by Sapper
“Won’t it be marvellous if we do find something.”
“Don’t build on it, Judy,” he warned. “Though I honestly am quite hopeful. Neither Miguel nor Dresler strike me as gentlemen who waste time or money. Here’s the hotel: play up for all you’re worth.”
And play up she did to the vast edification of the sallow-faced gentleman who reappeared mysteriously from nowhere. No power on earth would induce her to go on Don Miguel’s yacht, and if Jim was unable to get anyone to man the boat she would remain in Rio. And finally with a shrug of his shoulders he strolled away to the bar, calling high heaven to witness on the unreasonableness of woman. Then he instructed the hall porter to get Don Miguel on the telephone for him, and to him he spoke at length. He wondered who could have given his destination away: so did Don Miguel. Anyway it settled things, and he would accompany Don Miguel in his yacht, at which the Brazilian professed himself overjoyed. And finally he left the box with the comforting reflection that if the bluff had failed it was not for want of lying.
They had dinner, after which there was nothing to do but sit and wait. The sallow-faced man had gone, but there were several men in the lounge any one of whom might have been his successor. They had decided on their plan, and time seemed to drag interminably. At ten o’clock Judy rose from her chair.
“Jim,” she said irritably, “it’s insufferably hot. Can’t we take a car and go somewhere before going to bed?”
He stifled a yawn.
“Bit late, Judy, isn’t it?” he remarked doubtfully.
“I can’t help it: I’ll never sleep. Let’s drive out to that place where they bathe.”
“Copacabana!” His expression was resigned. “All right.”
He beckoned to a page.
“Tell the hall porter to get me a taxi. I want to go for a run to Copacabana.”
The boy gave the message, and returned shortly after to say the car was waiting.
And it was not until they were halfway to their destination that Jim turned to the girl.
“A little bit too clever, Judy,” he said in a low voice, “or rather, not quite clever enough. But it’s going to complicate things. This driver is one of them.”
“How do you know?”
“At about a quarter to ten I had a look at the taxi rank opposite the hotel. This car was in front. Two taxis were ordered between then and ten o’clock when we got this one. Why did he let two other men take the jobs?”
“What are you going to do?”
“You’ll see in a moment,” he said. “But it’s a lucky thing all taxis here are open cars.”
He gave an order in Brazilian to the driver.
“I’ve told him to drive right out to the end beyond the hotel,” he told the girl. “And when we get there I will show you a little trick of my own.”
The lights grew fewer and farther between, and at length ceased altogether. And suddenly Jim told the man to stop. In his hand he held a short bar which he was balancing carefully. She watched him fascinated, as, all in a single movement, he rose and hit the driver one blow on the nape of the neck. And the driver collapsed like a log on the floor of the car.
“Not everybody’s weapon,” said Jim calmly, as he rummaged under the seat for some rope. “It’s very easy to kill a man with it unless you’re careful. Now this sportsman will sleep peacefully for about four hours, but in case he wakes sooner we may just as well truss him up.”
He pulled out a length of cord evidently used for baggage, and tied the unconscious driver up deftly. Then he placed him gently in the ditch, and put a hundred milreis note in his pocket. After which he jumped into the driving-seat.
“It’s neck or nothing, Judy,” he said, as he turned the car round. “We’d never have got away with that lad at the wheel. And now I think we may, if luck is with us.”
They swung back towards Rio, with Jim crouching over the wheel to conceal his height. To reach the docks they had to go through the main street, and it was there that the danger lay, for the police in the Avenida Rio Branco are an extremely capable body of men. But fortune was with them: nobody held up the car, and at a few minutes to eleven he pulled up outside Antonio’s boat yard.
The place looked dark and deserted, but not until he had taken a careful look round did Jim allow the girl to get out of the car. Piles of wood and barrels afforded admirable hiding places for would-be watchers, and he dared take no risks with Judy. At last he was satisfied, and taking her by the arm he rushed her across to the entrance.
