imprecations. Those men we must pass, Isaid, if we would reach the boat. And we passed them. It seems amiracle even when I write of it.
Now, we had halted at the foot of the ravine and were just prepared togo headlong for the six, believing, it may be, that one at least of usmust fall, when they fired a shot, not from the gun at the watch-towergate, but from Czerny's own yacht away in the offing; and coming plumpdown upon the sand, not a cable's length from our own boat, a shellburst with a thunderous explosion, and scattering in fragments ofsteel, it scared the mutineers as no rifle could have done. Roaring outlike stricken bulls, cursing their master in all tongues, they began tostorm the cliff-side nimbly and to run for the shelter of the woods;but some fell and rolled backward to the sand, some turned on their ownknives and lay dead at the gully's foot; while those who gained thesummit stood all together, and wailing their doleful song they yelleddefiance at Czerny's ship.
But we--we made the boat; and falling half-dead in it, we thrust itfrom the beach and heard our comrades' voices again.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE END OF THE SIXTY HOURS
_The same night. Off Ken's Island. Half-past twelve o'clock._
We have not returned to the watch-tower rock, nor can we bringourselves to that while there is any hope left to us of helping thosewhom Czerny marooned on the dangerous shore. Our gig drifts lazily in apool of the whitest moonlight. We can still make out the ship's boatslying about Czerny's yacht, and the angry crews which man them. Fromthe beach itself rises up the mutineers' wail of agony, like a wildbeast's cry, at one time loud and ferocious, then dying away in along-drawn cry, which haunts the ear. Ever and anon, as the mood takesthem, the gunners on Czerny's yacht let fly at us with their erringshells; but they smite the air or hurt the water, or drop the boundingfire on the shimmering spread of sand beyond us. Perhaps it is thatthis employment occupies the minds of the longboats' crews and keepsthem from reckoning with the master who has befooled them. They, atleast, are at the crisis of their peril. Afloat there on a gentle swellthey must know that any hour may bring a changing wind and a breakingsea, and a shore rockbound and unattainable. They are playing withchance, and chance will turn upon them presently. Let them make for theisland where the laughing woods say "Come!" and the heralds of sleepwill touch them upon the foreheads, and raving, dreaming, they willfall at last, just victims of the island visions. Say that their bruteintelligences do not yet understand this; but hunger and thirst willteach them ere the dawn, and then reckoning must come!
All this I foresaw as we let the boat drift by the sandy bays, andspake, one to another, of to-morrow and that which it must bring.Whatever our own misfortune might be, that of Czerny's men was worse ahundredfold. For the moment it amused them to see the shells plungingand hissing in the sea about us; for the moment the desire to be quitof us made them forget how it stood with them and what must come after.But the reckoning would be sure. Let a capful of wind come scuddingacross that glassy sea, and all the riches in the world would not buyEdmond Czerny's life of these sea-wolves who sought it.
"They'll stand by until they know the worst, and then nothing will holdthem," I said to my comrades. "If they think they can get aboard theyacht, they'll do so and make for some safe port. If not, they'll tryto rush the house. Assume that they are driven hard enough and no gunwill keep them off. Let ten or twenty go down, the rest will come in. Iam thinking that we should get back to the house, lads, and not leaveit to younger heads. We've done what we could here, and it's plainlyuseless to go on with it!"
They were all with me in this, none more so than Captain Nepeen, who,up to this time, had been for the shore and the friends who might befound there.
"At least we have made every prudent effort; and there are others tothink of," said he. "If they had a gunner worth a groat, we should notbe where we are, captain. You must allow something to chance and alucky shot. They may get home even yet. I will not ask you what thatwould mean, for you are a seaman and you know."
His words, I think, recalled us to the danger. No hope of rescuerewarded our eyes when we scanned the black woods and the lonelyfore-shore of the forbidden land. Dark and terrible in the moonlight,like some mighty beacon of evil rising up above that sleeping sea, itseemed to say to us, "Go, turn back; remember those who count uponyou." And we pulled from it reluctantly out into the broad sea, andbreathed a full breath as we left its vapours and its fetid shores.
