The Sea Wolves/Chapter 27

was early on the morning of the second day after the passage of the bridge when Fisher and Messenger began in any way to think of their future, or, for the matter of that, of escape from the place in which they found themselves. The crossing of the ravine had brought them to a great valley, which, for all the life in it, was a valley of silence, of dark woods and pools, and even of tiny cataracts where a river plunged from the higher mountains in its path to the sea. But impassable precipices shut them in on all sides; and while this made for their protection from pursuit, the way of escape from the place of solitude was altogether hid from them.

To the lad the danger of the situation was plain from the beginning; but though many hours had passed, the man was still in darkness. Blindness, utter and hopeless, had come upon him, and he knew that never again would the veil be taken from his eyes. He could only lie upon the grass of a little wood to which the other had led him, and there shiver with his pain, scarce daring to ask, What has happened? where are the others? what is our situation? But Fisher tended him all through with hands as gentle as those of a loving woman. He bound his eyes with wet rags; he brought him abundantly of the luscious fruit that lay ripening everywhere around them; and he told him, in the best spirit of the consoler, that all would be well sooner or later.

This was well enough for the moment, but soon it was evident that, if the man did not arouse himself before many hours passed, the two of them would die where they lay of sheer starvation. The nuts and the roots and the fruits were the poorest sustenance to men bruised in mind and in body; the shock of the terrible night compelled nature to call for strong remedies; and though brandy was found in the bottle in Messenger's pocket, it was all insufficient for the more serious need. Thus it came that, after the man had slept for a few hours on the second night, Fisher spoke to him earnestly at dawn, and besought him to take heart for the journey.

"Look here," he said: "I'd sooner see you in the hands of the Spanish soldiers than lying in this state. At least they'd relieve your pain, and I can do nothing—nothing at all!"

"What you could do you've done," said Messenger. "I should have died if it had not been for you. There's weight in my eyes enough to kill a man. I shall never see again!"

"Who can say that?" exclaimed Fisher earnestly. "Once we're back in civilization who knows what cannot be done for you? But, old man, we'll starve here."

"If it wasn't for you," said he earnestly, "I'd cut my throat. What have I got to look to—years in a country I don't know, and me blind. Could anything be worse than that?"

"You say that now; but when the danger's past, you'll think otherwise. You've always your head. Prince, and I can be your eyes."

"Ah!" said he, a sudden flush of a blind man's hope coming to him, "you'll be a friend to me now—now that I want it, Hal. And look: you're making me think again. If we could get on the road, I've money in my pocket! I filled up with sovereigns and ingots when the cases burst. I must hold at least a thousand pounds' worth of the stuff!"

He pulled out from the rags about his breast a yellow bar of gold, and from the pockets of his trousers there came a handful of sovereigns, and then another, which he spread upon the turf and counted thrice.

"How much does it come to?" he asked, beginning to count again, and feeling about for the gold with a wild touch. "Is it a hundred in all? I've been weighed down with it like a sack, but I brought it through. Hal, man, you won't cheat me now?"

"Cheat you!" cried Fisher, starting back. "Cheat you—God forbid!"

"Ah, I knew you wouldn't, but my head's going with my eyes. You don't know what sight is to a man; but I'm learning. Give me the stuff again."

He gathered it all up to him again, thrusting the ingot into his breast, while he counted the sovereigns with a wolf-like eagerness and mechanically tore the bandage from his eyes, revealing a forehead from which the flesh had gone; but his scorched and withered pupils stared into vacancy and gave him no light. Then he gnashed his teeth, and dug his hands into the grass, and foam came upon his lips.

"I will see, by Heaven!" he cried. "I'll have light—light, I tell you! Man, it's all dark—dark as death!"

His frenzy was the frenzy of the moment; but the paroxysm had robbed him of the money, which now rolled all around him, and he sat hugging his knees and chattering, while Fisher bound up his head again with the rag damped in the river. Then the lad picked up the sovereigns from the grass and pressed them gently upon him.

"Here is your money," said he. "Had you not better put it back in your clothes?"

But the man had sobered down again.

"No," said he; "it's nothing to me now. You hold to it. I was mad just now, and said things which you'll forget. Tell me: how did the woman go down?"

"She went down when the bridge burned through. She was at the far end of it, and could not move either way. Didn't you hear her cry out?"

