THE SECOND ATTACK ON CZERNY'S HOUSE
The shot was fired and answered at the lower gate. We had looked for
that; for that we had been waiting during the watching hours. They
would attack the lesser reef, we said, and our own good men, standing
sentinels, would flash the news of it to us, and the gun would do the
rest. Dark as it was, the blackest hour the island had given us,
nevertheless by daylight we had trained our barrels upon the reef, and
now took aim in all confidence. Twice we whistled shrilly to warn our
men; twice we heard their answering voices. Then the gun belched forth
its hail of shot and the challenge was thrown down.
"Give it to them, Dolly!" I cried, my brain afire at the call of
action; "for every honest seaman's sake, give it to them, lad! We'll
tell of this to-morrow--aye, Dolly, we'll tell a great story yet!"
He answered me with a boy's glad cry; I do believe it was like a game
to him.
"Pass here, pass here!" he kept crying; "we have them every time! In
with the shot, Seth--in with it! Don't keep them waiting! Oh, captain,
what a night!"
The others said nothing; even Peter Bligh's tongue was still in that
surpassing moment. The doubt of it defied words. We knew nothing, nor
could we do aught but leave our fortune to the darkness of the night.
The rogues who fell, the rogues who stood, the boats that came on, the
boats that withdrew, of these we were ignorant. All was hidden from our
eyes; the veil of the night cloaked from us the work we had done. If
men cried in agony, if groans mocked angry boasts, if we heard the
splashing of the oars, the hoarse command, the vile blasphemy, the rest
was in imagination's keeping. The outposts of Czerny's crew, we said,
had tried to rush the gate where our own men watched; but our own were
behind the steel doors now and the gun's hail swept the barren rock.
The dawn would show us the harvest we had reaped.
Now, the volleys rolled their thunder right away to the hills of Ken's
Island, and the whistling of the bullets was like the singing of unseen
birds above our heads; there were oases of red flame in the waste of
blackness; we heard oaths and cries, commands roared hoarsely across
the water, voices triumphant and voices that were stilled; and then
came the first great silence. Whatever had befallen on the rock, those
who sought to force the lesser gate were, for the moment, driven back.
Even little Dolly, mad at the gun like one whom no reason could
restrain, heard me at last and obeyed my command.
"Cease firing, lad!" roared I, "cease firing! Would you shoot the sea?
Yonder's the captain's whistle. It means that the danger's nearer. Aye,
stand by, lads," I said, "and look out for it."
We swung the gun round so that it faced the basin before us, and,
rifles ready, we peered again in the lowering darkness. About me now I
could hear the deep breathing of my comrades and see their crouching
figures and say that every nerve was tautened, every faculty awakened.
Shielded by the night, those hidden boats were creeping up to us foot
by foot. Whatever had been done at the lesser gate had been done as a
ruse, I did not doubt. Czerny's goal was the greater door we held so
desperately, his desire the full possession, the mastery of the house
wherein lay life and treasure and lasting security.
I counted twenty, no man speaking, and then I raised my voice. Dimly,
in the shadows, I made out the shape of a longboat drifting to the
brink; and to Dolly I said:
"Let go--in God's name, let go, lad!"
He stood to the gun with a cry of defiance and blazed into the
darkness. The drifting boat lurched and sagged and turned her beam to
the seas. I could distinguish the faces of men, ferocious and
threatening, as they peered upward to the rock; I saw other boats
looming over the dark water; I heard the ringing command, "In at them!
To hell with them!" and then, I think, for many minutes together I
fired wildly at the figures before me, swung round now to this side,
now to that; was unconscious of the bullets splintering the rock or of
the lead shower pouring on us. The battle raged; we were at the heart
of it. What should a man remember then but those who counted upon him?
