by John Buchan
Anna proceeded to scrub her hands and use a pocket comb to tidy up her hair. ‘This is a queer ship,’ she said, ‘and queer people. But they’re kind, I think. They’re ordinary yachting folk, but the Tjaldar isn’t much of a yacht. Too much of a grubby trawler for their nice clothes.’
Peter John was looking out of the port-hole into the wall of fog. ‘They aren’t kind,’ he said. ‘They’re our enemies — your father’s and my father’s. They’re the people who tried to catch you at school. They’re the people we were always on the look-out for at Laverlaw. I must tell you all I know, for we’re in an awful hole.’
There and then in that dim cabin he told her the story as he knew it, told her many things which Haraldsen had jealously kept hidden from her, and gave point and shape to suspicions which had long lain at the back of her head. He may have told the story crudely, with a boy’s instinct for drama, but Peter John was also a realist who made no mistake about the fundamentals. She sat quiet as a mouse, but at the end she gave a low cry.
‘They’re going to attack our island? And we’ve let ourselves be made prisoners? Oh, Peter John, it is all my fault! I dragged you on this silly expedition.’
‘It is my fault, for I should have remembered. You see, I knew and you didn’t.’
Two miserable children clung to each other, while the fog thickened without and the cabin darkened.
Meantime, in the deck-house they had left, there was a feverish council. From what I learned later I can reconstruct the scene as if I had been listening outside the door. In an hour’s time the man called the Skipper would arrive, and three men and one woman had much to talk of before then. I can picture their rapid, confused speech, their alternations of eagerness and diffidence, their sudden confidence dashed by sudden fears. Always in the background there must have been this shadow of fear. For the absent Skipper had become to them no longer a colleague but a master. They were people whose plans lay well inside the pale of what we call civilization. They had reputations to lose, ambitions which demanded some respect for the conventions, comfortable lives which they were not inclined to sacrifice. But they had become yoked to one who cared for none of these things, a man from the outlands who had long ago discarded their world. They were like schoolboys playing at pirates who had suddenly found themselves enrolled under the authentic Blackbeard. Barralty, I fancy, was the worst scared. Albinus was the common rogue who had already known the shady side of the law. Troth was a robust fellow, a sportsman accustomed to risks who would not be greatly rattled till he knew the full extent of the trouble. But Barralty was the brittle intellectual, who found himself in a world where his old skill went for nothing, and with him was the woman who had worked with him, and who now saw all their careful schemes on the edge of a fulfilment more disastrous than failure.
Troth must have spoken first, for he had the coolest head.
‘Things are brightening,’ he said. ‘This is a piece of luck for us, for we’ve got our hostages. Now we can deal.’
‘You think so?’ said Barralty, in a voice which he tried to keep calm.
‘Well, we’ve got the girl, and she’s what Haraldsen cares most for in the world. And we’ve got the boy, who’s the apple of Hannay’s eye. There’s only Lombard left, and he doesn’t count for much. There’s no word of Clanroyden.’
‘What has happened to Clanroyden?’
‘God knows! Run out, perhaps. . . . No, he’s not that kind of fellow. The Skipper must have put a spoke in his wheel, for he’s devil enough for anything.’
‘Have you got a line on the Skipper’s plan?’
‘Plain enough. Old-fashioned piracy. He’ll descend on the Island like a marauding Viking and hold ‘em up. If they show fight, as they’re likely to, he’ll kill. He’ll get what he wants and he don’t care a damn for bloodshed. When he has got it he’ll disappear, he and his gang, into the outer darkness, as he has done before. I daresay he’ll play fair with us — I don’t know — but we’ll have to disappear with him. Do any of you fancy spending the rest of your lives being hunted up and down the globe, even if your pockets are full? D’Ingraville won’t mind it, for it’s his profession, but what about you, Barralty? What about you, with your big ideas about public life? What about you, Lydia? You like your little comforts. What about you, Erick? No more race-meetings for you, my lad, and flutters at Monte?’
‘My God!’ Barralty groaned. ‘Can’t we bring the man to reason?’
