SIEGE
Much as I hated and distrusted Cornelius Gleazen,--and in the months
since I first saw him sitting on the tavern porch in Topham he had
given me reason for both,--I continually wondered at his reckless
nonchalance.
As coolly as if he were in our village store, with a codfish
swinging above the table, instead of a skeleton leaning against it,
and with a boy's dart trembling in a beam, instead of an arrow
thrust half through the wall--with just such a grand gesture as he
had used to overawe the good people of Topham, he stepped to the
door and brushed his hair back from his forehead. The diamond still
flashed on his finger; his bearing was as impressive as ever.
"Well, lads," he said,--and little as I liked him, his calmness was
somehow reassuring,--"there _may_ be a hundred of 'em out there, but
again there _may_ be only one. First of all, we'll need water. I'll
fetch it."
From a peg on the wall he took down a bucket and, returning to the
door, stepped out.
In the clearing, where the hot sun was shining, I could see no sign
of life.
Pausing on the doorstone, Gleazen shrugged his great shoulders and
stretched himself and moved his fingers so that the diamond in his
ring flashed a score of colors. He was a handsome man in his big,
rakehell way; and in spite of all I knew against him, I could but
admire his bravado as he turned from us.
Boldly, deliberately, he stepped down into the grass, while we
crowded in the door and watched him. After all, it seemed that there
was really nothing to be afraid of. The rest of us were startled and
angry when O'Hara suddenly called out, "Come back, you blithering
fool! Come back! You don't know them, Neil; I say, you don't know
them. Come back, I say!"
With a scornful smile Gleazen turned again and airily waved his
hand--I saw the diamond catch the sunlight as he did so. Then he
gave a groan and dropped the bucket and cried out in pain and
stumbled back over the threshold.
With muskets we sprang to guard door and window. But outside the hut
there was no living thing to be seen. There was not even wind enough
to move the leaves of the trees, which hung motionless in the
sunlight.
It was as if we were in the midst of a nightmare from which shortly
we should wake up. The whole ghastly incident seemed so utterly
unreal! But when we looked at Gleazen, we knew that it was no mere
nightmare. It was terrible reality. Blood was dripping from his left
hand and running down on his shoe.
Through his hand, half on one side of it, half on the other, was
thrust an arrow. A second arrow had passed just under the skin of
his leg.
From the door I could see the bucket lying in the grass where he had
dropped it; but except for a pair of parrots, which were flying from
tree to tree, there still was no living thing in sight.
The vine-hung walls of the forest, which reached out long tendrils
and straggling clumps of undergrowth as if to seize upon and consume
the space of open ground, stood tall and green and silent. The deep
grass waved in the faintest of breezes. Above a single big rock the
hot air swayed and trembled.
Without even wincing, Gleazen drew the arrow from his hand and,
refusing assistance, bound the wound himself.
Turning from the door, Arnold went to the table and touched an arm
of the skeleton, which fell toward the body and collapsed inside the
sleeve with a low rattle.
O'Hara raised his hand with an angry gesture.
"I mean no irreverence," said Arnold.
For a moment the two stood at gaze, then, letting his hand fall,
O'Hara stepped over beside Arnold, and they lifted the bones, which
for the most part fell together in the dead man's clothes, and laid
them by the north wall.
"And what," asked Matterson, curiously, "are you two doing now?"
Without answering, Arnold coolly swept the stones on the table
together between his hands into a more compact pile.
"Hands off, my boy," said Gleazen, quietly.
"Well?" Gleazen's words had brought a flush to Arnold's cheeks. He
himself was nearly as old as Gleazen and was quick to resent the
patronizing tone, and his very quietness was more threatening than
the loudest bluster.
"Hands off," Gleazen repeated; and raising his musket, he cocked it
and tapped the muzzle on the opposite side of the table. "This says
'hands off,' too." He glanced around so that we could see that he
meant us all. "Matterson, ain't there a sack somewhere hereabouts?"
But for the blood on his shoe and the stained cloth round his hand,
he gave no sign of having been wounded.
From under the table Matterson picked up a bag such as might have
been used for salt, but which was made of strong canvas and was
grimy from much handling.
"He was always a careful man," Gleazen remarked with a glance at the
skeleton heaped up in the shadow of the wall. "I thought he would
have provided a bag."
Gleazen and Matterson then, with pains not to miss a single one,
picked up the stones by handfuls and let them rattle into the bag
like shot.
