“Cat ahoy, ahoy! …” echoed back across the anchorage from the hill behind the landing-place. But no red head showed over the bulwarks of the schooner, and no old seaman came out of the deckhouse to welcome them.
“Wild Cat ahoy!” shouted John. He did not know why he had not wanted to be the first to shout.
“Cat ahoy, ahoy! …” the echo came back from the shore.
“There’s no one stirring on the Viper either,” said Nancy. “What’s gone with them?”
“Our Jacob’s ladder’s down,” said Titty. They all saw the old rope ladder dangling down the green side of the Wild Cat.
“Stand by to grab it,” said John, luffing up sharply. “Lower away the sail, Nancy.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Nancy. But now even she was feeling her throat trying to close behind her words.
The brown sail came down. The Swallow slipped up alongside, Nancy grabbed the rope ladder. Roger brought the painter round clear of the mast. John clambered forward, took a turn of the painter round his wrist, and gripped the ladder with both hands.
“Let’s give them one more shout,” he said.
“Wild Cat ahoy!” they all shouted together.
There was a moment’s silence, and then the echo came back to them over the water.
“No answer,” said Roger.
“Did you hear anything?”
“No.”
“Well, they must be asleep,” said John, took his chance as the dinghy lifted, got both feet on the ladder, and climbed aboard the schooner.
CHAPTER XXX
DIRTY WORK
THE FIRST BILL knew of the coming of the Viper was the bump of a boat alongside the Wild Cat.
There had been no time to rest from the moment when Captain Flint had hailed the Wild Cat from the shore. Long before that, Peter Duck had been saying that, in the sort of weather that looked like coming on, the schooner would be better at sea. Bill had tumbled into the dinghy, rowed ashore and fetched the skipper aboard. Ten minutes later they had had the sails set and were getting the anchor up, making harder work of it than when there were half a dozen active sailors to go walking round the capstan. They had put to sea and made all the offing they could to the south-west, for it was from that quarter that Captain Flint was expecting the storm. They, too, had been suddenly shrouded in that copper-coloured cloud and choked with the same red dust from which the diggers had taken refuge in their sleeping-bags. It had been a desperate night. Again and again, even under her much shortened canvas, the Wild Cat had been flung over on her beam-ends by the savage squalls that leapt upon her first from one side and then from another. They had hove her to, only to have the wind swirl round on her quarter and send her burrowing into the confused steep sea before they had had time to bring the headsail once more a-weather. They had felt, far out at sea, blows that shook the timbers of the ship and made them fear for her masts, strange blows that could only be given by some explosive upheaval of the ocean floor. Not one of the three of them, Captain Flint, Peter Duck, and Bill, had had a moment’s rest, and all the time Captain Flint had been saying that with squalls like these, anything might have happened to the camp at Duckhaven.
“I ought not to have left them,” he said. But Peter Duck would have none of that. “They’ve solid earth under their feet,” he said, “and where’d they be, where’d we all be if we’d waited while the Wild Cat was drove ashore? And drove ashore she might easy have been. The anchor’s not made as would hold her in such weather.”
But with the first of the morning light, Captain Flint had clapped on sail to hurry back. He had clapped on sail too soon, in his hurry, and a foresail had been split, two jibs had been blown clean out of their ropes, and both topsails, that Mr Duck had begged him not to set, had burst the moment he had them aloft and drawing. “Hang it all,” Bill had heard him say, “it isn’t even as if they were my own.” For a moment Bill had been puzzled, till he guessed that Captain Flint was talking not of sails but of children.
Anyhow, with the first signs of a lull in the weather, they had been hurrying back to the island, hurrying all the more when, from far away, through the telescope, they saw that something had happened to change the shape of Mount Gibber. From that moment Captain Flint had not said another word. He had stood there, grimly looking forward at the island, and hardly stirring, until at last, in the late afternoon, they had made anchorage. Then, the moment staysail sheets were let fly, and the anchor was down, he had helped in lowering the dinghy overboard, had taken Bill with him and had rowed like a madman for the landing-place. There he had jumped ashore and pushed the dinghy off again.