‘We can’t, for all the reason, as he sees it, is on his side. He knows what he wants a little more clearly than we ever have, and he has the power behind him. We’re only passengers — he’s the fighting force. What can we do to stop him? He has his two infernal trusties from South America, Carreras and Martel — the very sight of them gives me the creeps. He has his crew of gunmen. He’s going to implicate us all in his gangster business, so that we’ll all hang together.’
‘But he can’t compel us if we object,’ Albinus groaned.
‘Can’t he? I haven’t got him fully taped, but he’s the biggest size in desperado I’ve ever struck. I know what’s in your mind, Erick. You think that we might make terms on our own account with the people on the Island. I’ve had the same idea myself, but I tell you it won’t do. The Skipper knows that game too well. If we try to double-cross him he’ll shoot.’
I can picture those four scared conspirators sitting for a moment dismally silent, till Troth’s vigour woke them.
‘But now things look better,’ he said. ‘We have got the materials for a civilized deal. Thank heaven for these blessed children! I don’t much like using kids in this business — if you remember, I always stuck out against it before — but needs must when the devil drives. The Skipper can’t be fool enough to neglect such a chance. It gives us a sitter, when the other way is an ugly gamble.’
‘But do we want the same things?’ Barralty asked. ‘We want a good deal, but the Skipper may want everything. And remember that Haraldsen isn’t alone. He has Hannay with him, and Hannay by all accounts is a tough customer.’
‘That will be the moment for the double-crossing if the Skipper plays the fool,’ said Troth grimly. ‘Once we get to bargaining we put the lid on his bloody piracy, and that’s what we most want.’
Then the Skipper arrived.
I picture his coming into the stuffy cabin, his face shining with fog crystals, and his pale eyes dazed by the sudden light.
‘An hour till dinner,’ he said, with a glance at the chronometer. ‘There’s time for a hot rum-and-milk, for it has been perishingly cold in the dory. But I’ve done my job. The reconnaissance is complete, gentlemen. To-morrow is The Day.’
Troth told him about Anna and Peter John. He listened with head lifted, rather like a stag at gaze, a smile wrinkling his lean cheeks.
‘Fortune is kind to us,’ he said. ‘Now we can add point to our first cartel. For one kind of possession we can offer another — and a dearer.’
But there was that in his voice which made Barralty look up anxiously.
‘Surely that alters our whole plan,’ he said. ‘Now we can treat, where before we could only coerce.’
‘I do not think so, my friend.’ D’Ingraville spoke lightly, as if the matter were not of great importance. ‘They will not treat — not on our terms. You want much, no doubt, but I want all, you see, and men will fight for their all.’
‘But — but—’ Barralty stammered. ‘Haraldsen cares for his daughter above everything, and Hannay for his son.’
‘Maybe,’ was the answer. ‘But Haraldsen and Hannay are not all.’
‘Lombard does not count.’
‘I do not think of Lombard. I think of Lord Clanroyden.’
‘But Clanroyden isn’t there.’
‘Not yet. But he will be there to-morrow.’
‘How do you know? Have you any news?’
‘I have no news. I have heard nothing of Clanroyden since we left London. But I know that he will be there, for I have an assignation with him,
and he will not fail me. And Clanroyden will never yield.’
‘But what do you mean to do, man?’ Troth asked.
‘I mean to follow the old way, the way of my Norman kinsfolk. Fate has been marvellously good to us. There is no man on the Island except those three — to-morrow they will be four — only dotards and old women. The telephone is cut and they have no boat. The fog will lift, I think, by the morning, but the Island will be in a deeper fog which cuts it off from the world. We shall have peace and leisure to do our will. If they listen to us, so much the pleasanter for everybody. If they fight we shall fight too, and beyond doubt we shall win.’
‘Win!’ Barralty muttered. ‘What do you mean by win?’
‘Everything,’ was the answer. ‘I shall get my will, though I leave a house in ashes and an island of dead men.’
‘And then?’ It was Lydia’s strained voice that spoke.
‘Then we disappear, leaving a riddle in the Norlands which no man will ever expound. Trust me, I have made my plans — for you, my friends, and for you, my fair lady. You may have to face some little adjustments in your lives, but what of that? Le mouvement c’est la vie.’
