The Sea Wolves/Chapter 11

broke with southern maturity, a day of relentless sun and intermittent breeze; and the warmth was as wine to the men marooned by the act of God in the haven of Galicia. Even Kenner, who had been very near to death, felt the blood coursing through his veins again; and Fisher slept upon a sheet of sand, regardless of the powerful rays which, even in the hours of the early morning, poured down upon him. Messenger alone, shivering and silent, was cowed into the depths of melancholy by the overwhelming visitation which had fallen upon the yacht.

Nor, indeed, is it to be marvelled at that this man, to whose far-reaching mind the whole emprise had been due, should have lain under such subjection. Even three days before the coming of that unlooked-for disaster a future, at least of action and of possibility, opened before him. The possession of the gold in the cabin of the yacht had steeled him to face all the hazards of exile, of capture, and of pursuit. He contemplated, with no dismay, the vigilance of governments and the zeal of private persons. Once in South America with some hundreds of thousands of pounds at his call, and his own wits to befriend him, he would have scoffed alike at the diplomacy of ministers and the treachery of republics. But on that morning after the wreck he stood on the shores of Spain, a hunted man and a man without resource, friendless in an unbefriending land, the wreck of an ambition and the tool of a crime; and as the gloom of his hope deepened his face had more than its usual pallor, his mind was limp, his marvellous foresight seemed entirely to have left him.

Kenner, like enough, would have known the depressing spell of thoughts such as these if the buffeting he had got in the sea had not knocked thought out of him and left to him only thankfulness that he was rid of the peril. Fisher, on the other hand, who had passed through the week as a man in a dream, had neither hurt from the sea nor a haunting of the mind to combat, and he slept, being content that he had come to shore and that the terrible days of the voyage were gone forever.

The place where they had come to was rugged enough, yet by no means lacking the picturesque. From the headland of rock, which marked the extent of a mountainous and black peninsula, the shore trended rapidly into a gentle bay. At the head of this there came tumbling down a narrow sparkling river, which flowed out of the hills so steeply that its falls and tiny cataracts were discernible from the remoter shore, whereon the castaways had been thrown. In this bay, whose beach was of a curiously gold-like sand, irradiating flashing lights in the play of the sun, the sea lay with little movement, tiny waves lapping the shore gently, as with caresses, and the softest of breezes coming from the land, laden with the scent of flowers and of the hay. It is true that the scene derived little ornament from its background of wild, seemingly inaccessible, and treeless hills; but in the lower valleys there was almost a wealth of verdure, and a venta or church perched here and there among the heights (but at a great way from the shore) was evidence of some human presence; though there was none near the sea nor at the place where the men of the Semiramis had first touched land.

There all was bleak, bold, barren; the walls of iron rock shot up with forbidding face to vast heights; there was no sign of track or path, of coast-guard or signal station; and away out to sea the needles of rocks whereon the yacht had foundered seemed alone in possession of the water. Beyond them and the line of sandy shallow the great rollers of the bay sported and foamed in long lines of green and white, and cast up fountains of glistening spray above the place of wreckage and the fateful reef. Truly a scene of desolation, and one which warranted the dumb despair of Messenger and his friend, and even the sleep of the weary lad.

Fisher, perhaps, would have slept all day had not Kenner, coming to some sense with the sun, aroused him before nine o'clock and pointed out the danger of his proceeding.

"I'll tell you what, youngster," said he, as the boy opened his eyes drowsily, "you aren't in Hyde Park, and this doesn't strike me as a particularly slap-up spot for camping. You'd got the sun full down on you."

"I must have had," said Fisher, rubbing his head woefully. "I feel as heavy as lead. Where's the Prince?"

Messenger rose at his words and came across to them.

"That's just what I'm asking myself," said he, as he sat down beside them, hatless, as they were, and half dressed, since most of his clothes were spread upon the beach to dry. "Where are we, and where are the rest of them?"

"Do you think that any of them lived besides ourselves?" asked Fisher earnestly.

