"ONCE ON BOARD THE LUGGER"
It was Roger Broom's voice which sent across the water that ominous shout
so appalling to Trent's ears. Mechanically George swam toward the place
where the dark head had risen, but as he took his first stroke a second
head appeared beside the other, then both went down together.
That moment concentrated more of anguish for George Trent than all the
years of his past life had held. He believed that both Roger and Maxime
had almost before his eyes suffered the most hideous death possible to
imagine, and he knew that at any instant he might share their fate. But
that thought no longer shook him as before. Since the others had died so
horribly it would be well that he should die too. A moment of sharp
agony, and all would be over. Better so, since he could not go back to
Virginia or to Madeleine Dalahaide alone.
His eyes strained despairingly over the cruel glitter of the rippling
sea, with a cold, vague feeling that he had reached the edge of the
world, and was looking over into the dim mystery of the next. He was
young and vigorous, and had loved life for its own sake; but, with Roger
and Dalahaide both dead, there was no longer a full-blooded craving for
help to save himself in his mind as he gazed toward the yacht and the
French boat. Instead he wondered with a sickly curiosity how long it
would be before the filthy brutes, which had put an end to his
companions, would make a meal of him, and whether it would hurt much, or
if unconsciousness would come soon. Mechanically he swam on, more or less
in the direction of the _Bella Cuba_ and the French boat, which were at
close quarters now; and perhaps there was a scarcely defined hope in his
heart that a stray shot might finish him before the hideous "guardians of
the Ile Nou" found their chance.
The state of his own brain and nerves became a matter of cold surprise
to him; the suspense without fear, though tingling with physical dread,
and the capacity for separation of emotions. He found himself thinking of
Virginia, and pitying her. This would break her heart, he told himself.
She would have a morbid feeling that she was to blame for the disaster;
that she had caused the death of her brother and cousin, and the other
man so strangely important in her life of late. He wished that he might
talk to her, and tell her not to mind, because it was not in the least
her fault, and she had done nothing but good.
Then he began to wonder why the yacht and the French boat had ceased
firing. The latter had only two guns, while the _Bella Cuba_ had four,
and, as he had said to Roger a few minutes (or was it years?) ago, she
was but a poor "makeshift," rigged up more as a kind of "scarecrow" for
_forçats_ meditating escape than for actual service. Still, she must
carry at least ten or twelve rounds of ammunition. Could it be that the
little _Bella Cuba_ had contrived to knock a hole in her hull, and that
her men must choose between beaching her immediately or having her sink?
It looked as if this explanation might be the right one, for she was
certainly retiring, and that with haste. To beach she must go round the
point whence she had come in, approaching the lagoon, and this she was
doing, the yacht having no more to say to her.
"The Frenchies know what their sea-wolves have done," George thought
grimly, "and so they can afford to let things slide and save themselves.
No good sending out a boat and trying to pick up their man under the nose
of the enemy, for the poor fellow's gone where neither friends nor foes
can get him. The episode is closed. And all the _Bella Cuba_ wanted was
to put the prison boat out of the running. There's no good being
vindictive. I could get to her now, if I liked--provided those brutes
would let me. But it's impossible--I won't think of it. Afterward I
should loathe myself for being a coward and going back to life without
the others. I couldn't have helped them--but it would seem as if I might
have, and didn't. Heavens! When is this going to end? I can't bear it
long. The best thing I could do would be to drown myself like a man, and
get it over before the worst can happen."
He flung up his arms, meaning to sink, and wondering whether it would be
really possible for a strong swimmer deliberately to drown himself, or
whether instinct would keep on countermanding the brain's orders, until
exhaustion did its work. One last look at the world he gave before the
plunge, and that look showed him a thing which he could not believe.
Between him and the black horns of the outer reef he saw once more two
dark heads close together.
"It can't be!" Trent said to himself; nevertheless, instead of flinging
away life, with all his strength he struck out lustily toward those
floating dots in the water. Then, suddenly, something cold and solid
rubbed against his leg. How the knowledge of what it was and what to do
came to him so quickly, and how he acted upon that knowledge swiftly
almost as light moves, he could not have told; but he knew that a shark
was after him; he knew that it must turn over on its back in the water
before the cavernous, fang-set jaws could crunch his bone and flesh, and
like a flash he dived. Queerly, as he shot down through the water, he
thought again of something outside the desperate need of
self-preservation. "This is what happened when I saw their heads go down
before and supposed it was all up with them both!" he said to himself.
