by Jules Verne
"The rascals are a bit too familiar!" the boatswain murmured. "They don't only not ask your leave –"
"Can they have a canoe on the beach, and are they going to fish along the shore?" said Captain Gould.
"We'll soon find out, Skipper," John Block replied.
The three men returned to their companions. Then they went down a little path bordered with a stout thorn hedge, which ran along the right of the Falconhurst river and passed on to the sea.
They were in sight until they reached the cutting through which the river flowed to its outlet into Flamingo Bay.
But as soon as they turned to the left, they became invisible, and would only be seen again if they put out to sea. It was probable there was a boat upon the beach—probable, too, that they generally used it for fishing near Falconhurst.
While Captain Gould and John Block remained on the watch, Jenny controlled her grief and asked Fritz:
"What ought we to do, dear?"
Fritz looked at his wife, not knowing what to answer.
"We are going to decide what we ought to do," Captain Gould declared. "But to begin with, it is idle to remain on this balcony, where we are in danger of being discovered."
When they were all together in the room, while Bob, who was tired by his long march, slept in a little closet next to it, Fritz answered his wife's question:
"No, Jenny dear—all hope is not lost of finding our people. It is possible that they were not taken by surprise. Father and Mr. Wolston are sure to have seen the canoes in the distance. They may have had time to take refuge in one of the farms, or even in the heart of the woods at Pearl Bay, where these savages would not have ventured. We saw no trace of them when we left the hermitage at Eberfurt, after we crossed the canal. My opinion is that they have not moved away from the coast."
"That is my opinion, too," said Captain Gould, "and I believe that M. Zermatt and Mr. Wolston have got away with their families."
"Yes, I am sure of it!" said Jenny positively. "Dolly, dear—Susan—don't lose heart! Don't cry any more! We shall see them all again!"
The young woman spoke so stoutly that she brought back hope to them. Fritz shook her hand.
"It is God who speaks through your lips, Jenny dear!" he said.
On consideration, indeed, as Captain Gould insisted, it was hardly to be supposed that Rock Castle could have been surprised by attacking natives, for they could not have brought their canoes by night to land which they did not know. It must have been by daylight that they arrived, and some of the islanders must surely have seen them far enough off to have had time to take refuge in some other part of the island.
"And then again," Fritz .added, "if these natives landed only recently, our people may not have been at Rock Castle at all. This is the season when we usually visit all the farms. Although we did not meet them at the hermitage at Eberfurt last night, they may be at Wood Grange, or Prospect Hill, or at Sugarcane Grove, in the midst of those thick woods."
"Let us go to Sugar-cane Grove first," Frank suggested.
"We can do that," John Block assented; "but not before night.''
"Yes, now, at once, at once!" Frank insisted, declining to listen to argument. "I can go alone. About twelve miles there, and twelve miles back; I shall be back in four hours, and we shall know what we are about."
"No, Frank, no!" said Fritz. "I do beg you not to leave us. It would be most foolish. If need be, I order you not to, and I am your elder brother."
"Would you stop me, Fritz?"
"I would deter you from doing anything so rash."
"Frank, Frank!" said Dolly entreatingly.
"Do please listen to your brother! Frank! I beseech you!''
But Frank was set on his plan.
"Very well!" said the boatswain, who thought it his duty to interfere. "Since a search is to be made, let us make it without waiting until night. But why should we not all go together to Sugar-cane Grove?"
"Then come along!" said Frank.
"But," the boatswain went on, addressing Fritz, "is it really Sugar-cane Grove that we ought to make for?"
"Where else?" Fritz asked.
"Rock Castle!" John Block answered.
The name, thus unexpectedly dropped into the discussion, altered the whole course of it.
Rock Castle? After all, if M. Zermatt and Mr. Wolston and their wives and children had fallen into the hands of the natives, and if their lives had been spared, it was there that they would be, for the smoke proved that Rock Castle was occupied.
"Go to Rock Castle, eh?" Captain Gould replied. "All right; but go there all together.''
"All together? No,'' said Fritz?" only two or three of us, and after dark."
"After dark?" Frank began again, more set than ever upon his idea. "I am going to Rock Castle now."
"And how do you expect in broad daylight to escape the savages who are prowling round about it?" Fritz replied. "And if you do escape them, how will you get into Rock Castle, if they are there at the time?"
"I don't know, Fritz. But I shall find out if our people are there, and when I have found out I will, come back!"
"My dear Frank," Captain Gould said, "I quite understand your impatience, and I sympathise with it. But do give way to us in this matter; it is only common prudence that makes us think as we do. If the savages get you, the hunt will be up; they will come to look for us, and there won't be any more safety for us, either at Wood Grange or anywhere else."