Now, you have imagined this picture, and you seem to stand with me upon
that split of rock, that defiant crag in the great Pacific Ocean, with
the darkness of heaven above and the darkness of the sea below, with
the belching guns and the spitting rifles, the yells of agony and the
crouching figures, the hearts beating high and the sweating faces; and
just as the outcome was hidden from me and I knew not from minute to
minute whether it were life or death to us, so will you share the
meaning of that suspense and all the terror of it. From every side now
the rain of shot was poured in upon us, the unceasing torrent came;
above, below, ringing upon the iron shield, scattering deadly
fragments, ploughing the waters, it fell like a wave impotent, a broken
sea whose spindrift even could not harm us. For a good ring of steel
fenced us about; we held the turret, and we laughed at the madness
below.
"Round with the gun!" I would cry, again and again; "round with her,
Dolly. Let them have it everywhere. No favours this night, my lad; full
measure and overflowing--let them have it, for Miss Ruth's sake!"
His joyous "Aye, aye, sir!" was a thing to hear. No sailor of the old
time, black with powder, mad on a slippery deck, fought, I swear, as we
four in that shelter of the turret. Clear as in the sun's day were the
waves about us while the crimson flame leaped out. Crouched all
together, the sweat upon our foreheads, smoke in our eyes, the wild
delight of it quickening us, we blazed at the enemy unseen; we said
that right was with us.
There were, as far as I could make out, six boats set to the attack
upon the great gate, and seventy or eighty men manning them. Acting
together on such a plan as a master-mind had laid down for them, they
tried to rush the rock from four points of the compass, trusting, it
may be, that one boat, at least, would land its crew upon the plateau.
And in this they were successful. Pour shot upon them as we might,
search every quarter with the flying shells, nevertheless one boat
touched the rock in spite of us, one crew leaped up in frenzy towards
the turret. So sudden it was, so unlooked for, that great demoniacal
figures seemed upon us even while we said that the seas were clear.
Whirling their knives, yelling one to the other, some slipping on the
slimy weed, others, more sure in foothold, making for the turret's
height, the mutineers fell upon us like a hurricane and so beat us down
that my heart sank away from me, and I said that the house was lost and
little Ruth Bellenden their prey at last.
"Stand by the gun--by the gun to the last, if you love your life!" I
cried to Dolly Venn. "Do you, Peter, old comrade, follow me; I am going
to clear the rock. You will help me to do that, Peter?"
"Help you, captain! Aye," roared he, "if it was the ould divil himself
in a travelling caravan, I'd help you!"
He swung his rifle by the barrel as he spoke the words and, bringing it
down crash, he cleaved the skull of a great ruffian whose face was
already glowering down from the turret's rim. Nothing, I swear, in all
that night was more wonderful than the _sang-froid_ of this great
Irishman (as he would call himself in fighting moods) or the merry
words which he could find for us even then in the very crisis of it,
when hope seemed gone and the worst upon us. For Peter knew well what I
was about when I leapt from the turret and charged down upon the
mutineers. A dozen men, perchance, had gained foothold on the rock. We
must drive them back, he said, stand face to face with them, let the
odds be what they might.
"God strengthen my arm this hour and show me the bald places!" cries
he, leaping to the ground and whirling his musket like a demon. Seth
Barker, do not doubt, was on his heels--trust the carpenter to be where
danger was! I could hear him grunting even above that awful din. He
fought like ten, and wherever he swung his musket there he left death
behind him.
So follow us as we leap from the turret, and hurl ourselves upon that
astonished crew. Black as the place was, tremulous the light,
nevertheless the cabined space, the open plateau, was our salvation. I
saw figures before me; faces seemed to look into my own; and as a
battle-axe of old time, so my rifle's butt would fall upon them. Heaven
knows I had the strength of three and I used it with three's agility,
now shooting them down, now hitting wildly, thrust here, thrust there,
bullets singing about my ears, haunting cries everywhere. Aye, how they
went under! What music it was, those crashing blows upon head and
breast, the loud report, the gurgling death-rattle, the body thrown
into the sea, the pitiful screams for mercy! And yet the greater
wonder, perhaps, that we lived to tell of it. Twelve against three; yet
a craven twelve, remember, who feared to die and yet must fight to
live! And to nerve our arms a woman's honour, and to guide us aright,
the watchword: "Home!"
