The Sea Wolves/Chapter 25
In the first unrestrained reaction of success the pandemonium that arose in the inner quadrangle of the castle was beyond words. Muleteers, serving-men, shepherds, masters of coasters, hillmen, babbled and gesticulated with a vigour which defied all the woman's demand for silence. Of the vast throng not a half were armed with guns or pistols; but the swarthy majority flourished shillalahs or plain clubs, or the shining cuchillos, and seemed bent upon an immediate sortie to the destruction of the cavalry, or of anything or anybody that they might hap upon. And now they swarmed about Messenger and the woman, whose reeking ponies were half hid in a cloud of steam, and demanded orders, or suggested them, or reeled off oaths, or uttered shrill "olés" with all the awakened spirit of the rarely awakened Spaniard.
Such a scene might have been prolonged even to the morning had it not been for the near presence of the pursuing cavalry in the park. Even above the clamour of the horde, and while the woman was commanding silence in vain, there came the sharp sound of shooting, coupled with the duller reports of the old smooth-bore guns with which many of the Spaniards were armed. And again after that, while a semblance of a hush had fallen upon the company, there were those that came into the quadrangle, carrying dead or dying, and calling out that the troopers had begun to shoot, and were advancing rapidly to the very gardens of the mansion. Then only was the woman heard, and as she gave her orders her voice rang out with the penetration of a bugle-note.
"Call them in," she cried in Spanish, "call them in, and stand by the bridge! At the shot of the pistol let the chains go! Fernando, is all ready below?—then take your place here, and hold the gate as you would hold your lives!"
They had blown a horn almost with her order, and at that signal the mob without ran in quickly over the bridge, and came raging into the courtyard, some showing wounds, others telling of men shot and of escapes. But the lancers mounted again and came swiftly over the turf toward the suspended bridge, a young officer leading them with drawn sword.
"Now," said the woman, as she watched their advance with a grim smile upon her blackened features, "now—let them swim!" and with that she fired her revolver at the boy leader when his horse had actually set foot upon the boards, and as he fell forward she gave a fiendish cry, and, the chains being let go, horse and man fell crashing into the moat. A dozen troopers, unable to check their advance, rolled over upon them, so that presently horses and men surged together in the water, and the screams of anger and of pain rose up from the ditch. In the same moment the great gates of the castle clanged upon their hinges, and shouts of defiance again echoed in the courtyard.
The shutting of the gates closed the first scene of the strange contest. The soldiers in the park had no artillery with them, and it is to be doubted if they would have used them had there been a dozen batteries. They had come across from Vivero looking for nothing but the capture of certain Englishmen said to be upon the coast; and the woman was misinformed in the particulars of their wish to arrest her. They had no such wish or instruction, but had been drawn suddenly into this serious brawl whereby they had lost forty of their men; and now there was no one armed with a sufficient measure of authority to know what steps to take; and they remained aimlessly riding before the gates, and waiting for those who should come up from Ferrol. That help, and a force large enough to make poor work of the Countess Ivena's resistance, was within a mile of them, they knew; and although they had a certain hope from the presence of a Spanish gunboat which now fired a signal gun in the bay, they had, perforce, to remain idle while the mob within the gates mocked them, and even fired shots from the bastions.
NOW—LET THEM SWIM!" (p. 281)
To this delay, and the wide dispersement of the troops in the valleys about the great house, the Spanish woman and Messenger owed their immediate safety. As the mob of pseudo-serfs swarmed in the great quadrangle the woman called her right-hand, Fernando, to her, and, entering the hall of fountains by a wicket from the cloisters of the quadrangle, she stopped a moment to drink a prodigious draught of water, while the Englishman dipped his face in the marble basin, and tried to concentrate his mind upon the danger which stood all about him—in the hills, in the valleys, in the company, even upon the sea. Kenner had come, truly—but to what an end! The woman had promised him safety; but what were her words worth? He lived; but how soon would the law put a hand upon him? Only the one thought—the money, writ large as in golden letters—maintained him in that feverish excitement and unrest upon which he lived then, and which tightened his nerves so that they twitched as the nerves of an epileptic.
From such reckonings with gloom and possibility the voice of the woman recalled him.
"This is no hour to loiter," said she, "and they wait for us. Everything goes as I hoped. We shall be miles in the hills before sunset, and by to-morrow night these troops will return to report my house empty. Did I not tell you that I would never be taken here? Sapristi! they have an equal task before them in the mountains! Come, mon ami, we will sup yet in the woods above Mondonedo!"
"They have brought the kegs from the creek, then?" he asked, as he brushed his wet hair from his forehead.
"Every one of them," she replied, "and they are now loading the mules. Oh, it's glorious! and I do not grudge you your triumph, mon cher! I did not believe, could not—you understand?"
"Perfectly; I doubt if I believe it myself, even now. But I am ready."
