Beyond the Rim/Chapter 16

HE raft was laden to its full capacity as Chalmers descended into the cabin for his last trip. He had built it so that the deck rode high above the water, and he blessed its buoyancy as he lowered the things he selected, slung in a bag improvised from his oilskin coat, to Leila, who stowed them deftly on the float.

The cartridges he had found in their original stowage under a locker seat and these he took first. Then followed canned goods from another locker, the bulk of his personal belongings—including the razor—the schooner's log, the case of charts, the chronometer, his sextant, and, last of all, the compass, which he unscrewed from the binnacle post.

It was not his intention to leave the schooner destitute of steerage implements. Now that he knew of the launch in the mangroves, it was his first desire that Sayers would muster up enough cocksureness to take the schooner under his command, providing they could be persuaded to give up the pearls as too difficult to procure, content perhaps with what they found in the lagoon.

But there was a spare compass in the cabin and he wanted the more reliable instrument. He took the automatic on its lanyard from his neck and lowered it to Leila, together with the electric torch. As he prepared to slip over the side and rejoin her, elated at the success of the raid, he remembered Tuan Yuck's rifle. To secure it would be to reduce the enemy's efficiency by one third. He had taken all the spare loads for the Winchesters save what might be carried in their belts.

“Just a minute,” he called down to the waiting girl, hardly discernible beneath the curve of the bows, her face a dim gray oval looking up at him with eyes that held the sparkle of the reflected stars that spangled the water all about her. “Never mind the torch!”

He remembered where the rifle stood when he had first noticed it and determined to take it. As he reached carefully for it in the velvety blackness, he fancied he heard a faint hissing, sputtering sound, like a noisy fuse.

He stopped, every movement arrested, intent upon the strange sound. Suddenly his spine tingled and he knew that he was not alone in the cabin. His senses, almost supernaturally alert, telegraphed to his brain that a door had been opened, ever so softly, behind him—the door of Tuan Yuck's cabin. He crouched rapidly, circling about in the same motion. He heard the swift intake of a breath, the swish of an arm in a silken covering above his head and, grappling for his foe, found only vacancy.

Which side of him the Oriental stood he could not tell. The cabin was in pitchy darkness through which his sight strained helplessly. How Tuan Yuck was armed he could only guess. The rifle was useless in this kind of mêlée and he reached for his knife. Instantly two hands that seemed made of steel clutched at his wrist and twisted skin and flesh in opposite directions. In the swift agony of the attack his tortured tendons were momentarily paralyzed and the knife fell tinkling to the floor.

He heard the scuff of Tuan Yuck's foot as the weapon was kicked away at the same instant that he managed to tear himself free, and groped for his opponent's arms. They writhed from his grasp with a vigor that astounded him. In his first struggle with the Oriental, in the clearing, he had been surprised at the other's wiry strength where he had expected flaccidity. But then he had held him pinioned and now the Chinaman was taking the offensive. He pursued Tuan Yuck, bumping against the fixed table in the center of the cabin, unable to obtain more than the briefest grip on the arms that warded him off so effectually.

The uncanny presentiment came to him that the Oriental's eyes possessed the faculty of seeing in the dark. The next second he was sure of it. The steely hands caught him again, one at the right wrist, the other high up, pressing a nerve that left the arm numb and helpless. A swiftly thrown-up knee was applied to his elbow, an instant more and his arm would have been broken, but Chalmers kicked out viciously in a wide circle and swept Tuan Yuck's legs from under him.

Both crashed to the ground together. Chalmers was amazed at the tiger-like ferocity with which Tuan Yuck strained against his hold and the claw-like grip that tore at his muscles, fighting always to reach his throat. The thought flashed that this fury must be born of opium and would diminish.

He held his own as they writhed on the floor of the cabin, waiting for the right time to exert all his strength in one explosive impulse. The moment came and he rolled uppermost, his fingers feeling for the other's throat. As they twisted, Tuan Yuck's head struck the post of the table with a thud, his form suddenly grew limp and his struggling arms fell outstretched on the floor.

As Chalmers instinctively relaxed his hold, Tuan Yuck's chest heaved upward and his whole body came to sudden life. The crafty Oriental had seized upon the sounding but comparatively harmless blow as a ruse. His right arm eluded Chalmers's swift pounce and twisted upward like a snake. Chalmers brought his left knee down hard upon the other's right biceps, striving to keep his poise upon the writhing form, but the action was too late.

Tuan Yuck had found the knife, perhaps his cat-like eyes had seen it! The blade slashed Chalmers's shoulder. He could hear the squeak of the steel against his collar-bone. By some miracle of luck the plunging point was diverted in the scuffle and the blow was only a glancing one.

With the shock of the wound Chalmers's fury outmatched that of Tuan Yuck.