I fought my way to the water's edge, and then turned round to see what
the others were doing. There were two upon Peter Bligh at that moment,
but one fell headlong as I took a step towards them; and the other's
driving-knife fell on empty air, and the man himself, struck full
between the eyes, rolled dead into the lapping sea.
"Well done, Peter, well done!" I cried, wildly; and then, as though it
were an answer to my boasts, something fell upon my shoulder like a
great weight dropped from above, and I went down headlong upon the
rock. Turning as I fell, I clutched a human throat, and, closing my
fingers upon it, he and I, the man out of the darkness and the fool who
had forgotten his eyes, went reeling over and over like wild beasts
that seek a hold and would tear and bite when the moment comes. Aye,
how I held him, how near his eyes seemed to mine, what gasping sounds
he uttered, how his feet fought for foothold on the rock, how his hand
felt for the knife at his girdle! And I had him always, had him surely;
and seeking to force himself upward, the slippery rock gave him no
foothold, and he slipped at last from my very fingers, and some great
fish, hidden from me, drew him down to the water and I saw the waves
close above his mouth. Henceforth there were but three men left at the
gate of Czerny's house. They were three who, even at that time, could
thank God because the peril was turned.
* * *
We beat the twelve off, as I have told you, and for an hour at least no
fresh attack was made on the rock. The sharpest eye now could not
detect boats in the darkness; the sharpest ear could not distinguish
the muffled splash of oars. We lay all together in the turret, and very
methodically, as seamen will, we stanched our wounds and asked, "What
next?" That we had some hurt of such an affray goes without saying. My
own shoulder was bruised and aching; the blood still trickled down
Peter Bligh's honest face from the knife-wound that had gashed his
forehead; Seth Barker pressed his hand to a jagged side and said that
it was nothing. But for these scratches we cared little, and when our
comrades hailed us from the lesser gate, their "All's well!" made us
glad men indeed. In spite of it all, one of us, at least, I witness,
could tell himself, "It is possible--by Heaven, it is possible--that we
shall see the day!" That we had beaten off the first attack was not to
be doubted. Wherever the mutineers had gone to, they no longer rowed in
the loom of the gate. And yet I knew that the time must be short; day
would not serve them nor the morning light. The dark must decide it.
"They will come again, Peter, and it will be before the dawn," said I,
when one thing and another had been mentioned and no word of their
misfortune. "It's beyond expectation to suppose anything else. If this
house is to be taken, they must take it in the dark. And more than
that, lads," said I, "it was a foolish thing for us to go among
them as we did and to fight it out down yonder. We are safer in the
turret--safer, by a long way!"
"I thought so all the time, sir," answered Dolly Venn, wisely. "They
can never get below if you cover the door; and I can keep the sea. It's
lucky Czerny loopholed this place, anyway. If ever I meet him I shall
quote poetry: 'He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel.' It would
about make him mad, captain!"
"Aye," says Peter Bligh, "poetry is well enough, as my poor old father
used to say; but poetry never reefed a to'gallon sail in a hurricane
and isn't going to begin this night. It's thick heads you need, lad,
and good, sound sense inside of 'em! As for what the captain says, I do
hold it, truly. But, Lord! I'm like a boy at a fair when the crowns are
cracking, and angels themselves wouldn't keep me back!"
"You'd affright them, Mister Bligh," puts in, Seth Barker, "you'd
affright them--asking your pardon--with your landgwich!"
"What!" cries Peter, as though in amazement; "did I say things that
oughtn't to be said? Well, you surprise me, Barker, you do surprise
me!"