"And now," said Gleazen, when the last one was in and the neck of
the bag was tied, "once more: _hands off!_"
Laying the bag beside the skeleton, he took his stand in front of
it, with Matterson and O'Hara on his right and left.
So far as the three of them were concerned, we might have been
killed a dozen times over, had anyone seen fit to attack us. But Abe
and I, all the time keeping one eye on the strange scene inside the
cabin, had kept watch also for trouble from without, and all the
time not a thing had stirred in the clearing.
"What," Matterson again asked, still watching Arnold curiously,
"what are you going to do now?"
Tipping the table up on one side and wrenching off one of the boards
that formed the top of it, Arnold placed it across a window, so that
there was a slit at the bottom through which we could watch or
shoot.
"Now, there's an idea!" Gleazen exclaimed. But he never stirred from
in front of the skeleton and the bag.
"There are nails in the table," said Arnold.
Matterson smiled, and taking the board in one hand, tapped a nail
against the table to start it, and with the thumb and forefinger of
the other hand drew it out as easily as if it had been stuck in
putty. "For a hammer," he said lightly, "use the butt of a musket."
"Look!" my uncle exclaimed: he was pointing at a good claw-hammer,
which hung over the door.
The hut fell far short of the duke's mansion that its luckless
builder had promised O'Hara, but it had a window in each of three
walls, and the door in the fourth, so that, by cutting a hole
through the door, we were able, after we had barricaded the
windows, to guard against surprise from any quarter without exposing
ourselves to a chance shot; and as we had brought four muskets, we
were able to give each sentry one well loaded.
The silence deepened. The air was fairly alive with suspicion. When
Uncle Seth nervously moistened his lips, we all heard him; and when
he flushed and shifted his feet, the creaking of a board seemed
harsh and loud.
"Well," said Gleazen, slowly, "I'll stand in one watch and Matterson
here will stand in the other. For the rest, suit yourselves."
Another long, uncomfortable silence fell upon us.
"Then," said Arnold, at last, "since no one else suggests an
arrangement, I would suggest that Mr. Matterson, O'Hara, Mr. Upham,
and I stand the first watch; that Mr. Gleazen, Joe Woods, and Abe
Guptil stand second watch; and in order to put four men in each
watch in turn, since we must have four to guard against surprise
from any direction, I suggest that each man, turn and turn about,
stands a double watch of eight hours. I myself will take the double
watch first."
"That is good as far as it goes," Matterson interposed in his light
voice. "But a single watch of two hours, with the double watch of
four, is long enough. A man grows sleepy sooner with his eye at a
knothole than if he is walking the deck."
Arnold nodded, "We agree to that," he replied.
"Lads," said Gleazen, quite unexpectedly, "let's have an end of hard
looks and hard words. Come, Joe,--come, Arnold,--don't take sides
against us and good Seth Upham. We're all in this fix together, and,
by heaven! unless we stand together and come out together, not one
of us'll come out alive."
The man now seemed so frank, and in the face of our common danger
so genial, that, if I had not still felt the sting of the flattery
by which he had deceived me so outrageously in the old days in
Topham, I should have been convinced that he was sincere in every
word he uttered. As it was, sincere or false, I knew that for the
moment he was honest. However his attitude toward us might change
when our troubles were past, for the time being we did share a
common danger, and it was imperative that we stand together. But to
speak of my poor uncle as if he were hand in glove with the three of
them and on equal terms exasperated me.
Seth Upham's face was drawn and anxious. It was plain that his
spirit was broken, and I believed, when I looked at him, that never
again would he make a show of standing up to the man who had
virtually robbed him of all he possessed.
"Sir," said Arnold Lamont, thoughtfully and with that quaint, almost
indefinable touch of foreign accent, "that is true. We might say
that we don't know what you mean by offering us a truce. We might
pretend that we have always been, and always shall be, on the
friendliest of terms with you. But we know, as well as you, that it
is not so. Since we share a common danger and since our safety
depends on our mutual loyalty, we, sir, agree to your offer. A truce
it shall be while our danger lasts, and here's my hand that it will
be an honest truce."
It was easy to see that Gleazen and Matterson were not altogether
pleased by his words. They would have liked, I think, to have us
apprehend the situation less clearly. But there was nothing to do
but make the best of matters; so Gleazen shook Arnold's hand, and we
took an inventory of our provisions, which were quite too few to
last through a siege of any length.
"To-morrow night, surely we can run for it," said O'Hara. "To-night
they'll watch us like hawks, but to-morrow night--"
Plainly it was that for which we must wait.