“Back you go, Bill. You’ve worked like a man last night and I shan’t forget it. Row off now and lend a hand with the sails. I’d not have left Mr Duck to it if it hadn’t been for the others.” And with that Captain Flint had run up the beach and disappeared among the trees.
Bill had rowed back to the Wild Cat. Peter Duck and he had lowered the sails and left them to dry. Then, tired right out, they had dropped into their bunks just as they were, Peter Duck in the deckhouse and Bill down below in his cabin, and had fallen instantly asleep.
They had never seen the black schooner, herself tattered from the storm that had helped her the last few miles of her long voyage, slipping down on the island through the low banks of haze to the north. They had never heard her anchor in the bay. Perhaps it was because he did not want to be heard that Black Jake had lowered a kedge on a silent grass rope instead of dropping his heavy anchor at the end of a few fathoms of noisy chain.
In any case, the first news that Bill had of the coming of the Viper was a bump somewhere outside his cabin and yet close by.
*
Sleepily, Bill stirred in his bunk. A boat that was. Captain Flint back again. Must have forgotten something. Bill turned over. Hardly a muscle in his body was not stiff and aching after his hard work during the storm. Ouch! That hurt him. He stretched out one leg, carefully. But how had the skipper come aboard? Why, Bill had brought the dinghy back himself. Of course it wasn’t the skipper. But what was that dinghy doing, bumping against the ship’s side, knocking off the paint, instead of swinging astern. Change of wind? Another? That was what it must be. He supposed he ought to go on deck and see if all was well, and warn Mr Duck if the schooner was swinging over her anchor. But what was that? The boat was being handed along the ship’s side. Perhaps it was them children back again. But how on earth? Bill waked up suddenly and altogether with the noise of steps on deck. Heavy steps. Men’s voices. Bill had a leg out of his bunk. Yes. Mr Duck was stirring in the deckhouse.
Suddenly he heard the old man’s voice.
“What are you doing there? Off this ship before you’re thrown off!” And then an order shouted to an imaginary crew: “All hands on deck there!”
Bill was out of his bunk in a moment and bolting barefoot for the forehatch. This was no time to wait to put on the shoes he had kicked off as he rolled into his bunk. Up the ladder he scrambled and out on deck.
Three men were on deck at the after end of the vessel. A fourth, with a knife in his mouth, was climbing over the bulwarks. Bill knew him at once for Black Jake’s brother, who was wanted by the police. He knew the others, too; Black Jake himself, Fighting Mogandy, and the ex-convict, Simeon Boon.
THE VIPERS COME ABROAD
“Drop that knife, you fool,” Black Jake was saying. “We want no killings, yet.”
Mogandy, with clenched fists, was crouching by the deckhouse.
The man with the knife was on deck now, and the scarred face of the bruiser from the “Ketch as Ketch Can” showed above the bulwarks.
“Close the forehatch, one of you,” said Black Jake.
But just then Bill heard the old seaman’s voice again. “Come on, now. All hands on deck! Off the ship, you scum!” And the next moment the old man came round the corner of the deckhouse, as if he had a score of men to help him.
“What, are you doing here?” he said, but at that mome
nt the crouching negro shot forward and upward. There was a thud as his fist caught the old seaman’s chin.
“I’m coming, Mr Duck!” cried Bill, and hurled himself, head down, into Mogandy’s stomach. The big negro doubled up with a groan.
A terrific blow caught Bill on the side of the head. Black Jake’s fingers seemed to be meeting through Bill’s shoulders as he twisted him round and lifted him off his feet.
“I reckon I’ll kill you for that,” groaned Mogandy.
“You’ve put the old man out for good,” said Black Jake angrily.
“Let me have a hold of that boy.”
“I’ll deal with the boy,” said Black Jake. “What’s the good of killing … before they’ve done some talking.” He held Bill’s head against the deckhouse and banged it with his fist.
“You, now. Speak up! And sharp. That’s where you went out of the dinghy that day. You wasn’t drowned. You’ll wish you was before we’ve done with you. Speak up, now. Where’s the skipper?”