Well, I was glad to hear them talk like this, for jest is better than
the coward's "if"; and men who can face death with a laugh will win
life before your craven any day. But for the prone figures on the
rock, looking up with their sightless eyes, or huddled in cleft and
cranny--but for them, I say, and distant voices on the sea, and the
black shape of Ken's Island, we four might have been merry comrades in
a ship's cabin, smoking a pipe in the morning watch and looking gladly
for dawn and a welcome shore. That this content could long endure was,
beyond all question, impossible. Nevertheless, when next we started up
and gripped our rifles and cried "Stand by!" it was not any alarm from
the sea that brought us to our feet, but a sudden shout from the house
below, a rifle-shot echoing in the depths, a woman's voice, and then
a man's rejoinder, a figure appearing without any warning at the
stairs-head, the figure of a huge man, vast and hulking, with long
yellow hair, and fists clenched and arms outstretched--a man who took
one scared look round him and then leaped wildly into the sea. Now
this, you may imagine, was the most surprising event of all that
eventful night. So quickly did it come upon us, so little did we look
for it, that when Kess Denton, the yellow man, stood at the open gate
and uttered a loud and piercing yell of defiance, not one among us
could lift a rifle, not one thought of plan or action. There the fellow
was, laughing like a maniac. Why he came, whence he came, no man could
tell. But he leaped into the seas and the night engulfed him, and only
his mocking laugh told us that he lived.
"Kess Denton!" cried I, my head dazed and my words coming in a torrent;
"Kess Denton. Then there's mischief below, lads--mischief, I swear!"
Clair-de-Lune answered me--old Clair-de-Lune, standing in a blaze of
light; for they had switched on the lamps below, and the vein of the
reef stood out suddenly like some silver monster breathing on the
surface of the sea. Clair-de-Lune answered me, I say, and his words
were the most terrible I had heard since first I came to Ken's Island.
"The water is in!" he cried, "the water is in the house!"
I saw it as in a flash. This man we had neglected to hunt from the
caverns below, striking at us in the supreme moment, had opened trap or
window and let the sea pour in the labyrinth below. The water was
flooding Czerny's house.
"Now!" I cried, "you don't mean that Clair-de-Lune? Then what of the
engine-room? How will it fare with Captain Nepeen?"
Doctor Gray stood behind the old Frenchman, and, limping up to my side,
he leaned against the rock and began to speak of it very coolly.
"The water is in," he said, "but it will not flood the higher rooms,
for they are above sea-level. We are saving what provisions we can, and
the men below are all right. As for Nepeen, we must get him off in a
boat somehow. It is the water I am thinking of, captain; what are we
going to do for water?"
I sat upon the rock at his side and buried my face in my hands. All
that terrible day seemed to culminate in this overwhelming misfortune.
Driven on the one hand by the sea, on the other by these devils of the
darkness, doomed, it might be, to hunger and thirst on that desolate
rock, four good comrades cut off from us by the sea's intervening, the
very shadows full of dangers, what hope had we, what hope of that brave
promise spoken to little Ruth but three short hours ago?
"Doctor," I said at last, "if we are not at the bottom of it now, we
never shall be. But we are men, and we will act as men should. Let the
women stand together in the great hall until the sea drives them out.
If water is our need, I am ashore to Ken's Island to-morrow to get it.
As for Nepeen, we have a boat and we have hands to man it; we'll fetch
Captain Nepeen, doctor," said I.
He nodded his head and appeared to be thinking deeply. Old
Clair-de-Lune was the next to utter a sensible thing.
"The man flood the house," said he, "but no sure he get to ship. If he
drown, Czerny know nothing. I say turn out the lamp--wait!"
"As true a word as the night has spoken," said I; "if Kess Denton does
not reach the boats, they won't hear the story. We'll keep it close
enough, lads, and Captain Nepeen will learn it soon enough. Do you
whistle, Dolly, and get an answer. I hope to God it is all well with
them still."
