XIII
As Tankred had intimated, Blake's journey southward from Panama wasanything but comfortable traveling. The vessel was verminous, the foodwas bad, and the heat was oppressive. It was a heat that took the lifeout of the saturated body, a thick and burdening heat that hung like aheavy gray blanket on a gray sea which no rainfall seemed able to cool.
But Blake uttered no complaint. By day he smoked under a sodden awning,rained on by funnel cinders. By night he stood at the rail. He stoodthere, by the hour together, watching with wistful and haggard eyes theAlpha of Argo and the slowly rising Southern Cross. Whatever histhoughts, as he watched those lonely Southern skies, he kept them tohimself.
It was the night after they had swung about and were steaming up the Gulfof Guayaquil under a clear sky that Tankred stepped down to Blake'ssultry little cabin and wakened him from a sound sleep.
"It's time you were gettin' your clothes on," he announced.
"Getting my clothes on?" queried Blake through the darkness.
"Yes, you can't tell what we'll bump into, any time now!"
The wakened sleeper heard the other man moving about in the velvety blackgloom.
"What're you doing there?" was his sharp question as he heard the squeakand slam of a shutter.
"Closin' this dead-light, of course," explained Tankred. A moment laterhe switched on the electric globe at the bunk-head. "We're gettin' inpretty close now and we're goin' with our lights doused!"
He stood for a moment, staring down at the sweat-dewed white body on thebunk, heaving for breath in the closeness of the little cabin. His mindwas still touched into mystery by the spirit housed in that uncouth andundulatory flesh. He was still piqued by the vast sense of purpose whichBlake carried somewhere deep within his seemingly tepid-willed carcass,like the calcinated pearl at the center of an oyster.
"You'd better turn out!" he called back as he stepped into the engulfinggloom of the gangway.
Blake rolled out of his berth and dressed without haste or excitement.Already, overhead, he could hear the continuous tramping of feet, withnow and then a quiet-noted order from Tankred himself. He could hearother noises along the ship's side, as though a landing-ladder were beingbolted and lowered along the rusty plates.
When he went up on deck he found the boat in utter darkness. To thatslowly moving mass, for she was now drifting ahead under quarter-speed,this obliteration of light imparted a sense of stealthiness. This note ofsuspense, of watchfulness, of illicit adventure, was reflected in thevery tones of the motley deckhands who brushed past him in the humidvelvety blackness.
As he stood at the rail, staring ahead through this blackness, Blakecould see a light here and there along the horizon. These lightsincreased in number as the boat steamed slowly on. Then, far away in theroadstead ahead of them, he made out an entire cluster of lights, likethose of a liner at anchor. Then he heard the tinkle of a bell belowdeck, and he realized that the engines had stopped.
In the lull of the quieted ship's screw he could hear the wash of distantsurf, faint and phantasmal above the material little near-by boat-noises.Then came a call, faint and muffled, like the complaining note of aharbor gull. A moment later the slow creak of oars crept up to Blake'sstraining ears. Then out of the heart of the darkness that surroundedhim, not fifty feet away, he saw emerge one faint point of light, risingand falling with a rhythm as sleepy as the slow creak of the oars. Oneach side of it other small lights sprang up. They were close beside theship, by this time, a flotilla of lights, and each light, Blake finallysaw, came from a lantern that stood deep in the bottom of a boat, alantern that had been covered with a square of matting or sail-cloth,until some prearranged signal from the drifting steamer elicited itsanswering flicker of light. Then they swarmed about the oily water,shifting and swaying on their course like a cluster of fireflies,alternately dark and luminous in the dip and rise of the ground-swell.Within each small aura of radiance the watcher at the rail could see adusky and quietly moving figure, the faded blue of a denim garment, thebrown of bare arms, or the sinews of a straining neck. Once he caught thewhites of a pair of eyes turned up towards the ship's deck. He could alsosee the running and wavering lines of fire as the oars puddled and backedin the phosphorescent water under the gloomy steel hull. Then he heard alow-toned argument in Spanish. A moment later the flotilla of small boatshad fastened to the ship's side, like a litter of suckling pigs to asow's breast. Every light went out again, every light except a faint glowas a guide to the first boat at the foot of the landing-ladder. Alongthis ladder Blake could hear barefooted figures padding and grunting ascases and bales were cautiously carried down and passed from boat toboat.
He swung nervously about as he felt a hand clutch his arm. He foundTankred speaking quietly into his ear.
