We slipped out to sea quietly at dusk, and all through the night
everything went well. The breeze was gusty; a southerly blow was making
up. It was fair wind for our course. Now and then Dominic slowly and
rhythmically struck his hands together a few times, as if applauding the
performance of the _Tremolino_. The balancelle hummed and quivered as
she flew along, dancing lightly under our feet.
At daybreak I pointed out to Dominic, amongst the several sail in view
running before the gathering storm, one particular vessel. The press of
canvas she carried made her loom up high, end-on, like a gray column
standing motionless directly in our wake.
“Look at this fellow, Dominic,” I said. “He seems to be in a hurry.”
The Padrone made no remark, but, wrapping his black cloak close about
him, stood up to look. His weather-tanned face, framed in the hood, had
an aspect of authority and challenging force, with the deep-set eyes
gazing far away fixedly, without a wink, like the intent, merciless,
steady eyes of a sea-bird.
“_Chi va piano va sano_,” he remarked at last, with a derisive glance
over the side, in ironic allusion to our own tremendous speed.
The _Tremolino_ was doing her best, and seemed to hardly touch the great
burst of foam over which she darted. I crouched down again to get some
shelter from the low bulwark. After more than half an hour of swaying
immobility expressing a concentrated, breathless watchfulness, Dominic
sank on the deck by my side. Within the monkish cowl his eyes gleamed
with a fierce expression which surprised me. All he said was:
“He has come out here to wash the new paint off his yards, I suppose.”
“What?” I shouted, getting up on my knees. “Is she the guardacosta?”
The perpetual suggestion of a smile under Dominic’s piratical moustaches
seemed to become more accentuated—quite real, grim, actually almost
visible through the wet and uncurled hair. Judging by that symptom, he
must have been in a towering rage. But I could also see that he was
puzzled, and that discovery affected me disagreeably. Dominic puzzled!
For a long time, leaning against the bulwark, I gazed over the stern at
the gray column that seemed to stand swaying slightly in our wake always
at the same distance.
Meanwhile Dominic, black and cowled, sat cross-legged on the deck, with
his back to the wind, recalling vaguely an Arab chief in his burnuss
sitting on the sand. Above his motionless figure the little cord and
tassel on the stiff point of the hood swung about inanely in the gale.
At last I gave up facing the wind and rain, and crouched down by his
side. I was satisfied that the sail was a patrol craft. Her presence
was not a thing to talk about, but soon, between two clouds charged with
hail-showers, a burst of sunshine fell upon her sails, and our men
discovered her character for themselves. From that moment I noticed that
they seemed to take no heed of each other or of anything else. They
could spare no eyes and no thought but for the slight column-shape astern
of us. Its swaying had become perceptible. For a moment she remained
dazzlingly white, then faded away slowly to nothing in a squall, only to
reappear again, nearly black, resembling a post stuck upright against the
slaty background of solid cloud. Since first noticed she had not gained
on us a foot.
“She will never catch the _Tremolino_,” I said exultingly.
Dominic did not look at me. He remarked absently, but justly, that the
heavy weather was in our pursuer’s favour. She was three times our size.
What we had to do was to keep our distance till dark, which we could
manage easily, and then haul off to seaward and consider the situation.
But his thoughts seemed to stumble in the darkness of some not-solved
enigma, and soon he fell silent. We ran steadily, wing-and-wing. Cape
San Sebastian nearly ahead seemed to recede from us in the squalls of
rain, and come out again to meet our rush, every time more distinct
between the showers.
For my part I was by no means certain that this _gabelou_ (as our men
alluded to her opprobriously) was after us at all. There were nautical
difficulties in such a view which made me express the sanguine opinion
that she was in all innocence simply changing her station. At this
Dominic condescended to turn his head.
“I tell you she is in chase,” he affirmed moodily, after one short glance
astern.
I never doubted his opinion. But with all the ardour of a neophyte and
the pride of an apt learner I was at that time a great nautical casuist.
“What I can’t understand,” I insisted subtly, “is how on earth, with this
wind, she has managed to be just where she was when we first made her
out. It is clear that she could not, and did not, gain twelve miles on
us during the night. And there are other impossibilities. . . .”