He lifted his glass and looked towards Lydia, drinking the last mouthful as if it were a toast.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘let me have a look at our hostages. Martel,’ he cried to some one outside the door, ‘fetch the babes.’
Peter John takes up the tale again. . . . The children had sat in a stupor of misery and fright, unable to think, deaf to all sounds except the thumping of their hearts. ‘We must get away,’ the boy had repeated at intervals, and the girl had replied, ‘We must,’; but the words were only a kind of groan, so destitute were they of any hope. What Anna thought I do not know, but Peter John’s mind was fuller of mortification than of fear. He had failed in his trust, and by his folly had given the enemy a crushing vantage.
They lost count of time, and it may have been an hour or two hours before the sliding panel in the alley opened and a face showed in the cabin door. A hand switched on the light. They saw a man slightly over the middle height, wearing sea-boots and a seaman’s jersey — a man who did not look like a sailor, for he had a thin, shaven, pallid face, a scar on his forehead, and eyebrows that made a curious arch over weak, blinking eyes. When he spoke it was with a foreign accent in a hoarse, soft voice. ‘You will come with me, please,’ he said. ‘M. le Capitaine would speak with you.’
The sight of the man sent a spasm of sharp fear through Peter John’s dull misery. For he knew him — knew him at least by hearsay. Sandy at Laverlaw had taken some pains to describe to us the two members of the old Bodyguard of Olifa whom D’Ingraville had with him. This was the Belgian Martel — there could be no mistake about the scar and the horseshoe brows. At the door of the deck-house stood another man, a tall stooping fellow whose hatchet face and black beady eyes were plain in the glow from the cabin. This was beyond doubt the Spaniard Carreras. The wolf pack was complete.
‘Don’t answer anything,’ the boy whispered to Anna. A stubborn silence was the one course left to them.
But there was no inquisition. Peter John had the impression of a company mighty ill at ease. The smooth geniality of tea-time had gone, and the four who had then entertained them seemed to have lost interest in their visitors and to be much concerned with their own thoughts. The pretty lady had become haggard and rather old, while Troth had lost his robustness and sucked his pipe nervously. Barralty had become a wisp of a man, and Albinus a furtive shadow. Only the newcomer radiated confidence and vitality. For a moment Peter John forgot his fear, and looked curiously at the tall man whom at Fosse he had assisted to put into the stream. He was so taut and straight that he had the look of an unsheathed sword. His pale eyes glittered like ice, and his smile had as much warmth in it as an Arctic sun. Magnificent, wonderful, terrible, inhuman, like some devastating force of nature. Yet, strangely enough, the boy feared the reality less than the picture he had made in his head. This was a wild thing, like Morag, and wild things could be tamed, curbed, or destroyed.
The Skipper bowed to Anna and nodded pleasantly to Peter John.
‘You must be our guests for the night, I fear,’ he said. ‘We are not a very commodious ship, so you mustn’t mind rather rough beds. You will want to turn in soon. What about supper?’
It was Anna who replied. ‘We don’t want any supper, thank you. But we’d like to turn in, for we’re both very sleepy.’
‘Right. Show the young lady and gentleman to their quarters, Martel. Mr. Hannay will berth forward, and Miss Haraldsen can have Miss Ludlow’s couch. Good-night and pleasant dreams.’
That was all. The two followed Martel the way they had come, and Anna was left in the big cabin, where a bed had been made up for her on the couch. Martel did the expected thing, for he took the key from the inside of the cabin-door and pocketed it; then he pulled the sliding panel which automatically locked itself. The sight of Anna’s desolate face was the last straw to Peter John’s burden. He followed Martel on deck, feeling as if the end of all things had come.
Suddenly an angry squawk woke him to life. Morag, hungry and drenched with fog, sat on her perch in a bitter ill-temper.
‘May I take my falcon with me?’ he begged.
Martel laughed. ‘I guess you may if you want company. Your ugly bird will be better below deck.’