Bill Blackett had been as good as his word: it was open. And still holding her arm he piloted her inside. The boat lay some twenty yards ahead of them and he was making straight for it when his eye caught a movement near a big coil of rope on his right. Instantly he thrust Judy behind him, and, in a low voice called out something in Brazilian.
It was the only chance, and he took it. If the mover was Bill or Percy it did not matter if he was one of the opposition he might, in the darkness, think Jim was one of his friends. And the ruse succeeded: a figure rose and came towards him. He waited tensely: on the lookout at any moment for a knife to be thrown.
He spoke again, and the man answered.
“Is that you, Pedro?”
And a fraction of a second too late he realised it was not. He opened his mouth to shout, but no sound came. Jim’s vice-like grip closed on his throat, and he felt himself picked up like a child.
“Run, Judy, run for the boat,” Jim muttered. “There are others about.”
He dragged the man with him, and hauled him on board gurgling and spluttering. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a light in an adjoining shed, and heard the sound of voices: the rest of the bunch were playing cards. And then from in front of him he heard the girl give a little cry. She was in the saloon which was lit by a solitary candle. And trussed up in two chairs like a pair of gagged mummies were Percy and Bill Blackett.
“Not a sound,” whispered Jim imperatively. “It’s our only hope. Get a knife out of the drawer and cut ’em loose. Bill first.”
He dared not relax his grip for an instant on his own man for fear he would shout, and in a fever of impatience he watched the girl slashing at the rope until Bill Blackett was free.
“Cast her off, Bill,” he ordered, “from the boat. It doesn’t matter if we lose the ropes. Then fend her off from the side.”
“I get you,” grunted the sailor, sprinting on deck.
“Percy – stand by the motor. But for the love of Allah don’t start it until I tell you.”
His cousin nodded and he turned to the girl.
“Quick, Judy – I must go and help Bill. Take my handkerchief from my pocket and cram it into this swab’s mouth with the handle of the knife. Mind your fingers, for he’ll bite. Good. Now some of that rope. Can you make a running noose? Splendid girl. Slip it round that elbow. That’s right: I can manage now.”
He hauled the rope tight, lashing the man’s arms behind his back: then he attended to his knees. And finally he wound the tablecloth round his head, and threw him into one of the off shore cabins.
“Stay here, Judy. On no account come on deck.”
He vanished silently, almost colliding with Bill Blackett.
“She’s cast off,” said the sailor, “and if you can take one boat hook aft I’ll go forrard with the other.”
“We want to get her out just far enough for them not to be able to jump, Bill,” he said, and the other nodded.
The card game was apparently still in progress, as they got on deck, and an angry altercation was taking place, which was all to the good. But the motor was bound to make too much noise for any quarrel to drown, and Jim realised, only too clearly, that it was touch and go. At length they got her out about six feet, so that she had a clear run for the open water. It was then or never, and he beckoned to Bill.
“Tell Percy to start up,” he ordered, “and slip her into half-speed at once, without waiting for any signal. I’ll steer.”
He waited tensely
at the wheel, and suddenly, with a snort, the motor hummed into life. Came instant silence from the shed: then a rush of cursing men to the side of the wharf. Ten yards: twenty, and a knife quivered in the deck at his feet. Thirty: forty – they’d done it, and he grinned happily.
“How did they get you, Bill?” he sung out to Blackett, who was fixing the lights.
“About a dozen of ’em swarmed on board, and caught us napping,” answered the other.
And it was at that moment that Percy popped his head up.
“I say, dear old lad,” he remarked, “everything is fearfully jolly and all that, but I suppose you know it’s my cabin you have bunged little bright eyes into.”
“Good Lord!” cried Jim, “I’d forgotten all about him. Unlash the blighter, and send him up on deck.”
“Now, you swab,” he said, as the man appeared shaking with fright. “Can you swim?”
Not a yard, he protested, with chattering teeth. Since childhood he had had a horror of water.
