The Sea Wolves/Chapter 18

gunshot and the flare of the rocket (as I say) stopped the rowers in their work. For a while they sat waiting for a second report, or for some light upon the origin of the first; and they did not move until an answering rocket leaped up from the headland in their bay, and another from the watch-tower upon the promontory at which they had first come ashore. These flights of fiery light drew a second gunshot from the sea, and at that Messenger made up his mind.

"There's either a ship ashore," said he, "or they've smelt out Kenner in his hole. That's bad for us, anyway, for there'll be coast-guards down on the beach, and ships about from somewhere. If I'm not mistaken, there are lights moving in the village yonder already."

"Be gor! plenty lanterns there, sah!" cried the nigger. "What you say 'bout this country, sah?—all cut-throat here by de profession, sah."

"There's no doubt about the lanterns," interposed Fisher; "and I believe I see a couple of small boats rounding the headland. It must be a ship ashore, and they're going to bring off the crew."

At this Messenger smiled.

"If there's any crew brought off to-night," said he, "Galicia isn't what I thought it. It's lucky for us any way. We may get through while they're flying at the other game."

The ship, which, as they came to know afterwards, had gone ashore in the shallows of the second bay, now fired more guns; bat the wind blew so strongly, sending spray clean over the longboat, even in the calmer water on the hither side of the reef, that they could but just hear them, and they began to row again. They had taken twenty strokes, perhaps, when the nigger let go the handle of his  oar once more, and, with a "Lord have mercy!" covered his eyes. The others, looking over the side as he pointed, saw the corpse of a man turned upon its back, and showing a white face, over which the spray sported as if in victory. So close came the dead man to them that they could perceive the water rushing in and out of his opened mouth; but the eyes, fixed and lustreless, did not move at the touch of the sea, and the hair upon the forehead lay dank and streaming.

A second corpse—that of a woman, with black hair, and the mark of terror still binding the features to distortion—now touched gently against the prow of the longboat, only to be carried more swiftly out upon the broad of the bay to the waste of water and the loneliness of the night. For one moment the derelict body, about which there was a life-belt, hugged the shelter of the gunnel, then it went onward, passing out in the black swirl of the current to the fury of the breakers in the open. But the watching men, speaking no word one to the other, rowed on the faster, as though wishing to shut the sight from their eyes, and the horror of it from their minds.

They had now come well into their own bay, but two luggers passed them as they went, and they lay on their oars breathlessly; but were not seen, so keen were the wolves to reach the carcass of the ship. It was vastly harder work, this rowing in the bay, for the current flowed right round it and against them; and for more than an hour they pulled desperately, still observing lanterns upon the shore, and many lights over against the point by which the trouble was. They were now so near that the sound of voices came to their ears; and the cries as of men fighting, and others encouraging them, were to be heard above the sough of the wind. But the headland of the bay sheltered them from the rougher waves they had known in the open; and a final effort brought them to the cove and to the inner lagoon, where Kenner awaited them, though exceeding anxious for their coming and the safety of the camp.

"Hello!" said he, as he stood on the ribbon strip of beach and helped the boat up; "I was beginning to think you were took with convulsions. Where's old Burke?"

"On his back, there," said Messenger, springing to the sand, "and pretty bad at that. We'd better get him upstairs to begin on."

"By thunder!" exclaimed Kenner, when he saw him, the bandage blood-covered, and the man groaning heavily. "What's he been at? I guess there's half of his features wanting! You've had a stick-up, then?"

"As you say," said Messenger, "but the news will wait; we must get him on his back first. One of you hand up the canvas while I hold him."

"Wal," said Kenner, "that's the Spanish way of drawing teeth, I calculate. Poor old Burke! it'll be many a day before he can show at a soirée, any way. Did you get all the stuff?"

"We left a keg," said Messenger quickly, "which you can fetch if you'll roll a dead man over. Have you seen any thing of what's going out over yonder?"

"There's boats been by here three times in the hour, and the beach at the bottom of the bay is thick with men," replied Kenner. "I saw that by climbing up the rock, there, and holding on like a tenderfoot. I've no head for tall places."

