WHICH SHOWS THAT A MAN WHO THINKS OF BIG THINGS SOMETIMES FORGETS THE
LITTLE ONES
I was the first to be out on the rock, but Peter Bligh was close upon
my heels, and, wonderful to tell, the Italian almost as quick as any of
us. To what gate of the sea the staircase was carrying me I knew no
more than the others. The time was gone by when anything in Czerny's
house could surprise me; and when at the stairs' head we found that
which looked for all the world like a great port-hole with a swing door
of steel to shut it, I climbed through it without hesitation, and so
stood in God's fresh air for the first time for nearly three days.
That this was the main gate to the sea I had all along surmised, and
now proved surely. No sooner was I through the door than all the world
seemed to spread out again before my eyes--the distant island, the
shimmering sea, the blue sky shut to us through such long hours. The
rock itself, where we gained foothold, lifted itself clear and dry
above the breakers at my feet. There were steps leading down to the
water's edge, a still pool wherein boats were warped, other crags of
the reef defying the tides; these and the silence of the night
everywhere; but of men I saw nothing. The bloody fight we had
anticipated, blow for blow, and ringing alarm, the struggle for
foothold on the rock, the challenge to Czerny's men--such things did
not befall. We stood unchallenged on the plateau, and we stood alone.
I said that it was a miracle, and yet the Lord knows it was no miracle
at all.
Let me try and describe this place for you that you may understand our
situation more clearly, and how it befell that such a simple
circumstance brought about such a strange turn of fortune. We had come
up from the heart of the reef, as you know, and the staircase led out
to a gate of steel opening in the face of a rocky crag, which stood
well above the level even of the storm-seas. A lower plateau (unwashed
by the sea) stood below the gate, and other crags jutted out of the sea
and showed windows to the western sun. I made a bit of a map of the
land and water thereby to keep it in my memory: and such as it is it
will enable any one easily to get the position truly. If one places
himself at the main gate of this house of wonders and puts Czerny's
crew by the sword-fish reef, all will be plain to him.
The island lay perhaps a mile to the southward; and nearer to us, at a
cable's length as I reckoned it, a group of rocky pinnacles in the open
sea marked the door we had shut and the ladder by which Czerny's men
went in to shelter. But the oddest thing of all was this, that the main
gate to this house of wonders should be left unguarded at an hour so
critical. Dark as it was, with only the soft grey light of a summer's
night shimmering on sea and land, nevertheless the mere fact that we
had passed unchallenged told me that we were alone. For why should two
men let three pass up and raise no alarm when alarm might mean so much?
Could they not have struck us down as we came out, one by one, firing
their guns to call comrades from the sea, and bringing a hundred more
atop of us to end our chances there and then? Of course they could; and
yet it was not done. No man hailed us; we had the breaking seas at our
feet, the fresh air in our lungs, the spindrift wet upon our faces. And
who was the more surprised, I at finding the gate unguarded or my
comrades to discover that there was such a gate at all, the Lord only
knows. Like three who stumbled upon a precipice we halted there at the
sea's edge, and looked at one another to ask if such great good fortune
could, indeed, be ours.
I have told you before that the Italian was at our heels when we gained
the rock, and it was to him now that I addressed my question.
"You said there were two at the gate, Regnarte. Where are they, then,
and what keeps them?"
He cracked his bony fingers many times, and began to gabble away
vociferously in his own language--a tongue I like the sound of, but
which no right-minded man should talk. When he came to some calmness
and to a sane man's speech, he pointed to the pinnacles of the lesser
gate and began to make the truth clear to me.
"You come lucky, sir, you come lucky, true! Hafmitz gone yonder; he and
mate, too; he go to see why other men cry out!"
I saw it like a flash. The alarm had been given at the other end of the
reef, and the two that should have guarded this, had put out in their
boat to see what the matter was. If a man had wished to believe that
Providence guided him that night, he could not have found a
circumstance to help him farther on the road. I make no pretence to be
what folks call a religious man, doing my duty without the hymn-books;
but I believe, and always shall believe, that there was something more
than mere chance on our way in all that venture, and so I set it down
here once and for all. The fingers of the white man's God pointed the
road for us; and we took it, fair or crooked let it prove to be.
"Luck! Luck's no word for it, my lads," said I. "If a man told such a
thing ashore, who'd believe him? And yet it's true--true, as your own
eyes tell you."
They had not found their tongues yet and none of them uttered a
syllable. The wonders they had seen: that house of mystery lying like a
palace of the story-books far down below the rolling Pacific; the
surprise of it all; the picture of lights and rooms and of a woman's
face; and now this plateau of rock with breakers at their feet and the
island mists for their horizon; and, in the far distance, away upon the
sword-fish reef, sights and sounds which quickened every pulse--who
shall blame them if they could answer me never a word? They simply
halted there and gazed spellbound across the shimmering water. I alone
knew how far we stood from the end where safety lay.
Now, Peter Bligh was the first to give up his star-gazing; and, shaking
himself like a great dog, he turned to me with a word of that common
sense which he can speak sometimes.
"'Tis a miracle, truly, and a couple of doors to it," cried he, like
one thinking keenly. "Nevertheless, I make bold to say that if they
have a key to yonder hatch we are undone entirely, captain."
