THE FIRST ATTACK IS MADE BY CZERNY'S MEN
We carried the shot to the stairs' head, each man working as though his
own life were the price of willing labour. If Miss Ruth had tidings of
the great good fortune the night had sent to us, she would neither stay
our hands with questions nor wait for idle answers. For a moment I saw
her, a figure to haunt a man, looking out from the door of her own
room; but a long hour passed before I changed a word with her or knew
if that which we had done would win her consent. Now, indeed, was Ruth
Bellenden at the parting of the ways, and of all in Czerny's house her
lot must have been the hardest to bear. She had blotted the page of her
old life that night and it never would be rewritten. None the less, a
woman's courage could show me a bright face and all that girlish
gentleness which was her truest charm. Never once would she speak of
her own trouble, but always lightly of ours; so that we three--little
Ruth, Dr. Gray, and Jasper Begg--might have been friends met upon any
common adventure, and not at the crisis of that desperate endeavour.
And so I think it will befall in all the perilous days, that what is
written in the story-books about loud exclamations and pale faces and
all the rest of it is the property of the story-teller, and that in
plain truth you find none of these things, but just silent actors and
simple talk, and no more noise of the difficulty than the common day
will bring. This, at least, is my memory of that never-to-be-forgotten
night. To-morrow might give us life or death--a grave beneath the seas
or mastership of that house of mystery; though of this no word passed
between us, but briefly we gave each other the news and asked it in
return.
"Captain," says the doctor, he being the first to speak, "they tell me
you've struck a gun-store. Is it true or false?"
I told him that it was true, and making light of it--for I did not wish
Miss Ruth to be upset before there was good reason--I named another
thing.
"Yes," said I, "we shall defend ourselves if there's need, and give a
good account, I hope. For the rest, we'll take it as we find it. I am
trusting that Mister Czerny will listen to common sense and not risk
bloodshed. If he does, the blame be on his own head, for I shall do my
best to make it easy for him."
"I know you will--I know you will, Jasper," says little Ruth, closing
her hand upon mine, and not caring much what the doctor thought of it,
I'll be bound; "we can do no more than our duty, each of us. Mine is
very hard, but I shall not turn from it--never, while I know that duty
says, 'Go on!'"
"That I'm sure you won't, Miss Ruth," was my answer to her; "if ever
duty justified man or woman it justifies you and I this night. Let us
begin with that and all the rest is easy. What we are doing is done as
much for the sake of our fellow-men as for ourselves. We work for a
good end--to let the world know what Ken's Island harbours and to keep
our fellow-men from such a place. Accomplish that much, and right and
humanity owe us something, though it's not for me to speak of it, nor
is this the time. My business is to hold this house against the devils
who are pillaging the ship yonder. The sea-gate I can take care of,
Miss Ruth. It's what's below in the pit that I fear."
She listened with a curiosity which drank in every word and yet was not
satiated. Nevertheless, I believe but half of my story was plain to
her. And who blames her for that? Was not it enough for such a bit of a
girl to say, "My friends are with me. I trust them. They will win my
liberty." The arguments were for the men--for Mister Gray and me, who
sought a road in the darkness, but could not find one.
"Two doors to this house, captain," says the doctor, after a little
while, "and one of them shut. So much I understand. Are you sure that
the cavern below is empty, or do you still count men in it?"
"'Tis just neither way," said I, "and that's the worst of it, doctor.
The sea's to be held while the shell lasts and perhaps afterwards; but
if there are men down below, why, then it's another matter. I'm staking
all on a throw. What more can I do?"
He leaned back upon the sofa and appeared to think of it. Presently he
said:
"Captain, a man doesn't shoot with his foot, does he?"
And then, not waiting for me to answer, he goes on:
"Why, no; he shoots with his hand. Just you plant me in the passage and
give me a gun. I'll keep the door for you--by Jove, I will!"
Now, I saw that this promise frightened Miss Ruth more than she would
say, for it was the first time that it occurred to her that men might
come out of the pit. But she was just the one to turn it with a laugh,
and crying, "What folly! what folly!" she called out at the same time
for little Rosamunda, and began to think of that which I had clean
forgotten.
"Jasper," says she, "you will never make a general--never, never! Why,
where's your commissariat? Would you starve your crew and think nothing
of it? Oh, we shall feed Mister Bligh, and then it will be easy," says
she, prettily.
