HOBSON'S CHOICE
Sallie had made an effort to rise, but her knees had utterly failed her,
and Reuben Yoxall had laid a heavy arm across her shoulders. The
ceaseless uproar from within the camp had suddenly increased.
The Emir was standing up in his stirrups to listen. He sank into his
saddle again, and issued some further orders, in Arabic. Most of his
force on foot in the rear made off at a staggering run. The horses of
his body-guard began to paw and curvet to free their feet as the loose
reins tightened on their necks.
"I must be going now, my fine doctor," said the Emir most reluctantly,
"but I'll leave you company enough for the few minutes you've left,
although you're but a dumb dog!
"And you'll maybe think of me when you're swallowing your first
mouthful. Till then you can mourn her-you-know-of."
The white horse leaped and plunged as though he had rowelled it cruelly,
and then he was gone at a breakneck gallop, the white shadows that were
his body-guard hard at his heels, with lances free.
The grave-diggers paused in their digging as he disappeared. A dozen or
more tongues broke into eager talking, and a fiendish, squealing laugh
out-shrilled them all. Sallie, with her face between her elbows, had
thrust a finger into each ear, and her eyes were tightly closed.
She opened them a little, involuntarily, as the heavy arm that had been
holding her down was taken away. Reuben Yoxall nudged her, and she
looked round, with infinite caution.
A blue-light, like a corpse-candle in the distance, had suddenly flared
up on the near ridge above the ravine that led to the camp. And in its
ghastly glow an unforgettable picture was vaguely visible for a moment
or two.
The last of the Emir's mounted men were streaming after him into the
gorge, between whose open jaws lay three prone, trampled bodies, two
very still, the other writhing round and round on the axis of a long
lance.
The breakers on the beach beyond the intervening sand-waves reared up,
and combed, and fell in blue-green foam. Outside them a black sea heaved
ceaselessly.
Inland, a segment of the circular rock-rampart which enclosed the camp
loomed up above the endless, empty desert, and on its summit showed a
number of white-clad, crouching figures with rifles, all firing inward
and downward on the pandemonium raging below.
Only a few yards away from where the two helpless onlookers lay the man
in the scarlet mask was standing, his hands behind him, between the two
big negroes Sallie had seen in the Emir's tent. And, grouped about them,
staring at the blue-light with wide eyes, were a dozen or more armed
Arabs. Two other negroes, knee-deep in a hole, were leaning on their
spades.
Farther off, beside the lagoon where the boats were lying, the third
mate and his men were making the best fight they might for their lives
against overwhelming odds. More than one of them had already fallen
before the blue-light guttered away and that inferno was blotted out.
But the renewed darkness lasted only for a few seconds before the
search-light on the bridge of the _Olive Branch_ in the bight answered
the signal from the ridge, cutting through the inky night a long, white,
fan-like swathe which swept the coast in sections until it finally found
its objective and settled there.
The group about the half-dug grave were at first almost paralysed with
fear of that phenomenon. The two black eunuchs seized their prisoner and
pulled him to the ground, the men of the guard took cover, with rifles
ready, the grave-diggers dropped incontinently into the grave and
cowered there.
But when, after its first gyrations, it steadied on to the ridge round
the camp, leaving them quite unharmed and outside its focus, they fell
to talking again, in awed whispers, while they gazed blinkingly at its
effect, all but the two who were busy digging again.
Yoxall plucked at Sallie's sleeve. She crept after him, and by very slow
degrees they got safely round in rear of the burial-party.
"Wait here," he breathed in her ear, and left her behind a low swell of
the sand.
She crawled to its brink. He was wriggling back toward the shapes
silhouetted against the dusky light. She clenched both her hands tightly
over her lips as he reached the one that was lying motionless, a knee
upraised, quite close to the others' heels.
The upraised knee slowly straightened. One of the two negro guards
looked round and kicked at their prisoner. The other spoke, and a
squealing laugh reached her ears.
Each instant seemed an eternity until she thought she could see Reuben
Yoxall turn and begin to worm his way back toward her, with another
stealthy shadow following him.
He reached her side.
"Up and run for it now, lass," he panted, and stooped and lifted her to
her feet. "They can't hear us from there. For God's sake, don't give way
now."
But she was quite limp and strengthless. The strain had been too much
for her. He picked her up in his arms and made for their boat at an
elephantine trot, the stranger struggling along after him through the
sand. She was sobbing brokenly when he set her down beside it.