"Lived!" said Kenner contemptuously; "how could they? By gosh! boy, if it hadn't been for you, Jake Kenner would be breakfasting wrong side up this morning!"

"Rot!" cried Fisher; "you'd have done the same for me."

The American went a little red in the face at this, for he knew that, had the positions and the power been reversed, Fisher would have gone down like a stone; but he checked his thought, and, holding out his hand, said simply—

"Shake, and if I live, look to me to stand by you. I wouldn't go through that night again not to get the gold back!"

At the word "gold" Fisher turned sympathetically to Messenger, and asked:

"Is some of the loss yours, Prince?"

"Yes," said Messenger, with a shrug; "Kenner and I are the chief sufferers."

"Won't some of the kegs wash ashore?" said Fisher next.

"I think not," replied Messenger, smiling for the first time. "Gold is a little heavier than flax, eh, Kenner?"

"I can't talk of it," said Kenner, turning away with the sigh of a broken man. "Every time I look away there it's like putting a knife in me. What an end!"

"It won't bear words," interposed Messenger suddenly; and then, without more talk, he began to pace the beach with long strides, pausing often to look seaward, or to bite at his finger-nails, as his habit was.

"He's thinking something out, I guess," said Kenner, as he watched him. "What he thinks out has generally got grit at the bottom of it."

"I wish he'd think out breakfast," said Fisher. "I don't know how you feel, but I've a void; and there doesn't seem much to eat here but cold rock and sea-weed."

"I've been of your opinion since you set me down," said Kenner feelingly; "I'd give a pound for a jug of wine."

"It would be the same thing if you'd give two," cried Fisher; "that is, if we stop here."

"If we stop here!" cried Kenner. "Wal, I'm fixed up, any road. I couldn't walk a mile if a hogshead of dollars was staked on it."

"Let's begin by drying ourselves, at any rate," continued Fisher. "The mariners in Horace hung up their clothes as an offering to the gods, you know. Here goes for the compliment!"

He stripped himself to the waist, and, making headgear of his handkerchief, he laid out his own clothes and those of Kenner in the glaring sun, and then, getting what shade he could from the overhanging crags, he said as a man who is satisfied—

"It occurs to me, Kenner, that if you played the Barmecide, and I played Shacabac, we might pass our time until the washing is dry. It looks as though it were going to be precious slow here; and I'm just as stiff as a lay-figure."

"You may knock me down in the same lot," cried Kenner with gusto; "what I can spell right here is thirst, and stroke the t's, too!"

"The first thing to do, don't you know," said Fisher, with his customary half-jocular readiness, "is to strike inland for a town, or, failing a town, for a village, or if we don't find either, why, then for an hotel. We've got some cash among us, surely, and directly we can put our hands on an English consul we'll make him send us home again. I'd give something to set foot in the Strand and breathe a real 'pea-soup' wouldn't you?"

Kenner, hunching himself up till he resembled a bundle, looked at the boy out of the corner of his ill-set eyes, and then chuckled. He was thinking that a good many people in London would be glad to have the acquaintance of the party just then. But he did not say anything; rather, he turned the conversation by pointing to Messenger.

"Where's he steering for?" he asked. "I never knew his double in my life you can't chain him, and you can't set him free; he's all wires and wheels, like a calculating machine! Look at him now striding along at six mile an hour, and halloaing at the hill to clear his lungs of salt; you'd think he'd got a patch in his head if you didn't know him."

"He's not halloaing at the hill," cried Fisher; "he's calling to someone. There's a man running along the sand, and it looks like old Burke! It is, too, as I'm alive! What luck!"

On this he began to dress, with a disregard for the niceties of the toilet which was admirable; and Kenner, taking heart that another lived, stood up on his feet, and lurched along with him toward the distant men. There was now no doubt of Burke's identity, for there he was with his rolling, reckless gait, his arms bare, and his head without a hat, coming swiftly over the sands toward them; and when he paused, it was to waken the hills with the echo of his resounding hail. At last he stood with Messenger, and they could see him pointing hurriedly toward the reef where the yacht had struck, or, again, to the bleak hills and the desert-like meadows. When they reached him, Kenner sank breathlessly upon the sand with the effort; but the skipper, curtly avoiding all greeting, continued his narration.

