THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTY HOURS
It was near about midday on a Saturday that we saved the poor folks
from the island, and not long after midnight on the Monday that our
troubles came to a head. I like to call these the "sixty hours"; and as
what I have to write of them is written, as it were, from watch to
watch, so swiftly did things happen, I will try to make a diary of it
that you may follow me more closely.
_Saturday, May 27th. At midday._
There are nine people rescued from the ship, and one of these a girl,
Isabel, the daughter of Captain Nepeen, of the American navy. Her
father is with her, a tall, stately man, very quiet and orderly, and
quite ready to take a man's duty in the house. Of the others, the most
part are American seamen, for this was an ocean-going steamer, Silver
Bell, trading from American ports to Yokohama. All are very astonished
at the things they have seen and heard both in this house and upon
Ken's Island; but they are too ill to take much part in them, and the
young lady lies still in a dead trance. Doctor Gray says that he will
save her; but another man, knowing less, might think that she was dead.
_The same day. At four o'clock._
They waked me from sleep at this hour to tell me that the men in the
caverns below were beating upon the iron doors of the corridor, and
appeared likely to force their way up to our part of the house. Captain
Nepeen brought the news himself, and had a long talk with me. I found
him a cultured man, and one who got a grip of things sooner than I had
expected.
"Mr. Begg," he said, "it is plain that we have fallen into the hands of
a very great scoundrel. I cannot imagine what kind of intellect has
made use of this extraordinary place, but I can very plainly divine the
purpose. It is for you and me to answer to civilization and justice. We
must begin at once, Captain Begg, without any loss of time," says he.
I answered him a little sharply, perhaps, being not over-pleased that
he should make so light of my own part in the matter.
"Sir," said I, "what a seaman can do I have done already, or you would
not be here to speak of it. Let that go by. The news that you bring
won't wait for civilities. It must be plain to you that if we are to
stand a siege in this house, we must hold every gate of it. There are
men in the galleries below; Heaven knows how many of them. I would name
that first and let the rest come after."
He was put about at this, and made haste to express a gratitude I had
not looked for. His naval training prompted him to habits of authority.
I could see that he was itching to be up and acting, and I knew that he
needn't wait long for that.
"Indeed," says he, warmly, "we owe our lives to you, as many a good
seaman will owe it in the days to come. I should have spoken of that
first. The wonders of this place drive other thoughts from a man's
head. We were half dead when we saw your signal, captain. What has
become of my fellow-passengers and the rest of the crew, God alone
knows. They put us ashore on the island after the ship was taken last
night, and nine of us, as you see, are here to tell the story. I have
heard the tradition of Ken's Island from the Japanese, but I never
believed a word of it before yesterday. Now I know that it is true. My
fellow-passengers are there, dead or dying, and at sundown I am
certainly going ashore to do what I can for them."
"You are a brave man, Captain Nepeen," said I, "a very brave man. Where
you go I follow. We cannot leave poor seamen to perish, cost us what it
may. Yet I would not hide it from you that it is a big business, and
that the man who goes to Ken's Island to-night may never return. We are
now fourteen in this house, and our first duty is to leave it safe for
those who trust us. With your help, Captain Nepeen, we'll answer the
scum down below," said I.
He assented very heartily and began to speak of the arms that we had
and of the manner of employing them. His fellows, I learned, were
bivouacked in the great hall, and these he waked first while I was
getting the sleep out of my eyes and asking myself, "What next?" The
room in which I lay was Czerny's own room; and now in the daylight the
sea played cool and green upon the arched windows and showed to me such
sights on the rocks without as I had never dreamed of in the darker
hours. What genius had pitched upon such a house under the waves? I
asked. What spirit of evil breathed upon this dreadful place? What
craving for solitude sent this master-mind here to the bed of the
Pacific Ocean, where it could spy upon these uncanny secrets, watching
the still green water, face to face with devilish shapes butting upon
the glass, the friend of the horrid creatures which slimed upon the
windows and crawled to their rocky haunts, or fought claw to claw in
the sight of their enemy, man? Desperate as the plight was, I must
stand a minute before the crystal panes and watch that changing
spectacle of the sea's own wonders. The very water was so near that
I thought I had but to stretch out a hand to touch it. The weird,
wild things that crept over the rocks, surely they would enter this
room presently! And Czerny could live here, cheek by jowl with
these fearsome mysteries! Again I say that man knows little of his
fellow-man, of his better nature or his worse.