He whistled across the sea, and after a long minute of waiting a
distant voice cried, "All's well!" For the hour at least our comrades
were safe. Should we say the same of them when daylight came?
* * *
The dark fell with greater intensity as the dawn drew near. I thought
that it typified our own black hour, when it seemed that fate had
nothing left for us but a grave beneath the seas, or the eternal sleep
on the island shore.
* * *
Another hour passed, and the dawn was nearer. I did not know then
(though I know now) what kept Czerny's crew in the shadows, or why we
heard nothing of them. Once, indeed, in the far distance where the
yacht lay anchored, gunshots were fired, and were answered from some
boat lying southward by the island; but no other message of the night
was vouchsafed to us, no other omen to be heard. In the gloom of the
darkened house women watched, men kept the vigil and prayed for the
day. Would the light never come; would that breaking East never speed
its joyous day? Ah! who could tell? Who, in the agony of waiting, ever
thinks aright or draws the truthful picture?
There was no new attack, I say, nor any sure news from the caverns
below. From time to time men went to the stairs-head and watched the
seas washing green and slimy in the corridors, or spoke of them beating
upon the very steps of the great hall and threatening to rise up and up
until they engulfed us all and conquered even the citadel we held.
Nevertheless, iron gates held them back. Not vainly had Czerny's
master-mind foreseen such a misfortune as this. Those tremendous doors
which divided the upper house from its fellow were stronger than any
sluice-gates, more sure against the water's advance. We held the upper
house; it was ours while we could breathe in it or find life's
sustenance there.
Now, I saw little Ruth in the hour of dawn and she stood with us for a
little while at the open gate and there spoke so brightly of to-morrow,
so lightly of this hour, that she helped us to forget, and made men of
us once more.
"They will not come again to-night, Jasper," she said; "I feel, I know
it! Why should they wait? Something has happened, and something spells
'Good luck.' Oh, yes, I have felt that for the last hour. Things must
be worse before they mend, and they are mending now. The gale will come
at dawn and we shall all go ashore, you and I together, Jasper!"
"Miss Ruth," said I, "that would be the happiest day in all my life.
You bring the dawn always, wherever you go, the good sunlight and God's
blue sky! It has been day for me while I heard your voice and said that
I might serve you!"
She would not answer me; but, as though to give my words their meaning,
we had watched but a little while longer on the rock when suddenly out
of the East the grey light winged over to us, and, spreading its
wonder-rays upon the seas, it rolled the black veil back and showed us
height and valley, sea and land, the white-capped breakers and the dim
heaven beyond them. Many a dawn have I watched and waited for on the
heart of the desolate sea, but never one which carried to me such a
message as then it spake, the joy of action and release, the tight of
life and hope, the clarion call, uplifting, awakening! For I knew that
in day our salvation lay, and that the terrible night was forever
passed; and every faculty being quickened, the mind alert, the eyes no
longer veiled, I stretched out my arms to the sun and said, "Thank
God!"
* * *
It was day, and the fresh sea answered its appeal. Coming quickly as
day will in the great Pacific, we had scarce seen that great rim of the
East lift itself above the sparkling water when all the scene was
opened to us, the picture of ships and water and wave-washed reef made
clear as in some scene of stageland. As with one tongue, realizing a
mighty truth, we cried, "The ship is gone; the ship has sailed!"
It was true, all true. Where at sundown there had been a yacht anchored
in the offing, now at daybreak no yacht was to be seen. Darkness, which
had been the ally of Czerny's men, had helped the man himself to flee
from them to an unknown haven where their vengeance should not reach
him. By night had he fled, and by day would he mock his creatures.
Drifting there in the open boats, the rising seas beginning to wash in
upon them, hunger and thirst their portion, the rebels were at no pains
to hide their secret from us. We knew that they had been called back by
these overwhelming tidings of the master-trick, and we asked what heart
the rogues would have now to sell their lives for the man who betrayed
them? Would they not look to us for the satisfaction the chief rogue
denied to them? We, as they, were left helpless in that woful place.
