me.
"Lads," I said, for it was not a day when a man picked his talk;
"lads," said I, "this ship goes full steam ahead for 'Frisco, and
you'll be wanting to know the reason why. Well, that's right and
proper. Let me tell you that she's steaming to 'Frisco because it's the
shortest way to Ken's Island."
They looked queer at this, but my manner kept them silent. Every man
aboard the Southern Cross had heard the gun fired up in the hills, and
every one knew that Dolly Venn and the skipper had raced for their
lives to the water's edge. "What next?" they asked; and I meant to tell
them.
"Yes," said I, "the shortest way to Ken's Island, and no mistake about
it. For what does a man do when he sees some one in a house and the
front door's slammed in his face? Why, he goes to the back door
certainly, and for choice when the night's dark and the blinds are
down. That's what I'm going to do this night, lads, for the sake of a
bit of a girl you and I would sail far to serve."
They said, "Aye, aye," and drew their chairs closer. The men had been
piped down to dinner, but Peter Bligh forgot his, and that was
extraordinary peculiar in him. Mister Jacob took snuff as though it
were chocolate powder, and the whole of a man spoke from his little
eyes.
"Listen," said I, beginning to tell them what you know already, "here
have we sailed twelve thousand miles at Ruth Bellenden's order, and how
does she receive us? Why, with a nod she might give a neighbour going
by in the street----"
"They not being on speaking terms except in church," put in Peter
Bligh.
"Or she wishing him to get on with his business," said Mister Jacob,
"and not to gossip when there was work to do."
"Be that as it may," I ran on, "the facts are as plain to me as eight
bells for noon. Ruth Bellenden's married to a foreigner who's next door
to a madman. Why, look at it--what was the only word she had the time
or the chance to say? 'For God's sake, come back, Jasper Begg,' says
she. And what am I going to do upon that, gentlemen? Why, I'm going
back, so help me heaven, this very night to learn her trouble."
"And to bring her aboard where she could tell it on a fair course, so
to speak. You'll do that, sir?"
"The night will show what I shall do, Mister Jacob. Was there ever such
a story? A man to marry the best creature that ever put on a pretty
bonnet, and to carry her to a god-forsaken shore like this! And to
ill-treat her there! Aye, that's it. If ever a woman's eyes spoke to
me of hard treatment, it was Ruth Bellenden's this morning. She's some
trouble, lads, some dreadful trouble. She doesn't even speak of it to
me. The yellow boy I've made mention of stood by her all the time. We
talked like two that pass by on the ocean. Who'll gainsay that it was
an unnatural thing? No mortal man can, with reason!"
"Aye, there's precious little reason in it, by what I make out,
captain. You'll know more when the young lady's aboard here----"
"And the yellow boy's head has a bump on the top of it, like the knob
what used to hang down from my mother's chandelay--but that's idle
talking. What time do you put her about to go ashore, sir?"
I was glad to see them coming to it like this, and I fell to the plan
without further parley.
"A fair question and a fair answer," said I; "this ship goes about at
eight bells, Peter. To Mister Jacob here I trust the safety of the good
fellows who go ashore with me. If we can bring the mistress aboard
to-night, well and good, we've done the best day's work we ever set our
hands to. If not, that work must rest until tomorrow night, or the
night after or the night after that. Eight days from now if it happens
that nothing is heard from the land and no news of us, well, the course
is plain. In that case it will be full steam ahead to 'Frisco, and from
there a cable to Kenrick Bellenden, and the plain intimation that his
sister has pretty bad need of him on Ken's Island."
"And of an American warship, if one is forthcoming."
"It may be, Mister Jacob; it may be that, though the devils ashore
there are the only ones that could tell you that. But you're a man of
understanding, and your part will be done. I rely upon you as between
shipmates."
He took a pinch of snuff, and flapping his coat-tails (for he was
always rigged out in the naval officer way) he answered what I wished.
"As between shipmates, I will do my duty," said he.
"I knew it; I've known it from the beginning," said I. "What's left
when you've done is the shore part, and that's not so easy. Peter
Bligh's coming, and I couldn't well leave Dolly on board. Give me our
hulking carpenter, Seth Barker, and I'll lighten the ship no more.