"There'll be one boat over," that worthy was explaining. "One boat--youtake that--the last one! And you'd better give the _guinney_ a ten-dollarbill for his trouble!"
"All right! I'm ready!" was Blake's low-toned reply as he started to moveforward with the other man.
"Not yet! Not yet!" was the other's irritable warning, as Blake felthimself pushed back. "You stay where you are! We've got a half-hour'shard work ahead of us yet!"
As Blake leaned over the rail again, watching and listening, he began torealize that the work was indeed hard, that there was some excuse forTankred's ill-temper. Most men, he acknowledged, would feel the strain,where one misstep or one small mistake might undo the work of months.Beyond that, however, Blake found little about which to concern himself.Whether it was legal or illegal did not enter his mind. That a fewthousand tin-sworded soldiers should go armed or unarmed was to him amatter of indifference. It was something not of his world. It did notimpinge on his own jealously guarded circle of activity, on his own taskof bringing a fugitive to justice. And as his eyes strained through thegloom at the cluster of lights far ahead in the roadstead he told himselfthat it was there that his true goal lay, for it was there that the_Trunella_ must ride at anchor and Binhart must be.
Then he looked wonderingly back at the flotilla under the rail, for herealized that every movement and murmur of life there had come to asudden stop. It was a cessation of all sound, a silence as ominouslycomplete as that of a summer woodland when a hawk soars overhead. Eventhe small light deep in the bottom of the first _lancha_ tied to thelanding-ladder had been suddenly quenched.
Blake, staring apprehensively out into the gloom, caught the sound of asoft and feverish throbbing. His disturbed mind had just registered theconclusion that this sound must be the throbbing of a passingmarine-engine, when the thought was annihilated by a second and morestartling occurrence.
Out across the blackness in front of him suddenly flashed a white saberof light. For one moment it circled and wavered restlessly about, feelinglike a great finger along the gray surface of the water. Then it smotefull on Blake and the deck where he stood, blinding him with its glare,picking out every object and every listening figure as plainly as acalcium picks out a scene on the stage.
Without conscious thought Blake dropped lower behind the ship's rail. Hesank still lower, until he found himself down on his hands and kneesbeside a rope coil. As he did so he heard the call of a challengingSpanish voice, a murmur of voices, and then a repeated command.
There was no answer to this challenge. Then came another command and thensilence again. Then a faint thrill arrowed through Blake's crouchingbody, for from somewhere close behind him a gun-shot rang out and wasrepeated again and again. Blake knew, at that sound, that Tankred or oneof his men was firing straight into the dial of the searchlight, thatTankred himself intended to defy what must surely be an Ecuadoreangunboat. The detective was oppressed by the thought that his ownjealously nursed plan might at any moment get a knock on the head.
At almost the same time the peevishly indignant Blake could hear thetinkle of the engine-room bell below him and then the thrash of the screwwings. The boat began to move forward, dangl
ing the knocking and rockingflotilla of _lanchas_ and surf-boats at her side, like a deer-mousemaking off with its young. Then came sharp cries of protest, in Spanish,and more cries and curses in harbor-English, and a second engine-roomsignal and a cessation of the screw thrashings. This was followed by ashower of carbine-shots and the plaintive whine of bullets above theupperworks, the crack and thud of lead against the side-plates. At thesame time Blake heard the scream of a denim-clad figure that suddenlypitched from the landing-ladder into the sea. Then came an answeringvolley, from somewhere close below Blake. He could not tell whether itwas from the boat-flotilla or from the port-holes above it. But he knewthat Tankred and his men were returning the gunboat's fire.
Blake, by this time, was once more thinking lucidly. Some of the cases inthose surf-boats, he remembered, held giant-caps and dynamite, and heknew what was likely to happen if a bullet struck them. He alsoremembered that he was still exposed to the carbine fire from behind thesearchlight.
He stretched out, flat on the deck-boards, and wormed his way slowly andludicrously aft. He did not bring those uncouth vermiculations to a stopuntil he was well back in the shelter of a rusty capstan, cut off fromthe light by a lifeboat swinging on its davits. As he clambered to hisfeet again he saw this light suddenly go out and then reappear. As it didso he could make out a patrol-boat, gray and low-bodied, slinking forwardthrough the gloom. He could see that boat crowded with men, men inuniform, and he could see that each man carried a carbine. He could alsosee that it would surely cut across the bow of his own steamer. A momentlater he knew that Tankred himself had seen this, for high above thecrack and whine of the shooting and the tumult of voices he could nowhear Tankred's blasphemous shouts.