“What the devil are we to do with him, Bill?” said Jim.
“Let him do the washing up,” answered the sailor. “There’s a cubby-hole aft he can doss down in.”
“Take him with us? Yes: I suppose we must. If the man can’t swim, we can hardly throw him overboard.”
He turned to him and spoke in Brazilian.
“You’re coming with us, do you understand. And you’ll have to make yourself generally useful. For if I have the smallest trouble with you I’ll trail you astern at the end of a rope as bait for sharks.”
CHAPTER 9
They sighted Lone Tree Island at dawn on the second day, and as they drew nearer Blackett searched the shore anxiously with his glasses. It was the northern end they were approaching, and his memory of the place was a little rusty. The beach which lay at the foot of the hill was guarded by a reef of rocks, and the line of surf looked unbroken. But somewhere there was a gap, and it was for that he was making. They had decided that it would be fatal to use the southern anchorage: they would see quite enough of the opposition without lying alongside them. And from what he remembered the gap was wide enough to let their boat through but would prove impossible for the yacht.
At last they saw it, and Jim looked at him doubtfully. It was about ten yards across, and at each edge the swell broke lazily on vicious black rocks. Beyond it, some two hundred yards away, was the shore, and the intervening water was as calm as a lake. An ideal harbour; anything but an ideal entrance.
They nosed in closer going dead slow, and the nearer they got the nastier it looked. Blackett was at the wheel: Jim was up in the bows peering into the water ahead.
“If we bump, go all out, Percy,” he said. “We’ll have to beach her.”
And to this day Bill Blackett swears the boat must have had an India rubber bottom.
“She bounced twice and then skidded,” he affirms, “but she got through.”
After which the crew had breakfast, and discussed the plan of campaign.
“We can presumably rely on having today undisturbed,” said Jim. “And there is a possibility of tomorrow also. They can’t arrive until tonight, and they won’t know until it’s light that they’ve got a useless map. Then they’ve got to find us. So that if we’re away from here by dawn tomorrow we may get an extra twelve hours. But that is the absolute maximum. Wherefore, chaps, we’ve got to get a move on.”
And so, a quarter of an hour later they rowed ashore in the dinghy leaving the Brazilian to amuse himself on board. Each of them carried a revolver and a heavy stick, and Jim had a rucksack strapped on his shoulders, in which was the food for lunch. And having beached the dinghy they started the climb.
The northern side of the hill was practically bare of any vegetation. For the first two or three hundred feet a few stunted shrubs grew sparsely: above that a thin brown weed, which might by courtesy have been called grass, stretched up to the summit. The slope was steep, but easy, and since the sun as yet had but little heat they made the top without difficulty.
“Seems rum to be back here after all these years,” said the sailor. “If anyone had offered me a hundred pounds to sixpence against it I wouldn’t have taken it.”
Below them lay the swampy half of the island. A thick mist covered it eddying sluggishly into the giant trees which came down to the edge of the marsh land and there stopped abruptly. A faint southerly breeze was blowing, and it carried to their nostrils that strange unmistakable scent of rotting vegetation which sends the man who knows to his medicine-chest for quinine twice daily. Fever – the place stank of it, as Bill Blackett had said in London.
Surrounding the swamp on three sides was higher ground: on the fourth lay the sea. Their own vantage point was the highest in the island, rising from the low foothills that formed the northern end. And due west, some two miles away there stood the Lone Tree. It seemed to have escaped from the forest which comprised the western half, and to be standing like a solitary sentinel in front of an army that had halted a few hundred yards away. And Jim, as he looked at that dense jungle, felt his heart sink. He alone of the party knew from past experience the difficulties of cutting a path through undergrowth of that sort, and keeping any sort of direction. However he said nothing and produced his compass.
“We’ll take a bearing due south-west from here,” he explained, “and see if it passes through any conspicuous spot which we can remember when we get to the Lone Tree. Then when we get the line between C and A from there, we may get an approximate position.”
