"AT THE END OF THE PASSAGE"
Captain Dove looked across at Carthew with a hoarse chuckle, no less
malicious. He was evidently in that mordant, capricious humour most
common with him at moments when his potations had merely begun their
evil work on his wits.
"Light that candle again, Slyne, confound you!" he ordered sharply. "His
noble lordship, our American friend, can scarcely see us--to say
good-bye."
"Oh, come on," Slyne urged, obviously almost at the end of his patience.
"We've no more than time to get safely away before we'll have the hue
and cry after us in the fishermen's boats--and they're faster than you
imagine."
"_You_ can't teach _me_ anything about boats!" Captain Dove retorted
with crapulous dignity. "So just light--Or, here--gimme the candle,
quick! And don't address any more of--of your in--invidious conversation
to me."
"I'll see Sallie safely afloat, then," suggested Slyne. "We'll have to
send her down in a whip, I expect. The sea's always rising."
"She's a better seaman than you are, Slyne," the old man returned with a
sneer. "And she'll go down hand under hand, same as I will--when I'm
quite ready. Till then, she'll stay here with me, so that his loving
lordship there can have a last, long look at her." He chuckled again,
most discordantly. "But--you can see that fat stiff, Jobling, safely
afloat, if you like. It will probably take a whip to tempt _him_ to run
the risk of a wetting on his way aboard."
The wretched object of his derision gave vent to a very audible groan,
hearing which, Captain Dove laughed aloud, with malevolent relish. And,
having at length succeeded in striking a match, he turned again toward
Carthew, standing still and silent on the other side of the apparently
bottomless chasm which cut the pathway apart.
"Are there only the two of you there?" he asked, darting a contemptuous
glance at Lord Ingoldsby.
"That's all," Carthew answered tersely. He was absolutely at his wits'
end, but thought he could not do better than detain the old man there as
long as he might.
"But you've raised the alarm up above?" Captain Dove suggested, with all
the fatuous cunning of one half-fuddled. "And we'll have a pack of your
cut-throats in petticoats down on us in a minute or two?"
He looked savagely round at Slyne. "I thought I told you to see that
bloated Jonah into the boat!" he blurted explosively. And Slyne, with an
exasperated shrug of the shoulders, sauntered away, with Mr. Jobling in
very uncertain attendance.
"I want to talk to you on my own account for five seconds or so,
young-fellow-my-lad," Captain Dove continued, as if in confidence, to
Carthew. "But--is it safe, eh? You haven't answered my questions yet.
And--you've turned the key on us once already!"
"You're safe from pursuit in the meantime," Carthew reassured him.
"I'll take your word for it, sir," Captain Dove declared, and, bowing
very graciously, all but over-balanced himself. "And now let me ask you
whether you have been listening to any more lies from Farish M'Kissock;
because, if you have, we must part brass-rags right away."
Carthew was most sorely tempted to spare the truth, and made haste to
answer honestly while he might. "I've heard all he had to tell," said
he, "and--"
"And you believe it all!" Captain Dove interposed, with maudlin pathos,
his evident intention to see whether he could not even yet make terms of
some sort for himself with the young American knocked on the head.
"Well, well! We must be jogging now, Sallie."
The girl stepped forward beside him at that, and Carthew was thankful to
see Ambrizette clinging to her skirts, for she had told him more than
once how often the dumb, black dwarf had stood betwixt her and imminent
harm.
Her sweet, sensitive features were very pale, but placid, as if, after
the sore stress she had suffered, she had found some sort of peace. And
all the pride seemed to have died out of her downcast eyes as she faced
him across the dark, impassable gulf that stretched between them.
"I don't want you to think that I have gone away unwillingly, Mr.
Carthew," she said, and his heart almost failed him as he heard that. It
had never occurred to him that she might have taken such a sheerly
suicidal step of her own free will.
"But why--" he cried, and the hurt in his voice perhaps helped to salve
a little the sore wounds in her own heart.
"I couldn't possibly have stayed here, you see--after what has happened.
And,--I'm not afraid of the future now. You don't understand, perhaps,
but--you will remember--I wasn't afraid."
"Come away now, Sallie," said Captain Dove. An irascible voice in the
distance was calling upon him insistently.
"Good-bye," she said, submissively, to Carthew, and, looking up, her
eyes met his for an instant.