"That's what they are supposing about me now, if they're looking my way.
Well, we shall see. It's going to be a race between this infernal brute
and me. I'd bet on him--but the dark horse sometimes gets in."
After that he had no more consecutive thoughts. Primitive instinct guided
him, and hope was the light which marked the goal. The others were not
dead yet, so he had a right to his life, if he could keep it; and toward
that end he strained, swimming as he had never swum before, diving,
darting this way and that, feeling rather than seeing which spot to
avoid, which to strive for. At last his foot touched rock. He had reached
that part of the jagged coral-reef which rose out of the sea. He ceased
to swim, and found that slipping, sliding, stumbling on a surface, which
felt to clinging hands and feet as if coated with ice, and smeared with
soap, he could scramble up to a point above water. He got to his knees,
then to his feet, and as he stood up, dripping and dizzy, a shout came to
him. Roger's voice again!--but no longer sharp with horror and loathing.
There he stood on another low peak of the reef, and Dalahaide was beside
him, slimmer, taller, and straighter than he, as the two figures were
darkly outlined against the light.
They were safe, at least from the sharks; and from the _Bella Cuba_ a
boat with four rowers was swiftly approaching. The reaction of joy after
the resignation of despair was almost too great. George Trent's throat
contracted with a sob, and there was a stinging of his eyelids which was
not caused by the salt of the sea.
"Hurrah!" he cried out, waving his hand to the two men on the reef, and
to the rowers in the boat. While his shout still rang in the air a
_canot_, such as that in which they had crossed from Noumea to the Ile
Nou, manned by twelve rowers, leaped round the point of rock behind
which the French boat had disappeared, and came straight as an arrow for
the reef on which the three men stood.
Now it was a race once more for life and death. The yacht's boat had the
start, but those twenty-four oars carried the _canot_, heavy as it was,
far faster through the water. The _Bella Cuba_ could not use her cannon
lest she should destroy her own friends, so nearly did the two boats
cross each other as both from, different directions, sped toward the same
goal.
The yachtsmen's blood was up, and they worked like heroes, but they were
four to twelve. The _canot_ shot ahead and got the inside track. The
race, as a race, could now have but one end. The _canot_ was bound to be
first at the spot where the runaway _forçat_ and one of his English
friends stood side by side out of reach of the hungry sharks, but not
beyond the grasp of justice. The fugitives, who had fought so long with
the sea, were unarmed, while the four surveillants in the _canot_ had
revolvers, and would either recapture or kill.
But Maxime Dalahaide spoke a word to his companion; and, as if the
triumph of the _canot_ over the yacht's boat had been a signal, the two
sprang from the shelf of the reef into the sea. George Trent knew well
what was in their minds; they preferred to risk being food for sharks to
certain capture; and without hesitating for an instant, George followed
their example. If they could swim under water to the yacht's boat before
the sharks took up the prison cause, all was not yet lost, for the boat
would do its best to dodge the _canot_ while the _Bella Cuba's_ cannon
seized their chance to work once more.
George kept under water as long as he could, then came up to breathe and
venture a glance round. Crack! went a pistol-shot close to his head, and
he dived again; but not before he had seen the yacht's boat not thirty
yards off. How near the _canot_ lay he had not been able to inform
himself, but the narrow shave he had just had gave him a hint that it
could not be far distant. He aimed for the boat as well as he could
judge, felt an ominous, cold touch, dived deeper for a shark, forged
ahead again, trying to forget the double danger, came up to breathe
because he must, and could have yelled for joy, if he had had breath
enough in his lungs, to see that either Roger or Maxime was being pulled
into the yacht's boat, while a second head bobbed on the water a couple
of yards away. The air cracked with revolver-shots, but George was not
the target now: the eyes of the surveillants were for the fugitives
nearest safety. Whether Roger or Dalahaide were hit, George could not
tell, but he kept his head above water in sheer self-forgetfulness until
both had been hauled on board. Then he dived again, and when he rose to
the surface he was close to the boat. It was his turn to be helped over
the side and to become a target. Something whizzed past his ear, leaving
it hot and wet, and he had a sudden burning pain in his left arm; but
nothing mattered, for there were Roger and Maxime, and he was beside
them. The rowers had set to their work with a will once more, not to
reach the _Bella Cuba_ with the best speed, but to dodge from between her
guns and the _canot_. Once she could let her cannon speak, the _canot_
was no longer to be feared. Brave as the Frenchmen were, clearly as they
had right on their side, from their point of view, they would have to
recognize that they were helpless, that the rest of the battle was to the
strong.
