IN WHICH HELP COMES FROM THE LAST QUARTER WE HAD EXPECTED IT
Now, no sooner did I see the yellow man than my mind was fully made up,
and I determined what harbour to make for. "If you're there, my lad,"
said I to myself, "the others are not far behind you. You've seen me
come in, and it's your intention to prevent me going out again. To be
caught like a rat in a trap won't serve Ruth Bellenden, and it won't
serve me. I'm for the open, Kess Denton," said I, "and no long while
about it, either."
This I said, but I didn't mean to play the startled kitten, and without
any token of surprise or such-like I turned round to Miss Ruth and gave
her "good-evening."
"I'm sorry you're not coming aboard, Mme. Czerny," says I; "we weigh in
an hour, and it will be a month or more before I call in again. But you
sha'n't wait long for the news if I can help it; and as for your
brother, Mr. Kenrick, I'll trust to hear from him at 'Frisco and to
tell you what he thinks on my return. Good-night, madame," said I, "and
the best of health and prosperity."
I held out my hand, and she shook it like one who didn't know what she
was doing. The yellow man came a step nearer and said, "Halloa, my
hearty." I nodded my head to him and he put his hand on my shoulder.
Poor fool, he thought I was a child, perhaps, and to be treated as one;
but I have learnt a thing or two about taking care of myself in Japan,
and you couldn't have counted two before I had his arm twisted under
mine, and he gave a yell that must have been heard up in the hills.
"If you cry out like that, you'll ruin your beautiful voice," said I;
"hasn't any one ever asked you to sing hymns in a choir? Well, I'm
surprised. Good-night, my boy; I shall be coming back for your picture
before many days have passed."
Upon this, I stepped towards the door, and thought that I had done with
him; but no sooner was I out in the garden than something went singing
by my ear, and upon that a second dose with two reports which echoed in
the hills like rolling thunder. No written music vas necessary to tell
me the kind of tune it was, and I swung round on my heel and gripped
the man by the throat almost before the echoes of the shot had died
away.
"Kess Denton," said I, "if you will have it, you shall!" and with that
I wrenched the pistol from his grasp and struck him a blow over the
head that sent him down without a word.
"One," said I, to myself, "one that helped to make little Ruth
Bellenden suffer;" and with that I set off running and never looked to
the right of me nor to the left until I saw Peter Bligh at the gate and
heard his honest voice.
"Is it you--is it you yourself, Mr. Begg? Thank God for that!" cries
he, and it was no longer in a whisper; "there's men in the hills, and
Seth Barker whistling fit to crack his lips. Is the young lady coming
aboard, sir? No?--well, I'm not surprised, neither, though this shore
do seem a queerish sort of place----"
I cut him short, and Dolly Venn running round from his place in the
garden I asked him for his news. The thing now was to find a road to
the sea. What could be done for Ruth Bellenden that night was over and
passed. Our chance lay on the deck of the Southern Cross, and after
that at 'Frisco.
"What have you seen, Dolly Venn--be quick, lad, for we can't linger?"
was my question to him so soon as he was within hail. He answered me by
pointing to the trees which border the garden on the eastward side.
"The wood is full of armed men, sir. Two of them nearly trod upon me
while I was lying there. They carry rifles, and seem to be Germans--I
couldn't be sure of that, sir."
"Germans or chimpanzees, we're going by them this night. Where's Seth
Barker--why doesn't he come down? Does he think we can pass by the
hill-road?--the wooden block! Call him, one of you."
They were about to do this when Seth Barker himself came panting down
the hillpath, and, what was more remarkable, he carried an uncouth sort
of bludgeon in his hand. I could see that there had been a bit of a
rough and tumble on the way, but it wasn't the time for particulars.
"Come aboard, sir," says he, breathing heavy; "the gangway's blocked,
but I give one of 'em a bit of a knock with his own shillelagh, and
that's all right."
"Is there any more up there?" I asked quickly.
"May be a dozen, may be more. They're up on the heights looking for you
to go up, captain."
"Aye," said I, "pleasant company, no doubt. Well, we must strike
eastward somehow, lads, and the sooner the better. We'll hold to the
valley a bit and see where that leads us. Do you, Seth Barker, keep
that bit of a shillelagh ready, and, if any one asks you a question,
don't you wait to answer it."