_The same day. At five o'clock._
We open the lower doors and go down into the galleries. Seven men are
with me and each carries a musket. The quest is not so much for those
shut down in the pit as for the life which they may send up to us.
Doctor Gray has put it in a word, and it is true. The great engine,
which draws the air from the sea's brink and drives it out in
life-giving currents through the corridors of Czerny's house, that
engine alone stands between us and eternity this day. If those below
have kept that engine going until this time, it is for their own
safety's sake. Rob them of food and drink, and what security have we
that they will continue at the task? And yet, the deed be my witness,
it was a perilous journey. No man in our company could say surely how
many of Czerny's crew he would find in the black labyrinth we must
face. No man could speak of the hidden mysteries lurking in passage or
cavern, far from the sea-gate and the sun's light. We were going into
the unknown; and we went with timorous steps, each asking himself,
"Shall I live to see the day again?" each saying to the other, "Stand
close!"
Now, the knocking had ceased when we opened the gates, and we stood for
a little while peering down into that corridor, which I have named
already as the backbone of the lower house. Lighted it was, the lamps
still burning, its barred doors shut, its branching passages suggesting
a hive of rocky nests which might harbour an army of desperadoes. No
sound came up to us from below save the sound of the engine throbbing,
throbbing, as it fanned a breath of life and drove it upwards to us
fresh and sweet upon our faces. Whoever lurked in that abyss feared to
show himself or to cry a truce. We were hedged about by black mystery,
and, rifle in hand, we set out to learn the truth.
There were lamps in the corridor, but in the passages branching from it
no light save that which streamed down, green and silvery, from the
windows which shut the still sea out. Oftentimes the seven with me
would draw all close together, awed by the fantastic spectacle these
glimpses of the sea's heart showed to them. At other times the nearer
alarm would set them quaking, and crying "Hist!" they would listen for
steps in the silence or other sounds than that of the engine's pulse
and the whirring fans. The very stillness, I think, made them afraid.
The horrors of the windows--above all, that horror of the nameless
fish--could frighten a man as no spectre of God's earth above. If I had
accustomed myself in part to these new sensations, if Czerny's house
seemed to me rather a refuge than a terror, none the less there were
moments when my step halted and my eyes were glued upon the sights I
saw. For here it would be a monstrous shark lying still in a glassy
pool; or there a very army of ferocious crabs, their eyes outstanding,
their claws crushing prey, their great shells shaped like fungi of the
deep; or going on a little way again I stopped before a giant porthole
and discovered a devil-fish and his nest in the deep and said that
nothing like to it had been heard or told of. Here lies a great basin
scooped out of the coral rock, and the green water is focused in it
until it looks like a prism, and everywhere, in nook and crevice, the
deadly tentacles, the frightful eyes of these unnameable creatures seem
to twist and stare, and threaten us. Such fish we counted, hundreds of
them, at the windows of the second cavern we entered; and, drawing back
from it affrighted, we went on like men who fear to speak of that which
they have seen.
"A madman's house; it could not be anything else," says Captain Nepeen,
as pale as any ghost; "unless I had seen it with my own eyes, Mr. Begg,
no story that ever was written would make me believe it. And yet it is
true, as Heaven is above us, it is true."
"No doubt of that," said I, "a madman's house, captain, and madmen to
people it. But of that we'll speak by-and-bye; for the shadows may
listen. Keep your gun ready; there will be others about besides
ourselves. Here's the first of them--stone-dead, by the Lord!"
They all came to a stand at my words, and saw that which my eyes
discovered for them--the figure of a dead man, lying full and plain to
be seen in the lamp's glare, and so fallen that no one might ask you
how he had died.
"One," said I, "and that which killed him left behind! He's been struck
down as he ran. There's the knife that did it, lads!"
A young seaman among us shuddered when he saw the knife still sticking
in the dead man's side. The rest of us drew the body out of the light
and went on again with wary steps. We were near the great dormitory at
this time, the door of which I myself had locked; but it was open now
and the lock broken. Lamps still burned in that vast room; food lay
still upon its tables; but the story of it was to be read at every
step. Chests overturned, chairs smashed, a litter of clothes upon the
floor, broken bottles, an empty pistol, great marks upon the door where
iron had indented it, bore witness to the struggle for light and
freedom. The prisoners had fled, but life was the price of liberty. I
took one swift glance round this broken prison, and then led my
comrades out of it.