A piercing scream rang out across the sand from the near distance, above
all the other turmoil. But he had already got the boat turned right side
up and the man in the mask helped him to set it afloat. He splashed
ashore again and carried Sallie out to it, settling her very tenderly in
its stern.
"We're all right now," he told her, and she whispered back, "Oh! I'm so
ashamed of myself, Rube,--I nearly fainted!"
The other man sat down in the bow and the mate stepped carefully in. A
few minutes later they were beyond the bar, safe enough from pursuit.
"I'll take an oar now," the stranger suggested, speaking for the first
time, and in a tone which showed how he had suffered. Yoxall passed him
one willingly. He had over-taxed his own strength at last. He was almost
exhausted before they at length ran alongside the _Olive Branch_,
skirting the arc of the search-light. He could scarcely scramble up the
rope he had left hanging from the poop.
But with the other man's help he managed to get the boat aboard and
stowed away again. And they returned on deck together.
"What do you think has happened ashore, Rube?" asked Sallie very
anxiously as he reappeared from below.
"I wish I knew, lass," he answered, no less concerned. "I'll go and find
out what Brasse--"
"I must see Mr. Brasse too," she told him. "He's promised--" She turned
to the stranger.
"The stokehold's the only place on board where you will be safe," she
said, somewhat uncertainly. "Will you mind very much--"
"I'll shovel coal _most_ contentedly," he assured her at once, in a tone
that was still very tremulous. "And--how to show my gratitude to both of
you, for the chance, I--I can't--"
His voice broke. He could say no more. His silent self-control had been
too sorely tried.
"Come on, then," said Reuben Yoxall uncomfortably. And Sallie clutched
at the big, stolid Englishman's arm again and clung to it as they went
forward, along the dark empty decks.
On the bridge, in the dim, vaporous light at one side of the white hood
within which the carbon was burning, they caught sight of the chief
engineer, a raggedly disreputable-looking individual, with features
haggard, refined to the pitch of foolishness, rendered still more
fatuous by the single eye-glass he always affected and which he had worn
even while, when he had first joined the ship, he himself had worked in
the stokehold as one of the black gang who feed the furnaces. Brasse was
one of a number of human enigmas who had followed Captain Dove's flag
and fortunes for uncounted years, and Sallie had long ago heard the
common report that there was a hangman's rope waiting for him somewhere
ashore.
He looked round as she approached, and his perspiring face expressed
heartfelt relief.
"Just a moment," he begged, and once more applied an eye to the
telescope trained parallel with the light.
"I thought so," he exclaimed, and turned a tap on a tube leading into
the hood. In the instant darkness which ensued, the flare of another
blue-light on the ridge above the ravine ashore produced a very weird
and startling effect.
The engineer turned to Sallie.
"Gad!" said he, hurriedly, "but I'm glad to see you safe back on board.
I was afraid that--Did you get your man?"
"Yes, we brought him off. He's here, behind," Sallie answered briefly,
since there was so little time to explain anything. "But--what has gone
wrong ashore, Mr. Brasse?"
"That second signal should mean that Captain Dove has been quite
successful," said Brasse, a bitter note in his voice. "I expect he'll be
back on board presently, too. So I'll get away below now and send some
of my men on deck to help. I'll have to see your friend fixed up before
the boats arrive. Have you explained to him--"
"Yes, he understands," she assured him, and, as the stranger followed
the engineer silently from the bridge, she spoke to Yoxall again. He was
leaning over the rail behind her, gazing over the side.
"What do you think has really happened, Rube?" she once more asked him.
"It didn't look as if our men were winning."
"I wish I knew, lass," he repeated dully. "But--we'll know before very
long, and--we can do nothing to help. So you'd better be off aft again,
now, and seek some rest. I must see everything shipshape about the
decks."
Sallie went slowly back to the poop, but she could not rest amid so many
anxieties. It was not very long, however, before the regular plash of
oars reached her ears where she was standing within the companion-hatch,
under cover from the dew that the awning dripped. And in another minute
Captain Dove's harsh voice hailed the ship.
"Show a light at the gangway, quick!" the old man shouted. "Muster all
hands at the rails--and don't let a single son-of-a-gun on board you
till I give the word."
