To his dismay a beam shot out from her deck. She was rigged with a searchlight that he in his limited survey had not noticed. The ray swept the waters in his direction, missed him as he promptly ducked, and when he again broke water it was swinging toward the New Bedford shore. But it came back, seeking him out. The churn of the screw had been plain to him across the water; now it stopped. A boat was being lowered. It came in his direction. Evidently they either guessed which way he had gone or they had seen him. Meanwhile the current was carrying down the schooner. As the tremulous finger of the searchlight pointed his way Jim dived for the third time. Swimming under water slowed his progress and there was the danger that when lack of air forced him up again the boat would be on him or the beam spot him. The last risk was realized. He bobbed up in a circle of dull radiance and there was a shout from the boat, a clutter of oars turning to a steady stroke, the flash and report of a gun and the watery spat of a bullet only too well aimed.
On they came, shouting in triumph. He heard the bellow of Swenson. His right hand had swollen with the blow, and now besides paining intolerably, it began to interfere with the diving power of his arm that grew numb.
“Turn on your back. Float, damn ye! Float, or I’ll sink ye for keeps!” Swenson was roaring like an infuriated bull. Jim might dodge for a while, might dive a time or two, but they would wear him down, If they got him alive he could imagine what would be in store for him aboard with the humiliated Hellfire; unless—
The gods had taken pity on him at last. A bank of fog, vagrant before the uncertain breeze, bore down on him. For the fourth time he slipped under water and struck out to reach its cover, swimming until he thought his lungs must burst and his body felt like lead from lack of oxygen. Up he came to suck in moist air, to find himself enveloped in woolly vapor. He turned over on his back to float and rest. He could hear the clack of oars, muffled calls. The search ray had long since reached its limit in the mist. Swenson and his rowers were losing their bearings. And the tide was bearing Jim rapidly toward the ocean. He had no hope of making Penikese now. That lonesome rock would have been only a temporary halting place, but a necessary one. Now he must keep on to Cuttyhunk. Out of the fog panic swooped at him. Was he going in the right direction? He knew how easy it was in broad daylight to get turned about while floating. In the fog—
His heart pounded for a few beats, then steadied. He could see a halo in the mist, a rainbow spot of dull, but—to him—glorious tints. The fixed white light of Cuttyhunk, well ahead on his left! Allowing for the tide, as the ferries do trying to make a slip, Jim bucked the rip diagonally, his angle of crossing deflected backward. The light came swiftly toward him and he saw that he must make almost superhuman effort if, when it came abeam, he was to be close enough to shore to make a landing. He strove not to get into a flurry. He turned on his right side now, his left, undamaged arm driving him, while the right gave flotation, depending mostly on his legs for power.
He was almost opposite the light, and it seemed to him that he had made scant progress shorewards for all his exertions. There comes a moment to the stoutest swimmer when the call upon the blood is too much for the over-worked lungs and heart; the limbs grow leaden, buoyancy is deflated and the overcoming of the dead centre of effort between strokes is a Herculean task. To turn upon the back and float and rest is the temptation that assails irresistibly. But to float in such an ebbing tideway, even for a few seconds, meant being carried out to the ocean, or at best down Long Island Sound.
The light grew suddenly clearer. He had battled through the thick belt of mist that had temporarily saved him. He could see surf breaking on the rocks of Cuttyhunk. Past them he went, ledge after spouting ledge where a landing threatened broken ribs if not worse. Now he was past the light, all hope gone. A wave slapped him in the face as if derisively; salt water lapped into his mouth, open and gasping for breath. It was all over. He had failed!
Instinctively he tensed for one last tussle before he quit. As he lifted his head to glance despairingly at the fixed light that shone so inexorably as a mark that he had missed, he saw the ghostly loom of spray that marked a little promontory projecting like a finger to the south of a tiny inlet below the ledges of the lighthouse foundation.
