The Popular Magazine/Volume 72/Number 1/The Crusader's Casket/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
THERE is no place on the globe like Venice en fête. There is no place where the citizens of a city give themselves over so whole-heartedly to a festival as in that ancient republic, that once imperial ruler of the seas, the “Queen of the Adriatic.” And there is no more generally attended fête than that commemorating the deliverance from the great plague, which has been celebrated every year at the same time, with but a short lapse, since 1537—nearly four hundred years. That “Feast of the Ascension and Nuptials of the Sea” instituted in 991, wherein the state barge manned by forty-two oars, guarded by one hundred and sixty-eight of the most valiant noblemen and knights, conveyed the reigning doge out to that point beyond the Lido where in the name of Venice he cast a flashing ring into the waves and uttered the formula: “Desponsamus te, in signum perpetuique veri dominii”—“We marry thee, O sea, in sign of absolute dominion”—has long since been lost. The “Feast of the Dogaressa” when the wife of the doge was crowned and, clad in robes gorgeously embroidered with priceless jewels, led a stately procession, reached its height of glory about the time when Columbus discovered America, and then gradually became forgotten. Likewise the “Feast of the Marys,” when twelve little girls gayly dressed were rowed in a state barge through the principal canals, has been obsolete since the fourteenth century. But the “Feast of the Redeemer” dies not, and each year takes on greater dignity and—greater celebration.
Captain Jimmy listened to Pietro's explanation of this on their eventful night, the guide having for the moment become poet quite as inconsequentially as if the decorated launch in which they rode had no other purpose than to mingle with the thousands of other craft that passed ceaseslessly to and fro on the great waterways. Scores of them had music aboard, and nearly every one had its singer. Now and then a gorgeous and highly illuminated barge passed with something akin to a small opera company and a full-sized orchestra to furnish harmonious accompaniment. The stately old palaces along the banks were illumined and some had great garlands of flowers trailing from roof to water. Everything was lazy movement, softened light, and romance. Throughout the balmy summer night it would continue, but it could be depended upon to be at its best between the hours of eleven and one in the morning, after which time the more sedate retired to their homes.
And the party on the swan boat waited with increasing tension for the first propitious hour. They stared at each other expectantly when the great bells of the Campanile, that slender, lighted shaft that loomed up above the gray old city as if seeking the stars, mellowly struck eleven o'clock.
“You are still determined to go, are you?” Jimmy asked the girl, who had listened with slightly parted lips and face aglow with excitement.
“Of course I am! You don't think I'd come clear across the Atlantic to weaken at the last moment, do you?” she asked.
“No, I don't think you would,” he replied soberly. “Well, I suppose its time for action and—you said you had your plans well worked out.”
She laughed a trifle nervously, he thought, and leaned forward and spoke to Pietro who was riding forward beside the man at the wheel, and Pietro in turn spoke to his kinsman, who gave the wheel a turn and, still at the same leisurely pace, swung the boat around and headed for one of the rios. He slowed down as they entered it until they crept beneath a stone bridge of the Schiavi at a most sedate pace and moved quietly, almost noiselessly, into the dark depths. After the lights of the Grand Canal and the fête the way seemed dark, gloomy, and dangerously narrow. As they progressed in a constantly increasing tension Jimmy was pleased to observe that they passed neither gondola nor other craft. Tommie too noticed it and exultantly called his attention to their good fortune.
“See,” she said quietly, “Pietro was right. This entire part of the city is practically deserted to-night. We shall go to a turn not far from the palace of that dreadful old man, where we shall find a gondola moored. Pietro, you and I will transfer to that, and Pietro will row us to the place. Then, if we can get it, as I am almost certain we can, I shall go and you and Pietro will wait for me, or until you hear an alarm.”
“It sounds good,” was all Jimmy said, but he had already made up his mind that her plan must suffer alteration.
