THE END OF THE SIXTY HOURS
_The same night. Off Ken's Island. Half-past twelve o'clock._
We have not returned to the watch-tower rock, nor can we bring
ourselves to that while there is any hope left to us of helping those
whom Czerny marooned on the dangerous shore. Our gig drifts lazily in a
pool of the whitest moonlight. We can still make out the ship's boats
lying about Czerny's yacht, and the angry crews which man them. From
the beach itself rises up the mutineers' wail of agony, like a wild
beast's cry, at one time loud and ferocious, then dying away in a
long-drawn cry, which haunts the ear. Ever and anon, as the mood takes
them, the gunners on Czerny's yacht let fly at us with their erring
shells; but they smite the air or hurt the water, or drop the bounding
fire on the shimmering spread of sand beyond us. Perhaps it is that
this employment occupies the minds of the longboats' crews and keeps
them from reckoning with the master who has befooled them. They, at
least, are at the crisis of their peril. Afloat there on a gentle swell
they must know that any hour may bring a changing wind and a breaking
sea, and a shore rockbound and unattainable. They are playing with
chance, and chance will turn upon them presently. Let them make for the
island where the laughing woods say "Come!" and the heralds of sleep
will touch them upon the foreheads, and raving, dreaming, they will
fall at last, just victims of the island visions. Say that their brute
intelligences do not yet understand this; but hunger and thirst will
teach them ere the dawn, and then reckoning must come!
All this I foresaw as we let the boat drift by the sandy bays, and
spake, one to another, of to-morrow and that which it must bring.
Whatever our own misfortune might be, that of Czerny's men was worse a
hundredfold. For the moment it amused them to see the shells plunging
and hissing in the sea about us; for the moment the desire to be quit
of us made them forget how it stood with them and what must come after.
But the reckoning would be sure. Let a capful of wind come scudding
across that glassy sea, and all the riches in the world would not buy
Edmond Czerny's life of these sea-wolves who sought it.
"They'll stand by until they know the worst, and then nothing will hold
them," I said to my comrades. "If they think they can get aboard the
yacht, they'll do so and make for some safe port. If not, they'll try
to rush the house. Assume that they are driven hard enough and no gun
will keep them off. Let ten or twenty go down, the rest will come in. I
am thinking that we should get back to the house, lads, and not leave
it to younger heads. We've done what we could here, and it's plainly
useless to go on with it!"
They were all with me in this, none more so than Captain Nepeen, who,
up to this time, had been for the shore and the friends who might be
found there.
"At least we have made every prudent effort; and there are others to
think of," said he. "If they had a gunner worth a groat, we should not
be where we are, captain. You must allow something to chance and a
lucky shot. They may get home even yet. I will not ask you what that
would mean, for you are a seaman and you know."
His words, I think, recalled us to the danger. No hope of rescue
rewarded our eyes when we scanned the black woods and the lonely
fore-shore of the forbidden land. Dark and terrible in the moonlight,
like some mighty beacon of evil rising up above that sleeping sea, it
seemed to say to us, "Go, turn back; remember those who count upon
you." And we pulled from it reluctantly out into the broad sea, and
breathed a full breath as we left its vapours and its fetid shores.
Three shots were fired at us while we crossed the open channel, and one
fell so close that we could see the cleavage of the water and feel the
silver spray upon our heated faces. This quickened our oars, you may be
sure, and set our course true and straight for the house, whose iron
gate stood up like a fortress of the deep and opened its rocky shelter
to us. Clair-de-Lune was there, too, halted and motionless by the sea's
brink; Dolly Venn stood at his side; and once I thought that I saw Miss
Ruth herself peering across the lapping wavelets and watching us with a
woman's anxious eyes.
Nor did we go unobserved by those who had so much to gain if mischance
should befall us in that last endeavour. Like pirates' junks, slipping
from a sheltered creek, the devils in the longboats espied us in the
moonlight and began to row towards us and to hail us with those wild
shouts which yesterday we had heard even in the House Under the Sea.
Yet, I witness, they did not affright us. We knew that sure eyes
watched them from the reef; no lads' playing at the length of a
watchdog's chain, kept more surely from the dog's teeth than those
night-birds from the gun's range. Shots they fired--wild, reckless
shots, skimming the water, peppering the sky, whistling in the clear
air above us. But the boats drew no nearer, and it seemed that we must
touch our haven unharmed, when the American seaman, stretching out his
arms in a gesture fearful to think of, and ceasing to row with horrid
suddenness, fell backward without any word and lay, a dying man, before
us.
They had shot him through the heart; and he was the second who fell for
Ruth Bellenden's sake.