"Yes, I must have. What a voice she had! Ha, ha! we should have made a pretty pair! So the hag knocked her brains out on the stones! Well, they were very good brains. I never met her like all the world through; she had the wits of ten men. What do you think she told me? That this place of hers was worth three thousand a year from the wrecks that came ashore alone. It seems that she and her people have lived here for years; it's a family place, and there never was one of them that didn't wreck. She was the last of her line. Her husband, a Mexican, was shot in his own country a few years ago. But she must have lived a life! There's not a man within five miles that wasn't in league with her; and they brought the stuff from the ships into that lagoon of hers until they could sell it inland. That light we saw in the bay was a false light she put out to lure boats. Think of that in this day! Ah! it's enough to make you tingle, isn't it? And it was all her work!"

"I wonder they didn'tfall foul of us us when we came ashore?" asked Fisher, encouraging him to talk.

"So they would have done if we'd come in the daylight. The night saved us—and the rock. It wanted quick eyes to pick out the poop in the cradle if you didn't look for it; and, as you saw yourself, ships gave the reef a wide berth. That's nothing against the hag, for once she heard of Englishmen being ashore, and her men got a glass on me, she put two and two together and made it four. If it hadn't been for the voice, we'd be half-way on the road to Finisterre, sure and safe! There was a curse in that cry. I said it when first I heard it."

"It was Billy, the mad boy, who uttered it," said Fisher thoughtfully. "He must have come off safe from the ship, and we never knew it."

"That's true," said the other. "We'd never have found the nigger and the long-boat but for the firing. Well, it's all ended now, and we're adrift again. There was a curse upon it from the start."

"There must have been," was Fisher's answer.

"And now my eyes are burned out, and you're going to say I brought it on me!" said the man savagely. "You're ready with your tongue when there's that talk. If ever I come to decent land again, I'll put a white tie on you and send you out to croak! You'd make a fortune out of the old women; you're just the build. But give me men, I say, and curse all twaddle!"

Fisher let him talk, for this was his mood. Presently he came to quiet again, and said—

"Where are we now? What's the place like?"

"It seems to me to be a forest between the hills," said Fisher. "There's a wood to your left and a great stretch of grassland in front of us. But, for all the way I see out, we might be in a basin."

"There must be a road," said the man impatiently, "or the woman wouldn't have come here. What's that singing noise I hear?—it's falling water, isn't it?"

"I went that way last night," said Fisher; "there is a river, but it rushes down like a cataract."

"Then follow it," said the Prince, "follow it through. The road should lie where it breaches the hills. That's sense, isn't it? I'm strong enough now; and dark here or dark there, what's the odds?"

"I think you're right," exclaimed Fisher, who had become timid before the other's brusqueness; "but, Prince, you're very bitter with me."

"Bitter!" said the man, who had stood up at his words; "bitter with you? No, not that; you stand between me and death. Let me hold your hands—let me hold them tight. I've no eyes, and the darkness presses down upon me; you'll be my eyes now. Heaven knows, you're the only one in my life that I ever cared to see twice—man, I just loved you."

"Then we'll face it together," said the other, "if you'll have me for a friend, Prince."

The Prince laughed at the suggestion.

"Hal," said he, "it looks as if I had no choice—I must just put up with you. Let me lean upon your arm. I feel as if I were going downhill; the ground sinks away from me wherever I put my feet. I'll be better when I've walked a spell. What's the road like in front?"

"There's a dingle full of long grass and a mass of flowers. The place is as wild as a jungle, and almost dark with shadow of the trees."

"Are you sure there's no one in sight?"

"Not a living soul."

"Well, I'm keen of hearing, and I think you're right; but there'll be work to do when we get out into the open. You won't forget that they'll watch the road like a trap; and I don't see what's to prevent us being taken."

"We shall die here, any way," said Fisher; "we may as well face it, if it's only on the odd chance."

They had come into the depths of the thicket, and their boots were dyed with the gold of the flowers upon which they trod. Long marsh grass, from which sprang orchids and ox-eyes and ivies abundantly, led them down a silent avenue, where birds of rich plumage rose up, startled at their coming, and a myriad flies buzzed ceaselessly about them. Then they struck the river where it narrowed until it became a stream not fifteen yards wide, scouring between rugged banks of white earth toward the lower end of the silent valley.

At a break in the banks of this swiftly flowing stream they lay down to quench their thirst, and when the man's eyes had been again bound up in the wetted rag, he threw himself upon the ground as he was wont to do in the old time, and listened with ear intent for the sound of men moving or of voices. When he had satisfied himself that no such sounds were to be heard, he rose up more cheerfully, and prepared to continue the journey.

"It's clear," he said, as the pair of them tramped along briskly in spite of their fatigue, "that the woman used this river as her road out of the hills; and we must use it, too. How, I can't tell you now, but the way will show presently."