"The birds have flown and one of them is winged," said I. "There are
five more to take, and the shadows hide them! Come on, my lads, or
they'll say that eight were scared by five, and that's no tale to tell
of honest seamen!"
I spoke up to encourage them, for, truth to tell, the dark and the
mystery were playing strange tricks with my nerves. As we penetrated
deeper into that labyrinth I could start at every shadow and see a
figure in every cranny. The men that the dark patches harboured, where
were they? Their eyes might be watching every step we took, their
pistols covering our bodies as we hurried on to the depths. And yet no
sound was heard, the great engine throbbed always; the cool, sweet air
blew fresh upon our faces.
Now, the first voice spoke at the head of the engine-room stairs, from
an open cavern which no lamp illumined. I had just called out to
Captain Nepeen to follow me to the engine-room, and was bidding the
others wait at the stairs-head, when a shot came flashing out of the
darkness, and in the flame of the gun's light I saw a great hulking
figure, and recognised it instantly. It was that of Kess Denton, the
yellow man, whom I had left senseless at the door of Ruth Bellenden's
bungalow more than twenty days ago. A giant figure, the head bandaged,
the arms and chest naked, a rifle gripped in both hands, this phantom
of the darkness showed itself for an instant and then vanished with an
echoing laugh which mocked and angered us. At the same moment the young
seaman who had shuddered before the dead, fell headlong in the passage,
and with one loud cry gave up his life.
And this was the first man who died for little Ruth Bellenden's sake.
We swung about on our heels as the report rang out and fired a blazing
volley into the darkness of the cavern. What other men lingered there,
how many of the driven ghouls who haunted the labyrinth received that
hail of lead, I shall never know nor care to ask. Groans answered our
shots; there were cries of pain, the curses of the wounded, the
derisive laughter of those that escaped. But little by little the
sounds died away, echoing in other and distant galleries, or coming to
us as whispered voices, speaking from places remote, and leaving to us
at last a silence utter and profound.
We were masters of the bout and the engine was ours.
"Captain Nepeen," said I, "do you and three others go back to the
stairs-head and hold it until I come. If they are afraid to face us
here, they'll never face us at all. Why, look at it. Seven men out in
the light, as fair a target as a woman might ask for, and they show us
their heels. Go back and hold the gate, and I and those with me will
answer for the engine. Time afterwards to hunt the vermin out."
He took my order unwillingly, I could see. A greater devil for a fight
than that smooth-faced American sailor I shall never meet in all my
days. Keen as a hound after quarry, he would have hunted out the
vermin, I do believe, if the path had led down to the mouth of Hades
itself.
"You will not go alone, captain," cried he, "that's plain madness."
"I take two to my call," said I, "and leave you the rest."
"But what--aren't you afraid, man?"
"Afraid! Of whom?" said I. "Of an old man--but that's too far ahead.
I'll speak of it when I come up, captain. Perhaps it's only my own
idea. But it's good enough to go on with."
He had still something to say, and, looking first into the black
cavern, which we had filled with shot, and then down the stairs towards
the engine-room, he went on presently:
"You take a big risk and I hope you'll get out of it. How many do you
expect to find below?
"One," said I, quickly, "and he a friend. It's a strange story,
captain, and wonderful, too. But it will wait."
I was at the door of the engine-room before he could answer me, and
pulling back the leather curtain I put my own idea to the proof. Just
as forty hours ago, so now that gloomy cavern shimmered with the
crimson light which the giant furnaces cast upon its rocky roof. Now,
as then, leather-clad figures moved before its molten fires. There were
the mighty boilers, the pumping engine, the throbbing cylinders, the
shining cranks; but the man who staggered towards me in the white
light, the man who uttered a glad cry of recognition, the man who fell
at last at my feet, imploring me for the love of mercy to bring him
food and drink, that man was no enemy.
He was Clair-de-Lune, the old Frenchman, and I had but to look at him
twice to see that he was the neighbour of death.
"Clair-de-Lune, old comrade!" I cried, "you! We owe our lives to
_you_, then! By thunder, you shame us all!"