The launch made another turn and stopped in the shadows of buildings that by their darkness and gloominess suggested that in hours of daylight they were used for factories or warehouses, and here, in the dusk of a long-disused entrance, they came to a halt beside a gondola. Slim and sinister it looked in that gloom, its black sides as dark as the shadows in which it rested. A switch clicked and the lights of the launch were extinguished. Quickly and somewhat excitedly Pietro stepped across to the gondola and felt for its mooring rope, while Jimmy followed, gave his hand to the girl, and helped her to a seat. The poet-guide loosened the boat, stood erect with the long oar in his hand and asked quietly, “All ready, signorina?”
“Yes, Pietro,” she said and then turned to her motor driver with, “You remember everything, don't you? That you are to be ready to start at an instant's notice, and that you are to remain here without fail, no matter what happens, until one of us comes?”
“Si, si, signorina. You may depend upon me.”
“Go ahead, Pietro,” she commanded as calmly as if they were bent on nothing more than an innocent excursion, and Pietro threw his vigorous young weight against the long oar, poised on the footboard, took a step backward and thrust the slender gondola past the launch and into the unruffled waters of the dark and narrow canal. He reached a sharp turn and with an apparently effortless motion swung the high prow outward, then sidewise, cleared a wall by a foot, and Jimmy saw that they had entered a long waterway on each side of which tier on tier of window boxes filled with fragrant plants, and walls cumbered with flowering creepers that seemed gently asleep, could be dimly discerned beneath the more open light of the high stars.
He peered at his companion whose dark dress made but a vague outline against the bordering darkness. Her face in profile showed pale and cleantly cut. Her chin was thrust forward and her head held high and purposefully. He could not avoid the admiring thought that “blood will tell!” and wondered if that long-dead Yancey Powell who had fought so desperately in this same ancient old city, and had so valorously escaped when the fight was done, might not have looked as she looked, some time, on perhaps this same rio. Colonel Yancey was dead, but the same buildings looked down on the same quiet stretch of waters then as now, and for centuries before had done the same. A masterful spirit with high and chivalrous aims had been then reviewed by these grim old watchers that stood like sentinels guarding their waterway, but they could have observed nothing more brave and daring of that fighting stock than on this quiet night. A Powell had come and gone. A Powell had come again, to dare again, to go again—if the luck of the day was with her! Suddenly Ware saw in this queer quest something as big and fine, if of less importance, as was ever the quest of the Grail. It meant as much to the girl at his side as ever the quest of the Grail to those crusaders of old. They had ventured into strange, distant and hard lands; but so had she. They had dared much, but their daring was no greater than hers. His heart warmed toward her until he yearned to take from her weaker shoulders this perilous task, and if it came, endure for her the burden of defeat. The proposed robbery of his own kinsman no longer appeared like a foolish burglary, but as something great beyond words. They were going out to rob a castle, he and she, and the dragon, his kinsman, was the enemy.
His meditations were ended by a backwash of the long, skillfully wielded oar that brought the slender gondola to a slow halt. They crept, under way, beneath a grated window but a few feet above, a window through which centuries past the armed sentries of powerful noblemen might have stood constant watch against enemy attack. It was unlighted, dark, moss covered.
“This is the window, signorina,” Pietro whispered as he reached upward, clutched the bars, and brought the gondola to a dead stop.
Gentle waves rippled past, washed against the gray walls, and quieted. The flowering creepers, water laved, swayed gently, and again came to rest. They had the stillness of the night, the serenity of the stars, the placidity of waters around them and from none of the dark old buildings about them came a light, or a sound.
“Good, go ahead with it,” the girl murmured, standing up, and Pietro clutched his fingers into the moss and handed backward a huge stone.
“Here! Let me take that,” Jimmy whispered, as he thrust himself in front of her and accepted it in his hands and quietly lowered it over the edge of the gondola so that it sank noiselessly into the water.
“Pietro has made many trips here in the night,” the girl whispered as the work of demolition went on. “All that he has been afraid of is that some one might discover it in the daytime. But all he has to do is to take down a lot of these stones—and out comes the iron grating! We've got an inside plan. Once I get through, I know just which way to go and turn to reach the main floor. If you will keep on taking those stones from Pietro, and dropping them overboard, I'll get ready for my part.”