"What I've been tellin' 'em, Kenner," said he, "is ez we're only at the beginning of it. I'm not sure we're quite that fur, and I reckon the Prince is my way. The yaller stuff is under water right enough; but you're not wanting more'n decent eyes in your head to see that the aft end of the ship has been fixed right up in the cradle there, and that she's holding still. Maybe her timbers are knocked right out of her; maybe they ain't. If my judgment's worth a dollar, there's about six feet of water over the bar at low tide, and the kegs don't go for to travel far on a bottom like that. What we're wanting is a gig and a rope to begin on, and after that the dark to work in."

"Why the dark?" said Kenner, to whom night had become a terror. "Give me day, and take your dark to blazes!"

"He's quite right," said Messenger; "I've thought of that from the first. There must be some sort of coastguard here, and once we're sighted the thing will ring through Europe, and we'll have to listen to the music. Safety doesn't lay out on this shore here; it lays up in the hills and under what cover we can get. The same's true of the boat; we must lay hands on the first one we come to, and what's to be got ashore must be shipped and landed at the first possible moment. Where do you think we are, Burke?"

"We're not a continent off the toe of the Bay," replied Burke; "though if you ask me to pin it on the chart for you, I don't know ez I could do within a hundred mile. The shore's foreign to me except by hearsay, and that's bad enough."

"I've heard strange things of it," said Messenger; "but there's no time to think of them now. The immediate necessity is meat and drink, and after that cover."

"If I'm choosing, it's more drink you may order to bring on," interposed Kenner; "I'm as weak as a rabbit."

"You'll have to walk a while, any way," said Messenger; "and if you can't, we'll have to carry you. There should be some path up to the heights from here, and the sooner we find a camping-place the better."

Kenner rose at this inducement, and, walking between two of them, made good way along the smooth sand, following the trend of the bay toward the distant river. They walked with moderate ease a mile or more, finding no break in the sheer face of the rock upon their right; for the headland was extraordinarily prominent and precipitous where its crags did not absolutely jut out above the beach. Yet they could see that there was lower land toward the neck of the bay; and they were moved with such a powerful excitement, begotten of the thought that the money might in some part be recovered, that they went with light step, and that which was near to merriment. So they came to the place where the cliff began to show a less rugged and a shorter face, when of a sudden there was a rattling of rocks just ahead of them, and a curious figure jumped out as it were from a ledge of the headland to the soft sand below.

The figure was that of a dark, weather-beaten Spaniard, a man of some age, but exceedingly ill-clad. He carried an old musket slung across his worn and ragged zamarra; and wore sea boots to his hips, though they spoke of much service and of decay. His sombrero was black, with velvet trimming upon a portion of it; and his beard fell deep upon his chest, and had grown over his face so that little was to be seen of him but dark and savage eyes, and ears that were outstanding beyond experience. But he displayed a surprised curiosity in the coming of the four; and stood watching them, or shooting quick glances out at the sea, as though he looked to find their ship at anchor or in difficulty.

When he had satisfied himself that they had no ship, but apparently were equally curious as to his identity, he wheeled round as he had come, and disappeared in a moment behind a low bush, plunging, as it seemed, into the face of the rock. They saw him, some minutes after, higher up on the side of the precipice; and then it was evident that he followed a path which led to the verdurous plains between the distant hills and the foreshore. Often he looked back at them, or stayed in his curiosity to see if they would follow him; but, observing that they did not, he went from their sight at last, although his path was to be traced by a peculiarly shrill whistling, which echoed across the ravine, but was not answered.

This sudden apparition did not appear to be to the liking either of Messenger or of Burke.

"Prince," said the latter, "that chap don't mean peace and goodwill, you bet. There's more like him in the hills, for sartin, and just as handsome. I'm for moving on quick."

"Exactly," said Messenger; "the traditions of this part of the Bay aren't quite what you would call pleasant. Let's get on."