"Wait a minute--only a minute more, for God's sake!" Carthew implored
the old man. "It won't do any of you any harm to stand by till I've said
my say. It won't help you in the least, Captain Dove, to carry Sallie
away--and you'll be far safer, believe me, if you leave her here. I've
only been waiting my chance to ask her to marry me, and--"
"I've asked her already," interrupted Lord Ingoldsby, in a tone no doubt
meant to be most impressive but strongly resembling a squeal. No one,
however, paid him any more attention than if he had been the shadow he
seemed.
"And if you carry her off just now," Carthew continued hurriedly,
encouraged by the benevolent smile with which Captain Dove was regarding
him, "you'll have good cause to regret it. For I'll hunt you down till I
find you, and then--"
"Now you're talking," the old man commented approvingly, quite
undismayed by that threat. "And then we'll make terms, if you come in
time and bring enough money with you.
"I'd even have waited here and fixed it all up, but--" He wagged his
shameless white head sorrowfully. "It wouldn't be wise," said he.
"You've been prejudiced against me--by Farish M'Kissock. It's too late
to think of that now. So I must be off, for my own sake.
"But maybe we'll meet again," he concluded with cheerful complacence,
"in some safer spot for me. And, if Sallie's still on my hands when you
show up--"
"So be it, then," Carthew agreed, seeing clearly that further appeal
would be futile, all eagerness to get above-ground again and begin the
chase. He could have the whole fishing-fleet of the village armed and
afloat within half an hour, and might even yet succeed in boarding the
_Olive Branch_ at her anchorage. But, manlike, he had counted without
the woman in the case.
"I'm going away of my own free will, Mr. Carthew," said Sallie suddenly,
with the same strange expression of face that he had observed when she
had looked back at him in the banquet-hall. "And--I don't want you to
follow me. You have been far more than generous, but--I couldn't marry
you--in any case."
"Don't say that, Sallie," he beseeched, and, "Dove!" cried a very
wrathful voice in the distance. "We'll be off without you if you don't
come down at once."
The old man's smug, blinking smile instantaneously changed to a furious
scowl. He pulled a big, golden-necked bottle from one of his pockets,
removed the cork, and, having poured its remaining contents hastily down
his throat, tiptoed off down the tunnel with it in one hand, making
motions as if to hurl it with accurate aim, leaving Sallie alone there.
Carthew glared across the black gulf at his feet, his free hand
clenched, in helpless despair. He would gladly have given his earldom
then in exchange for a pair of wings.
"I'll bolt up and get a ladder brought down," groaned Lord Ingoldsby.
And he would have made off without more ado but that Carthew had seized
him by the sleeve.
"Here! Hold this," commanded Carthew, and thrust the smoking lamp into
his hands. Sallie had turned to follow Captain Dove, with dragging
steps. He could not believe that she meant what she had said. He would
not let her go without making sure. Farish M'Kissock's contemptuous
words had recurred to his mind--"if you're man enough to master her!"
Instinct told him that she would not turn back now, and--a man's last
stake was all he had left to venture.
"Stop, stop! It's sheer suicide," the marquis cried shrilly, as Carthew
ran limping up the tunnel as far as the straight extended, and faced
about, throwing off his coat, and balanced there for a breathless
instant and then came racing down past him to launch himself bodily into
space.
No human being could have leaped the distance, and Carthew had been
further handicapped by his lameness. He shot, as if from a catapult,
nearly as high as the arched rock-roof, his elbows close, chin on chest,
head between his shoulders, knees at his temples and heels tucked back,
and, on the downward curve, reached the lower lip of the chasm, landing
on one shoulder, to hang there for the space of a couple of heart-beats,
as if poised for the inevitable rebound.
Lord Ingoldsby heard the dull thud of his fall and Sallie's stifled,
heart-broken cry. He opened his eyes and saw the girl desperately
striving to pull a hunched-up, relaxing body back from the brink over
which, but for her, it would already have toppled. He thought they must
both have slipped over before, at the finish, Sallie succeeded in
drawing Carthew into safety, and sat down beside him, swaying from side
to side, as if her own back were broken.
But, presently, Carthew looked up and then he scrambled on to his knees
with a suppressed grunt of agony. For a time the whole world swam redly
about him, but he clenched his teeth, not to be overcome. And when
Sallie in turn got on to her feet again, white and shaking, he had
recovered the use of his voice.
"I won't let you go--dear," he said dazedly, and started, in renewed
alarm for her, as they heard Captain Dove calling her harshly from
below.
"Coming," she called back, since she could not help herself.
"You must stay here, or--he'll kill you!" she whispered in an agony of
entreaty. "I'll go now; it will be best so. And if, by and by, you still
care to follow--"
"You go on," he said gently. "I'm going to follow you now."
