‘Mon Dieu! I believe they are men.’
‘What the hell…’ exclaimed Basil.
‘Yes, yes,’ the Frenchman went on excitedly, ‘I am sure of it. Regardez-moi-ça! What we think are heads are not heads at all but big balloons, strapped on to the backs of their shoulders—and round ball-like feet—those are balloons also. The back legs, of each one are real legs fastened to stilts and the front legs which you see form angles near the body, are arms and things like ski-sticks.’
‘Holy Mike! You’re right.’ Luvia passed his glasses over to Basil. ‘They’re humans, sure enough, by all that’s wonderful! The balloons must be filled with gas, I reckon, to support their weight as they hop over this devilish weed.’
‘That’s it, that’s it,’ Basil muttered. ‘How positively extraordinary—no limit to the invention of man, is there? These are the inhabitants of the islands, evidently; as they can’t get from one to another by swimming or boats, because of the octopuses, they tap some natural gas to fill balloons and flit over the weed from place to place.’
‘Of course that’s it,’ Synolda added. ‘Have you ever done balloon-jumping? I have. It’s grand fun. You have a gas-filled envelope strapped to your back which just about carries your weight. One kick of your foot’s enough to send you ten feet in the air and right over a hedge. It’s best of all when you’re on top of a hill. You can kick off and sail gently down a couple of hundred yards of slope before landing again.’
While they were talking the irregular mob of island balloon-hoppers had covered another half-mile and their limbs could be made out quite clearly.
‘Sacre Nom!’ muttered De Brissac, ‘the one in front is a white man. Look at his pale face and arms. The others are all blacks.’
‘White woman,’ corrected Unity, who had Luvia’s glasses. ‘She’s got long hair and a sort of short skirt that reaches only to her knees. The others, as you say, are all Negroes.’
‘D’you know what I believe?’ Basil said suddenly. ‘They’re not coming to attack us but are chasing the girl. She’s trying to escape from them. Remember how she broke away from two of the others just as they reached the island.’
‘Yes, yes,’ De Brissac took him up. ‘I can see terror on her face now and she looks constantly over her shoulder. Her lead, too, has much decreased. It is no more than twenty yards that she has in advance of the others.’
‘Oh, come on! Come on!’ Synolda began to shout in swift excitement. She swung round on Luvia: ‘Do something, do something quick! Why don’t you fire at those Negroes who’re after her?’
Luvia shook his head. ‘Hang on a minute. She’s leading still. We don’t want to scare her into thinking we’re hostile, and it’s a hundred to one against her speaking our language.’
Unity’s eyes were bright with anxiety. She clasped the bridge rail and stamped her foot impatiently. ‘Oh, the poor darling! She’s quite a little thing—almost a child—and pretty too.’
The girl from the island was now no more than a hundred yards away. The nearest Negro was springing along ten yards behind her. Not a sound came from the hunters or hunted. Their every effort was concentrated in straining on the stilts and ski-sticks which propelled them. The pursuing Negroes were almost naked and their powerful ebony bodies glistened with sweat as the grim chase proceeded in deadly silence.
De Brissac raised his Winchester. ‘Ready now? I’m going to give the leading black a warning shot through his balloon. If that doesn’t halt them you’ll each pick your man and come into action with my second shot. Aim for their balloons with the first round; we do not wish to take life unnecessarily.’
His rifle cracked. There was a soft answering plop as the bullet struck the balloon just above the Negro’s head. At fifty paces from the ship the whole line suddenly halted. Only the girl still came on. With one last bound she sailed into the air, tripped with her sticks on the ship’s rail, and came drifting head first, down on to the deck.
Unity ran towards the bridge ladder to go down and help her but De Brissac barked, ‘Stay where you are,’ and she halted, irresolute, at his order.
The blacks could not remain still as their gas balloons did not carry sufficient weight-lifting power to support them entirely. They came no nearer to the ship for the moment but hopped up and down in the weed presenting the queer spectacle of a great crowd of dancing Jennies.
Suddenly they began to yell in some strange unknown tongue, a series of barbarous, blood-curdling shrieks and, prodding the weed to get themselves into a rough line facing the ship, they bounded forward.
‘Fire!’ yelled De Brissac and a burst of flame flashed from the line of weapons on the bridge.
One Negro staggered and fell. The other bullets went wide or hit the balloons, but the volley did not stop the charge.
‘Independent fire. Aim for the men,’ shouted De Brissac, and an uneven crackle of rifle and revolver fire came in response to his order.
Half a dozen of the Negroes lurched, spun about and went headlong into the weed, but at least fifty had reached the ship and, clinging to its rails, were untying the cords that attached their feet to the awkward stilts. All of them were naked except for a loin cloth, and belts in which each carried an array of primitive but ugly weapons: knobkerries, long knives, assegais, and here and there an old-fashioned sword. Brutal and screaming their war cries, the savages swarmed on to the decks. De Brissac’s voice rose above the din:
‘Keep firing! Shoot to kill or those devils will murder us all. I’ll be back in a second.’
He thrust his Winchester into Largertöf’s hands, and snatched his own revolver which he had lent to the seaman. Bounding down the bridge ladder he leapt towards the girl from the island.