These peremptory orders were promptly obeyed. Reuben Yoxall himself came
running to the break of the poop with a deck-lamp and let the
Jacob's-ladder down. But Captain Dove's boat was well ahead of the
others, although for all company in it he had only Jasper Slyne and
three white-robed Arabs, who, as they ran alongside, shipped their oars
smartly to clutch at the ladder, up which Captain Dove scrambled
swaying, with only one hand at his service. Slyne followed him, hot,
dusty, dishevelled, still bleeding from a deep cut in one cheek, and
then the Arabs, the Emir El Farish first, and the last with a turn of
the boat's painter about his wrist in seaman-like fashion.
"Shift her forward now," Captain Dove commanded, "and up with the ladder
again."
Which also was done, in a hurry, so that when the other boats arrived
they had to bring-to under the bare wet side of the steamer wallowing in
the swell. Sallie, herself unseen, saw that there were only three or
four men in each, and a sudden, sick understanding of Captain Dove's
successful expedient for ridding the ship of the rest of the mutineers
flashed through her mind. But she would not allow herself to surmise
what the Emir's visit might mean.
Captain Dove, safe on board, surveyed for a space, in silence and very
much at his leisure, the men in the boats. But not one of them was able
or willing to meet his malevolent glance. A more cowed, unhappy,
hang-dog lot he had never seen, and he told them so, at some length.
"Get on to your feet, you, Hobson," he snapped, and the second mate
stood up in his place, as if with a galvanic effort of will. Captain
Dove regarded him fixedly for some moments.
"You're the worst that's left," he said then, in a steely voice, "and--I
don't quite know what to do with you. I've asked Far--the Emir here if
he'll have you as a gift, along with the others I left ashore, but he
won't. And I don't want you on the _Olive Branch_; there's no room on
board for a man like you--you might stir up another mutiny! Seems to me
the very best thing you can do for yourself now is to jump right
overboard before I have that boat swung and lay hands on you. For, if
you set foot on my ship again, I'll have you hove head-first into one of
the furnaces. D'ye hear?
"But take your choice--one way or the other, it's all the same to me.
"The rest of you mutinous swine can come aboard now. You've had your
lesson, I think, eh? Then stand by to pick Mr. Hobson up if he follows
you, and carry him down to the stokehold.
"Let the ladder over again, there."
The doomed wretch, staring wide-eyed at Captain Dove in the lamplight,
seemed to know that no appeal from that most monstrous penalty of his
scarcely less monstrous crime would serve any purpose at all, and looked
hopelessly about him while the others in the boat clambered, cringing,
up the ship's side. He shuddered convulsively as he caught sight of a
stealthy black fin in the water, within a few feet of him. His slack,
twisted lips were moving like those of a man with paralysis.
"Put--put a bullet through me first," he begged piteously, and turning
about, scrambled, groping, into the stern-sheets.
He stood there throughout an eternity of a few seconds, head bent,
shoulders heaving, hands hanging limp, and then, "For God's own sake--"
he cried, in a dreadful, whimpering voice, that was suddenly stilled by
a whip-like explosive crack as he pitched forward, headlong, out of the
boat.
Sallie had darted, unnoticed, down the steps from the poop to where
Jasper Slyne was standing in the background, nonchalantly looking on.
"Save him, Jasper--for my sake!" she beseeched of him, who alone had any
influence with the old man.
"I will--if you'll promise to marry me," he whispered in answer, as if
inspired to snatch at even such a precarious chance of placing her under
that obligation to him, and, without waiting for any reply, he fired at
the black fin beyond the boat, ran to the rail and plunged over the
ship's side. Captain Dove swung around, snarling viciously, and struck
at him as he passed.
The splash he made frightened the swarming sharks away for a moment or
two. He came up close beside Hobson, seized him by the scruff of the
neck, and, after a desperate struggle, succeeded in clambering into the
boat. A white streak seemed to leap from the water and snapped and
missed the second mate's helpless heels by an inch or two as Slyne, with
a final, frantic effort, jerked him inboard and fell backward over a
thwart.
Captain Dove stood glaring about him, speechless. Sallie had drawn back,
unseen, in breathless suspense. But the old man said nothing at all, not
even when Slyne stepped, spent and dripping, over the rail, with Hobson
close behind crying like a child.
"I've no more time to waste on such tomfoolery," said the Emir then,
angrily, "and no great taste for it, either, Captain Dove. So give me
the girl now, and I'll be gone."
"Come below, for a minute," returned Captain Dove, in a strangled voice,
mastering his pent rage with a very visible effort. "Come below for a
minute till I send for her.
"Mr. Yoxall, you'll let Mr. Brasse know that we'll be starting in half
an hour. Tell those men off in two watches, and send one lot below.