A moment more, and one of the little cannon roared a warning. She did not
try to hit the _canot_; the message she sent was but to say, "Hands off,
or take the consequences." And the men of the _canot_ understood. Not
only did they cease firing, but began to retire with leisurely dignity
toward the point which hid the disabled prison boat.
Now, suddenly, when all such peril was over, the thought of that slimy,
cold touch on his flesh, and what it had meant, turned George Trent sick.
He did not see how he or his friends had escaped the horror. If it were
to come again he was sure that escape would be impossible; and somehow he
knew, as if by prevision, that there would be nights so long as he lived
when he would dream of that touch in the water, and wrench himself awake,
with sweat on his forehead and his hands damp.
"Roger, are you all right, and Dalahaide, too?" he asked, wondering at
the weight he felt on his chest and the effort it was to speak.
"Thanks to Dalahaide, I am all right," Roger answered. "If it hadn't been
for his quickness and presence of mind, twice I should have been nabbed
by a shark. Weak as he was, he pulled me down for a dive that I should
have been too dazed to think of without him."
"I have cause enough to know something of these waters and their danger,"
Maxime said slowly, as if he too found it an effort to speak. "I was
weak, yes, but strength comes of great need, I suppose; and already I
owed you so much. I had to think and act quickly; besides, it was for
myself too."
"Thank heaven it's all over," exclaimed Roger, with a great sigh. "We've
a good doctor on board. He'll know how to make you fit once we have you
there. And that will be shortly now. See, here's the yacht! In ten
minutes you'll be in the stateroom that has been ready for you ever since
we left Mentone a few hundred years ago, bound for New Caledonia."
"Yes, your passage was engaged from the first," chuckled George, with an
odd little catch in his voice that would have been hysterical if he had
been a woman. "And I'll bet something you'll like your quarters. Two
lovely ladies took a lot of trouble with them--your sister and mine."
"I don't know what to say, or how to thank you," stammered Maxime. "It
goes so far beyond words."
"Just try to _live_ your thanks, if you think they're worth while. I
reckon that's what our two sisters would say on the subject. Don't let
there be any more talk about dying like there was to-day, that's all, you
know. And oh, by Jove! doesn't it feel queer to be gabbling this way,
when you remember what we've just come out of--those grinning brutes down
there, with their red mouths in their white shirt fronts, so to speak.
Ugh! I don't want to think of it, but I'm hanged if I can help it. I say,
did those Johnnies' revolvers do any damage here?"
"Dalahaide got a bullet in his shoulder, as if the wound in his back
wasn't enough to remember the place by," said Roger. "He says it's
nothing, and I hope that's the truth" (he actually did hope it now, at
least for the moment); "as for me, I believe they've saved the yacht's
barber a little trouble in cutting my hair on the left side, that's all;
luckily no harm done to any of our men."
All these scraps of conversation had been flung backward and forward
inside five minutes. Then they were at the yacht's side. Maxime, forced
to yield to his own weakness in the reaction now, was being helped on
board, the others following.
A slim, white figure, ethereal and spirit-like in the sheen of the moon,
was waiting to give them welcome. Virginia stood on deck, weeping and
laughing, Dr. Grayle by her side.
"Thank heaven! Thank heaven!" she sobbed at sight of Maxime. The cry was
for him, the look, the tears, the clasped hands, all for him. Roger and
George came together for her in a second thought, and Roger knew; though
he was not surprised, because he had guessed her secret, such joy of
success as even he, being a man, had felt, was blotted out for him.
* * * * *
Down below, locked into their staterooms, Lady Gardiner and the Countess
de Mattos had passed a strange and terrible hour, each in a different
way.