Almost mechanically he obeyed and in the darkness he heard the soft rustle of garments as if she were discarding feminine garb that would impede her bodily freedom. He had no time to look around, and besides would not have done so lest he prove ineptly curious. Stone after stone was handed downward to him and then there was a pause, a soft, grating sound, and into his hands came bodily the ancient iron grille, and with its contact he heard Pietro's whisper, “That is all. The way is clear.”
It was time for him to interfere in this mad project. He turned and bent toward her and said, “Now tell me how I'm to go when I get inside.”
“You're not going inside,” she whispered back as she thrust herself forward past him and lifted her hands to the window sill. “You're to wait for me to return, and, if you hear any alarming noise, you and Pietro are to get away as quickly as ever you can.”
He had no time to remonstrate, to discuss, or to argue, for suddenly her lithe young body, clad in boyish knickerbockers, leaped upward, gained the stone ledge and was disappearing. There was no time to be lost. He did not wait. He threw his sailor-trained hands upward, clutched the ledge and sprang after her. There was nothing else to do, unless she were to face unforeseen perils and menaces alone and unsupported. He heard Pietro's expostulations, muttered savagely behind him, twisted his body, and jumped forward into enveloping darkness. His shoes, although he landed on the stone flagging on his toes, made a harsh noise. He felt his arm clutched with hands that even through the cloth of his pongee suit thrilled him and her voice, so close to his ear that it was fragrant with her breath, remonstrating, “No—no—no! You mustn't come in here with me! You'll spoil everything!”
“I'm going with you,” he whispered. “Where you go, I go.” And then in the excitement of the moment he added: “Always! Never from now on shall you go alone.”
In that solid, profoundly quiet darkness he sensed that she drew back, hesitated, and then he felt a hand groping for his as if, after all, in this disturbed moment she was afraid of what might come and was grateful for his support. He caught it, held it, felt its yielding appeal, and could not restrain himself even in that peculiarly trying moment, so there in the darkness lifted it to his lips. He was disappointed when, as if shocked, it was hastily withdrawn, and her whisper came to him, “We must turn to the left. Then we climb some stairs and there is a door which we must open, and then we go to the right, find another door, and are in the loggia.”
“I'm afraid you will have to hold my hand and lead me,” he whispered back.
But she did not do as he wished. Instead he felt her fingers fumble and catch his coat sleeve, urge him toward her, and then hastily pull him forward. Suddenly she stopped and again there was that fragrance of her near breath as she admonished him, “You must take off your shoes. They make a frightful noise.”
He bent over and removed his shoes and wondered why he hadn't himself thought of that precautionary measure.
“Got 'em off,” he whispered as he straightened, and again the hand found his coat sleeve and led him forward. There was a muffled bump and she stopped.
“This must be the door into the loggia,” he heard her whisper as sounds indicated that she was softly feeling, adventuring, trying to locate the latch and then, “Ah! Here it is.”
He was about to caution her to open it slowly lest the loggia be lighted and guarded, but was too late to overtake her eagerness. The door swung open and high above in the peak of that inlaid dome that he had ad- mired there shone a light bathing the great twin stairways in a dim but faintly visible mystery. They led upward from either side, step above step, worn, ancient, austere, as if watching, as through many ages they might have watched countless times, the advance of intrigue. Her hand restrained him as she paused to listen. Her suspense could have been no greater than his, as they held their very breathing and strained their ears for inimical or menacing sound.
None came. The great entryway was as silent as a dead conqueror's tomb. He felt as if they were little children lost in the legendary woods when again he felt the impulse of her urgence that pulled him ahead on their weird and lawless adventure. He knew the direction now as well as she, but permitted himself to be drawn upward until they reached the central landing, then to the left ascent. She halted before the great bronze doors that barred the salon whose breadths, and widths, and heights he had admired. The light appeared stronger now. He could see her plainly as she moved forward with one white hand held outward, eagerly, yet cautiously.