_Sunday morning. Five o'clock._
I have known little sleep for the last thirty hours, nor can I sleep at
the crisis of our misfortunes. It is a still grey morning, with heavy
cloud in the East, and lapping rhythmical waves beating upon the
windows of the house as though anon a gale must blow and all this
torrid silence be swept away.
I cannot conceal it from myself what a gale would mean to us; how it
must scatter the open boats, drifting there at the mercy of a Pacific
sea; how, perchance, it might even lift the fog from Ken's Island and
show us sunny fields and sylvan woods, a harbourage of delight to which
all might flock with leaping hearts. And yet, says reason, if it so
befall that you yourselves may go ashore to yonder island, what logic
shall keep Czerny's men from the same good anchorage? They are as
twenty to one against you. If there are houses there, and stores for
the sun-time, who will shut them to this horde of desperadoes? Aye, the
head reels to think of it; the hours pass slowly; to-morrow we shall
know.
Now, I have thought of all this, and yet there are other things in my
mind, and they jostle one with the other, the sweet and the bitter, the
good and the bad, until it seems to me that I no longer get at the
heart of it, but am as a man drifting without a chart, set free on some
unknown sea whose very channels I may not fathom. Three hours ago when
I came ashore and lifted the dead man out, and sent the sleeping girl
to shelter, Ruth Bellenden's hand was the first to touch my own, her
word the first my ear would catch. So clear it was, such music to a man
to hear that girlish voice asking of his welfare as a thing most dear
to her, that all the night vanished at the words, and Ken's Island was
lost to my sight, and only the memory of the olden time and of my
life's great hope remained to me.
"Jasper!" she said, "it was not you--oh, Jasper, it was not you, then!"
I stepped from the boat, and, taking her hand in mine, I drew her a
little nearer to me; then, fearful of myself, I let go her hand again
and told her the simple truth.
"Miss Ruth," said I, "it is yon poor fellow. I will not say 'Thank
God!' for what right have I to serve you before him? He did his duty;
help me to do mine."
She turned away and gazed out over the sea to the yacht still
thundering its cannon and ploughing with its wasted shot the
unoffending sea. Deep thoughts were in her mind, I make sure, a torture
of doubt, and hope, and trepidation. And I--I watched her as though all
my will was in her keeping, and there, on the lonely rock, was the
heart of the world I would have lived and died in.
"You cannot forbid me to be glad, Jasper," she said, presently; "you
have given me the right. I saw you on the shore. Oh! my heart went with
you, and I think that I counted the minutes, and I said, 'He will never
come; he is sleeping.' And then I said, 'It is Jasper's voice.' I saw
you stand up in the boat and afterwards there were the shadows. Jasper,
there cannot be shadows always; the sun must shine sometimes."
She held my hand again and touched it with her cheek. I think that I
forgot all the place about, the sea and the men, the distant shore and
the island's shape, the still night and the dawn to come; and knowing
nothing save that Ruth, little Ruth, was by my side, I went into
dreamland and said, "It shall be forever."
_Monday. At six o'clock._
I cannot sleep and I have come to keep watch on the rock. Old
Clair-de-Lune is with me, but silence is in the house below, where some
sleep and some are seeking sleep. Of all who can discuss our future
bravely, none speaks better sense than this simple old man; and if he
rebukes my own confidence he rebukes it justly. I ask him when the
sleep-time will pass and the sun-time come. He shakes his head, he will
not prophesy.
"God forbid that it should pass," says he. "They will go ashore to the
island, and we--we perish," says he. "Pray that it shall not be,
captain. We have food for three week--month; but what come after? You
pick up by ship, you say. But not so. When your ship come here the
devils set trap, and all is wreck and burn and steal! They take your
ship and you perish, you starve. Ah, monsieur, pray that the sun-time
do not come."
I lay back upon the rock and thought of it. This old man, surety, was
right. Let the fog drift from Ken's Island, the woods awake, life stir
again, and how stood we--where was our benefit?
"It is a fearful position," said I, "and Heaven alone knows what the
end of it will be. That something has happened to Mister Jacob and my
ship I can no longer doubt, Clair-de-Lune. The Southern Cross is on the
rocks, be sure of it, and good men with her. Take it that they are
picked up and set on the American coast. What then? Who finds the money
for another steamer? It is not to be thought of: we must dismiss it
from our minds. You say that we have food for three weeks, and the
condensers down below will give us water. But it won't be three weeks
before we are in or out of it, my friend. If we are starving, others
are starving--those out yonder by Czerny's yacht. He'll give them food
to-day; but how long will they drift like cattle for the rain to beat
on? Your sense will tell you that they won't drift long, but will be
asking questions and wanting their answers. Aye, Clair-de-Lune, we'll
listen with all our ears when that begins!"
