The Isle of Seven Moons/Chapter 34
CHAPTER XXXIV
ON THE TRAIL AGAIN
Sally had spent the long afternoon gazing offshore for a sight of the longboat, or watching the still motionless needles of masts pricking the sky above the headland that guarded South Harbour. So slowly passed the time, it seemed to her mind, stored with the Biblical lore of her childhood, as if the onward march of the sun had again been halted by the old warrior of Israel, while he advanced towards the white walls of the cloud city in the west.
But no mighty trumpets rang. Everything was so still. Sometimes, startled by the mere whisper of the trees back of the tent, the crackle of a twig as a heavily freighted armadillo moved or a serpent glided into the underbrush, she turned her head in alarm towards the wood. They were all harmless sounds, but her nerves and imagination, tuned to higher than concert pitch by the events of the night, translated them into voices of the spirits of the isle, or the footfalls of the murderers themselves, bent on some further deeds of darkness.
The gypsy, seeing her distraction, forbore from his depressing auguries and tried to cheer her with new tales and improvised songs, while Yeo drowsed before the tent, but the taut nerves would not relax.
But that last time she had turned towards the mysterious wood—the sun hung just a hand's breadth above the sea-line then—her imagination had not tricked her. A human form was brushing aside the branches that over-arched the once-clear pathway. Some relief she felt when she recognized the giant mute Alexandre, but the shambling gait of his weak-hinged knees and huge splay feet was hurried, and he kept glancing in fear back at the thicket from which he had just emerged.
With uncouth gibberings he handed her a slip of paper, the unaddressed side of a long envelope, and the girl thought she could read the reason of his fear in the message, hastily scrawled thereon:
"Come quickly—I am dying.
- Larone."
With a strong effort of the will, she controlled her trembling nerves, told Spanish Dick of the message, and unheeding his protests, followed the black into the shadows. She had gone but a hundred yards through the green gloom of the forest when she stopped short at a gutteral sound of terror from her shaking guide. She looked around, but at first saw nothing to arouse his apprehension, only a gay cockatoo on a branch above their heads, squawking and ruffling his vermilion and azure feathers while he gazed down in curiosity at the thicket beside the path.
Angrily tossing off her own fears, she started to pass the rooted black, when she almost ran into the object of his terror protruding from the thicket—a long, slender, cylindrical thing. Promptly her heart went as cold as that rifle-barrel itself.
Behind her someone laughed, she felt her arms seized, and a thick scarf was bound swiftly across her mouth and jerked into a vicious knot—a needless precaution, for she could not have screamed just then if her lips had been free.
Darting this way and that, her eyes gathered in the figures of the group around her,—the tall, dark man she feared, the pink-complexioned one with the tow scalp and the red undershirt, and behind them, the sullen face of Phil, and the bowlegged old fellow, now with a hasty bandage across his left shoulder, and grinning as wickedly as one of Rip van Winkle s bearded bowlers when the pins go crashing for a thunderous strike.
Rapidly she was pushed on through the tangle into a break, where the five held council.
The Pink Swede and the Old Man returned toward the camp, as the others, with the prisoner, travelled in the same general direction, but at an angle to the path, deflecting to the north of it. Forty yards from the grove where her own tent had been pitched, they released her from bonds and gag—a queer manœuvre which she could not understand. For a moment she stood irresolute. Then gathering herself together she made a dash for freedom, crying, very foolishly as she afterwards learned:
"Dick, Dick, look out!"
No sooner was the warning uttered than she was seized again by her amused captors, bound and gagged as before. Even as she struggled she could see the barefooted gypsy, running with a smooth roly-poly gait, like that of the under sized Italian labourers that work on our ditches, straight towards the underbrush, cocking his rifle as he ran. A little to the west, she thought she heard the thicket crackling under the feet of someone—probably Yeo—a cry, then no more.
They forced her back through a labyrinth of vines and bushes into the heart of the forest, not pausing until they reached a naturally fortified glen, where they found Pete on guard, half way, she reckoned, not as the crow flies but on an angle, from the Cape to the headland. The fastness was well-buttressed by giant trees, equipped with a chevaux de frise by the thicket and interlacing vines, and darkened even at noontide by their heavy cordage and the thick foliage overhead. Now the only illumination was the flame licking up the pile of fagots, over which the old man raised three pronged sticks like the poles of a wigwam, suspending a rusty kettle from their juncture.