They moved at a brisk pace now, coming quickly to the goat path up which the Spaniard had disappeared; but, keeping the shelter of the lower bay, they struck for the river, thinking the probability of getting some boat to be larger there; and when they had walked a mile, they fell upon a little cabin built curiously as a nest some few feet above the beach. It was no more than a shanty of wood, roofed with weed, and curiously ornamented with shells; but smoke mounted from a hole in its roof and curled up the cliff; and its door stood open, showing proofs of habitation within. The four men stopped at once before this curious dwelling, and seeing that no one was for the moment in possession, they held a consultation.

"I ain't goin' to say for sure, but it appears to me that this is the particular hotel of Goat-in-the-boots yonder," said Burke; "the first house in the city by the look of it."

"It's a dreadful-looking hole, certainly," said Messenger, putting his head in at the door, to withdraw it quickly, "and doesn't exactly smell of attar of roses—but there might be food there. What do you think, Kenner?"

"I was thinking you might find a keg of beer," said Kenner, stumping up, "and leave an I O U on the table for it."

"Of course," cried Messenger, "we sha'n't raid the men; but who's going in? I'd sooner face a cattle stampede than that hole."

"Your senses is too highly developed. Prince," said Burke bluffly; "you've never run a cargo of black cattle, I guess—why, for sure, they ain't exactly violets; but it depends on your taste."

With this he made a dive into the room, the others watching him while he rummaged with no gentle hand, and came out again presently, laden with three bottles of a common wine and some great hunks of pan de centeno, the dry and unpalatable maize-bread of the Galicians. He was walking away with them when Fisher called out—

"I say, we ought to pay something. I've got half-a-crown, if that will do."

Burke took the money, returned to the room, put the coin in his own pocket, and came out again.

"Now," said he, "the sooner we reach a yard of grass and lie low the better; I don't hanker arter ovations myself—not much, in summer."

A walk of a few furlongs carried them to the slope of the cliff, and as the precipice decreased, so was the vegetation more abundant. They came at last to a point where the path rose, with broad steps, from the seashore to the wooded land above; and this they ascended, to find themselves upon a bare plain whereon rye had been grown; but there were trees green with some luxuriance beyond it, and a close-knit wood edging upon these again. It was in the wood that they finally took shelter, grouping themselves round the trunk of a chestnut-tree which had been felled; and upon this they spread their victuals for lack of table. The meal was sorry enough; but the men were long gone in fasting, and the American especially gulped down his wine with the unslakable thirst of the fever-stricken or the delirious.

"I was near dead for that," said he with satisfaction, when he had emptied a bottle; "and it isn't exactly Château Lafitte, is it?"

"It's not bad stuff," said Messenger, partaking of it moderately; "but all these Spanish wines are poor in the north."

"What about the bread, then?" asked Fisher. "It reminds me of sawdust or mortar—I'm not sure which."

"The bread's all right," said Kenner, making pretence to eat it with satisfaction; "if our chance of getting up the kegs of yellow stuff was as good, I don't know that I'd find fault with the menu."

"You're waking up, Kenner," said Messenger; "that's the first sensible thing you've said. The question is, Where are we going to clap hands upon a boat? There ought to be a village, or at least an inn, somewhere within five miles; but it will take a lot of tacking to get a craft without raising the neighbourhood. Of course two will have to stay to watch from the shore here; it would be a mad thing to lose sight of the place for a moment."

"That's sense," said Burke; "two of us make inland, two remain within a mile of here; but the two that goes hasn't got time on their hands, and shouldn't sleep over the job—leastwise, that's my notion of it."

The interesting point was not argued, for there came as he spoke a sharp report from the shore; and while they yet listened the first report was followed by a second and a third, which echoed in the distant hills and sent the birds screaming from the trees.

"Do you hear that?" cried Burke. "That ain't no Spanish rat-piece, I'd lay my life on it—that's a Winchester, and I guess we're moving!"

They all sprang to their feet at his words; and, keeping to the shelter of the wood, made their way quickly, that they might get a sight of the shore.