He was pale as death; the sweat ran in streams down upon his naked
breast; his words came like a torrent when he tried to tell me all.
"Three days in prison, and no man come to me," he said, pathetically;
"then I hear your voice. I say it is Captain Begg. I am glad, monsieur,
because it is a friend. I break the door of my prison and would come up
to you; but no, there is no one in the house; all gone. I say that my
friends die if I do not serve them. There are lads with me; but they
are honest. Ah, Captain Begg, food and drink, for the love of Christ!"
He fainted in thy arms, and I carried him from the place. Again, in all
providence, I and those dear to me had been saved by the fidelity of
one of the oddest of God's creatures.
_The same day. At eight o'clock._
I have begun to believe that the Italian is right, and that Czerny left
no more than eight men in the lower house. No attack has been made upon
the Americans we put in charge of the engine, nor is there any news of
those mutineers who fled from us this morning, save that which comes
from two of them, very pitiful creatures, broken-down and starving, who
have surrendered their arms and begged for food. The others, they say,
will come in presently, when the big man, whom they call Kess Denton,
will let them. They protest that their comrades are but four, and two
of them wounded grievously. I no longer feel any anxiety about that
which is below, and I have told Miss Ruth as much. She has now been two
hours with Captain Nepeen. Her way of life draws her sympathetically
towards that brave and gentle man. It must be so. The world has put a
great gulf between the simple seaman and those whom fortune shelters at
her heart. A plain sailor has his duty to do; the world would laugh at
him if he forgot it because the years have taught him to worship a
woman's step and to seek that goal of life to which her hand may lead
him.
_An hour later._
We are to go ashore with the dark to see if we can save any of the
refugees marooned on the island. It is a desperate chance and may cost
good men's lives. I do not forbid it, for I have lived and suffered on
Ken's Island myself. If there are living men there now--it may be
women, too--held in that trance of death from which they must awake to
madness or never wake again, the commonest instinct of pity says to me,
"Go." I have consulted Doctor Gray, and he is doubtful of the venture.
"Mind what you are doing, I beg of you," he says. "Are there not women
to save in this house?" Miss Ruth overhears him and draws me aside,
and, putting her hand upon my arm winningly, she lifts her pretty face
to mine and says, "Jasper, you will save them!"
I am going ashore, and Captain Nepeen goes with me.
_At ten o'clock._
We put off a boat at ten o'clock and rowed straight for the open beach.
It was a gloriously clear night, with a heaven of blazing stars and a
sea like flowing silver. The ship's boats made so many black shapes,
like ocean drift in the pools of light; and Czerny's yacht, speaking of
that dread Presence, lay as an evil omen in the anchorage to the
northward. Ken's Island itself was uplifted like some mountain of the
sea, snowcapped in its dazzling peaks, harbouring its wayward forests
and lovely glens and fresh meadows which the moon's light frosted. And
over all was that thin veil of the fog, a steaming blue vapour flecked
with the richest hues; now drifting in clouds of changing tints, now
spreading into fantastic creations and phantom cities, pillars of
translucent yellow flame, banks of darker cloud as though a storm were
gathering. Sounds of the night came to us from that dismal island; we
heard the lowing of the kine, the sea-bird's hoot, ever and anon the
terrible human cry which spoke of a soul in agony. And with these were
mingled grimmer sounds, like very music of the storm: the echo of
distant gunshots fired by Czerny's men at the anchored yacht which
refused them harbourage.
There were four with me in the boat, and Captain Nepeen was one of
them. I had set Peter Bligh at the tiller, and Seth Barker and an
American seaman to pull the oars. We spoke rare words, for even a
whisper would carry across that night-bound sea. There were rifles in
our hands; good hope at our hearts. Perchance, even yet, we should
awake some fellow-creature from the nameless sleep in the woods whose
beauty veiled the living death.
Now, I say that Czerny's men were firing rifle-shots at the anchored
schooner, and that sound was a true chantey for our ears. What eyes
would they have for us when their salvation lay aboard the yacht? We
were nothing to them; the ship was all. And, be sure, we did not go
unwatched or helpless. Behind us, at the gate we had left, our gun
showed its barrel like the fang of a slipped hound. Cunning hands were
there, brave fellows who followed us in their hearts, while we crossed
the basin swiftly and drew near the terrible shore. If we had seen the
sun for the last time, then so be it, we said. It is not a seaman's way
to cry at danger. His word is "must," and in a sure purpose lies his
salvation.