Burying his head, he spent his last atoms of energy in the crawl, flailing the surges with his arms, clipping the water with his legs, plowing through the backwash from the rocks at top speed, then failing—
There was an eddy in the tiny inlet, a small space of slack water, then an opposing current that bore him, still feebly swimming, close to the ledges that were beginning to expose their beards of slippery weed. These he grasped and clung to, twining his fingers like hooks among the pods, his body aswing and horizontal. A great wave came rolling into the inlet, chafing against a hundred obstacles, its force breaking. The tail of it lifted Jim and flung him into a crevice of the rock, scraping his flesh against mussels and barnacles that tore his feet and cut through his thin clothing, taking toll of his blood. It sucked at him as it retreated, spent, part of the general retreat of the tidal waters, but Jim remained, holding with fingers, knees, elbows and his lacerated feet, too spent to move for the moment. A rising tide must inevitably have plucked him from his refuge, borne him off to make a sport of him, half stunned as he was. But now it ebbed steadily. Off shore, the whaleboat was seeking the schooner’s searchlight in the fog, Swenson himself bewildered for direction, giving up the chase; cursing and hoping that Jim had sunk; wondering whether he had been given the right position of the island; deciding that he had been tricked, and exhausting his repertory of oaths to meet the occasion. The schooner’s engine could not buck the full sweep of the ebb any more than could the rowers. Both craft dropped down below the light, below where Jim crawled to the pitted top of his saving promontory; the boat caught up to the mother vessel, was towed, after the crew got aboard, and the schooner swung out around Martha’s Vineyard, past Nantucket, out to the sea until the tide turned.
Jim, with naked feet, stumbled over the dripping rocks, cut and bruised, yet gathering strength in the exultation of having won through. But Nature called a halt, insisting on recuperation, his engines clamoring for fuel. A soaking meant nothing to Jim who had slept curled up on hard planks in a small cockpit many a wet night. He found a patch of sand and dropped to it, shouldering out a shallow bed, scraping a hollow for his hips, dropping asleep in the middle of the work, dreamlessly lost to all the world with the fixed white light of Cuttyhunk streaming overhead.
Gulls woke him, screaming discordantly at this intruder on their sanctuary. The mist had gone, and the morning was sharp and clear with the sun already striking at him over Nashawena Island. He sat up, smarting and aching, a sorry looking sight but refreshed, his hurts lost in his purpose—to get to Foxfield before evening. The prospects were not encouraging, but he clenched his jaws until the muscles bunched, tightened his fists and began to figure out how he could make it. The light was out.
The Elizabeth Islands string out westward from the elbow of the curved arm of Barnstaple—Cuttyhunk, Nashawena, Pasque, Naushon, Nonamesset and Uncatean, the two latter side by side and opposite Woods Hole, railroad terminal and port of call for steamers plying between New Bedford and Nantucket. The straits between the islands, smallest at low tide, are all narrow, that between Nashawena and Pasque the widest. There are a few shacks at Cuttyhunk settlement and at Tarpaulin Cove on Naushon, but they are irregularly occupied. Jim had faint hopes of hiring the use of a boat from one of these and making his way to the train. But it was all of fifteen miles, as an aeroplane might make it, from Cuttyhunk to Woods Hole. Even if he got a boat immediately, there was a long morning’s work ahead of him to get to the steamer landing, chancing connections at the railroad. Whether he could hire an auto at Woods Hole to take him to Foxfield he did not know. The owner would charge him both way fare, and his money might be insufficient after all. If he could get to New Bedford—
As he stretched himself he found he had an app
etite. Swenson’s sandwiches had long since lost their sustaining powers. A man’s engines need stoking to be effective. Jim made his way over the rocks toward the shacks at Cuttyhunk. He saw smoke coming out of a stovepipe, promise of breakfast. Better than that, he saw a launch, dirty-white with no glittering brasses—no pleasure craft, but the practical powerboat of a fisherman, engines hooded forward, and a roomy cockpit aft. It was moored to a wharf along which a man walked bearing lobster pots. Another one was in the cockpit fussing with the engines. Jim broke into a run, shouting at the men. The one with the lobster basket-traps turned to gaze at him and the one aboard clambered to the wharf where they stood spellbound, looking at the strange figure that had hailed them, and now came hobbling along on bare feet, hatless, with clothes torn and stained with sea-slime and sand, a right hand swollen into shapelessness, face streaked and caked with blood.