A little later the two huskies returned, one with a box, a slab of bacon, and a shoulder of ham, under his arms, the other with two gunny sacks of provisions slung over his back.
"A lead-pipe cinch," Pete reported. "He fell for it like a sucking baby."
The series of manœuvres was easily analysed now,—the message, borne by the impressed black had been a decoy, those sacks and cases prizes from her own camp, lifted while the gypsy searched the underbrush after her warning. For some queer whim of their own, they had not killed him. It would have been very easy. Perhaps they wanted to play on the sailor-superstitions of the crew. Of course she could not guess that the yacht had been taken as hostage, and that she herself had just been kidnapped in reprisal.
All food she refused, and sat reclining against a pile of cut boughs on the outskirts of the camp. Once she let her hand, now free of the thongs, grope underneath the leaves. She felt something hard, and her fingers, feeling along the surface, lighted on a padlock.
The chest!
She had found it again but to what avail now?
Bound around it were iron chains, and through them thrust two three-inch tree butts, by which they had carried it on their shoulders, leaving no furrows after they left the sand. Evidently they had returned after depositing the chest here, and had trampled down bushes and grasses to make the false trail which Ben and the sailor had followed, leading to nowhere.
Suddenly she recalled that other form which she had seen in the dawn, bolstered up against the driftwood log. She sprang up, passed to the other side of the fire, and watched the three precious blackguards eating so ravenously that they reminded her of jackals she had once seen feeding behind the iron bars in a zoölogical garden. Their leader was as cool as ever and quite as fastidious—the more dangerous for that, she thought, and Phil was far more slovenly and gross than in the old debonair days. His face was inflamed, the eyes swollen and heavy-lidded.
"Drinking more than's good for him," she commented to herself.
Her one-time fiancé came over and lounged carelessly beside her.
"As your friend Ralph Waldo says, 'it's a small world after all.'"
She did not answer and he tried another tack.
"Well, Miss Sally Fell, the shoe's on the other foot now."
Again no response and, angered, he rasped out:
"That was a mean trick you played on me last month."
Last month! Was it only as far behind them as that? Years had passed, she would have said—almost a lifetime. Still, even though she had acted according to her convictions, her Puritan conscience troubled her a little; she felt pity for the boy she had—yes, jilted—there was no other word—and at the very altar. How like an old play it had all been, but a play without any humour at all. Perhaps she was responsible, in part, for his flight, and, most of all, his moral disintegration, so evident now.
"I was awfully sorry, Phil, but you know when I became engaged to you, Rogers had brought back word that Ben had been lost. I promised Ben first, so when that message came in the bottle, what could I do but go?"
"You might better have stayed with me. A pretty mess you re in now."
"What are you doing with these criminals anyway?" she retorted. "They're nothing but thieves and murderers."
"Look out—they'll hear. It wasn't my fault. I couldn't help myself."
"Why don't you leave them? You can get to the North Star and help me escape."
"I will if"
"If what?" Her question had a suspicious note.
"If you'll make good your promise to me."
"You can't mean what you're saying; you've been drinking, but you can't have fallen as low as that."
"You've got it coming, Sally Fell, after the way you've treated me."
"In Salthaven, we always considered the Huntingtons gentlemen."
"And a perfect hundred per cent lady always keeps her promise. Come, Sally, you know way down in your heart I could give you a better time, make you happier, than Ben Boltwood."
He reached towards her but she recoiled.
"Keep your hands to yourself, Philip Huntington."
"Just as you say, Miss Prisms and Prunes—but you'd better think twice—. Come, Sally, be a good fellow—just say the word and I'll see that you're safe."
"No, hard as your friends look, I'd rather trust them."
"Thanks," he bowed maliciously. "That's going some, but you'll change your mind—in the morning—after"
"After what?"
"Never mind, you'll see."
"My answer will be the same—even if it means death."