Before us, as before them, lay the peril of hunger and of thirst, the
death-sleep or the greater mercy. And who should ask them to accept it
without a last supreme attempt, a final assault, which should mend all
or end all? Driven to the last point, to the last point would they go
to grasp that foothold of the seas and to drive us from the rock
whereon life might yet be had.
"Lads," I said, "the story is there as the man has written it. We have
no quarrel with yon poor devils nor they with us; but they will find
one. We cannot help them; they cannot help us. We'll wait for the
end--just wait for it."
I spoke with a confidence which time did not justify. Just as the dawn
had put new life into us, so it had steeled the hearts of this derelict
crew and nerved it for any desperate act. For long we watched the
rogues rowing hither, thither; now in the island's shadows, now coming
towards us, but never once raising a rifle or uttering a threat. In the
end they came all together, waving a sail upon a pole; and while they
appeared to row for the lesser gate they accompanied the act with soft
words and a protest of their honesty.
"'Tis after a truce they are," says Peter Bligh, presently, "and that's
a poor thing, any-way. My poor father used to say, 'Knock 'em on the
head first and sign the papers afterwards.' He was a kind-hearted
gentleman, and did a lot of good in the world!"
"He must have done, Peter," said I; "he must have done a power of good,
hearing the little you say about him. 'Tis a pity the old gentleman
isn't here this day to preach his kindness to yonder rogues. They look
in need of a friendly hand; indeed, they do."
Well, the laugh was turned on Peter; but, as a matter of fact, he spoke
sense, and I understood as well as he did the risk of parley with the
wreckers, even though they did not seem to have any fight left in
them--a fact which old Clair-de-Lune was the first to observe.
"They not fire gun this morning," says the old man. "All starve hungry.
Czerny gone. What for they fight? They no stomach left."
"Meaning they've no heart in them," puts in Doctor Gray, at his side.
"Aye, that's true, and a bit of human nature, too. You cannot fight
every day any more than you can make love every day. It comes and goes
like a fever. They had their square meal last night, and they are not
taking any this morning. I should not be afraid of them if I were you,
captain."
"I never was," said I, bluntly; "I never was, doctor. There's not
enough on my conscience for that. But I do believe you speak truly.
Making love is more in their line this watch. Ask Dolly Venn there.
From what I saw between him and little Rosamunda down below, lie's an
authority on that point. Eh, Dolly, lad," said I to him, "you could
make love every day, couldn't you?"
The lad flushed all over his face at the charge, and Peter Bligh, he
said something about "Love one another" being in the Bible, "which must
mean many of 'em, and not one in particular," says he. And what with
the laugh and the jest, and the new confidence which the sight of those
poor driven devils put into us, we came all together to the sea's edge,
and, scarcely cocking a rifle at them, we hailed the longboats and got
their story.
"Ahoy, there! And what port d'you think you're making for?" cries Peter
Bligh, in a voice that might have split the waters.
They replied to him, standing up in the boat and stretching out their
sunburnt, hairy arms to us:
"Water!--water, mate, for the love of God!"
"And how do you know," cries Peter back to them, "how do you know that
we've water for ourselves?"
"Why, Barebones saw to that," says one of them, no doubt meaning Czerny
thereby; "Barebones saw to that, though precious little of it the
lubber drank!"
"He's off, is Barebones," says another; "oh, trust Barebones!
Bones-and-Biscuits puts to sea last night, 'cause he's a duty to
perform in 'Frisco, he 'as. Trust Bones-and-Biscuits to turn up
righteous when the trumpet blows!"
And another, said he:
"I wish I had his black head under my boot this minute! My mouth's all
sand and my throat is stuck! Aye, mates," says he, "you'll moisten my
poor tongue--same as is wrote in the Scriptures!"