It touched and seemed to caress the first great door. The door swung open, and again, to his surprise, there was a light in the dome of the great salon, as if to guard it from violation. It was high up in the center roof whose gilded figures seemed watching them. But it was brighter than the outer one through the gantlet of whose rays they had so hurriedly passed. High overhead though it was, it made everything distinct; the great solemn salon; the marvelous frescoes; the Corinthian pillars at the sides; the dull pattern of the tiled and sweeping floors; the cabinets containing the valued and prized collections of his sole kinsman and—off to the side—that one which held the Crusader's Casket of gold. For but an instant she hesitated, and then with soft and hurrying feet urged him into haste that was almost a run as if a fairy had led him into a dance toward some long-sought goal. He hurried with her across the broad, tiled space, their noiseless feet in unison. He anticipated, with a sympathetic shock, her disappointment when she must learn that the cabinet was locked. He hadn't thought of that till now. He resolved that if necessary he would seize the thing and carry it away, or, if it proved too heavy, kick and break the glass with his stockinged feet. But to his surprise the door yielded.
“Uncle Lem must have forgotten, for once, to lock it!” he thought with a great thankfulness as she pulled it open, released him, bent forward, and then reached for the golden box that lay plainly exposed. She clutched it to her breast and turned toward him with sparkling, triumphant eyes. She reminded him, somehow, of a picture of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, that he once had seen; only this maid was there by his side, palpitating, looking even more boyish than the picture of the original Joan who, as he recalled, was clad in shining armor rather than in youthful knee breeches. She turned to escape and he paused long enough to close the door of the cabinet, and then ran after her.
It was not until they reached the foot of the stairs that he thought he heard a sound in some remote part of the house, the sound of heavy footsteps. He seized her arm and together they stood, breathlessly listening. There was a momentary silence, and then again the undoubted trudging of boot-clad feet across stone floors. The girl stood as if petrified with doubt and anxiety, and he became from that moment the leader in their strange enterprise.
“Come quickly!” he whispered, and urged her toward the door that was still ajar, the door through which they must pass. They hastened through and then, as if all the good fortune that had thus far accompanied them had been lost, from somewhere through the wide spaces of halls and the narrow passageways below a sudden draft raced along, the door slipped from his fingers and closed with a resounding bang. But even through its thickness they heard those clumping steps, as if suddenly suspicious and alert, racing down the broad stairs.
“Run! Run!” he muttered sharply as he seized her arm and with the other hand extended and guiding him by the feeling of the walls, urged her with him. They raced downward. Once he tripped and nothing but that same sailorlike training of hand and foot saved them from a fall. The heavy steps behind were in hot pursuit. He saw the dim square of light made by the open window, lifted her bodily and almost threw her through it. In almost the same moment he had scaled it and dropped into the waiting gondola just as two hands seized his wrist and strove to hold him prisoner. The man inside the palace was shouting a wild alarm and crying for help. Jimmy braced his knee against the wall, gave a mighty thrust, and felt the hands slipping. They lost their hold and he dropped into the gondola. Pietro, calling upon his patron saints, thrust the gondola off just as a man's head appeared in the opening of the window shouting for the police.
Then as the gondola was urged into way they heard him call as if to some one who had joined him, “Robbers! We have been robbed! Run you to the telephone and notify the guard. And you, Paolo, come with me to the water gate!”
The water gate could not have been far off. It must certainly have been accessible, for even as Pietro swung the gondola to make the turn of the bend they saw behind them a flashing light, dimly made out another gondola manned by two oars in pursuit, and then Pietro swung into the oar at such vigorous speed and with such trained skill that it seemed as though the great sweep must break with the strain.
“Lean into it, Pietro! I wish I could help you,” Jimmy cried.
“I wish you could, signor, because that other boat comes fast!” Pietro replied brokenly, and now rowing desperately.