At last they succeeded in making Frank listen to reason. He had to bow to the authority of one who already perhaps was the head of the family.
So it was decided that they should wait, and that as soon as darkness permitted Frank and the boatswain should leave Falconhurst. It was better that two should make this reconnaissance, fraught with many dangers. They would glide along the quickset hedge that bordered the avenue, and both would try to get to Jackal River. If the drawbridge were withdrawn to the other bank, they would swim across the river and attempt to sret into the court-yard of Rock Castle through the orchard. It would be easy to see through one of the windows if the families were shut up inside. If they were not, Prank and John Block would come back at once to Falconhurst, and they would all try to get to Sugar-cane Grove before daylight.
Never did the hours drag by more slowly! Never had Captain Gould and his companions been more profoundly dejected—not even when the boat was cast adrift upon an unknown sea, not even when it was smashed upon the rocks in Turtle Bay, not even when the shipwrecked company, with three women and a child amongst them, saw themselves threatened by winter on a desert coast, shut in a prison whence they could not escape!
In the midst of all those trials they had, at least, been free from anxiety on account of those in New Switzerland! Whereas, now, they had found the island in the power of a horde of natives, and did not know what had become of their relatives and friends; but had good ground for fearing that they might all have perished in a massacre!
Slowly the day wore on. Every now and then one or other of them, generally Fritz and the boatswain, climbed up among the branches of the mangrove in order to search the country and the sea. What they were most anxious to ascertain was whether the savages were still in the neighbourhood of Falconhurst, or had gone back to Rock Castle. But they could see nothing, except, towards the south, near the mouth of Jackal River, the little column of smoke rising above the rocks.
Up to four o'clock in the afternoon nothing happened to change the situation. A meal was prepared from the stores in the house.
When Frank and John Block came back they might all have to set out for Sugar-cane Grove, and that would be a long march.
Suddenly a report was heard.
"What is that?" Jenny exclaimed, and Fritz drew her back as she was hastening to one of the windows.
"Could it have been a gun?" Frank asked.
"It was a gun!" the boatswain exclaimed.
"But who fired it?" Fritz said.
"A ship off the island, do yo
u think?" James suggested.
"The Unicorn, perhaps!" Jenny cried.
"Then she must be very near the island," John Block remarked, "for that report was close at hand."
'' Come to the balcony, come to the balcony!'' Frank cried excitedly.
"Let us be careful not to be seen, for the savages must be on the alert," Captain Gould cautioned them.
All eyes were turned towards the sea.
No ship was to be seen, although, judging from the nearness of the report, it must have been off Whale Island. All that the boatswain could see was a single canoe, manned by two men, which was trying to get in from the open sea to the beach at Falconhurst.
"Can they be Ernest and Jack?" Jenny whispered.
"No," Fritz answered, "those two men are natives, and the canoe is a pirogue."
"But why are they running away like that?" Frank asked. "Can there be someone after them?"
Fritz uttered a cry—a cry of joy and surprise combined.
He had just seen a bright flash in the middle of a white smoke, and almost simultaneously there was a second report which made the echoes ring round the coast.
At the same time a ball, skimming the surface of the bay, threw up a great jet of water a couple of fathoms away from the canoe, which continued to fly at full speed towards Falconhurst.
"There! There!" shouted Fritz. "Father and Mr. Wolston and all of them are there— on Shark's Island!"
It was, indeed, from that island that the first report had come, as well as the second with the ball aimed at the pirogue. No doubt the islanders had found refuge under the protection of the battery which the savages did not venture to approach. Above it was the red and white flag of New Switzerland, while on the topmost peak in all the island floated the British flag!
Impossible to depict the joy, the delirium to which those so lately in despair now abandoned themselves! And their emotions were shared by those true comrades, Captain Gould and the boatswain.
There was no further idea of going to Rock Castle; they would leave Falconhurst only to go—how, they did not know—to Shark's Island. If only it had been possible to communicate with it by signals from the top of the mangrove, to wave a flag to which the flag on the battery might reply! But that might have been unwise, unwise too, to fire a few shots with the pistol, for, though these might be heard by M. Zermatt, they might also be heard by the savages, if they were still prowling about Falconhurst.
It was most important that they should not know of the presence of Captain Gould and his party, for these could not have withstood a combined attack by all the savages now in possession of Rock Castle.
"Our position is a good one now," Fritz remarked; "don't let us do anything to compromise it."
"Quite so,'' Captain Gould replied. "Since we have not been discovered, don't let us run any risk of it. Let us wait until night before we do anything."
"How will it be possible to get to Shark's Island?" Jenny asked.