“Dunno.”
The word was hardly out of his mouth before Black Jake’s fist swung round again, and Bill’s red head crashed into the side of the deckhouse. He dropped, stunned, to the deck.
Someone kicked him fiercely in the ribs.
Dimly he heard voices.
“Who’s done it now? If I knocked out the old man, you’ve killed the boy.”
“Heave ’em over and be done with ’em,” came another voice.
“I want to kill that boy …” Mogandy again.
Bill’s head was pounding like a pile-driver. Up, up, up, up. Bang! Up, up, up, up. Bang! Drowning, he seemed to be, in waves of red mist. Closing over him. For some minutes he knew nothing at all.
He came to himself again with a violent pain in his ankle. Someone had stepped on it and slipped. A heavy boot caught him in the back. What had happened?
“Give him a rope to chew.” That was Boon’s voice, with a grunt at every few words. What was he grunting about? Bill very cautiously looked out from eyes that he kept all but closed.
He found he was lying on the deck by the galley door. Simeon Boon was close by, grunting as he pulled a rope tight and made it fast, grunting as he hove up a heavy body and let it fall, grunting again as he took a new turn with the rope, pulled it tight, and again made fast. The body was that of Peter Duck, and Boon was binding it round and round from head to foot. Black Jake was tying a large loose knot in a stouter piece of rope. He forced the knot into Mr Duck’s mouth, and tied the ends of the rope behind his neck.
“If you won’t talk for me, you won’t for yourself,” he growled, letting the unconscious head fall on the deck.
“What’s the use of all this,” said another voice, that of Mogandy. “Heave ’em over and have done. We know all we want. Ain’t we seen the smoke of their fire? North of your old diggings you said it was. Stands to reason the old man’s told ’em where to dig. While we’re talking here, they’re a-digging up the stuff.”
“We’ve got the guns now,” said the voice of Jake’s brother. “Good ’uns, too.”
“What are we waiting for?” said Mogandy.
“Right,” said Black Jake suddenly. “We’ll wait no more. You, Mogandy, and you, George, come with me. The other two’ll stay to guard the ships. There’s a lot of stuff in here we’ll want before we sink her. And beyond that there’s no sense in sinking her in shallow water. Three’s enough to go across the island. Put it there’s six of ’em. These is all the guns there was. I know that, for I’d a good look at ’em in Lowestoft harbour that time when there was no one aboard. They may have revolvers? What’s revolvers against guns? We can pick ’em off from far away as easy and as safe as shooting squabs in a rookery. Pick ’em off we must, and then, if they haven’t done the digging for us, why, we’ve still got the old man here, if Mogandy hasn’t killed him. We’ll make him talk …”
“Easy, there.” This was a new voice. Bill knew it at once, though he could not see the man. It was the bruiser from the “Ketch as Ketch Can”. The voice was cunning, and suspicious. Bill saw Simeon Boon look up sharply at the first words.
“Easy there. Boon an’ me’s to let you go off with all the guns. We can’t sail the ships an’ well you knows it. We lets you go off with the guns. And then you gets over the other side, an’ how’re we to know what you does there? A bargain, likely, to save trouble, and us knowing nothing of it. Stay here? Not much. We’ll know what’s said, and we’ll know what’s done. Eh, Simeon?”
“Sense, and I says the same.”
Black Jake gave in at once.
“Right,” he said. “I’ll stay here with George, and you three …”
“No, you don’t,” said George. “Not me. I’m for the stuff.”
Not one of them, except Black Jake, was willing to let the others land on the island without him, and not one of the others liked the idea of leaving Black Jake with the ships. Perhaps they feared some trick or other that would leave them at his mercy or helpless, without a navigator.
“Wasting time, we are,” said Mogandy. “We sticks together. These two won’t run away with the ships. Have you got the old fool properly roped?”
At this moment, while the others bent over the body of Peter Duck, bound and helpless as a bale of cotton, Bill staggered to his feet and bolted forward along the deck. Why he did it, he did not know. It was the instinct of a mouse, caught and hurt by a cat, and making its hopeless bid for freedom when the cat lifts its paw.
