The Sea Wolves/Chapter 15
It was now far in the afternoon, there being a greater red light upon the hills and a deeper purple in the higher ravines. The tide being almost run out of the bay, the strange boat which approached the river kept to the centre of the stream, the men in her having undoubtedly come to shore to learn what was the business of the firing in the upland. A greater misfortune could not, it seemed, have come upon the party; for, on the one hand, there were the Spaniards, wild hillmen of Galicia, who would scarce let the hunt for the strangers lie; and, on the other, the representatives of Spanish authority, to fall into whose hands meant certain extradition to England for the whole of them.
This being so, at the very first sight of the coast-guard, Messenger, put up his hand for complete silence, having first dragged down the branches over the ship, and whispered to the others to hold her steady. And the whole of them waited with scarce a breath while the wash of oars sent water rippling into the creek, and eight men in rough uniform, but all armed heavily, rowed across the cove and made fast to the opposite bank.
It is no figurative statement to say that the five hid away under the bushes scarce moved a hand during this manœuvre. They were in some part relieved to find that the men made no attempt to search the banks of the cove (nor, indeed, did the Spanish guard suspect the presence of a boat upon the shore); but their uneasiness was greater when seven of the eight ran up to the hills and were heard whistling one to the other in the high places. What they did there, or whether the shoremen fled at their coming, in some part fearing that their share in the adventure should be discovered, the others never knew; for by-and-by they came again as they had gone, and, without as much as a look at the bushes, they rowed straight out toward the headland, and, indeed, toward the rocks where the end of the Semiramis had been.
At the sight of this course Kenner could no longer keep silence—
"Prince," said he, with a ghastly face, "they're rowing straight for the reef—did ye see that?"
"I did," said Messenger curtly. "Do you suggest that we should row after them?"
"But," cried Kenner, "they'll find the money"
"Possibly," said Messenger. "It will be found by the first man that touches the point—if they're going there, they'll bring it back with them."
"He's right!" cried Burke, though he ground his teeth; "and they're laying dead on the tack. Look at 'em now!"
The boat, as he said, was holding on the tack, the course being set, as it seemed, straight out to sea. Once or twice there broke from the Americans snarling curses and muttered oaths, but Messenger sat very still, with deeper lines in his face, and his hands moved restlessly, as the hands of a nervous man will. Thus it was for one terrible quarter of an hour, when the distant boat went up the bay; but at the last a shout, which was not to be held back, burst from the five, and Kenner sobbed like a woman. The coast-guard had pulled round the headland, and the bay was empty.
"That," said Messenger, when the critical moment was obviously past, "was the worst ten minutes of my life," and be wiped from his forehead the sweat which streamed upon it. But Kenner was already helping himself to the rum, and the others drank, while Fisher began to tell them what had passed on shore, and to try and mend his rags. When he spoke of his meeting with the Spanish girl, Kenner looked up quickly, but checked the words upon his lips, and relapsed into moody silence, sitting through the whole narration as one thinking. Had Messenger noticed him he would have remembered his words at Monaco, when he said that he would meet the Spanish woman again. Bat the necessities of the moment outweighed any recollections, and Kenner maintained his silence until Fisher concluded. At the end of his tale, and when they had made a pretty bandage of one of his hands, which was sorely injured, Burke cut in with his advice—
"Look, now," said he, "it's mighty poor fortune; but ez far ez I ken see, when we put our feet in that hog-sty this morning, we went for to stir up blazes. You may bet that the man in the boots told his chaps, and they told other chaps, and it's round the town by this time, if ez there is a town. What you're going to do. Heaven knows. Prince! I've rid roads in my time; but I was never so near to the floor—never, as I'm living"
"Wal," said Kenner, who at this forced himself to speak, "I've thought your way since morning; if you'd be asking for my word, I'd say let the stuff lie, and be dd to it! There's money ashore if you live to get it; but what's your chance when it's more than your neck's worth to show in a town, and you've no craft to work in but a cockleshell which won't carry you ten mile in a sea, let alone against the kind of sea you've got to face to make Ferrol?"
"All that's true enough," replied Messenger, who had listened to them very patiently; "but it's argument that's as narrow as the bridge of your nose. In the first place, do you think we've any chance of walking through Spain without a shilling in our pockets, when, by this time, we must be papered on every shore in Europe? In the second, how do you propose to get out of Spain and reach the other side until you've touched some of the freight that you're now talking about as though it was to be had at sixpence a pound? Why not say at once that none of you have yet realized what you were playing for? Where I am concerned, I shall stay here as long as I can walk; but any of you that chooses had better go now."
"Where you stop, I shall stop," said Kenner; "you know me well enough for that. Not that I don't think you're right; you're right all along. We've sat on the stuff and fed on it, yet there's not a man among us but yourself that knows what it would look like if rolled out on this shore in sovereigns. And that's nat'ral, I guess. But as for being with you, I'm with you to the end."
"You may pass that round," said Burke, as the man shook hands—a practice beloved of every American—and then he continued with satisfaction, "I reckon, Prince, ez your talk is like oil to a lamp—it lights all of us. Once the load is ashore here, and we've got our arms in it, there's a dozen roads to take. What I'm looking for now is dark—the sooner the better! "
"And an hour's sleep," said Messenger; "there's nothing like a doze to clear the mind, and we don't want any thick heads for the work we've got before us. The nigger there will watch, for he's slept all day."
"Be gor, sah," said the nigger; "you think I sleep, you labor under a lie, sah; watch better with eyes shut, sah—presarve the sight, by golly!"
"I'm thinking if you sleep this watch that there'll be darned little of you to preserve, anyway!" said Burke; and with that they all turned in, and not a man of them moved until dark was down upon the sea, and from the distant cape the light shone flickering and feeble, as do so many of the headland lanterns on this desolate coast. At that hour Messenger, huddled up amidships, shook himself like a dog; and when he had sat up, he awakened the others, but to the nigger he gave a fierce kick, for the man was heavy with sleep, and lay hunched up in the bows. All being thus aroused, they pushed out the boat silently from the alcove, and, scarce daring to use their oars, crept to the bay in the shelter of the dark, and then rowed with that fierce excitement and brooding expectancy which were so entirely the outcome of the situation.
Was the gold still lying in the poop of the ship, or had the poop broken up so completely that the kegs had gone swirling away in the current to be lost in the deep of the sea beyond the headlands? Would they ever look upon that power of treasure again, or was it engulfed with the unnumbered dead, and the ships of the ages, and the wealth of cities and of nations which the Atlantic has fed upon since her conquest? Had any from the shore anticipated them? If they recovered the gold, could they drag it through Spain with them? These were but a tithe of the questions the men asked themselves as they drove the ship over the shallows of the bay, and onward, until the greater waves touched her, and she began to rise upon the swell of the bar. Then all eyes were turned to the reef; and when they had rowed a short space, the first of the crags of rock seemed to take shape from the sea, when it rose before them as a dark pinnacle, Burke uttered a low cry of exultation, for the poop stood clear up above the water, and in the stillness there was no wave so great that it broke upon it.
A few strokes now carried them to the cradle of rock in which the last of the Semiramis lay. Though this presented a sheer face to the land, it fell away on the far side of the bar; and the men, bringing the boat under shelter of the crag, waited until the tide should fall, for it was yet but an hour after high water.
When at last the ebb set in more rapidly, Burke sprang from the bows to the plateau with nimble step, and, being come up on the poop, he presently disappeared into the cabin. But the others waited with a great silence upon them, robbed of words by the moment of his mission; yet possessing full knowledge of the meaning both of good tidings and of bad.