I made no objection to this, for it was evident that she wished to
conceal her fears from us; but I knew that the doctor was wise, and
before I left him there was a rifle at his side and twenty rounds to go
with it.
[Illustration: "If there is any sound at the door, fire that gun."]
"If there's any sound at the door of the corridor--as much as a
scratch," said I, "fire that gun. I shall be with you before the
smoke's lifted, and you will need me, doctor--indeed, you will!"
I left him upon this and went up, more anxious than I would have
confessed, to my shipmates at the gate. I found them standing together
in the moonlight, which shone clear and golden upon a gentle sea, and
gave points of fire to the rocky headlands of Ken's Island. So still it
was, such a scene of wonder and of beauty, that but for the words which
greeted me, and the dark figures peering across the water, and
something very terrible on the distant reef, I might have believed
myself keeping a lonely watch in the glory of a summer's night. That
delusion the East denied. I knew the truth even before Mister Bligh
named it.
"They've fired the ship, captain--fired the ship!" says he, with just
anger. "Aye, Heaven do to them as they've done to those poor creatures!
Did man ever hear of such a villainy--to fire a good ship in her
misfortune? It would be a sin against an honest rope to hang such a
crew as that!"
I stepped forward to the water's edge that I might see the thing more
clearly. Looming up upon that fair horizon were wreathing clouds of
smoke and crimson flames, and in the heart of it all the outline of the
ship these fiends had doomed. No picture ever painted could present
that woful scene or describe its magnificence as we saw it from the
watch-tower of the reef. It was, indeed, as though the very heavens
were on fire, while the sea all about the burning hull shone like a
pool of molten gold in which strange shapes moved and the shadows of
living things were to be seen. Now licking the quivering masts, now
blown aside in tongue-shaped jets, the lambent flame spurted from every
crack and crevice, leaped up from every port-hole of that splendid
steamer. I saw that her minutes were numbered, and I said that before
the dawn broke she would sink, a mass of embers, into the hissing
breakers.
"Good Lord, Mister Bligh!" cried I, the seaman's habit coming to me at
the dreadful spectacle, "was ever such a thing heard of? And the poor
people aboard--what of them now? What haven may they look for?"
"They've put the men ashore, sir," said Dolly Venn, hardly able to
speak for his anxiety. "I saw two boat-loads go across to the bay while
Mister Bligh was piling the ammunition. They've sent them to die on the
island. And we so helpless that we must just look on like schoolgirls.
Oh! I'd give all I've got to be over yonder with a hundred bluejackets
at my elbow. Think of it, sir! Just a hundred, and cutlasses in their
hands."
"Aye," said I, "and a tree for every rogue that rows a boat yonder.
Well, my lad, thinking's no good this night, nor can you get the
bluejackets by whistling. We haven't all served our time in a Queen's
ship, Dolly, and we're just plain seamen; but we'll try and speak a
word to Edmond Czerny by-and-bye, or I'll never speak another. Now,
help me with your young eyes, will you, and tell me if that's a ship's
gig yonder, or if it isn't----"
He said that it was a ship's gig, and he pointed out that which I had
not seen before--a steam yacht lying off to the east of us and waiting
for some of her crew to go aboard. Edmond Czerny would be on deck
there, I thought, watching the hounds he had sent to the work; and if
that spectacle of death and destruction did not gratify him, then
nothing would in all the world. And surely such a sight even he had not
beheld in all his years. That shimmering molten sea, the island
catching the reflected lights and making its own pictures of them; the
distant forests, whose trees lifted fiery branches and leaves of flame;
the mist-clouds raining blood and gold, the burning steamer, the great
arena of fire-flecked sea and the small-boats swimming upon it--what
more of delight or devilry could Ken's Island give this vulture of the
deep?
So much the night would show us as Providence willed and good hearts
might determine.
Now, I have told you that little Dolly Venn had served in the Naval
Reserve and knew more of gunnery than the most of us. To this, I bear
witness, we owed much that night.
"You've got a skipper's part, Dolly, lad," said I, "and yon gig begins
the trouble, if my eyes don't deceive me. Why, she's coming in here,
lad, straight to this very door, just as fast as oars can bring her.
And there's more to follow--a fleet of them, as any lubber could tell
you."