A moment later the strong light of an electric torch came sweeping around the corner, cutting a beam into the darkness and reaching out until it found them. Jimmy stood up in the boat, seized a folding chair to use as a weapon and crawled back over the slim after deck of the gondola, prepared to fight. The other boat was gaining by leaps and bounds. There seemed no possibility of reaching the launch before it overtook them. Nearer and nearer it edged, and the man in the bow was shoutting alternately for them to stop, and for the police. The long prow of the pursuer crept up until it was overlapping the stern and it seemed to Jimmy that nothing could possibly save them now, when from out of the darkness of a cross rio swept another slim black shape that hurled itself savagely into the pursuer, its great steel prow tearing and rending the flimsy woodwork, then rearing high upward as both became wrecks. The torch in the hands of the man in the boat disappeared in the water. There were cries of anger, oaths, shouts, and their own gondola was almost overturned as one of the others collided against it and swung it crosswise. A form was seen emerging from the water and its hands clutched the gondola near where Jimmy stood with the chair upraised and his muscles flexing to strike.
“Don't hit me, Signor Ware! Don't strike. Help me aboard! It is I, Tomaso,” a hoarse old voice besought him, and Jimmy dropped the chair and caught the rugged old wrists and hoisted his man aboard. He had no time to ask explanations, but he understood. Pietro had recovered the gondola's balance and with muttered exclamations and prayers was again urging it forward.
A second gondola with a second electric torch swung around the distant turn and was bearing down upon them as rapidly as it could be propelled. Jimmy saw Tomaso crawling over the boat and springing to assist Pietro. Together they pulled at the single oar which is awkward work and a waste of strength, but with two such watermen as these it at least hastened their progress.
“Here we are! Here is the launch, signorina,” Pietro shouted, and the gondola swept up alongside their craft. Together, pell-mell, they tumbled in, the girl still clutching her treasure to her breast, and although excited she was anything but panic-stricken. The feeling of the launch beneath her feet seemed to reassure her.
“We still have a chance,” she exulted. “And if they overtake us, at least no one shall have the casket. I'll throw it overboard, first, rather than let it go back to the Harnways.”
“Good!” Jimmy explained fervently. “Good! Why not chuck it now?”
“Not until the last hope is gone,” she replied determinedly, and then her voice was lost in the sudden spiteful roar of the engine as the launch, with wide throttle, sprang away from the screening water gate where it had been waiting.
The long beam of light behind was now so close that it pricked out the floral swan, the white hull of the launch, the bent back of the engineer who was stooping over his wheel as if by the pressure of his hands to force the speed, and the set face of the American girl who was huddled down in one of the wicker seats still holding the golden box that had caused so much trouble and now threatened to bring upon them the harsh hands of the law. The launch raced round a corner. Whistles blew behind them, indicating that the second gondola had been a police boat. The launch raced down a smooth stretch at such speed that it outdistanced the pursuers by a whole turning.
“Now! Get that stuff off. Chuck it overboard,” Jimmy shouted, and Pietro and the panting old Tomaso assisted him to throw off the decorations that must mark and identify them wherever they went. Ripping and tearing, the nets and framework gave and their wake was littered with flowers that tossed upon the waves. Here and there behind them they could see occasional lights springing to life in windows bordering the rio, heads thrust through, but always the blowing of the guard's alarm whistles became fainter.
“By heavens! We've given them the slip, I do believe,” Jimmy cried as, the work of dismantlement accomplished, he stood in the rocking cockpit and stared behind.
“Just around that curve we pass under the bridge and out into the Grand Canal, signor,” Pietro said, standing erect beside him and, animosity forgotten, putting one hand on his shoulder and pointing with the other.
“But we don't dare stop to let the signorina off,” Jimmy remarked. “That police boat is too close on us.”
“And there is no landing place until we pass the bridge,” Pietro added. “If we could get her off the boat, we could take our chances. All they could do would be to arrest us and we could hold our lips.”