“Wall, I’ll be scaled,” said the man with the pots. “Where in time did ye come from, stranger? W’ot’s the general idee?” Jim had his story ready.
“Got boomed-off last night abeam the light,” he said. “Fool amateur on a yacht jibed her, running before the wind. Wish he’d sprung his stick.” The fishermen appraised him with professional eyes.
“You bein’ hired by him?”
“Yes, Sloop Gypsy. Me being sailing master, and my own fault for believing the fool knew enough to steer in a fog. What’ll you take for a snack to eat and a trip to New Bedford?” The men looked at each other. Their answer was essentially that of New England bargaining.
“What’ll you give? Oughter git that hand of yourn fixed up. Boom hit that?” Jim ignored the thrust. Money would talk.
“Two of you own the launch? Call your profits fifteen a day apiece. That’s more than it is on an average. I’ll give you thirty dollars.”
“We got our customers to consider. Orders to fill.”
“Tell ’em it was an off day. You don’t always have luck.”
“Do it for fifty dollars—cash in advance.”
“Deal closed.” Jim tried vainly to get his right hand at his money. It would not go into his pocket. But he worked it out and handed over twenty dollars, displaying enough to set the fishermen’s minds at rest about their pay. “Thirty more when we hit New Bedford,” he told them. “Now for a mug-up.”
The launch was sturdy enough, but not designed for speed or grace. It wallowed into New Bedford at eleven o’clock, helped by the tide. They passed half a dozen power schooners, but Jim had not seen enough of Swenson’s craft to recognize it, save by the figures instead of name on her boats. Nor would recognition have delayed him. He had evolved a theory that Foster, at back of Swenson—though he admitted even in his biased mood that such a connection between an unprincipled, almost outlawed bully and a prosperous manufacturer seemed incongruous—had planned on securing the figures together with the person of Lyman, and thus get possession of the pearls by making toothpicks of the Golden Dolphin if necessary to find the hiding-place of the treasure. He began to suspect Foster of having planted certain of his tools on the Golden Dolphin on her original voyage to plot a mutiny—a scheme upset by the tidal casting ashore of the ship.
By this time, he feared, Foster would have learned that Kitty Whiting had the diary in her possession. If Swenson communicated with him, stating that Lyman had got away, there might be an immediate attempt to get the figures from Kitty, to delay her voyage and give Swenson a start. They might even try to kidnap the girl. Men will go to great lengths for the sake of a fortune—even Foster, who, having already made one million, no longer considered it as a definite goal.
If he was correct, Swenson would wire. And so could he! At the first store he bought shoes, socks and a cap. Then he found a telegraph office. He had brushed up a little at the store, but the girl looked askance at his desperate looking appearance. He was forced to ask her to write out his messages—one to Kitty Whiting, another to her Cousin Lynda. He believed the latter less likely to trust in Foster, less bound by ideas of partnership. The content of both was the same save for the interchange of names.
Arriving this evening. Vital you keep information mailed you absolutely secret. Also my arrival. Trickery active.
James Lyman.
He found he could get a train shortly after noon that would take him to South Framingham a few minutes before four. That place was about eight miles from Foxfield. Further connections were bad, but he could hire a machine that should surely land him at the antique shop by eight o’clock.
If Swenson had wired, all his calculations might be upset. Foster would be prepared for his appearance and would, of course, be ready to discredit Swenson. Therefore he would proceed as planned and attend the meeting he had himself arranged.
Lyman could have spared himself a lot of worrying had he known that at that very moment, Swenson, with a broken-down engine that obstinately refused to come to life, was cursing the lack of a breeze twelve miles off-shore.
He filled in his wait with lunch and a visit to a barber’s for a shave and a chance to bathe his injured hand. Then to a druggist for bandaging.
“Better show that to a doctor,” advised the man. “Looks like misplaced bones, to me. Ought to have an X-ray taken of it. Delay won’t help it.
“Then it can’t be helped,” said Jim. “I’ve seen worse get well at sea.” The druggist shrugged his shoulders.