"'Tis like a fête and gala on the old stinking Liffey," says Peter
Bligh, peering with me across the busy sea. "A dozen boats, and every
one of them full. I'd give something to see Mister Jacob to-night;
indeed, and I would, captain. We are over few for such an 'out and
home' as this."
It was rare to see Peter Bligh serious, but he had the right to be that
night, and I was the last to blame him. Consider our situation and ask
what others would have felt, placed as we were--four willing men upon a
bit of craggy rock rising sheer out of a thousand fathom sea, and
commanded to hold the gate for our lives and for another life more
precious against all the riff-raff that Ken's Island could send against
us. Out on the shimmering sea I counted twelve boats with my own eyes,
and knew that every one of them was full of cut-throats. In the half of
an hour or sooner that devil's crew would knock at our gate and demand
to come in. Whatever way we answered them, however clever we might be,
was it reason to suppose that we could hold the rock against such odds,
hold it until help came when help was so distant? I say that it was
not. By all the chances, by every right reason, we should have been cut
down where we stood, and our bodies swimming in the sea before the sun
shone again on Ken's Island and its mysteries. And if this truth was
present in my mind, how should it be absent from the minds of the
others? Brave faces they showed me, bright words they spoke; but I knew
what these concealed. We stood together for a woman's sake; we knew
what the price might be and made no complaint of it.
"We are over few, Peter," said I, "but over few is better than many
when the heart is right. Just you drink up that grog and put yourself
where there is not so much of your precious body in the moonlight. It
will be Dolly's place at the gun, and mine to help him. There is this
in my mind, Peter, that we've no right to shoot fellow-creatures unless
they call upon us so to do. When the gig comes up I'll give them a fair
challenge before the volley's fired. After that it's up and at them,
for Miss Ruth's sake. You will not forget, Peter, that if we can hold
this place until help comes, belike we'll carry Miss Ruth to Europe and
shut down this devil's den forever. If that's not work good enough to
put heart into a man, I don't know what is. Aye, my lads," said I to
them all, "tell yourselves that you are here and acting for the sake of
one who did you many a kindness in the old time; and mind you shoot
straight," says I, "and don't go wasting honest lead when there's
carrion waiting for it."
They answered "Aye, aye!" and Dolly, leaping up to the gun, began to
give his orders just for all the world as though he skippered the ship
and I was but a passenger.
"We'll put Regnarte in front," says he, "so that we can keep an eye on
him. Let Peter hail them from where he's standing now; the rock covers
him, captain, and the shield will take care of you and me. And oh?"
says he, "I do wish it would begin--for my fingers are just itching!"
"Let them itch, lad, let them itch," was my answer; "here's the gig by
the point, and they won't trouble you with that complaint long. Do you,
Peter, give them a hail when I cry, 'Now!' If they stop, well and good;
if they come on--why, you won't be asking them to walk right in!" says
I.
He took my meaning and set to work like the brave man that he was. Very
deliberately and carefully I saw him slip out of his coat and fold it
up neatly at his feet. He had a rifle in his hand and a pile of
ammunition on the floor, and now he opened his Remington and began to
fill it. For my part, I stood by the gun's shield, and from that place,
covered by a ring of steel, I looked out across the awaking sea.
Impatience, doubt, hope, fear--these I forgot in the minutes which
passed while the gig crept slowly across that silver pool. The silence
was so great that a man might almost breathe it. Slow, to be sure, she
was; and every man who has waited at a post of danger knows what it
means to see a strange sail creeping up to you foot by foot, and to be
asking yourself a dozen times over whether she be friend or enemy, a
welcome consort or a rogue disguised. But there is an end to all
things, even to the minutes of such suspense; and I bear witness that I
never heard sweeter music than the ringing hail which Mister Bligh sent
across the still sea to the eight men in the gig, and to any other his
message might concern.
"Ahoy!" cries he, "and what may you be wanting, my hearties, and what
flag do you sail under?"
Now, if ever a hail out of the night surprised eight men, this was the
occasion and this the scene of it. They had come back from the pillaged
ship believing that the sea-gate of the house stood open to them and
that friends held it in all security. And here upon the threshold a
strange voice hails them; they are asked a question which turns every
ear towards the rock, sends every man's hand to the gun beside him.