There were other entreaties; some of them spoke to us in French, the
most part in German. Of the boats that were left, two had rowed away
for the lesser gate, but five drifted about our rock and drew so close
that we could have tossed a biscuit to them. Never have I seen a crowd
of faces more repulsive or jowls so repellent. Iron-limbed men, fat
Germans, sleek Frenchmen, Greeks, niggers, some armed with rifles, some
with fearsome knives, they squatted all together in the open boats and
roared together for pity and release. Then, for the first time, I was
able to see how cruelly Czerny's gun had dealt with them in the
darkness of the night. It was horrible to see the bloody limbs, the
open wounds, the matted hair, the gaping faces of these creatures of a
desperado's mad ambition. The boats themselves were splintered and
hacked as though heavy hatches had beaten them. I could wonder no
longer that they called the truce; and yet, knowing why they called it,
what was I to do? Let them set foot on the plateau, and we, but a
handful at the best, might be swept into the sea like flies from a
wall. I say that I was at my wits' end. Every merciful instinct urged
me to give them water; every prudent voice cried, "Beat them off."
"If there's fight in that lot, I'm as black as yonder nigger!" said
Peter Bligh, when he looked at them a little while, very
contemptuously. "Not a kick to-day among the lot of them, by Jericho!
But you cannot give them water, captain," he goes on, "for you've
little to give."
Clair-de-Lune, thinking deeper, was, nevertheless, for a stem refusal.
"Keep them off, captain, that's my advice," says he. "They very
desperate, dangerous men. They drink water, then cut throat. Make ear
deaf and say cistern all empty. They think you die, and they wait, but
come aboard--no, by thunder!"
Now, I knew that this was reason, and when Doctor Gray and Captain
Nepeen added their words to the Frenchman's I stepped down to the
water's edge and made my answer.
"I'll give you water willingly, men, if you'll show me where it is to
be found," said I; "but we cannot give what we haven't got, and that's
common sense! We're dry here, and if it's bad luck for one it's bad
luck for all. The glass says rain," I went on; "we'll wait for it
together and have done with all this nonsense."
They heard me to the end; but ignorant, perhaps, of my meaning they
continued to whine, "Water, water," and when I must repeat that we
had no water, one of them, leaping up in the boat, fired his rifle
point-blank at Captain Nepeen, who fell without a word stone-dead at
my side.
"Great God!" said I, "they've shot the captain dead."
The suddenness of it was awful; just a gun flashing, a gasping cry, an
honest man leaping up and falling lifeless. And then something that
would never move or speak again. The crews themselves, I do believe,
were as dazed by it as we were. They could have shot us, I witness,
where we stood, every man of us, but, in God's mercy, they never
thought of that; and turning on their own man, they tore the rifle from
his hand and, striking him down with a musket, they sent him headlong
into the sea.
"Witness we've no part in it!" they roared. "Jake Bilbow did it, and he
was always a bad 'un! You won't charge fifty with one man's deed! To
hell with the arms, mate--we've no need of 'em!"
Well, we heard them in amazement. Not a man had moved among us; the
body was untouched at our feet. From the boats themselves ruffians were
casting their rifles pell-mell into the sea. Never at the wildest
hazard would I have named this for the end of it. They cast their
rifles into the sea and rowed unarmed about us. To the end of it, I
think, they feared the gun with a fear that was nameless and lasting,
nor did they know that the turret was empty--how should they?
It was a swift change; to me it seemed as though the day had conjured
up this wonder. None the less, the perplexity of it remained, nor could
I choose a course even under these new circumstances. Of water I had
none to give; our own circumstances, indeed, were little better than
that of these unhappy creatures in the boats about me. The sea flooded
the house below us; the great engine no longer throbbed; our women were
huddled together at the stairs-head, seeking air and light; the fogs
loom heavy on Ken's Island; no ship's sail brought hope to our horizon.
What should I say, then, to the mutineers, how answer them? I could but
protest: "We are as you; we must face it together."