Dominic had been sitting motionless, like an inanimate black cone posed
on the stern deck, near the rudder-head, with a small tassel fluttering
on its sharp point, and for a time he preserved the immobility of his
meditation. Then, bending over with a short laugh, he gave my ear the
bitter fruit of it. He understood everything now perfectly. She was
where we had seen her first, not because she had caught us up, but
because we had passed her during the night while she was already waiting
for us, hove-to, most likely, on our very track.
“Do you understand—already?” Dominic muttered in a fierce undertone.
“Already! You know we left a good eight hours before we were expected to
leave, otherwise she would have been in time to lie in wait for us on the
other side of the Cape, and”—he snapped his teeth like a wolf close to my
face—“and she would have had us like—that.”
I saw it all plainly enough now. They had eyes in their heads and all
their wits about them in that craft. We had passed them in the dark as
they jogged on easily towards their ambush with the idea that we were yet
far behind. At daylight, however, sighting a balancelle ahead under a
press of canvas, they had made sail in chase. But if that was so, then—
Dominic seized my arm.
“Yes, yes! She came out on an information—do you see, it?—on
information. . . . We have been sold—betrayed. Why? How? What for? We
always paid them all so well on shore. . . . No! But it is my head that
is going to burst.”
He seemed to choke, tugged at the throat button of the cloak, jumped up
open-mouthed as if to hurl curses and denunciation, but instantly
mastered himself, and, wrapping up the cloak closer about him, sat down
on the deck again as quiet as ever.
“Yes, it must be the work of some scoundrel ashore,” I observed.
He pulled the edge of the hood well forward over his brow before he
muttered:
“A scoundrel. . . . Yes. . . . It’s evident.”
“Well,” I said, “they can’t get us, that’s clear.”
“No,” he assented quietly, “they cannot.”
We shaved the Cape very close to avoid an adverse current. On the other
side, by the effect of the land, the wind failed us so completely for a
moment that the _Tremolino’s_ two great lofty sails hung idle to the
masts in the thundering uproar of the seas breaking upon the shore we had
left behind. And when the returning gust filled them again, we saw with
amazement half of the new mainsail, which we thought fit to drive the
boat under before giving way, absolutely fly out of the bolt-ropes. We
lowered the yard at once, and saved it all, but it was no longer a sail;
it was only a heap of soaked strips of canvas cumbering the deck and
weighting the craft. Dominic gave the order to throw the whole lot
overboard.
I would have had the yard thrown overboard, too, he said, leading me aft
again, “if it had not been for the trouble. Let no sign escape you,” he
continued, lowering his voice, “but I am going to tell you something
terrible. Listen: I have observed that the roping stitches on that sail
have been cut! You hear? Cut with a knife in many places. And yet it
stood all that time. Not enough cut. That flap did it at last. What
matters it? But look! there’s treachery seated on this very deck. By
the horns of the devil! seated here at our very backs. Do not turn,
signorine.”
We were facing aft then.
“What’s to be done?” I asked, appalled.
“Nothing. Silence! Be a man, signorine.”
“What else?” I said.
To show I could be a man, I resolved to utter no sound as long as Dominic
himself had the force to keep his lips closed. Nothing but silence
becomes certain situations. Moreover, the experience of treachery seemed
to spread a hopeless drowsiness over my thoughts and senses. For an hour
or more we watched our pursuer surging out nearer and nearer from amongst
the squalls that sometimes hid her altogether. But even when not seen,
we felt her there like a knife at our throats. She gained on us
frightfully. And the _Tremolino_, in a fierce breeze and in much
smoother water, swung on easily under her one sail, with something
appallingly careless in the joyous freedom of her motion. Another
half-hour went by. I could not stand it any longer.
“They will get the poor barky,” I stammered out suddenly, almost on the
verge of tears.
Dominic stirred no more than a carving. A sense of catastrophic
loneliness overcame my inexperienced soul. The vision of my companions
passed before me. The whole Royalist gang was in Monte Carlo now, I
reckoned. And they appeared to me clear-cut and very small, with
affected voices and stiff gestures, like a procession of rigid
marionettes upon a toy stage. I gave a start. What was this? A
mysterious, remorseless whisper came from within the motionless black
hood at my side.
“_Il faul la tuer_.”