She was moaning loudly but sitting up and frantically endeavouring to get her feet free of her stilts.
As De Brissac raced up to her two Negroes sprang at him from the rail. He pistolled the nearest, shooting him through the throat, and turned to face the other. His automatic clicked uselessly. The ammunition in the clip had been exhausted.
The ferocious-looking black giant came at him with a broad-bladed cutlass but he had dropped his ski-sticks on the deck and stooping swiftly, De Brissac grabbed one of them. He was just in time to jab the Negro with its pointed end in the left side of the belly.
The man let out a howl of rage, bent double, straightened up, and came on again; but De Brissac had more time to aim his second thrust and landed the point of the ski-stick in the man’s right eye. With a wail of pain the savage dropped his cutlass and staggered away towards the side of the ship.
Others came roaring at De Brissac, brandishing their knives and clubs; two pitched forward shot down from the bridge, another checked hit through the shoulder. Next second the Frenchman had his arm round the girl and was lugging her, stilts and all, up the ladder to the bridge. Basil fired over De Brissac’s shoulder and dropped another attacker, who was grabbing at the girl’s legs.
Fortunately the savages had no firearms, so the Gafelborg’s company suffered no casualties at all whereas, in the couple of minutes since the island horde had reached the ship, the execution among them had been appalling. The rearmost ranks of the attackers, seeing the fate that was overtaking their comrades, refrained from boarding the ship and, jumping up and down in the weed some twenty feet away, shouted abuse in their strange tongue, hideous and threatening, but fearful of following their fellows on deck.
Those who had boarded the Gafelborg in their frenzied pursuit of the young girl had either been shot down or were hurriedly lashing on their stilts again, in such cover as they could find, and slipping over the side into the weed to escape the devastating fire from the rifles and revolvers of the crew.
A further horror now overtook the attackers and demoralised them entirely. Several of those whose balloons had been shot through could no longer support themselves; with others who had been killed, they lost their balance and fell headlong in the weed. The disturbance of its surface attracted a g
iant squid. Its grey-white, leathery tentacles shot up, waving and flickering in the air, searching for victims among the fallen.
Having no wish to massacre the wretched savages now that they had been driven off, De Brissac gave the order to cease fire, and the little company on the bridge stood staring at a horrifying spectacle. Half a dozen of the unfortunate men were in the grip of the octopus’s giant tentacles, some seized by a leg, others by the neck, others again round the waist; while a score more were attacking the creature with great courage.
They were at a big disadvantage as they could not stand still but they seemed to have had considerable practice in managing their stilts and ski-sticks since they leapt from place to place with great agility, each man grasping both ski-sticks in his left hand and in his right brandishing a spear, knife or cutlass, with which he made sudden swoops at the snake-like tentacles.
The octopus began to thresh the weed, tossing it in all directions; one of its tentacles was severed completely about three feet from the tip and several others were cut and slashed with jagged wounds in a dozen places. The great brute suddenly leapt half out of the weed, then dived; disappearing under the surface and dragging four of its victims with it.
The stiltsmen rescued their fallen comrades, and others that had been hit but succeeded in getting away from the ship. Two or three unwounded men supported each of the casualties and with a few last howls of hate and defiance at the people on board they made off towards their island.
Eight or ten of their number were left killed or badly wounded on the Gafelborg; great splodges of red blood stained the white decks where they lay, but the interest of her passengers and crew was now centred in the young girl they had rescued.
After De Brissac had dragged her up on the bridge she had fainted, so, without any rudeness, they were able to stare their fill at her. She was a slim little creature, less than five feet in height, but with well-developed breasts which made them guess her to be a girl of nineteen or twenty. She was nearly naked, being dressed only in a short, kilted skirt of some homespun material and a vest of lighter stuff which had been neatly darned. Her hair was dark, parted in the centre and floated down to her shoulders in long curls. Her face had something of a Spanish look with its small aquiline nose and pointed chin. She was undoubtedly a white woman, although her skin had been tanned to a rich golden brown, and a small crucifix dangling from her neck on a thin gold chain showed her to be a Christian.
What strange story of shipwreck or life in the weed-surrounded island would she tell them when she came out of her swoon? That was the thought that filled their minds as they carried her down to the lounge.
12
The Secret of the Islands
They made a careful examination of the girl directly they got her along to the lounge and found that she was only slightly bruised from her fall. With Synolda’s help Unity set about reviving her, while the men went off to clear the decks of the casualties in the recent battle.
Altogether nine stiltsmen were found in various parts of the ship; five were dead, two more had been shot through the stomach and were obviously in a dying condition, while of the remaining two one had been stunned by a bullet passing under the skin of his scalp and the other was moaning from the pain of a smashed thigh-bone. The rest of the victims of the guns had either escaped or disappeared under the weed.
The dead were thrown overboard, the four wounded carried to a deck-house on the poop which had previously served as part of the officers’ quarters. Their wounds were bandaged, drugs administered to them from the medical store, and Hansie was told off to watch by them.