* * *
Now, I have told you that both the greater and the lesser gates of
Czerny's house were hewn in the pinnacles of rock rising up above the
highest tides, and offering there a foothold and an anchorage; but you
must not think that these were the only caps of the reef which thrust
themselves out to the sea. For there were others, rounded domes of
tide-washed rock, treacherous ledges, little craggy steeples, sloping
shelves, which low water gave up to the sun and where a man might walk
dry-shod. To such strange places the longboats turned when we would
have none of them. Convinced, may-be, that our own case was no better
than theirs, the men, in desperation, and cramped with long confinement
in the boats, now pushed their bows into the swirling waters; and
following each other, as sheep will follow a leader, they climbed out
upon the barren rocks and lay there in a state of dejection defying
words. Nor had we any heart to turn upon them and drive them off.
Little did the new day we desired so ardently bring to us. The sky,
gloomy above the blackening, angry seas, was like a mock upon our
bravest hopes. Let a few hours pass and the night would come again.
This was but an interlude in which man could ask of man, "What next?"
We feared to speak to the women lest they should know the truth.
The men crawled upon the sea-washed rocks, I say, and there the
judgment of God came upon them. So awful was the scene my eyes were
soon to behold that I take up my pen with hesitation even now to write
of it; and as I write some figure of the shadows comes before me and
seems to say, "You cannot speak of it! It is of the past, forgotten!"
And, certainly, if I could make it clear to you how Czerny's men were
forever driven off from the gate of the house that Czerny built, if I
could make it clear to you and leave the thing untold, that would I do
right gladly. But the end was not of my seeking; in all honesty I can
say that if it had been in my power I would have helped those wretched
creatures, have dealt out pity to them and carried them to the shore;
but it was written otherwise; a higher Power decreed it; we could but
stand, trembling and helpless, before that enthralling justice.
They climbed on the rocks, forty or fifty of them, may-be, and lying in
all attitudes, some stretched out full length, some with their arms in
the flowing tide, some huddled close as though for warmth, they
appeared to surrender themselves to the inevitable and to accept the
worst; when, rising up out of the near sea, the first octopus showed
himself, and a great tentacle, sliding over the rock, drew one of the
mutineers screaming to the depths. Thereafter, in an instant, the whole
terror was upon them. Leaping up together, they uttered piercing cries,
turned upon each other in their agony, hurled themselves into the sea,
to reach the boats again. God! how few of them touched the befriending
prows! The whole water about the reef was now alive with the devilish
creatures; a hundred arms, crushing, sucking, swept the unsheltered
rocks and drew the victims down. So near were they, some of them, that
I could see their staring eyes and distorted limbs as, in the fishes'
embracing grip, they were drawn under to the gaping mouths or pressed
close to that jellied mass which must devour them. The sea itself
heaved and splashed as though to be the moving witness of that horrible
attack; foam rushed up to our feet; a blinding spray was in the air;
eyes protruded even in the green water; great shapes wormed and
twisted, rending one another, covering the whole reef with their filthy
slime, sending blinding fountains to the highest pinnacles, or sinking
down when their prey was taken to the depths where no eye could follow
them. What sounds of pain, what resounding screams, rent the air in
those fearful minutes! I draw the veil upon it. For all the gold that
the sea washes to-day in Czerny's house, I could not look upon such a
picture again. For death can be a gentle thing; but there is a death no
man may speak of.
* * *
At twelve o'clock the clouds broke and the rain began to fall upon a
rising sea. The vapours still lay thick upon Ken's Island, but the wind
was driving them, and they rolled away in misty clouds westward to the
dark horizon.
I went below to little Ruth, and in broken words I told her all my
story.
"Little Ruth, the night is passed, the day is breaking! Ah, little
Ruth!"
She fell into my arms, sobbing. The sleep-time was past, indeed; the
hour of our deliverance at hand.