To Kate there was little mystery, though much fear. She had sulkily shut
herself up, and, not dreaming what was appointed for the night, had
finally dropped asleep, while meditating reprisals for the bad treatment
she had received that day. But though her suspicions had not gone as far
as an actual rescue in dramatic fashion, with the first shot from the
prison boat which woke her from a sound sleep, she divined what was
happening. Bounding from her berth, while hardly yet awake, she darted to
her porthole, which was wide open. It faced the wrong way to afford her a
glimpse of what was going on, but she could hear more firing at a
distance, doubtless at the prison on the Ile Nou, the ringing of bells,
and much tramping overhead on the deck of the yacht. She felt the throb
of the engine too, and though the _Bella Cuba_ had been lying quietly at
anchor in the harbour when Kate had fallen asleep, now she was moving at
a rapid rate through the water, which gurgled past her sides.
Kate had known, of course, that they had not come thousands of miles for
nothing, and the moment she was certain that New Caledonia was to be the
_Bella Cuba's_ destination she realized that an attempt would be made to
save Maxime Dalahaide. She had been anxious to earn the other half of the
Marchese Loria's money, and at the same time to pay Virginia and George
Trent for their secretiveness, by letting Loria hear of their arrival, at
least, even if she could tell him no more. That desire had been thwarted
by Dr. Grayle, but Kate considered the act merely postponed. Next time
they coaled--since they must coal somewhere before long--she would
certainly find a way of wiring to Loria, and probably she would have
something much more definite to tell him, that was all. Exactly what that
"something" might be, had been rather vague in her mind; but she had
thought that Virginia, George, and Roger would most likely have found
means to communicate with Dalahaide and give him hope for the future;
perhaps they might even try to put in his hands some means of escape,
after which the _Bella Cuba_ would linger about in these waters, out of
sight of New Caledonia, until he either succeeded in getting away or
failed signally to do so. This plan Kate had considered not beyond the
bounds of possibility; or (she had told herself) Virginia, who was so
enormously, absurdly rich, might be counting upon bribing some lesser
prison authority to help the convict to escape. So daring a girl, sure of
the power of beauty and wealth, and with millions of pounds to play with,
might have conceived such a scheme and have the boldness to carry it out.
She could offer any bribe she liked, and--every man was said to have his
price. It was conceivable now to Kate that Virginia and Madeleine
Dalahaide had had confidences together, and that the mysterious locked
stateroom had been specially fitted up for the benefit of the prodigal.
It would be like Virginia to have made such a wild plan, and to persuade
Roger Broom and George Trent to aid her in carrying it out; yet Kate had
not guessed to what desperate lengths they would be ready to go. She had
forgotten about the yacht's cannon; but when she heard the shot from the
French boat she suddenly remembered them, and wondered, in great terror,
whether they would be put to use. She realized that the trio meant to
stop at nothing to gain their end and that this end was to have Maxime
Dalahaide out of prison at any cost to themselves and others.
Into the midst of her confused deductions broke the yell of a shot from
one of the yacht's guns. It was as if the _Bella Cuba_ were alive and had
given a tiger-spring out of the water. Kate shrieked with fear, and
staggered away from the porthole. Her first thought was to run out of the
stateroom and seek refuge somewhere--anywhere. But, with her hand on the
bolt with which she had fastened the door, she realized that she was as
safe where she was as she could be elsewhere, in the dreadful
circumstances--perhaps safer. But she was in deadly terror. As a roar
from the French boat was answered by another roar from the yacht, which
again shivered and leaped like a wounded thing, her knees gave way under
her, and she half fell, half crouched on the floor of the stateroom,
shuddering and moaning. The danger seemed as appalling, as hopeless to
escape from, as an earthquake which, go where you would, might tear
asunder the ground under your feet and bury you alive.
It was clear that the _Bella Cuba_ and the strange, ugly-looking
steamboat she had seen in the harbour, with its two unmasked cannon, were
waging fierce war upon one another. For all that Lady Gardiner knew,
Dalahaide was already on board, and the prison boat was giving chase; yet
that could not be true, surely, for suddenly the yacht's engines ceased
to move; it was as if her heart had stopped beating. Had the _Bella Cuba_
been struck? Was she sinking? Even if not, one of those horrible
cannon-balls might come crashing into the yacht's side at any moment,
and every one on board might be instantly killed.