He had a glass with him and he began to scan the yacht very closely and
the ship's boats about it. I had not noticed that there was an unusual
stir in the anchorage, but he remarked it now and drew his own
conclusions.
"They give rogue man arms and cutlass, captain; he go overboard too. I
see them pass from boat to boat. Ah, there he is, the bread and the
biscuit. They get breakfast and then come here, captain. What else you
look for? They not lie there all the days. They too much devil for
that. We few and little; they big and strong. Why shall they not take
the house? Some die, but other mans remain. Czerny he say to them,
'Great much price if you kill the English captain.' He know that all
his money is locked up down here. Why shall he not come, captain?"
I could not tell him why. My own glasses showed me the things he made
mention of and others beside. Arms, I saw, were being passed down from
the yacht to the small boats clustered about it. There was no sunlight
to glisten upon the bright barrels of the rifles, but I could
distinguish them nevertheless; and cutlasses were handed from boat to
boat--a good fifty of them I counted, and there were more to come. What
the meaning of it was a child might have told you. Truce prevailed
between master and man in their common desire of possession. The last
great attack was to be made upon us--the rock to be rushed. Even a
woman would have divined as much.
"Clair-de-Lune," said I, "the end is coming at last; and it won't be
very long. We're dealing with a remarkable man, and it is not to be
supposed that he'll sail away and leave us here without one good blow
for it. Aye, it's a great mind altogether, and there's the plain truth.
Who else but the cleverest would have thought of this place, and come
here like a human vulture to feed upon ships and men? There have been
many Edmond Czernys in the world; but this man I name chief among them,
and others will name him also. We set ourselves against a hand in a
million; stiff backs we need to wrestle with that; but we'll do it, old
comrade, we'll see it through yet!"
It was a wild boast, yet, God knows, a well meant one. Perhaps, if he
had pushed me to the confession, I would have told him that I was far
from believing my own prophecies, and that, in truth, I realized, as he
did, the perilous hazard of our position and all that defeat might mean
to us. Just as he knew, so did I know that before the night came down
dead men might lie on the rocks about me and be engulfed in that sea
which beat so gently upon the lonely shore; that living men from the
boats yonder would swarm in the galleries below, and women's cries be
heard, and something follow which even I dare not contemplate. The
dreadful truth, perhaps, kept our tongues away from it; we talked of
other things, of Czerny and his house, and of what we would do if the
best should befall.
"He wonderful man," old Clair-de-Lune went on, standing, like some old
Neptune of the sea, bolt upright on the pinnacle of rock; "wonderful
man, and none like him! Thirteen year ago he first find this place, and
thirteen year he wreck the ships. I know, for there was a day when he
tell me much and I listen. He say, 'Make great fortune and no trouble
to earn him. If sailor man drown, more fool he.' All the years back,
hundreds of years, ships perish on Ken's Island. Czerny he hear the
story in Japan, and he come to see the place for himself. They say he
once sleep through the fog and mad afterwards. He no longer have right
or wrong or care about the world. He come to Ken's Island and grow
rich. Then his engineers find this rock. Once, long time ago, it have
been part of the island, captain. The--what you say?--volocano, he
shoot fire into the sea; but that was before the peoples. Czerny, he go
down into the rock and he discover great cavern and little cavern, and
he say, 'I live here in the sleep-time.' Plenty of money make fine
house. He shut out the sea wherever he would come in; he build great
windows in the rock; his _mécanicien_, he put up engine and draw air
from the skies. Long year Czerny live here alone. Then one day come
madame--ah, captain, I was sorry when I saw madame come! 'She will
suffer here,' I said; she have suffered much already. Czerny is not as
other men. If madame say to him, 'You good man; you and I live here
always,' then she have everything, she go where she will, she become
the master. But I say when I see her, 'No, never she will not say that.
She good woman.' And then I fear for her, captain; I fear greatly. I
did not know she have the English friend who will save her."
He turned to me wistfully, and I read in his eyes of that deep
affection which little Ruth Bellenden has never failed to win from all
who know and learn to love her.
_Monday. At three o'clock._
We held a council of war in the great hall at this hour, and came upon
a plan to meet the supreme attack which must be made upon us tonight.
We are all of one mind, that Czerny will seek to rush the house under
cover of the darkness, and in this the sunless day must help him. We
cannot look for any moon or brightness of the stars which shall aid our
eyes when the sun has set. It will be a dark night, cloudy and,
perhaps, tempestuous. If the storm should break and nature be our ally,
then the worst is done with already and the end is sure. But we have no
right to hope for that. We must face the situation like thinking men,
prepared for any eventuality.