We divided our food into equal portions, each to serve for one
meal,--the meals, we saw, were to be very few,--ate one portion on
the spot and settled ourselves to watch and sleep. But before I fell
asleep I heard something that still further enlightened me.
"Now, why," asked Gleazen, sourly, as he faced the other two in the
darkness, "couldn't _one_ of you ha' stayed with Bull, even if the
other was fool enough to go a-wandering?"
Matterson quietly smiled. "Bud, here, swore he'd never leave him."
"We-e-ell," O'Hara drawled, irritably, "you was both of you too long
gone and Bull was set in his ways. It was 'Step this side,' and
'Step that!' And 'Those stones are yourn and those are mine and
those are for the company.' Says I at last, 'Them that you've laid
out for me, I'll take to the coast. Keep the rest of them if you
wish.' Says he, 'You'll leave me here to rot.' 'Not so,' says I. 'By
hook or by crook Neil will get the vessel surely, and Molly will
arrange the market surely, for they're good men and not to be turned
lightly off. Do you clean the pocket, and build the house. Surely
the pocket that has sent Neil home like a gentleman, and has sent
Molly west like a man of business, will provide us at least the
wherewithal to buy _one_ cargo. And with a cargo under our own
hatches,' says I, 'four fortunes will soon be made.' 'Do you go,'
says he, 'and I'll build a house like a duke's mansion to live in,
and dig the pocket out and make friends with the niggers, which
eventually we will catch, and four fortunes we will make.' So I come
away, and you two surely would 'a' done the same if you'd been in
my breeches instead of me; and then he went and built his house on
the king's grave!"
As I lay on the floor, not three feet from the skeleton and from the
round bag of quartz-like stones, through half-closed eyes I saw
against the door, beyond which the sun was shining with intense
heat, the great black shadow that I knew was Matterson, with a
musket across his knees; then, so exhausted was I, that I forgot the
grim object within arm's length of where I lay, forgot our feud with
Matterson and Gleazen and O'Hara, forgot every ominous event that
had happened since the Adventure had set sail four days before and
moved down the river toward the open sea, and, falling asleep,
dreamed of someone whom, strangely, I could not forget.
The sun had set and the moon was up when my turn came to go on
guard. Taking Matterson's musket and his place by the open door
where I could see all that went on without, but where no one outside
could see me in the dark of the hut, I settled myself with my back
against the jamb. In Matterson's motions as he handed me the musket
and went over by the skeleton and lay down, there was the same lithe
strength that he had revealed when he lifted himself to the taffrail
and boarded the Adventure in Havana harbor. I marveled that he could
endure so much with so little drain on his physical powers.
"Watch sharply, Joe, there's a brave lad," he said in his light
voice.
As he crossed the hut and laid his great body on the floor, so
slowly yet so lightly, I thought to myself that I had never seen a
lazier man. What a power he might have been at sea or ashore, had he
had but a tithe of Gleazen's bold effrontery! Although he had shown
none of Gleazen's passionate recklessness, he had given no sign of
fear under any circumstances that we had yet encountered. I
wondered if it were not likely that the man's very quietness, the
complete absence of such petulance as Gleazen sometimes showed,
sprang from a deep, well-proved confidence in his own might.
I was glad that it had fallen to me to guard the door rather than a
window. Whereas from the windows one could see only a short space of
rough open park and then the intermatted tangle of vines, from the
door the vista ran far down the hill to the open glade where, hidden
in deep grass, the spring lay. But though I sat with the musket
beside me for hours, and though the moon rose higher and higher,
revealing every tree and bush, in all my watch I did not see one
thing astir outside the hut.
I must repeat that we seemed to be living in a dream. We had seen no
enemy, heard no enemy. For all the signs and sights that those walls
of tangled creepers revealed to us, there might have been no human
being within a hundred miles. Yet from behind those walls had come
three arrows, and for the time being those three arrows locked us in
the hut as fast as if they had been bolts and chains and padlocks.
As I watched, I heard someone get up and walk around the hut; and
when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that it was my uncle. To my
surprise he was talking in a low voice. Now what, I wondered,
possessed him to stay awake when he might be sleeping.
"I must be getting home," I heard him say as he came nearer; and his
voice startled me because, although it spoke softly, it was the old
sharp, domineering voice that I had known so long and so well in
Topham; "I must be getting home. I don't know when I've stayed so
late at the store."