Leave Da Costa in charge of the deck--you'll be rated as second mate,
now, Da Costa, d'ye hear?--and turn in, yourself, Mr. Yoxall, till the
morning watch."
"Ay, ay, sir," Yoxall responded mechanically, and Captain Dove, as he
led the way to his own quarters amidships--he had only been berthed aft,
in the poop, while he had been ill and the crew conspiring against
him--at length looked round at Slyne.
"Better get into some dry clothes, quick," he said, civilly enough, but
in a tone which betrayed his real temper. "I want you to go aft and
bring Sallie along."
When Slyne came aft again, a few minutes later, he was once more cool
and clean and spruce in white drill, with a plaster over the cut on his
face. He was also apparently well pleased with himself.
He found Sallie crouching within the companion-hatch, and she shrank
still farther into its shelter as he approached.
"What's the matter?" he asked in surprise, his greedy eyes searching her
white face in the misty darkness while she looked up at him in
speechless dismay.
"Did you hear what Captain Dove said?" he asked, and laughed exultantly.
"You needn't worry about anything of that sort now, my dear. You've got
some one to look after you now, and--it's all part of his plan, don't
you understand? You must come along with me, but--there's nothing to be
afraid of. You're perfectly safe now--with me."
She did not know what to believe, but, since there was no help for it,
she followed him, without a word, to the doorway of the mid-ship saloon,
within which the Emir and Captain Dove were amicably engaged over a
black bottle.
"The real potheen!" El Farish was saying exultantly, a tumbler to his
hook-nose. "It's long since I've had the chance of such." He looked
round as Slyne stepped in.
"Here, have a sip, Mr. Slyne," he said. "No, out of this glass of mine,
if you please, just to show that it isn't hocussed. I've known Captain
Brown--Captain Dove, I mean--long enough to be extra careful in his
company."
He laughed as Slyne took the tumbler from him and, with a covert nod to
Captain Dove, half emptied it at a draught. And, as Slyne smacked his
lips, "If it does you so much good, it can't do me any harm," said the
Emir jovially. "So--here's to the pair of bright eyes that--Ah! there
she is. Come in, acushla, and let's have another look at you."
But Sallie had stopped on the threshold, and stayed there, silent,
unable to move. The Emir, staring avidly at her, rose and lifted his
glass.
"Here's happy days and no regrets--to the two of us!" he cried, and was
draining it off when Captain Dove, at his back, felled him to the floor
with a well-aimed blow of the full water-bottle, which was the most
convenient weapon at hand.
"Are his two cut-throats out there safe?" the old man hissed from
between set teeth, and Sallie, looking round, saw two limp figures
huddled with hanging heads in the dark alleyway just beyond the door.
"Safe as houses," Slyne answered evenly, since she stood silent, aghast.
"I made sure of them before I went aft. A single drink settled their
hash. You must have made the dose in the other bottle pretty strong."
"It's just as well, after all, you see, that we didn't depend on fixing
him the same way," said Captain Dove, recovering his self-command and
indicating the prone Emir with a contemptuous foot. He seemed to have
forgotten for the moment his grudge against Slyne. "I was afraid he'd
smell a rat if we tried that old trick on him.
"And now--the sooner he's over the side the better. Don't stand there
staring, Sallie! Go and call some of the men in."
The girl turned and went, dazedly, drawing her skirts close as she
passed the two huddled figures in the alleyway. Half a dozen of the
watch on deck carried the Emir and his ineffectual retinue up the
gangway, flung them, like so much rubbish, into the boat out of which
the hapless Hobson had fallen, and at once cast it loose.
"They'll probably all wake up before they drift into the surf," said
Captain Dove, looking on, with a laugh which made even Slyne glance
askance at him. "And, if not--it isn't my fault.
"That fellow thought he could get the better of _me_, Slyne--and there's
the result!
"Is that you, Mr. Da Costa? Where's Hobson?"
"He's locked himself into his room, sir, and barricaded the door," the
new second mate answered swiftly, with a servile smile.
"Humph!" exclaimed Captain Dove. "All right. Weigh anchor at once. Head
west for an hour and then due north. You'll be relieved before long. And
just bear in mind that we've got to be very careful of coal now; we've
no more on board than will take us to Genoa."
Da Costa saluted briskly, and had disappeared before Captain Dove turned
and caught sight of Sallie again.
"Get away aft and turn in at once," he called irritably to her. "You'll
have to take the bridge by and by, and for a good long spell, too--we've
all had a hard time of it ashore while you've been idling on board."