“By Jove! Pietro! You're a trump to think of that,” Jimmy exclaimed in spontaneous recognition of the other's loyalty. He accompanied his remark by extending his hand, and Pietro took it, and then and there they knew that they were to become friends. But their remarks had been overheard by the girl, who exclaimed, “What? Put me off and you take all the responsibility and bear all the blame? Well, I guess not! We either escape together or go to jail together. I've got something to say about that!”
She started to her feet to continue her remonstrance when there came an unexpected interruption. Swinging around the turn with a searchlight ablaze came another launch traveling at high speed as if to intercept them.
“A police launch!” Pietro exclaimed. “They've been warned by telephone to meet us.”
“Quick work! They're better than I thought they could be!” Jimmy remarked with compulsory admiration. “We're in for it unless we can make it into the Grand Canal, and then—we can at least give them a race!”
By the same impulse they all dropped down into the boat, Pietro kneeling on the floor of the pit, old Tomaso, wet and dripping and with his gray hair hanging in strands across his forehead, hunched like a giant-shouldered gnome, the girl still sitting erect, and Jimmy half crouched as if to be ready for a fight when the finish came. The motor-boat driver alone appeared bent on his task and recklessly taking chances. He still hung over the wheel with his chin thrust forward and a scowl on his face, blinking at the oncoming light that almost blinded him.
“Hold fast!” he cried sharply, and gave the wheel a violent twist that brought the launch swirling about, its prow lined toward the light. He accelerated his engines until they roared with energy and speed. There were shouts and cries from the oncoming boat; it held on for an instant and then, weakening when it was apparent that nothing but a swerve could keep it from being cut down, swept to one side and edged against the walls. Its clutches were grinding with the abrupt effort to hold itself. It wriggled and twisted as if in distress.
Jimmy felt the launch beneath their feet lean over, poise for an instant at an acute angle while its bow wave came back in a broken, drenching spray and then it slithered past the menaced, struggling police launch, barely scraping its side, while its affrighted occupants shouted in a babel of explosives to “Surrender!” to “Stop the boat,” to “Sheer off if you don't want to ram us,” and other phrases less to the point. Jimmy saw with admiration that the man at their own wheel never looked back; that he was working hands and feet to shoot past; that the launch was now taking on a reckless racing speed, and that the pale arch of the bridge seemed soaring toward them from above. They smashed through a belt of total darkness; running still faster, with bow waves climbing ever higher, tore from the black shadow out into the sparkle and glitter of a million festal lights, caught the smell of the fresh sea and nearly swamped in an abrupt swerve to avoid a barge load of astonished singers. They rocked and tossed through the wake of an excursion steamer, heeled over sharply to avoid a lighted gondola filled with children, made a wide curve to gain an opening between a procession of gay celebrants and then sedately slowed down. The engines suddenly stopped their clamor as they were shut off. The man at the wheel stood up, brushed the damp hair from his eyes and looked back at Captain Jimmy as if for orders.
“Can't we cross over and land somewhere in the darkness of the Giudecco?” Jimmy asked as he stared about him.
“We can't, sir,” gruffly shouted old Tomaso, as he stood up and pointed backward. “That police boat has rounded and is coming out as if escaping from Hades. And that's not all, signor. Over there from the other side comes another launch. There's nothing for it but a race for the open down the Adriatic. Tell him to get going at full speed, signor. It's our only chance!”
Jimmy stared. Tommie, still clinging to the box, did likewise.
“Oh, he's right, Jim,” she said. And even then he was aware of an exultant throb as she used his familiar name. It proved her dependence and that now, at last, she was hoping that he might rescue her from this predicament.
“All right, Tommie,” he said, “leave it to me. We'll give 'em a run if this launch of yours has lively heels—and I think she has. Here, you”—to the engineer—“give her all she's got and head down the Giudecco. All the rest of you sit down. We don't want to look conspicuous or make ourselves a target. They may begin to shoot pretty soon, if we prove too fast for 'em.”