Peter John found himself in a little cubby-hole of a cabin under the fore-deck. It was empty except for a hammock slung from the ceiling, and a heap of blankets which some one had tossed on the floor. There was a big port-hole which Martel examined carefully, trying the bolts and hinges. ‘Don’t go walking in your sleep and drowning yourself, sonny,’ was his parting admonition. He did not clamp it down, but left it ajar.
Peter John’s first act, when he found himself alone, was to open the port-hole wide. It was on the port side, looking west, and close to where they had embarked on the Tjaldar in the afternoon. The fog was thinning, and a full moon made of what remained a half-luminous, golden haze. The boy had a notion of getting out of the port-hole and trying to swim to the Island, but a moment’s reflection drove it out of his head. He was not a strong swimmer, and he could never manage two miles in those cold Norland waters.
Then a squeak from Morag gave him another idea. There was no light in the cabin except what came from the moon, but he tore a leaf from a little writing-book which he kept for bird notes and printed on it a message. ‘In Tjaldar, which is enemy ship,’ he wrote. ‘Expect immediate attack. Don’t worry about us for we are all right.’ He wrapped the paper in a bit of silk torn from his necktie, and tied it round Morag’s leg. Then he slipped the leash, and cast the bird off through the port-hole. Like a stone from a catapult she shot up into the moonlit fog.
‘An off-chance,’ he told himself, ‘but worth taking. She’s savagely hungry, and if she doesn’t kill soon she’ll go back to the House. If she’s seen there Mr. Haraldsen has a spare lure and knows how to use it. If he gets the message he’ll at least be warned.’
The action he had taken had put sleep out of his head and had cheered him up for the moment. He could make nothing of the hammock, so he sat himself on the heap of blankets and tried to think. But his thoughts did him no good, for he could make no plans. His cabin door was locked and the key in Martel’s pocket. Anna was similarly immured at the other end of the ship. They were prisoners, mere helpless baggage to be towed in the wake of the enemy. Oddly enough, the Skipper did not seem to him the most formidable thing. The boy thought of D’Ingraville as a dreadful impersonal force of nature, like a snow blizzard or an earthquake. His horror was reserved for Carreras and Martel, who were evil human beings. As he remembered Martel’s horse-shoe brows and soft sneering voice he shivered in genuine horror. The one was the hungry lion, but the other was the implacable, cunning serpent.
How long he sat hunched on the blankets he does not know, but he thinks it must have been hours. Slowly sleep came over him, for body and mind and
nerves were alike weary. . . . Then that happened which effectually woke him. The disc of light from the porthole was obscured by something passing over it, slowly and very quietly. He looked out, and saw to his amazement that one of the kayaks was now floating on the water beneath him, attached to a rope from above.
As he stared, a second object dropped past his eyes. It was the other kayak, which lightly shouldered the first and came to rest beside it.
His hand felt for one of the lowering ropes and he found it taut. Grasping it, he stuck his feet through the port-hole, wriggled his body through and slid down the rope. Almost before he knew he was sitting in a kayak, looking up at the dim bulk of the vessel.
Then came another miracle. A human figure was sliding down the rope from the Tjaldar’s deck, and he saw that it was Anna, coming down hand over hand as lightly as a squirrel. She saw him, dropped into the second kayak, and reached for the paddle. All was done as noiselessly as in a dream. There was a helper on the deck above, for the taut rope was dropped after her and swished gently into the water.
Anna kissed her hand to the some one above, seized her paddle, and with a slow stealthy stroke sent her kayak out into the golden haze. As Peter John clumsily followed suit, she turned on him fiercely, ‘Quiet, you donkey,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t splash for your life. Hang on to me and I’ll tow you.’
In half a dozen strokes the little craft were out of sight of the Tjaldar.
CHAPTER XIV. The Ways of the Pink-Foot
They had travelled a quarter of a mile before Peter John spoke. ‘How did you manage that?’ he asked excitedly.
Anna slackened pace and dropped into line with him.
‘I didn’t. It was the man — the one with the funny eyebrows — the one the Skipper called Martin or some name like that.’
Peter John emitted a groan of dismay.