“You yellow devil!” he exploded pantingly as he held the other's wrists in his clutch at last, squatting upon his chest, each knee in the hollow between the Chinaman's upper and forearms. The warm blood that ran down his left arm angered him. He held but one desire—to gain possession of the knife and drive it home, the primal instinct of a man fighting for his life.

Tuan Yuck's teeth gritted and the reek of his opium-tainted breath came upward as he spat in Chalmers's face. He flinched at the nastiness of it and the Chinaman with one mighty effort set his foot against a locker and, so braced, upset Chalmers's balance, smashing the latter's head against a locker.

Now their positions were reversed though Chalmers still held the other's wrists in a vise-like grip, dizzy as he was from the blow and the loss of blood. Already he felt a faintness growing upon him as Tuan Yuck pressed his advantage. His grasp was almost automatic now, and it was the hand of the arm that was wounded that resisted the tug of the Chinaman's right wrist to be free and deal the fatal blow.

Hitherto he had thought of nothing but the fight. It had taken only a minute or two of swift, strenuous struggle in the dark and there had been no time to consider other matters. Now, as he lay prone, his strength ebbing, the thought of Leila waiting in the water outside, only a few feet away, maddened him to fresh effort. Tuan Yuck met it with a cackling laugh.

“Yellow devil, am I?” he said. “I'll send you to a white man's hell, you young fool.”

Chalmers's fingers seemed nerveless. He could no longer fill his lungs beneath his opponent's weight.

THERE was a swift pattering on deck, a rush of feet down the companionway, a circle of brilliant light that searched the gloom and caught the blade of Tuan Yuck's knife as the Oriental plucked his wrist free at last and started the lunge that would end the fight.

The sudden glare from behind startled him but did not halt the blow. Swiftly as it descended, the girl was quicker and the tube of the lamp came down clubwise, the heavy bull's-eye of the lens striking the base of Tuan Yuck's skull with all the force her strong young arm could muster.

Tuan Yuck pitched forward, his head striking the floor beyond Chalmers's shoulder, the knife driven into the floor of the cabin, where it snapped off short. The ray of the lamp went out with the blow and Leila's efforts failed to relight it.

Chalmers, roused from his swooning condition by the torch ray and his recognition of Leila, struggled to free himself from the incubus of Tuan Yuck's weight. Leila, kneeling on the floor, assisted him to rise.

“Quick!” she said. “Tuan Yuck has signaled ashore. They are coming in the boat!”

She gave her strength to him as his will fought its way back to full consciousness and supported him with her shoulder as he staggered up the companionway and across the deck to the rail. A confused shouting came over the water. The fresh air helped to revive Chalmers and the emergency rallied his forces, though his head ached furiously.

“Are you badly hurt?” Leila asked anxiously.

His forearm rested on her shoulder, one of her slender arms was about his waist. He braced himself to stand without her aid.

“I'm all right,” he said. “Come on, we've got to be getting out of this. We might hold them off, I suppose; but we don't want their old schooner.”

He essayed a laugh and hurried forward, reeling a little as he went.

“You're bleeding,” she said with a half-checked sob.

The revelation of her tenderness did more for him than any surgery.

“It's only a surface slash,” he said. “The salt water will help, and we can patch it up when we get back. There's nothing serious. I got a whack on the head that did the most damage.”

He proved it by straddling the rail and, hanging to it by his uninjured arm, slipping into the water. Leila was there before him, ready to aid. The salt water smarted, but it acted both as a tonic and as an astringent and he reached the raft easily enough.

“You'll have to cast it adrift,” he said. “Pull the loose end.”

She tugged at the slipknot, the rope fell with a little splash and the raft began to fall away from the schooner, the flood-tide bearing it back toward the cape and Safety Haven.

Inshore, there was splashing and confusion, the shouting of orders by Sayers and the drunken babble of the two natives. Spurts of pale flame flashed up as their oars beat the phosphorescent water in an effort to get the whale-boat straightened out for the schooner.

Chalmers floated full length, his right hand on the raft for support. Beside him Leila, with a steady scissors stroke of her legs, drove the raft onward, aided by the tide.

All their attention centered on their own craft, the Australian and his Kanaka aids failed to see the raft, succeeding at last clumsily in getting the whale-boat in line for the schooner, Sayers cursing loudly at every inefficient stroke and the natives answering him in the coarse familiarity of mutual drunkenness.

The flood was strengthening and the raft was soon beyond the headland and in the home waters of Safety Haven. They found bottom off their starting point and stood upright. An indistinct murmur from the schooner barely reached them.

“How do you feel?” asked Leila. “Can you walk up to the caves?”