We made the island at the westward end that we might have a clear sheet
of water between Czerny's boats and our own; and we so set our course
that our gun could sweep the intervening seas if any eye detected us.
The land was low-lying towards the west and marshy; yet, strange to be
told, the fog lay light upon it. It had been planned between us that
Captain Nepeen and I should go ashore while the others held the boat.
We carried revolvers in our hands, but no other arms. The death-fog was
our true defence; and against that each man wore the respirator that
Duncan Gray had made for him. Sleep might be our lot, but it would come
upon us slowly.
"It will be straight for the woods, captain," said I, "and all our
heart go with us. Your friends, who were put ashore last night, will
never stray far from the beach, believe me. We'll search the foreshore
and leave the rest to chance. As for going under, we sha'n't think of
that. It would never do to begin by being afraid of it."
He answered readily enough that he had never thought of such a thing.
"Where you lead, there I follow, Captain Begg," said he. "I shall not
be far behind you, rely upon it."
"And me not far from the shore when it's 'bout ship and home again,"
chimes in Peter Bligh. "God go with you, captain, for you are a brave
man entirely!"
I laughed at their notion of it, and went a little way up the beach.
The respirator about my mouth, charged with some chemical substance I
did not know the use of, permitted me to breathe at first with some
ease. And what was more extraordinary was this, that while in the woods
the fog had seemed to suffocate me, here it was exhilarating; bracing a
man's steps so that he seemed to walk on air; exalting him so that his
mind was on fire and his head full of the wildest notions. No coward
that ever lived would have known a moment's fear under the stimulation
of that clear blue vapour. I bear witness, and there are others to bear
witness with me, that a whole world of strange figures and wonderful
places opened up to our eyes when we began to push ashore and to leave
the sandy beach behind us. And that was but the beginning of it, for
more fearful things were to follow after.
I will try to describe for you both the place and the scene, that you
may realize my sensation, and follow me truly in this, my third journey
to Ken's Island. Imagine, if you can, an undulating stretch of lush
grass and pasture-land, a glorious meadow flooded with the clear, cold
light; arched over with a heaven of stars; bordered about by heavy
woods; dipping to the sea on two sides and extending shimmering sands
to the breaking swell on the third. Say that a hot blue fog quivers in
the air above this meadow-land, and is breathed in at every breath you
take. Conceive a mind so played upon by this vapour that the meadows
and the woods beyond the meadows are gradually lost to view, and a
wonder-world quickly takes their place. Do this, and you may follow me
more surely to a phantom city of majestic temples hewn out of a golden
rock and lifting upward until they seem to touch the very skies; you
may peer with me into abysses so profound that no eye can fathom their
jewelled depths; you may pass up before walls built wholly of gems most
precious; you may sleep in woods beneath trees silvered over with
light; search countless valleys rich in unknown flowers. And the city
is peopled with an unnumbered multitude of moving figures, the sensuous
figures of young girls all glittering in gold and jewels; the shapes of
an army of giants in blackest armour; and there are animals that no eye
has seen before, and beasts more terrible than the brain can conceive.
Say, too, that this deadly vapour of the island so stimulates the
faculties that earth no longer binds a man nor heaven imprisons him.
Say that he can rise above the spheres to unknown worlds, can, span the
seas, and bridge the mountains. Depict him, as it were, throwing off
his human shape and seeing the abodes of men so far below him, so puny,
so infinitely small that he begins to realize eternity. Cast him down
from these visions suddenly and in their place set up black woods and
the utter darkness of nature impenetrable. Let the exaltation leave
him, the sights fade utterly, the dismal abyss of the nether world
close him in. Awake him from these again and let him reel up and
stagger on and believe that he is sinking down to the eternal sleep.
Such sensations Ken's Island will give him until at last he shall fall;
and lying trance-bound for the rain to beat upon his face, or the sun
to scorch him, or the moon to look down upon his dreams, he shall lie
and know that the world is there, and that nevermore may he have part
or lot in it.