“Suppose the other chap is in the hospital?” he said as he rang up his money.
“I sure hope so,” Jim answered fervently. It was a bad hand, but it would have to get along. If only Swenson’s jaw was half-way like it.
At four-thirty he was front-seated beside the driver of a good car, averaging twenty-five miles through incorporated towns and villages with their speed restrictions and wide-awake traffic regulators. At seven o’clock they had a blowout and shifted to the spare. At ten minutes to eight they entered Foxfield by way of a detour for road-mending that brought them over the same bridge that Jim had crossed two nights earlier on his way to Foster’s house. The car took him to the hotel. After the chauffeur was paid off Jim had fifteen dollars and sixty cents; Swenson’s contribution had paid expenses. The clerk at the desk stared at him unbelievingly as Jim asked for his key.
“That room’s rented. Thought you’d skipped. Mr. Foster and his son rang up the other night, wondering why you didn’t show up to their house. Then they came down together in their car. Seemed a bit upset about you. Thought you might have misunderstood their directions, but I told ’em you’d spoken to me about it. Thought you might have fallen in the river, maybe. I told ’em we’d take a look at your junk. If it was worth more than what you owed us you might come back. If not, you’d faded for reasons of your own. You ain’t the only one that’s done it. Mr. Foster figured I was right, but I guess I was wrong. Want another room? What happened.”
“I got into an accident,” said Jim. “Machine hit me, picked me up and took me along with ’em a ways. I’ll take a room, I reckon. And I’d like my things.”
The clerk looked at him with an expression that showed he thought Jim was lying, but said nothing. His things were brought to the new room. They had plainly been overhauled. Foster had doubtless been glad of the chance to see if the diary was there or not. And a new thought struck him. Foster might by now be a confirmed believer in his own suggestion that Jim was a fake, and that, seeing his story was to be investigated thoroughly, he had skipped. Though if Foster had seen the little diary, he could tell almost at a glance—any keen-witted person could—that its content was authentic enough with its everyday comments and the stains upon the pages with their more or less legible entries. But—if Foster had suggested the assault and abduction, it was clever of him to have come to the hotel and shown just the right amount of concern. Foster was clever.
Jim changed shirt, collar, and tie, slicked up to the best of his ability, hard put to it to do much to his only suit. At twenty minutes past eight he pressed the bell between the two porches with a side glance at the
ship model. He had already noticed light coming from the two windows of the dining-living room.
The gaunt maid opened the door, starting back.
“Land o’ Goshen!” she exclaimed. “I—”
Jim pushed past her with an imperative gesture for silence. For a moment the woman seemed dazedly about to try and bar his way. She gasped like a stranded fish, muttering confusedly.
“For the land’s sake. I wanter know. Why, I—” Jim grasped her bony wrist with his left hand.
“Shut up,” he said. “Are the rest here? Mr. Foster and his son?” She nodded, gathering herself together.
“I’ll tell Miss Kitty you’re here.”
“You needn’t bother.” Jim went through the hall and abruptly opened the door of the dining room. About the table were seated the four he had expected to find, rising to his entrance. He saw immediately that Kitty and her cousin had received his telegram, though they exhibited well feigned surprise. As for Stephen and Newton Foster, there was no question about their astonishment. The former especially showed some measure of alarm and consternation. They did not seem attempting to mask their emotions. Yet Jim could not construe guilt out of their appearance. Young Newton surveyed him quizzically. The elder Foster swiftly recovered himself. Jim spoke first.
“I’ve got to apologize for my appearance.” he said, “But I’ve been on the jump every minute that I wasn’t tied up since I saw you last.”
“Tied up?” The ejaculation was unanimous. Jim could not detect any difference in expressions.
“Hand and foot, with a couple of sacks to boot,” he said grimly. “Someone asked me to help them with a busted automobile on my way to your house at your invitation to talk things over, Mr. Foster. I stooped and somebody hit me over the head with a blackjack. The rest sounds like a chapter in a dime novel, but I had made up my mind to keep this appointment and here I am.”
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 9