“I'm not even wobbly any more,” he answered, not with absolute truth. “I've stopped bleeding. But I'd better stay down here to repel boarders in case they try to start something. You might fetch down a rifle. We'll want to stop them at long range.”

“I'll bring two,” she answered, “and something to dress that wound.”

Grateful for the chance to more completely pull himself together, Chalmers sat on the beach, his back against a rock. Aside from a little light-headedness he felt fairly fit. The slash from Tuan Yuck had evidently severed no important veins nor arteries and, though his shoulder was stiffening, he felt no severe pain.

“Flesh wound, I guess,” he soliloquized. “Pretty lucky for our side. The darling!” He closed his eyes and saw again the ray of the torch, the flare of it on Leila's face as she raised her arm for the blow. “The darling!” he said again, more loudly.

Leila, coming quietly and swiftly down the beach, lantern in hand, heard it. Her heart bounded and she kissed her hand to him in the darkness.

“Did you call?” she asked.

“Me? Why, no,” he answered.

Her lips silently formed two syllables that by daylight might have been recognized as “stu-pid” though coupled with a smile that robbed them of any sting.

“Here are the rifles,” she said. “And now, if you'll sit still, I'll dress your wound.”

She set the lantern on a rock and cut his sleeveless vest away with the scissors she had brought. The blood had not stiffened owing to the soaking of the return swim, and the wound showed clean-lipped and pale. With strips of plaster she dexterously strapped the edges together and applied a cooling salve, above which she laid a pad of cotton and bound the shoulder up with a broad bandage.

“I brought our surgical kit along last night,” she said. “The salve is wonderful. It's made from native herbs. If you don't have to use your arm any more tonight that cut will be healing up by tomorrow. Really, it's not very deep.”

“I thought it wasn't,” he said. “I used my arm after it happened and I knew there was nothing very much the matter outside of the loss of a little blood. And that won't hurt me. Tell me, how did you arrive on time to give our Oriental friend that most prodigious swat in exactly the right place?”

“I didn't know where I hit him,” she said. “I struck blindly. You had just left me. I had the torch still in one hand when something made me look along the ship's side and I saw Tuan Yuck's head stuck out of his porthole looking forward toward me. It disappeared and I pushed the raft under the bows, hoping he had not seen me. Then his arm was thrust out. There was some sort of a torch in his hand that broke out into a crimson flame.”

“A Coston signal,” said Chalmers. “That's what I heard sputtering. He must have taken them in his cabin for emergencies. Go on!”

“As soon as it started to flare I slipped my finger through the ring on the torch, reached up for the stay with that hand and drew myself up out of sight. They were shouting on the beach and I knew they'd be on board in a few moments, so I managed to scramble over the bows some how, with the torch still in my hand, and started to warn you.

“I heard you scuffling in the cabin. I didn't know what else to do—I'd left the pistol on the raft, like a ninny—so I went down into the cabin and flashed the light on, and when I saw you underneath and covered with blood I—I struck at the back of his head. I wish I'd killed him!” she ended passionately, her eyes blazing in the lantern light; then she bowed her head on her knees and sobbed.

Chalmers looked at her helplessly. He wanted to gather her into his arms and comfort her, but reached over and patted her shoulder instead.

“Don't cry,” he said.

She lifted her head and looked at him as if he had struck her. Then she bounded to her feet.

“Perhaps I did kill him,” she cried. “I hope so. I hate him. I hate all men!”

Astounded into silence and inaction Chalmers saw her disappear up the beach.

“I wonder what I've done?” he asked himself, not knowing that his sin was one of omission, not commission.

He sat there a little wearily, his rifle across his knees, watching the point. There was no sound from the schooner, the night seemed very quiet after the excitement of the fight and he was very lonely.

There was a light step at his side, felt rather than heard, and he turned his head to see Leila. She had discarded her bathing-suit and wore her linen skirt and middy blouse, with her hair braided in long plaits that hung over her shoulders and bosom. In her hands she carried two mugs of steaming liquid.

“I left the soup kettle on the ashes when we started,” she said demurely. “This will do you a world of good. I brought one for myself, so we can drink it together.”

The aroma of the thick soup was supremely grateful. The draught heartened him. He marveled at the swift change in the girl's demeanor and wondered how many Leilas there were in the one dainty body. But, acquiring wisdom, however tardily, he said nothing.

“That soup has made me drowsy instead of waking me up,” he said. “I've got to keep awake, you know. And we've got to haul up that raft.”

He yawned prodigiously.

“I'll pull up the raft,” she said. “You've got to rest your arm. It will be easy on the rising tide.”

When she came back he was asleep under the influence of the veronal she had mixed with his soup. She smiled, lifted his head gently and pillowed it on her lap, then, with the rifles handy, leaned back against the rock and kept watch until long after dawn.