Now, I had resolved to try and get down to the sea by the valley road
and, once upon the shore, to signal Harry Doe, if possible, and, if not
him, then the ship herself as a last resource. Any road seemed to me
better than this trap of a house with armed men all about it and a
pistol bullet ready for any stranger that lingered. "Aboard the ship,"
said I, "we'll show them a clean pair of heels to 'Frisco and, after
that, ask the American Government what it can do for Ruth Bellenden and
for her husband." We were four against a hundred, perhaps, and
desperate men against us. If we got out of the scrape with our skins,
we should be as lucky a lot as ever sailed the Northern Pacific Ocean.
But should we--could we? Why, it was a thousand to one against it!
I said this when we plunged into the wood; and yet I will bear witness
that I got more excitement than anything else out of that venture, and
I don't believe the others got less. There we were, the four of us,
trampling through the brushwood, crushing down the bushes, now lying
low, now up a-running--and not a man that wouldn't have gone through it
twice for Ruth Bellenden's sake. If so be that the night was to cost us
our lives, well, crying wouldn't help it--and those that were against
us were flesh and blood, all said and done, and no spirits to scare a
man. To that I set it down that we went on headlong and desperate. As
for the thicket itself, it was full of men--I could see their figures
between the trees. We must have passed twenty of them in the darkness
before one came out, plump on our path and cried out to us to halt.
"Hold, hold," shouts he; "is it you, Bob Williams?"
"It's Bob Williams, right enough," says I, and with that I gave him one
between the eyes, and down he went like a felled ox. The man who was
with him, stumbling up against Seth Barker, had a touch of the
shillelagh which was like a rock falling upon a fly. He just gave one
shuddering groan and fell backwards, clutching the branches. Little
Dolly Venn laughed aloud in his excitement, elbowed Peter Bligh who
gave a real Irish "hurrugh"; but the darkness had swallowed it all up
in a minute, and we were on again, heading for the shore like those
that run a race for their very lives.
"Do you see any road, Peter Bligh?" asked I, for my breath was coming
short now; "do you see any road, man?"
"The devil a one, sir, and me weighing fourteen stone!"
"You'll weigh less when we get down, Peter."
"And drink more, the saints be praised!"
"Was that a rifle-shot or a stone from the hills?" I asked them a
moment later. Dolly Venn answered me this time.
"A rifle-shot, captain. They'll be shooting one another, then--it's
ripping, ripping!"
"Look out, lad, or it'll be dripping!" cried I; "don't you see there's
water ahead?"
I cried the warning to him and stood stock-still upon the borders of as
black a pool as I remember to have seen in any country. The road had
carried us to the foot of the hills, almost to the chasm which the
wicker-bridge spanned; and we could make out that same bridge far above
us like a black rope in the twilight. The water itself was covered with
some clinging plants, and full of winding, ugly snakes which caused the
whole pool to shine with a kind of uncanny light; while an overpowering
odour, deadly and stifling, steamed up from it, and threatened to choke
a man. What was worse than this was a close thicket bordering the pond
on three sides, so that we must either swim for it or turn back the way
we came. The latter course was not to be thought of. Already I could
hear footsteps, and boughs snapping and breaking not many yards from
where we stood. To cross the pond might have struck the bravest man
alive with terror. I'd have sooner forfeited my life time over than
have touched one of those slimy snakes I could see wriggling over the
leaves to the bottom of the still water. What else to do I had no more
notion than the dead. "It's the end, Jasper Begg," said I to myself,
"the end of you and your venture." But of Ruth Bellenden I wouldn't
think. How could I, when I knew the folks that were abroad on Ken's
Island?
I will just ask any traveller to stand with me where I stood that night
and to say if these words are overmuch for the plight, or if I have
spoken of it with moderation. A night as black as ink, mind you; my
company in the heart of a wood with big teak trees all round us, and
cliffs on our right hand towering up to the sky like mountains. Before
us a pool of inky water, all worming with odd lights and lines of blue
fire, like flakes of phosphorus on a bath, and alive with the hissing
of hundreds of snakes. Upon our left hand a scrubby thicket and a marsh
beneath it, I make sure; Czerny's devils, who had shot the poor folks
on the Santa Cruz, at our heels, and we but four against the lot of
them. Would any man, I ask, have believed that he could walk into such
a trap and get out of it unharmed? If so, it wasn't Jasper Begg, nor
Peter Bligh, nor little Dolly Venn, nor Seth Barker with the bludgeon
in his hand. They'd as good as given it up when we came to the pool and
stood there like hunting men that have lost all hope.
"Done, by all that's holy!" says Peter Bligh, drawing back from the
pond as from some horrid pit. "Snakes I have seen, nateral and
unnateral, but them yonder give me the creeps----"
"Creeps or no creeps, the others will be up here in five minutes, and
what are you going to do then, Peter Bligh, what then?" asks I, for as
I'm a living man I didn't know which way to turn from it.