He let the compass settle, and then prolonged the line by laying his stick on the ground.
“It’s pointing straight at that huge mass of scarlet flowers,” cried Judy.
“Come on,” he said abruptly. “Let’s get to the Lone Tree.”
The mist was slowly clearing from the swamp, showing glimpses of vivid green interspersed with dull brown ground.
“Lord! what a death trap,” he exclaimed involuntarily, and at that moment Bill Blackett clutched his arm.
“Look,” he muttered, “at that bit of green half-left of you.”
He was staring through his glasses, and Jim focused his own. The mist was still swirling in thin wisps over the marsh, but it suddenly lifted for a few seconds from the spot which the sailor had pointed to. And, quite distinctly, he saw something heaving and struggling in the green slime. Then all was still: whatever it was had gone under. But still he kept his glasses fixed. What was that moving on the brown ground which flanked the green? There were two, three, half a dozen… And then the mist came down again, blotting out everything.
“Is that what happened to the crew of the Paquinetta?” said Blackett sombrely. “Anyway, what was it, Mr Maitland?”
Jim glanced at him quickly: evidently he had not seen the others.
“Some animal caught in the bog,” he said shortly. “It often happens, even on Dartmoor, or in the New Forest. Let’s get a move on.”
But half-way to the Lone Tree he paused and adjusted his glasses once again. The mist had completely gone: the swamp lay open below them. But though he scanned it from end to end no living thing stirred. Only the faint reek of it rose poisonous to heaven.
It was getting hot when they reached the Lone Tree, and a haze was already shimmering over the forest. But it was not enough to prevent them picking up the cairn of stones on the high ground at the south of the island. And having done so for a moment or two they all stood silent staring at one another. For the line to the cairn passed directly through the centre of the great patch of scarlet flowers they had picked up from the hill.
“Why we’ve only got to walk till we find it,” cried Judy, “and we’ve got the spot.”
“Not quite so easy as it sounds, Judy,” said Jim. “In the first place we’ve got to keep our direction going through the undergrowth, when we shan’t be able to see the flowers; and in the second place the flowers look very different when looked at from where we are now, to what they will when we’re standing underneath them. W
hat’s up, Bill?”
The sailor drew him, on one side.
“For God’s sake, Mr Maitland,” he said in a low voice, “chuck it. It’s not worth it. Those flowers never grew there naturally: why, there’s not another patch that you can see. They have been planted, I tell you – planted as an ornament, as a decoration.”
“Decoration! For what?”
“For what is underneath them. There, in the forest.”
“You’re talking rot, Bill,” said Jim curtly, though the strangeness of that one flaming splash of colour had not escaped him. And yet the thing was absurd: the sailor was a superstitious ass. The flower looked like the ordinary scarlet hibiscus, as common in the tropics as the daisy is at home. It was just coincidence, and lucky coincidence that this great square of them should mark the spot they wanted. So he argued to himself, cursing Bill mentally for having made such an argument necessary.
He took the compass bearing on the cairn of stones, and found it was south-south-west: then he gave the order to march.
“I’ll lead,” he said. “Then Judy after me. Bill – you bring up the rear. And watch for snakes every step you take.”
He calculated that the distance was about three miles, and it soon became obvious that they would never do it that day. The heat once they left the open became well-nigh unbearable: the undergrowth in places seemed like a solid wall. Huge lianas – the size of a ship’s cable – hung in great festoons from the trees; rank weeds and tropical ferns with tendrils the size of a man’s arm blocked the way, and had to be slashed at with knives to afford a passage. In places they were almost in darkness, so thick was the foliage above: then they would stumble into a patch of sunlight where gorgeous humming birds flitted like exquisite coloured jewels above their heads.
The sweat poured off them, and at the end of an hour Jim made out that they had blazed a trail for about half a mile. But the exertion had been terrific, and the girl, though she made no complaint, was obviously exhausted. Moreover the going was becoming worse as they got deeper in, and reluctantly he called a halt.