Kate knew not what to do; whether to remain where she was, or to crawl
out into the cabin and try to find some one--even the hateful doctor--who
would tell her how great the danger was, and what one must do to be saved
from it. She forgot all about Loria, and Dalahaide, and her many
grievances, and only knew that she wished to be spared from death, no
matter whose schemes failed or succeeded, or who else lived or died.
The Countess de Mattos had not been asleep. Her headache, perhaps, had
kept her nerves at high tension, and made rest impossible. As she had
confessed to Virginia early that morning, on discovering the name of the
next landing-place, she did not like New Caledonia. The thought of the
place, and the secrets it must hold, oppressed her. She wondered, with a
kind of disagreeable fascination which invariably forced her weary mind
back to the same subject, whether the convicts' life was very terrible;
whether they lived long in this land of exile, or whether they were
notoriously short-lived. The climate must be trying, and then there were
countless hardships to endure--hardships which must be less bearable to
those who had known luxury and refinements. She did not like to dwell
upon anything that was painful or even sordid; and when memory persisted
in dragging before her reluctant eyes the dead body of any particularly
hateful scene in her past, as a cat will sometimes obstinately lay before
its master a rat it has mangled, she was in the habit of dulling her
sensibility by drinking a little absinthe in which some chlorodyne had
been dropped.
When she travelled, she always carried two or three bottles of the liquor
with her, wrapped in laces and cambric, in her luggage, for she had grown
used to it, and could hardly support life without its soothing influence
now. She was careful not to take too much, however, for she worshipped
her own beauty; and absinthe was an enemy to a woman's complexion.
She felt to-night, lying in the harbour of Noumea, as she had felt
sometimes during a furious _sirocco_ in Sicily--restless, unnerved,
fearful of some vague evil, though common sense assured her that nothing
of the kind she dimly pictured could possibly happen. She remembered
uncomfortable things more vividly and painfully than usual, too; and, at
last, she could deny herself the wished-for solace no longer. She rose
from her berth, trailing exquisite silk and lace (for the woman must
always frame her beauty worthily, even for her own eyes alone), poured
out half a glass of absinthe, dropped in her allowance of the drug, added
water, till the mixture looked like liquid opal, and sipped the beverage
with a kind of dainty greed.
In a few minutes she had ceased to care whether the _Bella Cuba_ lay in
the harbour of Noumea or off Sydney Heads. What did it matter? What harm
could come?
Presently, lying in her berth, dreamily staring out at the moonlight
through the open porthole, her lovely arms pillowing her head, the
Countess became aware that the yacht was moving. So they were getting out
to sea again, she told herself. A little while ago she would have been
delighted, as if at an escape, because, as she had said, Noumea was
hateful, and no place for pleasure-seekers. But now that the absinthe and
chlorodyne soothed her nerves she was comparatively indifferent whether
they stopped or steamed away. Nothing unpleasant had happened. Of course
not; why should it? She had racked her nerves, and given herself a
headache all in vain. Still, it was good to know that she would see no
more of that terrible land of beauty and despair.
She shut her eyes comfortably, and was on the way to the more welcome
land of sleep when the boom of the gun, which had wakened Lady Gardiner,
roused her from her lotus mood of soft forgetfulness--the greatest joy
which she could ever know.
Her brain was dazed with the liquor and the drug she had taken, and she
was utterly unable to comprehend the tumult and confusion which followed.
Kate Gardiner had a clue to the mystery which the Countess de Mattos did
not possess. The Portuguese beauty had no means of guessing what had
brought the _Bella Cuba_ to Noumea. She had never heard any one on board
speak the name of Dalahaide, or that of any convict imprisoned at New
Caledonia, and the firing between the yacht and the French boat suggested
nothing to her but horror.
She, too, was afraid, half-stunned with fear, and she was angry with
herself now for having taken the absinthe and chlorodyne, because they
prevented her from thinking clearly--the very thing which, a short time
ago, she had wished not to do. At first she lay still, burying her head
in the pillows; then she murmured prayers to more than one saint, for she
was an ardent Catholic; and at last, unable to bear the suspense and
isolation any longer, she threw open the stateroom door and ran out into
the cabin.
No one was there; but above the sound of trampling overhead she thought
she could distinguish voices, and Virginia Beverly's was among them. If
Virginia were on deck, the Countess said in her mind, it would be well
for her to be there too.