Seth Barker was the one that answered me.
"I'm going to knock some nails in, by your leave," says he, and with
that he stood very still and bade us listen. The whole wood was full of
the sound of "halloaing" now. Far and wide I heard question and answer,
and a lingering yodle such as the Swiss boys make on the mountains. It
couldn't be many minutes, I said, before the first man was out on our
trail; and there I was right, for one of them came leaping out of the
wood straight into Peter Bligh's arms before I'd spoken another word.
Poor devil--it was the last good-night for him in this world--for Peter
passes him on, so to speak, and he went headlong into the pond without
any one knowing how he got there. A more awful end I hope I may never
hear of, and yet, God knows, he brought it on himself. As for Peter
Bligh, the shock set him sobbing like a woman. It was all my work to
get him on again.
"No fault of ours," said I; "we're here for a woman's sake, and if
there's man's work to do, we'll do it, lads. Take my advice and you'll
turn straight back and run for it. Better a tap on the head than a cry
in yonder pool."
They replied fearsomely--the strain was telling upon them badly. That
much I learnt from their husky voices and the way they kept close to
me, as though I could protect them. Seth Barker, especially, big man
that he was, began to mutter to himself in the wildest manner possible;
while little Dolly burst into whistling from time to time in a way that
made me crazy.
"That's right, lad," cried I, "tell them you're here, and ask after the
health of their womenfolk. You've done with this world, I see, and made
it straight for the next. If you've a match in your pocket, strike it
to keep up their spirits."
Well, he stopped short, and I was ashamed of myself a minute after for
speaking so to a mere lad whose life was before him and who'd every
right to be afraid.
"Come," said I, more kindly, "keep close to me, Dolly, and if you don't
know where I am, why, put out your hand and touch me. I've been in
worse scrapes than this, my boy, and I'll lead you out of it somehow.
After all, we've ship over yonder and Mister Jacob isn't done with yet.
Keep up your heart, then, and put your best leg forward."
Now, this was spoken to put courage into him--not that I believed what
I said, but because he and the others counted upon me, and my own
feelings had to go under somehow. For the matter of that, it looked all
Lombard Street to a China orange against us when we took the woodland
path again; and so I believe it would have been but for something which
came upon us like a thunder-flash, and changed all our despair to a
desperate hope. And to this something Peter Bligh was the first to call
our attention.
"Is it fireflies or lanterns?" cries he all at once, bringing out
the words like a pump might have done; "yonder on the hillside,
shipmates--is it fireflies or lanterns?"
I stood to look, and while I stood Seth Barker named the thing.
"It's lanterns," cries he; "lanterns, sure and certain, captain."
"And the three ripping little girls carrying them," puts in Dolly Venn.
"'Tis no woman ever born that would hunt down four poor sailor-men,"
cries Peter Bligh.
"To say nothing of the he-lion they was a-fondling of"--from Seth
Barker.
"Lads," said I, in my turn, "this is the unlooked for, and I, for one,
don't mean to pass it by. I'm going to ask those young ladies for a
short road to the hills--and not lose any time about it either."
They all said "Aye, aye," and we ran forward together. The halloaing in
the wood was closing in about us now; you could hear voices wherever
you turned an ear. As for the lanterns, they darted from bush to bush
like glow-worms on a summer's night, so that I made certain they would
dodge us after all. My heart was low down enough, be sure of it, when I
lost view of those guiding stars altogether, and found myself face to
face with the last figure I might have asked for if you'd given me the
choice of a hundred.
For what should happen but that the weird being, whom Seth Barker had
called the "he-lion," the old fellow in petticoats, whom the little
girls made such a fuss of, he, I say, appeared of a sudden right in the
path before us, and, holding up a lantern warningly, he hailed us with
a word which told us that he was our friend--the very last I would have
named for that in all the island.
"Jasper Begg," cried he, in a voice that I'd have known for a
Frenchman's anywhere, "follow Clair-de-Lune--follow--follow!"
He turned to the bushes behind him, and, seeming to dive between them,
we found him, when we followed, flat on his stomach, the lantern out,
and he running like a dog up a winding path before him. He was leading
us to the heights, I said; and when I remembered the great bare peaks
and steeple-like rocks, upstanding black and gloomy under the starry
sky, I began to believe that this wild man was right and that in the
hills our safety lay.
But of that we had yet to learn, and for all we knew to the contrary it
might have been a trap.