I have set down this account of my own experiences on the island that
you may compare it with the books of others who have since visited this
wonderful place; but I would not have you think that I, and the brave
man who stood at my side, forgot that human errand which put us ashore
in those dismal swamps; or hung back to speak of our own sensations
while others might need us so sorely. If we passed from delirium to
sanity, from the height of hysterical imagination to the depths of
despair and gloom, none the less the faculty of action remained, the
impulse which cried, "Straight on," and left us willing still to dare
the worst if thereby a fellow-creature might be saved. Burning as our
brains were, heavy the limbs, we could still push on across the
meadows, search with our eyes for those poor people we had come out to
save. How long this power of action would remain to us, what supreme
misfortune would end our journey at last, throwing us, it might be, to
the grass, there to sleep and end it all, we would not so much as
consider. Good men were perishing on Ken's Island, and every instinct
said, "You, Jasper Begg, and you, James Nepeen, hold out a hand to
them."
"Do you see anything, captain?" I asked my companion again and again;
"we should be near them now. Do you hear any sound?"
He answered me, gasping for his breath:
"Not a whisper."
"Yonder," I would go on, "yonder by the little wood; they landed there.
Can you get as far, captain?"
"I'll try, by Heaven!" said he, between his teeth.
"They'll not be far from the wood," said I, "that's common sense. Shut
your eyes to all the things you see and don't think about it. It's an
awful place, captain. No living man can picture its fellow."
I waited for him to come up to me, and so placed myself that his eyes,
I hoped, might turn seaward and not up towards the woods where such
weird sights were to be seen. For this place, the angle of the great
pasture-land where it met the forest, was occupied by sleeping cattle,
white, and still, and frigid, so that all the scene, glimmering in the
moonlight, might have been cut out of some great block of marble; and
cows and sheep, and trees and hills, all chiselled by the hand of
Death. That a living thing should be speaking and moving there seemed
almost an outrage upon the marvellous beauty of that field of sleep.
The imagination reeled before this all-conquering trance, this glory of
nature spellbound. It were as though a man must throw himself to the
earth, do what he would, and surrender to the spell of it. And that,
perchance, we had done, and the end had been there and then, but for a
woman's cry, rising so dolefully in the woods that every impulse was
awakened by it and all our resolutions retaken.
"Did you hear that?" I cried to him, wildly; "a woman's voice, and near
by, too! You'll not turn back now, Captain Nepeen!"
"Not for a fortune!" said he, bravely; "it would be Gertrude Dolling,
the purser's sister; we cannot leave her!"
The desire was like a draught of wine to him. He had been near falling,
I make sure, but now, steadying himself for an instant upon my arm, he
set off running at all his speed, and I at his heels, we crossed the
intervening grass and were in the wood. There we found the purser's
sister, stumbling blindly to and fro, like a woman robbed of sight,
while children were clinging to her dress and crying pitifully because
she did not heed them.
It was an odd scene, and many must come and go before I forget it. Dark
as the wood might be by day, the moonlight seemed to fill every glade
of it, showing us the gnarled trunks and the flowering bushes, the
silent pools and the grassy dells. And in the midst of this sylvan
rest, remote from men, a lonely thicket of the great Pacific Ocean, was
this figure of civilization, a young girl decked out in white, with a
pretty hat that Paris might have sent her, and little children, in
their sailors' clothes, clinging trustingly, as children will in
confidence to a woman's protecting hand. No surprise was it to me then,
nor is it a surprise now, that the girl neither saw nor heard us. The
trance had gripped her surely; the first delirium of exaltation had
robbed her of sight and sense and even knowledge of the children. That
doleful wailing song of hers was the first chant of madness. Her steps
were undirected, now carrying her to the wood's heart, now away from it
a little way towards the sea's beach. My order, twice given, that she
should stand and wait for us was never answered; I do not even think
that she felt my hand upon her shoulder. But she fell at last, limp and
shuddering, into my arms, and I picked her up and turned towards the
sea.
"The children to you, and straight ahead," said I to the captain; "run
for your life, and for the lives of these little ones. It will be
something to save them, captain."
He answered me with a word that was almost a groan; but stooped to his
task, nevertheless. He knew that it was a race for their lives and
ours.
I had the burden in my arms, I say, and no feather's weight was less to
me in the hope of my salvation and of those we strove for. The way lay
straight down, through a ravine of the low cliffs to the beach we had
left and the good boat awaiting us there. Nothing, it seemed, but a
craven will could stand henceforth between us and God's fresh air that
night. And yet how wrong that reckoning was! There were a dozen of
Czerny's men halloaing wildly on the cliff-side when we came out of the
wood; and almost before we had marked them, they were after us headlong
like devils mad in wine.