He stood erect in the cockpit, alone, and rapidly thinking. Then he bent downward to the engineer and, with a hand on his shoulder ordered, “Get every foot out of her that you can, even if you rip the engine apart. Bear down to starboard. See that black shape—right down through there—steamer with dim riding lights? Well, get alongside her first of all and stand by to stop quickly. If she's the one I think she is, and we can gain time enough so they can't see what we do, the signorina, old Tomaso, and I will board her. After that you and Pietro keep on and race those fellows to a standstill. I'll tell Pietro what to do after that. Shake her up!”
The man nodded and “shook her up,” as probably she had never before been shaken. Down the dark opening they raced. Their course was no longer obstructed now that they passed through the main procession of craft. Back behind them they could see the distant searchlights of but two boats and then, off to the left, there shone another. Like hounds that had caught a scent the guard boats were answering the alarm and closing in. For a moment Jimmy watched them with sea-trained eyes, and then chuckled as he decided that they were not gaining, but were possibly losing.
“Go to it!” he cried aloud in his excitement. “Catch us if you can! You're welcome. This is some boat to catch!”
He felt that the girl had arisen from her seat and was standing close behind him. He felt, also, that he had taken the command from her hands and was robbing her of conquest. He turned and faced her in the dim light of illuminations and of stars and said, “Tommie, you've got to let me run this show now, and ask no questions. I'm trying to get out of it as best I can—for your sake. Does it go? Whatever I do?”
“Of course it does,” she bravely asserted. “Whatever you do I'll know is for the best. I got up to tell you that. And—Jim, if you want me to I'll throw the only incriminating evidence—I think that's what it would be called—the casket—overboard.”
“Not by a darned sight!” he exclaimed, turning toward her with a grin, “We got ourselves into this mess trying to get it. We've got it—and we won't let go till we have to. We're not beaten yet. I've got a plan. Sit down now, and don't bother me for a minute or two.”
She subsided into the chair and he stood alert and watchful as the launch raced ahead.
“Pietro,” he called quietly, “come over here. I want to tell you what to do.”
The boy climbed quickly to his side and, with the wind of their rapid flight whipping his shock of hair listened as Jim said, “You know that is my ship. She's all ready to sail, or should be. What I plan to do is to take Miss Cardell and Tomaso aboard as quickly as possible from the dark side where, at this turn of the tide, the side ladder should be. Then you and your cousin are to go ahead. Hit it up hard. Give the police boats a long hard chase. Don't let them suspect until it's too late that they've been fooled. My ship will get under way at once. I'll answer for that. The police can do nothing with you if they catch you but hold you up and I'll make it worth your while to keep your mouth shut and be held up. You'll hear from me within a few days. I'll be responsible for the safety of the signorina if you'll do this. You can trust me with her, can't you?” he continued whimsically.
“I can now, signor, although there was a day when I didn't,” Pietro said. “And—you'll bring her back, won't you? Some time? It's not the money I care for, although maybe I'll need it if they catch us.”
Jimmy laid a hand on his shoulder and said “Yes, some day I'll bring her back. And, Pietro, we're friends. I'll be behind you all the way, if the worst comes and you are caught. Is that good enough? All right! That goes! And we've gained enough to fool them. That's my ship. Run down on it and do as I say.”
Pietro shouted to the man at the engine. The launch swung round, and the black hull of the Adventure screened everything of the fête from sight. To Jimmy's gratification he saw that her side ladder was still down. Looking upward he saw the heavy roll of smoke from her funnel against and besmirching the stars. Moreover her anchor was up. It all seemed too good to be true. He wondered how all this could be. Then a voice from the head of the ladder became audible and he recognized it as Barton's, when it said, “All right, sir. We can be under way in five minutes. As soon as you are aboard.”
“This,” said Jimmy,” must certainly be Fate!”
He boosted the astonished Tommie upward, Tomaso, obedient to his orders came behind, and with a “Good night, signorina. Good night, signor,” Pietro called to his kinsman and the launch shot ahead, tearing up the quiet waters and leading the befooled police boats on a long and fruitless chase.