"Cut loose those boats!" bellowed the frantic gun-runner. Then herepeated the command, apparently in Spanish. And to this came ananswering babel of cries and expostulations and counter-cries. But stillthe firing from behind the searchlight kept up. Blake could see ahalf-naked seaman with a carpenter's ax skip monkey-like down thelanding-ladder. He saw the naked arm strike with the ax, the two handssuddenly catch at the bare throat, and the figure fall back in a huddleagainst the red-stained wooden steps.
Blake also saw, to his growing unrest, that the firing was increasing involume, that at the front of the ship sharp volley and counter-volley wasmaking a pandemonium of the very deck on which he knelt. For by this timethe patrol-boat with the carbineers had reached the steamer's side and aboarding-ladder had been thrown across her quarter. And Blake began tocomprehend that he was in the most undesirable of situations. He couldhear the repeated clang of the engine-room telegraph and Tankred'sfrenzied and ineffectual bellow of "Full steam ahead! For the love o'Christ, full ahead down there!"
Through all that bedlam Blake remained resentfully cool, angrilyclear-thoughted. He saw that the steamer did not move forward. Heconcluded the engine-room to be deserted. And he saw both the futilityand the danger of remaining where he was.
He crawled back to where he remembered the rope-coil lay, dragging theloose end of it back after him, and then lowering it over the ship's sideuntil it touched the water. Then he shifted this rope along the railuntil it swung over the last of the line of surf-boats that bobbed andthudded against the side-plates of the gently rolling steamer. About him,all the while, he could hear the shouts of men and the staccato crack ofthe rifles. But he saw to it that his rope was well tied to therail-stanchion. Then he clambered over the rail itself, and with a doubletwist of the rope about his great leg let himself ponderously down overthe side.
He swayed there, for a moment, until the roll of the ship brought himthumping against the rusty plates again. At the same moment the shiftingsurf-boat swung in under him. Releasing his hold, he went tumbling downbetween the cartridge-cases and the boat-thwarts.
This boat, he saw, was still securely tied to its mate, one of thelarger-bodied _lanchas_, and he had nothing with which to sever the rope.His first impulse was to reach for his revolver and cut through themanilla strands by means of a half-dozen quick shots. But this, he knew,would too noisily announce his presence there. So he fell on his kneesand peered and prodded about the boat bottom. There, to his surprise, hesaw the huddled body of a dead man, face down. This body he turned over,running an exploring hand along the belt-line. As he had hoped, he founda heavy nine-inch knife there.
He was dodging back to the bow of the surf-boat when a uniformed figurecarrying a rifle came scuttling and shouting down the landing-ladder.Blake's spirits sank as he saw that figure. He knew now that his movementhad been seen and understood. He knew, too, as he saw the figure comescrambling out over the rocking boats, what capture would mean.
He had the last strand of the rope severed before the Ecuadorean with thecarbine reached the _lancha_ next to him. He still felt, once he wasfree, that he could use his revolver and get away. But before Blake couldpush off a sinewy brown hand reached out and clutched the gunwale of theliberated boat. Blake ignored the clutching hand. But, relying on his ownsheer strength, he startled the owner of the hand by suddenly flinginghimself forward, seizing the carbine barrel, and wresting it free. Asecond later it disappeared beneath the surface of the water.
That impassioned brown hand, however, still clung to the boat's gunwale.It clung there determinedly, blindly--and Blake knew there was no timefor a struggle. He brought the heavy-bladed knife down on the clingingfingers. It was a stroke like that of a cleaver on a butcher's block. Inthe strong white light that still played on them he could see the flashof teeth in the man's opened mouth, the upturn of the staring eye-ballsas the severed fingers fell away and he screamed aloud with pain.
But with one quick motion of his gorilla-like arms Blake pushed his boatfree, telling himself there was still time, warning himself to keep cooland make the most of every chance. Yet as he turned to take up the oarshe saw that he had been discovered by the Ecuadoreans on the freighter'sdeck, that his flight was not to be as simple as he had expected. He sawthe lean brown face, picked out by the white light, as a carbineer swunghis short-barreled rifle out over the rail--and the man in the surf-boatknew by that face what was coming.
His first impulse was to reach into his pocket for his revolver. Butthat, he knew, was already too late, for a second man had joined thefirst and a second rifle was already swinging round on him. His nextthought was to dive over the boat's side. This thought had scarcelyformulated itself, however, before he heard the bark of the rifle and sawthe puff of smoke.