"By swimming," Fritz declared. "Yes; I can swim there all right. And since father must have fled there in the long boat, I will bring back the long boat to take you all over."
"Fritz,—dear!" Jenny could not refrain from protesting. "Swim across that arm of the sea?"
"Mere sport for me, dear wife, mere sport!" the intrepid fellow answered.
"Perhaps the niggers' canoe is still upon the beach," John Block suggested.
Evening drew on, and a little after seven o'clock it was dark, for night follows day with hardly any interval of twilight in these latitudes.
About eight o'clock the time had come, and it was arranged that Fritz and Frank and the boatswain should go down into the yard. They were to satisfy themselves that the natives were not hanging about anywhere near, and then were to venture down to the shore. In any case, Captain Gould, James Wolston, Jenny, Dolly and Susan were to wait at the foot of the tree for a signal to join them.
So the three crept down the staircase. They had not dared to light a lantern lest its light should betray them.
There was no one in the house below, nor in the out-houses. What had to be found out now was whether the men who had come during the day had gone back to Rock Castle, or if they were on the beach for which the canoe had made.
Caution was still necessary. Fritz and John Block decided to go down to the shore by themselves, while Frank remained on guard near the entrance to the yard, ready to run in if any danger threatened Falconhurst.
The two men went out of the palisade and crossed the clearing. Then they slid from tree to tree for a couple of hundred yards, listening, and peering, until they reached the narrow cutting between the last rocks, against which the waves broke.
The beach was deserted, and so was the sea as far as the cape, the outlines of which could just be seen in the eastward. There were no lights either in the direction of Rock Castle, or on the surface of Deliverance Bay. A single mass of rock loomed up a couple of miles out at sea.
It was Shark's Island.
"Come on," said Fritz.
"Ay, ay," John Block replied.
They went down to the sandy shore, whence the tide was receding.
They would have shouted for joy if they had dared. A canoe was there, lying on its side.
It was the pirogue which the battery had greeted with a couple of shots from its guns.
"A lucky thing that they missed it!" John Block exclaimed. "If they hadn't, it would be at the bottom now. If it was Mr. Jack or Mr. Ernest who was such a bad shot, we will offer him our congratulations!''
This little boat, of native construction and worked by paddles, could only hold five or six people. Captain Gould and his party numbered eight, and a child, to be rowed to Shark's Island. True, the distance was only a bare two miles.
"Well, we will pack in somehow," John Block said; "we mustn't have to make two trips."
"Besides," Fritz added, "in another hour the flood tide will make itself felt, and as it sets towards Deliverance Bay, not very far from Shark's Island, it will not be a very big job for us to get there."
"Everything is for the best," the boatswain replied, "and that is beginning to become evident."
There was no question of pushing the boat down to the sea; it would take the water of its own accord, directly the flood tide overtook it. John Block satisfied himself that it was firmly moored and was in no danger of drifting out to sea.
Then both went up the beach again into the avenue, and rejoined Frank, who was waiting for them in the court-yard.
Informed of what they had found, he was overjoyed. Fritz left him with the boatswain to keep watch over the entrances to the yard.
The news he brought made joy upstairs.
About half past nine all went down to the foot of the mangrove tree.
Frank and John Block had seen nothing suspicious. Silence reigned round Falconhurst. The slightest sound could have been heard, for there was not a breath of air.
With Fritz and Frank and Captain Gould in front, they crossed the court-yard and the clearing, and filing under cover of the trees in the avenue they reached the beach.
It was as deserted as it had been two hours before.
The flood tide had already lifted the boat, which was floating at the end of its rope. Nothing now remained but to get into it, unmoor it, and push off into the current.
Jenny, Dolly, Susan, and the child immediately took their places in the stern. The others crouched between the seats, and Fritz and Frank took the paddles.
It was just ten o'clock, and, as there was no moon, they hoped they might get across unseen.
In spite of the great darkness, they would have no difficulty in making straight for the island.
The moment the pirogue was caught by the current it was carried towards it.
All kept silence. Not a word was exchanged, even under breath. Every heart was gripped by excitement.
The flood tide could not be relied upon to take them straight to Shark's Island. About a mile from the shore it bore away towar
ds the mouth of Jackal River, to run up Deliverance Bay.
So Fritz and Frank paddled vigorously towards the dark mass of rock, where no sound or light could be detected.
But someone would certainly be on guard within the battery. "Was there not a danger of the canoe being seen and shot at, under the misapprehension that the savages were making an attempt to get possession of the island under cover of the night?
Actually, the boat was not more than five or six cables' length away when a light flashed out at the spot where the guns stood under their shed.