He left her, and soon four of the five figures were stretched at full length in various postures around the glen, MacAllister keeping watch silently by the fire.
Every once in a while he abstractedly stirred the embers, sending a little fiery nebula of sparks to the arching roof of the trees.
Like all who gaze into the red heart of a fire, whether on the hearthstone or in the forest glen, he seemed to be seeing visions, evil, perhaps, but very absorbing, in the pantomime of the dancing flames. A smile flicked across his features like the cruel lash of a whip, and she knew then that here was the murderer of Old Joe. His hand might not have dealt the blow, but his cold, calculating engine of a brain had furnished the motive-power.
The flames died down at last, and then, glancing at the men, now deep in slumber, the girl feigning hers perfectly, he rose and went over to the chest, lifted the concealing boughs, cautiously unwound the chains, and raised the lid. As much of emotion as those cold features would ever show, they revealed now in the gloating expression, as he sifted the shining beauties between his fingers.
"The best day's work I ever did—or night's either," she heard him mutter.
Closing the lid, he examined his automatic and resumed his watch, while she sank into real slumbers at last.
In the morning, before sunup, a breakfast, cold for fear now of betraying smoke, was eaten hastily, and this time Sally accepted her own portion for strength against the unknown trials of the day.
All traces of the fire were scattered, then, well-guarded by Nature as was the place, for further security they disengaged vines from the tree-trunks and trailed them over the chest and the sacks which they had brought from the yacht to convey thither the gold. In front they rolled boulders, and when their work was finished, under the gambler's direction, no trace of the iron was visible.
As the old man was patting the last creeper into place, like a "counterpane over the gold babies," he said, he suddenly stood mute and transfixed.
All eyes were bent on the leafy screen from which a little wriggling fork darted, behind, a flat spear-head and full three feet of muscle and gristle, coiled for the deadly spring.
Something whirred through the air—it was not the deadly forked thing, for this had the flash of steel. The knife pierced the adder's head just behind the poison wells in its throat, and pinioned the whole squirming length against the tree.
The gambler's nerveless hands were expert at many things besides stacking cards. Not for nothing had he swallowed swords and outlined the form of the painted lady with whirling knives, that year in the dime museum in Frisco.
Such hairtrigger accuracy was terrifying. Sally thought of that other knife she had seen, twenty-four hours before—the reddened one—and shuddered.
What was he saying?
"Old Timer, the good Book says 'thou shalt not covet,'" he quoted sardonically. "It grieves me to see how thou'st forgotten the Ten Commandments and all my holy teachings."
And the Pink Swede in turn jeered the maddened old man.
"Ay tank you ban tam fool. The whisky you always pack, she breed snakes like rabbits."
After another whispered council, in which her ears, sharpened by fear, distinguished one question of Pete's,—"Why don't you leave 'er here, Cap, with the chest," and the reply: "No, they've captured the yacht, and we can't pack too much baggage, she's safer up there," the gambler and Phil left the camp, Pete and the Swede standing guard. Her mouth was swathed in the scarf again, and she was dispatched northward with the wicked old man as her guide. At first she was glad that it was not the gambler.
Up the mountain slope he drove her, through its forest-covered sides, past the haunted house, a glimpse of whose forlorn walls she caught as they toiled upwards, then among the ragged rocks and sulphurous saucers pocking the scarred face of the mountain below the crater, and boiling feverishly now. Thick murky scarfs of vapour swathed their yellowed lips, as that silken gag muffled her own, and wandered disconsolate over the whole area.
Over the divide they passed and zigzagged down to the brink of the gorge. Northward she could see the spars and masts of the North Star beautifully pencilled against the turquoise of the sky, and not far away, the graceful lines of the yacht, all like a cheerful painting in bright water colours.
Above, the black ostrich plume had expanded to four times the size when first she saw it, and near it, that black speck upon the blue sank and grew as it sank, like the evil thing of her dreams, until she could once more distinguish the wide stretched wings of the waiting buzzard.