Three shots were fired at us while we crossed the open channel, and onefell so close that we could see the cleavage of the water and feel thesilver spray upon our heated faces. This quickened our oars, you may besure, and set our course true and straight for the house, whose irongate stood up like a fortress of the deep and opened its rocky shelterto us. Clair-de-Lune was there, too, halted and motionless by the sea'sbrink; Dolly Venn stood at his side; and once I thought that I saw MissRuth herself peering across the lapping wavelets and watching us with awoman's anxious eyes.
Nor did we go unobserved by those who had so much to gain if mischanceshould befall us in that last endeavour. Like pirates' junks, slippingfrom a sheltered creek, the devils in the longboats espied us in themoonlight and began to row towards us and to hail us with those wildshouts which yesterday we had heard even in the House Under the Sea.Yet, I witness, they did not affright us. We knew that sure eyeswatched them from the reef; no lads' playing at the length of awatchdog's chain, kept more surely from the dog's teeth than thosenight-birds from the gun's range. Shots they fired--wild, recklessshots, skimming the water, peppering the sky, whistling in the clearair above us. But the boats drew no nearer, and it seemed that we musttouch our haven unharmed, when the American seaman, stretching out hisarms in a gesture fearful to think of, and ceasing to row with horridsuddenness, fell backward without any word and lay, a dying man, beforeus.
They had shot him through the heart; and he was the second who fell forRuth Bellenden's sake.
_Sunday morning. Five o'clock._
I have known little sleep for the last thirty hours, nor can I sleep atthe crisis of our misfortunes. It is a still grey morning, with heavycloud in the East, and lapping rhythmical waves beating upon thewindows of the house as though anon a gale must blow and all thistorrid silence be swept away.
I cannot conceal it from myself what a gale would mean to us; how itmust scatter the open boats, drifting there at the mercy of a Pacificsea; how, perchance, it might even lift the fog from Ken's Island andshow us sunny fields and sylvan woods, a harbourage of delight to whichall might flock with leaping hearts. And yet, says reason, if it sobefall that you yourselves may go ashore to yonder island, what logicshall keep Czerny's men from the same good anchorage? They are astwenty to one against you. If there are houses there, and stores forthe sun-time, who will shut them to this horde of desperadoes? Aye, thehead reels to think of it; the hours pass slowly; to-morrow we shallknow.
Now, I have thought of all this, and yet there are other things in mymind, and they jostle one with the other, the sweet and the bitter, thegood and the bad, until it seems to me that I no longer get at theheart of it, but am as a man drifting without a chart, set free on someunknown sea whose very channels I may not fathom. Three hours ago whenI came ashore and lifted the dead man out, and sent the sleeping girlto shelter, Ruth Bellenden's hand was the first to touch my own, herword the first my ear would catch. So clear it was, such music to a manto hear that girlish voice asking of his welfare as a thing most dearto her, that all the night vanished at the words, and Ken's Island waslost to my sight, and only the memory of the olden time and of mylife's great hope remained to me.
"Jasper!" she said, "it was not you--oh, Jasper, it was not you, then!"
I stepped from the boat, and, taking her hand in mine, I drew her alittle nearer to me; then, fearful of myself, I let go her hand againand told her the simple truth.
"Miss Ruth," said I, "it is yon poor fellow. I will not say 'ThankGod!' for what right have I to serve you before him? He did his duty;help me to do mine."
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br /> She turned away and gazed out over the sea to the yacht stillthundering its cannon and ploughing with its wasted shot theunoffending sea. Deep thoughts were in her mind, I make sure, a tortureof doubt, and hope, and trepidation. And I--I watched her as though allmy will was in her keeping, and there, on the lonely rock, was theheart of the world I would have lived and died in.
"You cannot forbid me to be glad, Jasper," she said, presently; "youhave given me the right. I saw you on the shore. Oh! my heart went withyou, and I think that I counted the minutes, and I said, 'He will nevercome; he is sleeping.' And then I said, 'It is Jasper's voice.' I sawyou stand up in the boat and afterwards there were the shadows. Jasper,there cannot be shadows always; the sun must shine
The House Under the Sea: A Romance Page 38