Fisher thought so, too, but he only said "Yes," for anxiety was pressing upon him, and weariness and hunger. He thought often that he could not drag his weary limbs another step, and he walked mechanically for nearly an hour, while the stream alternately ran between high banks of rock or spread itself abroad in the valley, broadening until it swept the long grasses and the lilies, and washed the leaves of the overhanging trees. At last, however, and when the exhausted men had come under the very shadow of the great hill which stood as a barrier between them and the outer world, it narrowed again, running between high ramparts of rock straight toward the headland.

Some time before the two had reached this place Fisher had uttered an exclamation whose dominant note was one of surprise; but to the man's quick enquiry: "What is it?" he made no answer, only hurrying him on. When he stopped ultimately, it was upon the border of a pool in which the water swirled fiercely before it entered the cutting, and in this pool a rude punt, almost round in shape, was moored. There was only a pole in the ship, and a big locker at one end of it; but it was, beyond doubt, the last resort of the woman, and the means between herself and secret flight from the castle. The sight of it was as wine to the lad.

"Prince!" he cried with exceeding joy, "you've eyes now for ten of us! Here's what you were looking for—a punt against the bank, and a pole in it!"

"I was expecting it half-an-hour ago," said Messenger. "Well, we'll just get in, and leave the rest to chance. Is the river swift?"

"It runs like a mill."

"All the better; where the woman went we may go. Just place me where I can hold tight, and keep her in the centre of the stream. If there's going to be any shooting, I prefer to be on my back."

He was guided in, and set comfortably, with his back against the locker, almost as he spoke; and then Fisher rolled up his sleeves and cast free the mooring. A gentle push drove the punt from the bank, but the stream caught it as a match, and sent it whirling wildly round, with the spray foaming around it, and the water wetting the two to their skins.

At one time Fisher declared that their venture would end where it began; but he had seen something of river work, and when he had recovered himself from the first shock, he contrived to get a hold for his pole, and sent the rickety craft rocking into the deep of the stream. It was carried thence swiftly between the high banks, and from that moment the peril of the journey began.

Of this Messenger himself knew nothing. He experienced only the sensation of swift travel through the air; he heard the harsh grating when the tub struck the bank, or bounded off the embossment of a jutting rock; he was conscious that his companion was in the throes of ceaseless work and activity. But to Fisher the picture was very different. Though the heavy wooden tub was abnormally strong, he thought every moment to see her crushed into splinters as the rapids drove her onward at a headlong pace, and the river-bed inclined until the stream itself was like a roaring torrent.

As the craft thus was forced onward the banks upon either side of the river became higher, until it seemed as if the punt were being carried into the very bowels of the earth. Deep and dark and infinitely green the torrent ran in its rocky bed, sinking and yet sinking until it fell, as it were, under the shadow of the hill, and all that could be seen from the boat were precipices of stone, and great heights which no man could ascend. But yet its course was straight as the rule upon the line, and the ship kept from wreckage upon the bank with the least touch of the skilfully handled pole. Then, quickly the light in the abyss failed; a tremendous roaring, as of a mighty cascade, rang in the ears of the two; they were plunged into utter darkness, and the cries died upon their lips as the punt bounded onward with shocks innumerable, and great crashes, and the sound of wood splintering.

The truth was that they had entered a tunnel, cut by nature, under the great hill which was one of the ramparts of the valley; and they now voyaged through the bowels of the earth. Fisher, indeed, had seen the orifice of the subterranean way long before he had reached it, but had waited until they were near to the approach before he had called to Messenger to throw himself flat, and, on his part, had hauled in his pole and lain down, holding to the crossplanks with all his strength. From that time both the nature of the passage and the manner of it were hidden from him. He could tell little beyond the terror of the transit when, in the darkness, he felt the boat spinning round and round like a top; or striking the rock with fearful concussion; or flying downward like a ship upon the fall of a sea. And he wondered that the punt held together, that she was not shivered like a glass falling upon stone, that he did not feel the water about his ears and mouth, and come to the unutterable struggle for life and breath in that tomb of horror and of noise.

All this went through his mind like a dream, for the duration of the passage was brief. When it seemed that he could endure the thunderous echoing in his ears no longer, when the crashing of the boat was most violent, when the water poured over him in a cascade, light flashed upon his eyes, a brown burned landscape spread out before him, he saw a thicket with a green bank of grass before it, a village lying in a hollow upon his right hand, a distant view of purple hills and white-misted sky. And at this he stood up again and grasped his pole, as the punt was swung gently through meadow-land.

"Prince," he cried joyfully, "we're through it now; here's the open country again!"

"What do you see?" asked the man, sitting up.

"A great stretch of burned meadow-land, and a wood upon the left bank—but halloa!"

"Well"

"There are two soldiers lying by the river!"