We're short-handed as it is. And, besides, if four won't serve, then
forty would be no better. What we can do yonder, wits, and not
revolvers, must bring about. But I'll not go with sugar-sticks, you
take my word for it, and any man that points a gun at me will wish he'd
gone shooting sheep."
"Aye, aye, to that," cried Peter, who was ever a man for a fight; "the
shooting first and the civil words after. That's sense and no blarney.
When my poor father was tried at Swansea, his native place, for hitting
an Excise man with a ham----"
"Mr. Bligh," cried I, "'tis not with hams you'll be hitting folks
yonder, take my word for it. This job may find us on a child's errand
or it may find us doing men's work. Eight bells on the first watch will
tell the whole of the story. Until that time I shall hold my tongue
about it, but I don't go ashore as I go to a picnic, and I don't make a
boast about what I may presently cry out about."
Well, they were both of my way of thinking, and when we'd talked a
little more about it, and I'd opened the arm-chest and looked over the
few guns and pistols we'd got there, and we'd called the lad Dolly down
and promised him that he should come with us, and the men had been
given to understand that the skipper was to go ashore by-and-bye on an
important business, Peter and the others went to their dinner and I
took my turn on the bridge. The swell was running strongly then, and
the wind blew fresh from the north-east. We'd lost all sight of the
island, and spoke but one ship, a small mail steamer from Santa Cruz
bound for the Yellow Sea, which signalled us "All well" at six bells in
the afternoon watch. From that time I went dead slow and began to bring
the Southern Cross about. The work was begun that very hour, I always
say.
Now, I've told all this, short and brief, and with no talk of my own
about it. The thing had come so sudden, I knew so little of Ruth
Bellenden's trouble or of what had befallen her on the island, that I
was like a man in the dark groping blindly, yet set on hearing the
truth. As for the crew, well, you may be sure that Dolly Venn had put
his side of the story about, and when they knew that my mistress was
ashore there and in some danger, I believe they'd have put me in irons
if I'd so much as spoken of going back.
Risky it was, so much I won't deny; but who wouldn't risk more than his
own paltry skin to save a woman in trouble, and she, so to speak, a
shipmate? There was not a man aboard, stake my life, who wouldn't have
gone to the land willingly for Ruth Bellenden's sake though he'd been
told, sure and certain, that Ken's Island must be his grave. And we'd
always the ship, mind you, and the knowledge that she would go to
'Frisco to get us help. A fool's hope, I say now. For how could we know
that the Southern Cross would be at the bottom of the sea, a thousand
fathoms down, before the week was run? We couldn't know it; yet that
was what happened, and that is why no help came to us.
We had put the ship about at six bells in the afternoon watch, but it
was eight bells in the second dog (the night being too clear for my
liking and a full moon showing bright in the sky) that we sighted Ken's
Island for the second time, and for the second time prepared to go
ashore. The longboat was ready by this time, her barrels full of water
and her lockers full of biscuit. Such arms as we were to carry were
partly stowed in water-proof sheeting--the rifles, and the cartridges
for them; but the revolvers we carried, and a good Sheffield knife a
man, which we weren't going to cut potatoes with. For the rest, I made
them put in a few stout blankets, and more rations than might have
served for such a trip. "Good beginnings make good endings," said I;
"what we haven't need of, lads, we can carry aboard again. The
longboat's back won't ache, be sure of it."
All this, I say, was done when the moon showed us the island like a
great barren rock rising up sheer from the sea. And when it was done,
Mister Jacob called my attention to something which in the hurry of
shore-going I might never have seen at all or thought about. It was
nothing less than this--that their fool's beacon was out to-night, and
all the sea about it as black as ink. Whoever set up the light, then,
did not use it for a seaman's benefit, but for his own whim. I reckoned
up the situation at a glance, and even at that early stage I began to
know the terrible meaning of it.
"Mister Jacob," said I, "those that keep that beacon are either fools
or knaves."
"Or both, sir," said he.
"Which one is the own brother to the other. Aye, captain, 'tis lucky
ye've the parish lantern, as my poor father used to say when----"
But Peter Bligh never finished it that night. The words were still in
his mouth when a rocket shot up over the sea and bursting in a cloud of
gold-blue sparks, cast a weird, cold light upon rock and reef and all
that troubled sea. And as the rocket fell our big carpenter, Seth
Barker, standing aft by the hatch, cries out,
"Ship ashore! Ship ashore, by----!"