"I'll look myself when the stuff's down," said Messenger; and with that the four of them hauled Burke to the ledge of rock, and, having given him some of the liquor, they bound up his face, using the sleeve of Kenner's shirt for the operation; and so they laid him upon the sheet of the longboat; he yet groaning, though his pain seemed less. After that it was half-an-hour's work to sink the gold in the creek and to store the few provisions they had taken from the Spaniards' boat; but the four worked with silent zeal, and Fisher not the least readily, since the rough philosophy he was master of told him again to go through with it.

When the bullion was quite sunk, and the longboat high in the water again. Messenger began to think of the scene being played in the bay without. Indeed, his attention was called to it before his own work was quite done, for the sky above the haven was suddenly lighted with a glowing red light, and this endured for some minutes before the four men were able to put the boat out and get to the bay. Kenner had reached the open, as he told them, by swarming along the face of the rock from ledge to ledge; but they rowed; and, having come into the bay, they saw at once from the loom of the land the striking development of the mystery. A great fire was now burning some half-a-mile from the opposite shore, and from the lapping tongues of red there stood up the masts of a fore-and-aft schooner which had come ashore near the point, and was then surrounded by fishing-boats and small craft, whose crews seemed waiting patiently until the beacon of the sea should be engulfed. A mighty holocaust it was, the sparks leaping up on the breeze and falling hissing to the breakers; the smoke rolling in clouds of inky blackness away to the hills, the red light striking upon the waters and showing the environing fleet, whose fierce shouts of triumph the watchers heard all plainly. And anon there came a movement in the drama, for two long, black-hulled boats of men appeared suddenly near to the glowing schooner; and at the sight of them the small ships ran up sails or put out oars and went scudding away, some to the near shore, some toward the haven of the four, others to round the point and gain the village, which was at the back of the ravine in which the survivors of the Semiramis had come to hide.

As the boats hurried in flight Messenger instantly saw the danger.

"We must clear in," said he, "and risk the ship, too. If any of them strike our hole, there's not a man among us who'll see the morning; and the boat's the difficulty."

"Fix her up some hundred yards down the creek, and trust to luck," said Kenner. "We can swarm in as I did."

"That's what I mean to do," said the other; "but there's no time to lose. If my eyes aren't blinded by the fire, that lugger, there, is making straight for our place."

The whole bay was now full of small boats, luggers, yawls, cutters, which scuttled away briskly before the advent of the pursuers. The majority of them were soon lost to view in the darker shadows of the far land, but many belonged to the village on the other side of the promontory; and a few—these principally row-boats of a large size—were steering, as Messenger first had observed, straight for the creek wherein the gold had been cast. This, however, was a wrong impression, and was quickly corrected. Presently the helm of the lugger which threatened the four was put down, and the craft lay with its nose pointing almost to the south of the bay. At the same moment the high land, to which the new course shaped, was lighted with the flare of many torches; and these gave illumination enough for the observers to see a party of men on horseback riding upon the cliffs; and at the head of the party was a woman, who seemed to be commanding those who followed.

Now before Messenger and the others had seen this they had brought their own craft into a deep fjord of the cliff, some quarter of a mile below their own haven; but the change of the other's course reassured them, and when they had lain a long while during the passing of the two boats, and the gradual clearing of the bay, they rowed back to their place of camping, and made fast their craft in a corner of the pool, where it was safe from the view of all those who should not expressly seek it. Thus they reached the chamber of the rock, and the place where Burke was; and for the first time since sundown could think of rest.

It had been a night eventful enough to be called, then and after, the terrible night; yet, with all their fatigue and overwhelming weariness, the four could not sleep. Burke lay almost insensible and stupefied where they had first put him; but the others, huddling over their cold food, and weighed down with the hazards of the situation, had no minds but for the metaphorical morrow with its possibilities and its dangers. And until the dawn they planned and schemed, and at every swish of water below them they looked to see a man-of-war's boat enter the cove.