Instantly, their own vile deeds accusing them, they cry, "Discovery!"
They tell each other, I make sure, that Czerny's house is in the
possession of strangers. They are stark mad with curiosity, and unable
for a spell to say a word to us.
They would not speak a word, I say; their oars were still, their boat
drifted lazily to the drowsy tide. If they peered with all their eyes a
the rock from which the voice came, but little consolation had they of
the spectacle. The shadows spoke no truth, the gate hid the unknown;
they could read no message there. Neither willing to go back nor to
advance, they sat gaping in the boat. How could they know what anxious
ears and itching hands waited for their reply?
A voice at last, crying harshly across the ripple of the water, broke
the spell and set every tongue free again. Aye, it was good to hear
them speak.
"Bob Williams," cries the voice. "What ho! my ancient! I guess that's
you, Bob Williams."
"And I guess it isn't," roars Peter Bligh, half mad, like a true
Irishman, at the thought of a fight. "It isn't Bob Williams, and be
derned to you! Are you going ashore to Ken's Island or will you swim
awhile? It's good water for bathing," says he, "and no charge for the
machine. Aye," says he, "by the look of you cold water would not hurt
your skins."
Well, they had nothing to say to this; but we could hear them parleying
among themselves. And presently; another longboat pulling up to them,
the two together drifted in the open and then, without a word, began to
row away to the lesser reef, whose gate I had shut not an hour ago.
This I saw with very great alarm; for it came to me in an instant that
if they could force the trap--and there were enough of them to do that,
seeing that they had rifles in their hands--the whole of the lower
rooms would swarm with their fellows presently, and I did not doubt
that the house would be taken.
"Dolly," cried I, appealing to the lad, when, the Lord knows, my own
head should have been the one to lead, "Dolly," cried I, "they'll force
the gate--and what then, Dolly----?"
He had leapt up when the ship moved off, and now, drawing me back, with
nervous fingers he began to show me what a man-of-war had taught him.
"No, sir, no," says he, wildly, "no, it's not that. Help me and I'll
tell you--and oh, Mister Begg, don't you see that this gun was put here
to cover that very place?" says he.
Well, I had seen it, though in the stress of recent events it had
slipped my memory; and yet it would have been as plain as the nose on
the face to any gunner, even to the youngest. For if Czerny must hold
his house against the world, how should he hold it with one door of two
open to the sea? That devilish gun, swung there on a peak of the rock,
could sweep the waters, turn where you might. It was going to sweep the
lesser gate to-night.
"Round with her and quick about it," cries Dolly Venn, and never a
gladder cry have I heard him utter. "They're coming ashore, captain.
They are on the rock already."
I stood up to make sure of it, and saw four men leap from the gig to
the rock which it was life or death for us to hold. And to Dolly I
said:
"Let go, lad; let go, in Heaven's name!"
He stood to the gun; and clear above all other sounds of the night the
sharp reports rang out. That peaceful, sleeping sea awoke to an hour
the like to which Ken's Island will never know again. We cast the glove
to Edmond Czerny and powder spake our message. Henceforth it was his
day or ours, life or death, the gallows or the sea.
There were four men upon the rock when the gun began to spurt its vomit
of shot across the sea, and two of them fell almost with the first
report. I saw a third dragging himself across the crags and pressing a
hand madly against every stone as though to quench some burning flame;
a fourth crouched down and began to cry to his fellows in the boats for
mercy's sake to put in for him; but before they could lift a hand or
ship an oar the fire was among them; and skimming the waves for a
moment, then carrying beyond them, it caught them as a hail of burning
steel at last and shut their lips forever. Aye, how shall I tell you of
it truly--the worming, tortured men, the gaping wounds they showed, the
madness which sent them headlong into the sea, the sagging boat dipping
beneath them, the despair, the terror, when death came like a
whirlwind? These things I shut from my eyes; I would not see them.
The sharp reports, the words of agony, the oaths, the ferocious
threats--they came and went as a storm upon the wind. And afterwards
when silence fell, and I beheld the silver sea, the island wreathed
in mists, ships' boats in the distance like dots upon the water, the
ebbing flames where the steamer burned, the woods wherein honest seamen
suffered in the death-trance from which but few would waken, I turned
to my comrades and, hand linked in hand, I said, "Well done!"