At the same moment he felt the rip and tug of the bullet through theloose side-folds of his coat. And with that rip and tug came a thirdthought, over which he did not waver. He threw up his hands, sharply, andflung himself headlong across the body of the dead man in the bottom ofthe surf-boat.
He fell heavily, with a blow that shook the wind from his body. But as helay there he knew better than to move. He lay there, scarcely daring tobreathe, dreading that the rise and fall of his breast would betray hisruse, praying that his boat would veer about so his body would be in theshadow. For he knew the two waiting carbines were still pointed at him.
He lay there, counting the seconds, knowing that he and his slowlydrifting surf-boat were still in the full white fulgor of the waveringsearchlight. He lay there as a second shot came whistling overhead,spitting into the water within three feet of him. Then a third bulletcame, this time tearing through the wood of the boat bottom beside him.And he still waited, without moving, wondering what the next shot woulddo. He still waited, his passive body horripilating with a vastindignation at the thought of the injustice of it all, at the thoughtthat he must lie there and let half-baked dagoes shower his unprotestingback with lead. But he lay there, still counting the seconds, as the boatdrifted slowly out on the quietly moving tide.
Then a new discovery disturbed him. It obliterated his momentary joy atthe thought that they were no longer targeting down at him. He could feelthe water slowly rising about his prostrate body. He realized that theboat in which he lay was filling. He calm
ly figured out that with thebody of the dead man and the cartridge-cases about him it was carrying adead weight of nearly half a ton. And through the bullet hole in itsbottom the water was rushing in.
Yet he could do nothing. He could make no move. For at the slightestbetrayal of life, he knew, still another volley would come from thatever-menacing steamer's deck. He counted the minutes, painfully,methodically, feeling the water rise higher and higher about his body.The thought of this rising water and what it meant did not fill him withpanic. He seemed more the prey of a deep and sullen resentment that hisplans should be so gratuitously interfered with, that his approach to the_Trunella_ should be so foolishly delayed, that so many cross-purposesshould postpone and imperil his quest of Binhart.
He knew, by the slowly diminishing sounds, that he was drifting furtherand further away from Tankred and his crowded fore-deck. But he was stillwithin the area of that ever-betraying searchlight. Some time, he knew,he must drift beyond it. But until that moment came he dare make no moveto keep himself afloat.
By slowly turning his head an inch or two he was able to measure theheight of the gunwale above the water. Then he made note of where an oarlay, asking himself how long he could keep afloat on a timber so small,wondering how far he could be from land. Then he suddenly fell toquestioning if the waters of that coast were shark infested.
He was still debating the problem when he became conscious of a changeabout him. A sudden pall of black fell like balm on his startled face.The light was no longer there. He found himself engulfed in a relieving,fortifying darkness, a darkness that brought him to his feet in theslowly moving boat. He was no longer visible to the rest of the world. Ata breath, almost, he had passed into eclipse.
His first frantic move was to tug and drag the floating body at his feetto the back of the boat and roll it overboard. Then he waded forward andone by one carefully lifted the cases of ammunition and tumbled them overthe side. One only he saved, a smaller wooden box which he feverishlypried open with his knife and emptied into the sea. Then he flung awaythe top boards, placing the empty box on the seat in front of him. Thenhe fell on his hands and knees, fingering along the boat bottom until hefound the bullet-hole through which the water was boiling up.
Once he had found it he began tearing at his clothes like a madman, forthe water was now alarmingly high. These rags and shreds of clothing hetwisted together and forced into the hole, tamping them firmly into placewith his revolver-barrel.
Then he caught up the empty wooden box from the boat seat and began tobale. He baled solemnly, as though his very soul were in it. He wasoblivious of the strange scene silhouetted against the night behind him,standing out as distinctly as though it were a picture thrown on a sheetfrom a magic-lantern slide--a circle of light surrounding a drifting andrusty-sided ship on which tumult had turned into sudden silence. He wasoblivious of his own wet clothing and his bruised body and the dull achein his leg wound of many months ago. He was intent only on the fact thathe was lowering the water in his surf-boat, that he was slowly driftingfurther and further away from the enemies who had interfered with hismovements, and that under the faint spangle of lights which he couldstill see in the offing on his right lay an anchored liner, and thatsomewhere on that liner lay a man for whom he was looking.
The Shadow Page 13