Now these men, as we learned afterwards, driven by hunger and thirst to
the point of raving, had come ashore that very evening; it may be to
rifle the stores on the island; it may be in that spirit of sheer
madness which sometimes drives a seaman on. Twenty in all when they
landed, there were eight asleep already when we encountered them; and
lying on the cliff's side, some with arms and heads overhanging, some
shuddering in the fearful sleep, one at least bolt upright against the
rock with his arms outstretched as though he were crucified, they
dotted that dell like figures upon a battle-field. The rest of them, a
sturdy twelve, fired by the dancing madness, brandishing their knives,
uttering the most awful imprecations, ran on the cliff's head above us,
and seemed to be making straight for the cove where our boat lay. And
that is why we said that the race was for life or death.
There are moments in his life when a man must decide "aye" or "nay"
without checking his step to do so. As things stood, the outlook could
not have been blacker while we ran through the ravine to the water's
edge. Behind, in the wood, lay the dancing death; before us these
madmen with their gleaming knives, their unearthly yells, their reeling
gait and fearful gesticulations. We had to choose between them, the
sleep in the lonely glen, or the race downward to the shore; and we
chose the latter, believing, I think, that the end must be the same,
turn where we would.
"Keep your course, keep your course!" I cried to the captain as we ran
on. "Hold to it, for your life--it's our only chance!"
He set one of the children on the sand, and, bidding the little one run
on ahead, he drew his revolver and stood shoulder to shoulder with me.
"A straight barrel and mark your men," cried he, very quietly; "it's a
cool head that wins this game. We have ten shots and the butts will do
for two. You will make that twelve if you add it up, captain."
His coolness surprised me, but it was not to be wondered at. Never from
the first had I heard this man utter one word which complained of our
situation or of its difficulty. To Captain James Nepeen a tight corner
was a pleasure-ground; and now with these yelling devils all round him,
and the vapour steaming in the woods behind, and the sea shimmering
like a haven that would beckon us to salvation, he could yet wear that
cynical smile of his, and go with lighter step, and bear himself like
the true seaman that he was. Of all that I have ever sailed with I
would name him first as a true comrade in peril or adversity. To his
skill I owed my life that night.
"One," said he, suddenly, when a great head showed itself on the cliff
above us and was instantly drawn back. So quick had he been, so wild
did the aim appear, that when a body rolled presently down the grassy
bank and lay stark before us I could not believe that a bullet had done
its work.
"One," cried he again, triumphantly--"and one from twelve leaves
eleven. Ha, that's your bird, captain, and a big one!"
[Illustration: Another man fell with a loud cry.]
I had pulled my trigger, prompted by his example, and another man from
the cliff above lifted his arms and fell with a loud cry. And this was
the astonishing thing, that though we two were caged in a ravine like
rats in a trap, and had shot two of the devils stone-dead, no answering
shot was fired from above, no rifle levelled at us.
"No arms," cries the captain, presently; "and most of them half drunk.
We're going through this, Mister Begg, right through, I assure you!"
Well, I began to believe it; nevertheless, there were men on the shore
before us, halloaing madmen, with clasp-knives in their hands and
murder in their faces. Clear in the moonlight you could see them; the
still air sent up their horrid imprecations. Those men we must pass, I
said, if we would reach the boat. And we passed them. It seems a
miracle even when I write of it.
Now, we had halted at the foot of the ravine and were just prepared to
go headlong for the six, believing, it may be, that one at least of us
must fall, when they fired a shot, not from the gun at the watch-tower
gate, but from Czerny's own yacht away in the offing; and coming plump
down upon the sand, not a cable's length from our own boat, a shell
burst with a thunderous explosion, and scattering in fragments of
steel, it scared the mutineers as no rifle could have done. Roaring out
like stricken bulls, cursing their master in all tongues, they began to
storm the cliff-side nimbly and to run for the shelter of the woods;
but some fell and rolled backward to the sand, some turned on their own
knives and lay dead at the gully's foot; while those who gained the
summit stood all together, and wailing their doleful song they yelled
defiance at Czerny's ship.
But we--we made the boat; and falling half-dead in it, we thrust it
from the beach and heard our comrades' voices again.