“Stop him there!” roared Mogandy.
Steps thundered behind him along the deck. Bill dropped on hands and knees down into the forecastle. Someone landed heavily on the top of him. Bill scrambled from under. A terrific grip closed on his shoulder. He was shaken violently. The cat had the mouse again. Bill grabbed at the bars of Gibber’s cage. The door swung open. Black Jake lifted Bill clean off his feet and shook him till he felt his teeth were going to be shaken out of his head. One, at least, had been knocked out already, when Black Jake had banged his head against the deckhouse.
Bill suddenly heard himself shrieking, shrieking at the top of a voice that hardly seemed to be his own. He shrieked and shrieked.
“Yell, will you? We’ll cure that.” Black Jake picked up a great hunk of soap that was lying handy, crammed it into Bill’s mouth so that it all but choked him, and tied a handkerchief across that, so tightly that it forced the soap against the back of his throat, and pulled his lips back almost to his ears.
Bill gasped for breath. He had no time to use his hands. Simeon Boon had come down the ladder after Jake, bringing some rope with him. Bill felt his arms seized, twisted, forced together behind his back, tightly lashed and then held fast while turn after turn of rope was taken about his helpless body.
He was picked up and flung headlong into the straw at the bottom of Gibber’s cage. The gate clanged to. The padlock snapped.
Mogandy’s head showed in the hatch.
“I’m going to kill that boy.”
“Time enough,” said Black Jake. “He’ll be asking you to kill him before I’ve finished with him. Come on, Boon. We’ve the shore gang to settle first.”
Steps went up the ladder. It was suddenly dark. The forehatch closed with a bang. For a few more minutes there was a noise in the saloon. Then slamming of locker doors, steps on deck, and voices. “Both boats. We’re short of one.” “Easy with those guns there.” Boats bumped and scraped against the ship’s side. There was silence.
*
Bill, an aching bundle in the straw at the bottom of Gibber’s cage, managed with a great effort to turn on his face in time to save himself from choking. Soap filled his throat and his nose. The hard lump of it kept his mouth agape. He dribbled soap and blood into the straw. That, at least, was better than swallowing it.
This, he thought, was the end of everything. What had they done to Mr Duck? Was Mr Duck dead? He tried to shout, but he was so well gagged that he could make no noise at all. He lay silent, listening. There was not a soun
d from the deckhouse. They had not thought Mr Duck dead or they would never have roped him up like that. He, too, was lying somewhere, alive, and waiting, like Bill himself, until Black Jake and the crew of the Viper should come back to pay off old scores. And Captain Flint? And them children? What chance had they against men who could not safely leave them alive? The skipper was afraid of nothing. Bill was sure of that. But what could he do against desperate men with guns? And Bill saw the little party of diggers happily talking together on the beach at Duckhaven, while Jake, Mogandy and Simeon Boon, armed with elephant-gun, shotgun, and rifle, stalked them in perfect safety from the cover of the forest. Again he gathered all his strength, as if to shout a warning to them. But in the dark fo’c’sle of the schooner, flat on his face in the monkey’s straw, he knew that he could make no sound, and that even if he could, it would not reach them. He choked again, and tears mingled with the blood and soap that still dribbled from his mouth. He forgot the threats of Black Jake and Mogandy about what they would do to himself, and thought only of what might at any moment be happening to them children. The able-seaman he thought of, and Cap’n Nancy, whom he had made seasick with that old tale of the bacon fat and the bit of string. They had always stood his friends. And what would happen to them now if those cut-throats laid hands on them? Down in the dark fo’c’sle Bill lay helpless and fairly blubbered into the straw.
*
It seemed to him that he had been lying there for ages, though it can hardly have been much more than an hour, when his thoughts were brought sharply back to his own peril. He heard a faint shout, not so very far away. Had the pirates changed their minds? Were they coming back already? Had he slept? “Worse than killing,” Black Jake had promised him, and, in such things as these, Black Jake, Bill knew, was one to keep his word.
There was again a bump against the side of the ship.
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