Now, I had slept a little at the height of the day, and the first news
that they brought to me when I waked was of the surrender of the two
that remained in the caverns below, and of the fidelity of the other
four of Czerny's men who already had joined us. So far as I can make
out there may be but one living man in the lower story of the house,
and for him and his goodwill we care nothing.
The rest of the crowd we fought, seeing, perhaps, that fortune goes
with us so far, will themselves stand on fortune's side and serve us
faithfully. That much, at least, I put to my fellows as we sat round
the table in the hall and made those plans which reason dictated.
"They'll serve," said I, "as long as we are on the winning side. We'll
put them in the engine room, where they'll keep the fires going for
their own sakes. If they so much as look false, then shoot them down.
It is in my mind, Captain Nepeen," said I, "that we'll have need of
such a man as you, and three good fellows with you, at the lesser gate.
You should find cover on the rocks while we hold the near sea for you.
If Czerny gets a foothold there and beats that door in, I need not tell
you how it will go with us. For the rest, I leave two men at the
stairs-head and two in this hall to be at Miss Ruth's call. Peter Bligh
and Dolly Venn go up with me to work the gun. If they rush it--well,
twenty there won't keep them back with rifles. But I count upon the
coward's part, and I say that a man will think twice about dying for
such as Czerny and his ambitions. Let that be in all your minds, and
remember--for God's sake remember--what you are fighting for."
"For women's honour and good men's lives," said Captain Nepeen,
quietly. "Yes; that's the stake, gentlemen. I don't think we need say
any more to nerve our arms and clear our eyes. We fight for all that is
most dear to honest men. If we fail, let us at least fail like true
seamen who answer 'Here' when duty has called."
_At six o'clock._
We all dined together at this time in the large dining-room near by
Miss Ruth's boudoir. An odder contrast than that between this fine room
below and the still, desolate sea above, no mind could imagine. For, on
the one hand, were the insignia of civilization--luxury, display, the
splendid apartment, the well-dressed women, the table decked out with
fine linen and silver, the windows showing the sea-depths and all their
wondrous quivering life; on the other hand, the black shapes of night
and death, the menace of the boats, the anchored yacht, the darkening
skies, the looming island. We sat down fourteen souls, that might have
met in some great country house, and there have gathered in friendship
and frivolity. Never in all my life had I seen Miss Ruth so full of
vivacity or girlish charm. Her laughter was like the music of bells;
the jest, the kindly word was for every man; and yet sometimes I, at
her side, could look deep into those grey-blue eyes to read a truer
story there. And in the babble of the talk she would whisper some
treasured word to me, or touch my hand with her own, or say, "Jasper,
it must be well, it must be well with us!" Of that which lay above in
the darkening East, no man spoke or appeared to think. There was ruby
wine in our glasses; the little French girls capered about us like
nymphs from the sea; we spoke of the old time, of sunny days in the
blue Mediterranean, of wilder days off the English shores, of our homes
so distant and our hopes so high; but never once of the night or that
which must befall.
_Monday. At eleven o'clock._
We have now been at our stations for two hours and nothing has
transpired. I have Clair-de-Lune with me at the great sea-gate, and
Dolly Venn and Seth Barker are at the gun. The night is so dark that
the best trained eye can distinguish little either on sea or land.
Ken's Island itself is now but a blur of black on a cloud-veiled
horizon. We have shut off every light in the house itself; the reef
runs no longer beneath the sea like a vein of golden light, nor do the
windows cast aureoles upon the sleeping water. What breeze there is
comes in hot gusts like breath from heated waters. We cannot see
Czerny's yacht nor espy any of his boats near or afar; but we crouch
together in the shelter of the rocks, and there is water near to our
hand, and food if we seek it, and the ammunition piled, and the barrels
of the rifles outstanding, and the figures with their unspoken
thoughts, their hopes, their fears of the dreadful dawn that must be.
Whence out of the night shall the danger come? Shall it come leaping
and brandishing knives, a veiled army springing up from the shadows, or
shall it come by stealth, boat by boat, now upon this quarter, now upon
that, outposts seeking to flank us, deadly shots fired we know not
where? I cannot tell you. The comrades at my side ask again and again,
"Do you see anything, captain?" I answer, "Nothing!" It is the truth.
_Monday. At midnight._
We are still upon the rock and the shadows engulf us. The lad at my
side, sick with waiting, has curled himself up upon a bed of stone and
is half asleep; Seth Barker leans against a crag like some figure hewn
out of granite; old Clair-de-Lune is all hunched up as a bundle.
Nevertheless, masterly eyes scan the lapping waters. Will the night
never speak to us? Will the day bring waiting? Ah, no! not that! A shot
rings out clear on the still night air; a flash of fire leaps across
the sea. We spring to our feet; we cry, "Ready!" The sixty hours are
over and the end is near!