Luvia had the decks swabbed down to clean up, as far as possible, the horrible patches of gore which stained them, and when the arms had been collected and returned to a locker of which he had the key, with De Brissac, Vicente and Basil he went back to the lounge to hear the rescued girl’s story.
She had been badly shaken by her fall and was only just recovering from her terrible experience, but as soon as she had opened her eyes, which were brown lit with golden lights, she began to speak in English to the joy of the other girls who were able to comfort and reassure her.
As the men filed into the lounge, she gave them an enchanting smile and said at once: ‘Gentlemen, you and your ladies must be wondering who I am that I should seek refuge in your ship. Permit me to present myself and, if you have leisure to hear it, recount something of my history.’
The gallant De Brissac caressed his little dark moustache with one brown hand and bowed courteously. ‘We are dying to hear all about you, Mademoiselle, if it will not fatigue you.’
She shrugged and spread out her hands with a little foreign gesture. ‘To you I owe special thanks, Monsieur, for saving me on the deck there. I am a little bruised and shall be stiff tomorrow, but am quite enough recovered to tell you my strange story.’
The Frenchman bowed again and sat down beside her while the others settled themselves in a semicircle near by.
‘My name is Yonita Van der Veldt.’ She began and continued with considerable vivacity but often using old-fashioned phrases. ‘I am half of Dutch and half of Spanish extraction, although I have English blood in my veins also and speak English as my natural language. Most of my forbears have lived on the smaller of these two islands during the last two hundred and fifty years. As you may surmise, we are a colony made up of the survivors of several shipwrecks, and we number now one hundred and twenty-seven men, women and children. All of us are the prisoners of the weed sea which holds many horrors.’
‘Doesn’t it ever break up when there’s a storm?’ Juhani interrupted.
Yonita shook her head. ‘For some strange reason we are never plagued with violent storms here. Now and again in winter inclement weather churns the weed up into a long, rolling swell for a few days, but there is such a vast extent of it that the great waves of the ocean are smothered in its weight long before they can reach our shores. The weed is not even agitated by a swell for more than perhaps ten days in any year and for the rest of the time it is just atrocious, still and silent, as you see it now.’
Basil grimaced. ‘That doesn’t sound as though we have much chance of getting out of it again.’
‘I fear me, sir, you have no chance at all,’ she told him solemnly. ‘Through the centuries many ships have been caught in this pernicious web of weed but none that have been driven past the fringe have ever come free to set their sails again. There is a current under the weed which passes through the channel separating the two islands, and the ships that are caught are carried by it until they beach upon the one or the other. ’Tis impossible to see them from here, but round the corner of Satan’s Island there are a half-dozen ships which have gone aground in the shallow water, and the remains of several more which beached themselves there in long-past generations.’
‘Satan’s Island, Mademoiselle?’ De Brissac asked interrogatively.
‘Thus we have named the one nearest to you which is inhabited by these devilish men. Farther along the coast of our own island there is yet another shallow beach where you will find more ships aground in a wide bay. ’Twould be an even wager to which of those strange graveyards of shipping your vessel will go.’
‘I knew we were drifting south,’ Luvia remarked. ‘It was misty yesterday so we couldn’t have seen the islands anyway, but I’m dead sure we’ve drifted farther in during the night. How long d’you reckon it’ll take us to make one of these beaches?’
‘My opinion is scarce worth the having, but the denseness of the weed slows up the progress of vessels as they get nearer to the land. It looks no great distance, but methinks not less than ten days or at most a month. How long is it since your ship was snared in the weed?’
‘It’s four days since we first struck it.’
Yonita nodded. ‘You have been very speedy then to get so far in so short a time. Most ships drift for weeks in the weed before they come so close in as this. That is why very few of the crews ever survive to land. Of
ten they die of starvation, if their supplies are short when they first enter the weed, or go mad through the terrors of living week after week imprisoned in it. The few who do survive tell always that they have lost many men snatched from their decks by the giant devil-fish that live under the weed.’
‘Bremer!’ exclaimed Basil.
De Brissac shrugged, ‘Oui, Luvia and I guessed that, although we did not like to tell you. Please proceed, Mademoiselle, and tell us more of your strange life in these uncharted seas.’
‘The weed sea is a thing of dread,’ she went on slowly, ‘yet our island is by no means unpleasant. In winter it is very cold but we have abundance of wood for fires to warm us and for the building of comfortable houses. In summer it is most agreeable here, and with the stores salvaged from ships we have been able to raise crops of Indian corn, wheat, potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables. Also we have planted orchards of apples, pears, plums and cherries. Our livestock is confined to pigs and chickens, those being the only animals we have been able to salvage in sufficient numbers to breed from. I claim to be of Spanish and Dutch descent but actually our population is a very mixed one; although the predominant strain of our blood is English.
‘The first people to be cast away on our island were Sir Deveril Barthorne, the Royalist buccaneer, and his crew, in 1680. They had with them at the time two Spanish ladies whom they had recently captured, together with their Negress waiting-women, from the Spanish Main. The first Sir Deveril married the lovelier of these Spaniards, and they established what might be termed a Royal Line. There has been a Sir Deveril in the island ever since, and I am betrothed to the present holder of the title.’
Uncharted Seas Page 17