I sat upon a crag of the rock and tried to think of it all. Czerny's
men would return in an hour, or two at the most, and the truth would be
out. They would come--the seamen to the lesser gate, the others to this
door of steel by which we sat--and, finding that knocking did not open,
they would take such measures as they thought fit to blast the doors. A
gun well fired might do as much if gun could be trained upon the reef.
Once let them inside and it needed no clever tongue to say how it would
fare with us or with those we sought to protect. No man, I said, would
live to tell that story, or to carry the history of Edmond Czerny's
life to a distant city. All that lay between us and life was this door
of steel shutting like a port-hole in the solid rock. And could we hold
it against, it might be one, it might be three hundred men? That was a
question the night must answer.
"Regnarte," I said, upon an impulse, "you have guns in this house?"
He held up his fingers and opened them many times to express a great
number.
"One, two, three hundred guns," said he. "Excellency has them all; but
here one gun much bigger than that. You seamen, you shall know how to
fire him, captain. Excellency say that no man take the gate while that
gun there. Ah! the leg on the other boot now!"
Now he cracked his fingers all the time he said this, and shook his
keys and danced about the plateau like a madman. For a while I could
make neither head nor tail of what he meant; but presently he turned as
though he would go down to the cabins again, and, standing upon the
very threshold of the staircase, he showed me what I had never seen or
should have looked for in twenty years--the barrel of a quick-firing
gun and the steel turret which defended it.
"'Tis a pom-pom, or I'm a heathen nigger!" cries Peter Bligh, half mad
at the sight of it. "A pom-pom, and a shield about it. The glory to
Saint Patrick that shows me the wonder!"
And Dolly Venn, catching hold of my hand in like excitement, he says:
"Oh, Mr. Begg, oh, what luck, what luck at last!"
I crossed the plateau and saw the thing with my own eyes. It was a
modern Krupp quick-firing gun, well kept, well fitted, well placed
behind a shield of steel which might defend those who worked it against
a hundred. Those who set it upon the rock so set it that not only the
near sea but the second gate could be covered by its fire. It would
sweep the water with a hail of lead, and leave unseen those that did
the work. And the irony of it was chiefly this, that Edmond Czerny,
seeking to defend the door of his house against all the world, now shut
it upon himself.
"Yes," said I, at last, and I spoke almost like a man drunk with
excitement; "give me shell for that, and we'll hold the gate against
five hundred!"
The hope of it set every nerve in my body twitching; sweat, I say,
began to roll down my face like rain.
"You have a magazine in this place," I continued, turning upon the
Italian in a way that surprised him; "you have arms in this house and
shot for that gun. Where are they, man, where are they?"
He stood stock-still with fright, and stammered out a broken reply.
"Excellency has the key, captain--I show you! Don't be angry, captain!"
He turned to enter the house again, and I followed him, as eager a man
as ever hunted for that which might take a fellow-creature's life.
"Do you, Peter and Dolly, keep a watch here," said I, indicating the
place, "while I go below with this man. We must hold the gate, lads,
hold it with our lives! If the two yonder come back, be sure you close
their mouths. You understand, Peter--close their mouths!"
"Aye, I understand, captain!" said he, very quietly. "They'll not sing
hymns when I've done with them!"
I followed the Italian down the stairs, and we made for the great hall
again. Many lights were burning there, and the figures of women passed
in and out of the splendid rooms. At the far corner, opposite Miss
Ruth's own apartment, the Italian came to a halt and began to gabble
again.
"Excellency live here, sir," said he; "the gun-room--you go right
through to him; but Excellency, he have the key. Me only doorman. I
speak true, sir!"
I opened the door of the room he indicated, and feeling upon the wall
switched on a lamp. It was the palace of a place, with great book-racks
all round it, and arm-chairs as long as beds in every corner, and
instruments and tables and pretty ornaments enough to furnish a
mansion; but for none of these things had I eyes that night. Yonder, at
the end of the room, a curtain opened above a door of iron; and through
that door I saw at a glance the way to the gun-room lay. Ah, how my
head tried to grapple with the trouble! The keys--where lay the keys?
What chance or miracle would show me those? Was the key on Czerny's
person or here in one of the drawers about? How much would I have paid
to have been told that truly! But how to open it!
Now the Italian watched me with curious eyes as I went up to the door
and drew the curtain back from it. A quick glance round the room did
not show me what common sense was seeking--an iron safe in which
Czerny's keys might lie. That he would keep the key of the armoury in
the room, unless it were on his person, I had no doubt; and argument
began to tell me that, after all, a safe might not be necessary. If
alarm came it would come from the sea; or from the lower doors, which
were locked against his devil's crew. I began to say that the keys
would be in a drawer or bureau, and I was going to ransack every piece
of furniture, when--and this seemed beyond all reason--I saw something
shining bright upon a little table in the corner, and crossing the room
I picked up the very thing for which a man might have offered the half
of his fortune.
"Heaven above!" said I, "if this is it--if this is it----"
And why should it not have been? News of the wreck had come to the
house like a sudden alarm leaping up in the night; the keys, which I
held with greedy fingers, might they not have been in Czerny's hands
when the bell clanged loudly through the startled corridors? I saw him,
forgetful in his very greed, serving out rifles to his willing men,
running up at hazard to be sure of the truth, leaving behind him that
which might open his house to the world forever. And in my hand the
fruit of his alarm was lying.
Ah, Heaven! it was the truth, and the door opened at my touch, and arms
for a hundred men glittered in the dim light about me.