She had no option but to obey him, since to have remained there would
merely have meant that Captain Dove, coming back for her, would have him
at a greater disadvantage. And as she led the way in the dark, with slow
steps, he followed quietly; while Lord Ingoldsby, left to his own
devices as they disappeared, was brilliantly inspired to bolt back for
help.
A little further on a thick twilight made progress more easily possible,
and they could feel the salt breath of the sea on their fevered faces.
Then, at last, they drew near the oblong opening in the cliff-face at
which Captain Dove had for several minutes been busy abusing the men in
the boat below. But he was in no better temper by then, since the empty
bottle he had hurled at Slyne had knocked the steersman insensible.
"Is that you, Sallie?" he snapped, looking round.
"Below there, you lubbers! Stand in again. We're coming down now.
"Hurry up, girl!" he barked, impatiently. "It's high time we were
away."
He was leaning out over the ledge, clinging with one hand to a bar of
the great water-gate, so thick, that his stubby fingers did not meet
round it. Carthew, creeping after Sallie set her suddenly aside, and ran
at him.
Captain Dove heard him coming, but too late to save himself. He felt as
if a bullock had kicked him in the small of the back, and, as his hold
broke, he fell headlong, howling like an evil spirit, into the
smothering, yeasty surge through which his boat was already hastily
backing to pick him up.
Carthew set his back to the heavy gate, and it swung slowly shut. But
Slyne had not left behind the key he had for its modern lock, and its
old-fashioned draw-bolts were rusted fast. He could only hope that Lord
Ingoldsby would bring back some means of bridging the drowning-hole
before Captain Dove and his helpers could storm the position again.
He laughed, a little light-headed by then, as he stumbled up the long,
dark slope, with Sallie close at his shoulder.
"I told you I wouldn't let you go,--dear," he declared triumphantly, and
his laugh changed to a low, choked groan as she would have taken his arm
to help him; for he was walking unsteadily.
"Don't touch that one," he begged. "It's a bit sore; I came down on it
when I jumped."
"Do you think it's broken?" she whispered, and her eyes grew dim as she
thought of all he had suffered through her. She had stopped. There were
lights coming down the tunnel, and hurrying feet, on the further side of
the drowning-hole.
He slipped his sound arm about her. "There's nothing broken that can't
be mended now," he murmured contentedly. "Unless you're really
determined to break my heart."
THE END
* * * * *
_A Story of Charm and Cheeriness_
ALL THE WORLD TO NOTHING
_By_ WYNDHAM MARTYN
Illustrated by H. H. Leonard.
A few years ago Wyndham Martyn's first book, "The Man Outside," was one
of the "best sellers" of its season. His new novel shows a distinct
advance in the art of the story-teller, and will make many new friends
for its author. Richard Chester, a young American of family, with a
care-free disposition and a dashing outlook on life, goes through all
his money, and has the choice of appealing to his older brother for
assistance or working to avoid starvation.
Choosing the latter alternative, and the odds against him, he pursues
his unfaltering way through many trials and vicissitudes, not afraid to
try labor of the meanest sort; and throughout his struggle for existence
his hopes are sustained through love of a true-hearted woman. No man
fights more gallantly than he for what is dear to him; neither hardship
nor ill-success has power to stay his impetuous course.
The reader must learn for himself the place that a curious will and a
chance meeting have in the unusual plot, and the reader may be sure of
finding in "All the World to Nothing" a story of charm and cheeriness
and unusual appeal.
* * * * *
_By the author of "The Haunted Pajamas"_
THE GIFT OF ABOU HASSAN
_By_ FRANCIS PERRY ELLIOTT
Illustrated by Hanson Booth.
This is absolutely the cleverest, catchiest book of the season, the
Arabian Nights up-to-date in modern New York, a rapid, rollicking
romance of love and laughter, fun and absurdity, all told in the most
delightfully whimsical manner imaginable. A young club-man, whose
distinguishing characteristic is the possession of unblushing audacity
and nerve, sees a pretty girl outside the antique-shop of a Persian
dealer, to which the girl's aunt has come in quest of a wonderful
rug--and then the fun begins and never stops.
For Abou Hassan's shop holds a rug more wonderful than the world has
known in many centuries: a magic rug--put foot upon it and one can't be
seen or heard. And the hero's love-making, his masquerade as another
man, the complications for which the magic rug is responsible, these
make a steady stream of comedy that brings laughter to your lips and
tears to your eyes while you are held entranced by the mirthful medley
of mysterious events that follow.