Of the four Kenner appeared to suffer the deepest depression. He had said little since he saw the party of horsemen upon the cliff and the woman riding at the head of them; but when dawn was near, and Fisher and the nigger were at length lying in a heavy sleep upon the rocks, he turned to Messenger and spoke openly of his fears.

"Prince," said he, "do you remember three months ago at Monaco?"

"Perfectly," replied the other.

"And the Spanish woman?"

"I seem to recall some of your vapourings in that direction," Messenger answered languidly.

"Call 'em what you like. I'm referring to the witch with the teeth set in her head like glass in a brick wall—the woman and the girl with the pretty face. You've a mind to recollect them, perhaps?"

"Why should I remember them?"

"Didn't the youngster say that he saw the girl when he went ashore the other day?"

"You didn't believe that story, surely?" asked Messenger.

"I guess I did; and I'll tell you right here that the woman who rode on the cliffs to-night should have been her mother!"

"Should have been," said Messenger wearily; "how's that?"

"Because I know it I I can't tell you why, but I know it! Her name's the Countess Yvena, and I was with those who shot her husband in New Mexico."

The Prince, weary as he was, laughed outright at the story,

"Kenner," said he, "you should have been born a poet; you've got imagination! Now you speak of it, I remember your twaddle about having to meet her again, or something."

"That's what I know," said Kenner; "we'll meet again, and one of us will go under"

"It's a fine tale, man," interrupted the Prince, "but you're wasting breath on it. Didn't we arrange an hour ago that you were to get away to Ferrol as soon as the dark and the cut-throats round here will let you ?"

"That's so," replied Kenner; "but I'll have to return."

"Well, what of that? Where does the woman come in? Besides, you're dreaming the whole thing! You don't mean to tell me seriously that the person we saw to-night is the same as the one who ate oysters with her fingers in the gardens at Monaco three months ago?"

"Wal, you reassure a man. Like enough, the kid's story set me thinking of it, and I'm not myself"

"Are any of us any better off? " asked the Prince. "It's the want of food and rest; and we're not likely to get much of either until you return. But we trust in you. As I said an hour ago, if you can, with the aid of money, reach Ferrol in a couple of days, you'll find an American consul there. You won't forget that you wish to view the Basque provinces from the sea, and are seeking a yacht for that purpose. The smaller the ship you buy the better afterwards. We'll run round to Lisbon in the guise of mere pleasure-seekers, and then send you back to London to buy a steamer. Whatever they're doing there now in the way of taking us, they'll never look for our return; and a little good disguise should make the matter as easy as shelling peas."

"What if you're took before I can get back here?"

"I don't foresee anything of that sort. Europe's ringing with the tale of this robbery, of course. You may be quite sure that we're wanted in every big city, and there's employment for all the detectives living, and more. It's true that we've had a bit of a brawl with the shoremem here, but I don't think we've been sighted by any in authority; and while that continues to be so we're safe. The sharpest detective living can't have looked for the wreck of the yacht. If I was figuring this thing out on shore, I should expect the man who ran a cargo such as we ran to have shaped either for Buenos Ayres or for Rio. They may have searched the Spanish coast—like enough the iron-clad we saw yesterday was on that tack—but for our foundering, no, there will scarcely have been a man sharp enough to have foreseen that!"

"Wal," said Kenner, "you've hitched on to reason, and I'd shout glory with you if it wasn't for this notion of the woman which sticks in my head. Anyway, I start to-morrow night, and if I come back with a ship, you'll have nothing agen me. What I'm thinking of now is Burke."

"You're wasting time; he's a carcass like flint, and the heart of a bull. Three days should see him well: but come and look at him."

Upon this they both went to the place where the skipper was lying, and found him to be still feverish, but cooler, while he slept more restfully. When they had reassured themselves thus, the two, dawn having fully come, gave way to their fatigue, and, making what beds they could upon the hard rock, they fell to slumber at once and did not awake for many hours.

But on the following night, at the first fall of darkness, they put Kenner ashore some miles down the coast, and he, armed abundantly with sovereigns and carrying only his revolver, struck inland to gain the high road to Ferrol. And with him he took all the hope of the four that remained with the treasure, for upon his safety depended not only their success, but their very lives.