Where was he taking her? To the yacht? No, they said it had been captured, and when they reached the frail bridge by the waterfall, they turned to the west and the sea-wall. Her hands were free, so, remembering some stories she had read of the expedients of other sorely-pressed heroines, she untied the red sailor's knot from the V of her middy-blouse, and dropped it upon the trail. But the trick did not work as in the old tales, for a gust of wind came whirling along and blew it over the brink.
The sheer distance to the bottom, and a sudden query flashing across her mind, dizzied her. Had they discovered that cavern? Was it there that the old man was leading her? Up till now she had been "game"—but to stay in that awful place with those evil men—that would be beyond her strength. Almost she was tempted to follow the dancing ribbon which fluttered like a gorgeous butterfly above the veil of the cascade, until, caught in the white meshes, it vanished.
They reached the sea-wall and the beginning of the perilous path. She was desperate.
"Old Man-whatever-is-your-name, I won't go a step farther."
"All right, Miss, if you think those rocks down there would make a nice soft bed for your pretty flesh."
He spat down into the gorge, then grasping her arm with one hand, with the other forced her head over the edge until she stared down into the cauldron seething around the rocks at the foot of the cliff.
"Take a good squint, sissy. It's a nice little drop, ain't it now?"
She writhed back from his grasp, glanced around for help that was nowhere near, and saw the North Star again. The sight of the buoyant ship somehow steadied her. Perhaps, after all, Ben and Cap'n Harve would come. She would wait and pray.
The old man snarled out something, and so, with fingers clutching at crevices in the sea-wall, and listing against its sides all the way to maintain her balance against the threatening winds, she essayed the perilous path once more.
She closed her eyes when she stepped over the mound in the mouth of the cavern, still she did not advance far into its darkness, but sat near the opening where she could see that circle of blue, the only thing in that desolate place which told of hope.
The old man crouched down nearby, chewing ferociously and exercising his marksmanship on the vaulted walls. Now the skeleton seemed to delight his ghoulish fancy, and he began a ribald conversation with the old freebooter of long ago, whose sins could not have been redder or more numerous than his own. They were kindred souls; if the theory of reincarnation were only true, he might have been addressing the remains of his former self.
"Have a swig, my hearty," he hailed his new comrade, taking the skull in his hand and forcing the flask between the rows of teeth, after applying it to his own.
"G— blast me hide if ye ain't a good mate, ye grinning deathshead! Ye ain't no kill-joy nuther, but a cheery . Many's the cup o' good wine ye've swallered, and blood i' the bargain, I ll warrant. Come wet your whistle again. Here's happy days!"
With a deep draught he pledged the toast.
"And here's wishin' ye luck in yer little game with the Devil tonight."
Stoppering the flask, he leered at the girl.
"There's a pretty bridegroom for ye, my gal," then addressing again the thing in his hand, "How'd ye like to be spliced to this lass, me lad?"
Crouching, she retreated toward the inner chamber. Awful as it was, it could hold no worse terrors than that evil old man with the flask and the skull. But he followed, continuing his ghastly soliloquy.
"What right good bedfellows yu'd make. Her with her red cheeks and ye with yer old yaller bones."
The ballast of whisky suddenly shifted in his wicked old brain and his mirth changed to anger at her.
"Come, you close-mouthed jade, swing yer clapper. Yur sour-faced sweetheart on the ship below would only beat ye, and the Chesterfield Kid's only a quarter o' a man. Jilt 'em both, I say."
He thrust the jowl nearer her face.
"Now here's the proper bridegroom for ye. Won't never lay a finger on ye. Just give ye them soul-kisses ye read about, warm enough to yer way o' thinkin'?
"Come, a good kiss for the handsum bridegroom."
Again he lifted the skull towards her face. The grinning thing was within an inch of her blanching lips. A scream rent the air, and she sank unconscious on the floor of the cavern.
And then there was a long tremor as if the whole island sighed to its very depths, followed by a more violent spasm. The floor of the cavern shook. Fragments fell from the roof, one crimsoning the temple of the prostrate girl, and the great birds of the night, startled from their brooding, flew from the dark recesses with weird and horrible cries.
The tremor subsided, but the old wretch dropped the skull and sank on the floor, praying in rabid fear to some unseen power—he knew not on whom to call.