As she talked she had poured out two glasses of strong liquor, and, putting a cigar-box before him, she offered him a light, while she rolled herself a cigarette with incredible rapidity. Then she strode from the apartment, and he followed her through the gate by which he had first reached her house. In the smaller outer courtyard two men, who carried lanterns, waited at the iron door of the inclined passage which led to the tunnel in the creek; and, immediately entering by the narrow archway, they shut out the sound of voices as they locked the wicket, and quickly descended to the cavernous depths below.
Once in the tunnel a vast silence reigned. Two sentinels—rough Spaniards, whose hair flowed over their shoulders, and whose curious apron-like dresses were covered with many beads of coral and of silver—stood at the seaward entrance, armed with rifles. The flicker of a few torches cast an amber light upon rough, bearded seamen, who lay with their guns in postures of defence upon the edge of the narrow quay. It was along this quay that the woman, lighted by a single torch-bearer, now went with a ready step; and, coming out of the cavern at length upon the landward side, showed the inner and final lagoon, which stood as a tiny natural harbour in the very depths of her own grounds.
Here, as Messenger soon observed, was the haven of her seclusion. High walls of rock edged about the lagoon on every side; trees grew thickly upon the cliffs of it; there were innumerable small warehouses of stone built at varying heights above it; and on the southern side a steep path, cut through the rock ages gone by some falling rivulet, was now hewn out into a hill road, upon which a drove of mules, whose bells lacked their clappers, had been tethered.
In this place the woman hid what plunder the wolves brought her from the sea; and here, now, the two black boats were moored, while a dozen sturdy arrieros, armed to the teeth, dragged the kegs from them and bound them to the backs of the mules. And here Fisher and the negro worked by torch-light like navvies, transmitting their energy to the others, who hauled and pulled, and muttered oaths almost with every action.
At the coming of the party, which was quickly put across the pool in a punt waiting for it, Fisher sprang up and greeted Messenger warmly.
"I'm glad you've come," said he; "it's been a dreadful time! There's a boat from the Spanish ship cruising in the bay, and we expect her every minute. We shan't have all the stuff loaded for another half-hour yet!"
"Is it all there?" asked the Prince, who jerked out his words with significant emphasis.
"Every ounce of it; and we had luck with us. The Spanish ship anchored ten minutes after we had come into the cove. What I want to know now is: How are you going to get the two large cases on a mule's back? You might as well ask him to trot off with a Cathedral!"
"We'll see to that; get the rest loaded. I must speak to her about it. Hal, it's a crushing business!"
"Old man, that's true! I seem to be living with my head on fire. Heaven knows where we'll all be to-morrow!"
"Out of this, anyway; but I see that she's bringing barrels up. She's quick, isn't she? She must have seen the big cases as we crossed. I never knew a woman with such a head!"
"Nor I!" said Fisher, who had an eye for the beautiful.
The woman, as they saw, had anticipated their difficulty. At her direction the great cases of sovereigns were broken open, and as the Spaniards stood a moment dazzled by the brightness of the gold under the torches' light, she, too, raised her hands dramatically, and then, with a stamp of her foot, recalled them to their work. They obeyed her like children obey a strong man; but the sovereigns were still being heaped into the smaller barrels when there was a low whistle from the tunnel, and all the workers springing upright, doused their torches in the water as by a common impulse.
"What is it?" asked Messenger, as he, with the others, lay flat upon the quay and listened. He was answered by a rippling of the water in the pool, and a distant sound of oars. He waited, breathing with an effort, and the sound became more distinct—the boat was coming up the creek to the tunnel, and the Spaniards were whispering among themselves. Then the woman, putting her hand upon his as he drew a pistol, spoke.
"Hold that back, if you don't want a hundred men in here," said she; "it's a government boat from the bay, and they are making their last voyage."
The boat was now very near to the tunnel's mouth, yet so perfect was the silence of the Spaniards, all of whom had withdrawn into the inner lagoon, that the creek might have been the home of desolation rather than of men. Not a sound, scarce a breath, was heard; but the sailors in the boat began to discuss the situation, and presently lit a blue flare in the tunnel, though even then the bend of it prevented them seeing the garrison, which was now waiting with high-strung eagerness. Yet by what means his friends were going to cope with the danger, or to obliterate it, Messenger could not tell. Not a man of the defending party had a gun raised; not one drew a knife; they only lay crouching upon the rock, with expectant grins upon their swarthy faces, and their heads down almost to a level with the water.
Was the boat coming on or going back? The question was vital to them, the pause exasperating. Their nerves were now so knit-up that they moved restlessly in spite of themselves, and the deep gasps of men trying to hush their breathing was distinctly to be heard. They knew well that if they permitted escape to the attackers they might as well give themselves over to the soldiers at once. And they could hear the bated discussions, the low talk, the arguments of those who unwittingly stood so near to death: and still the boat did not advance, while the flare died down, and darkness reigned again. Then, suddenly, the whole of the watchers gave a simultaneous movement of unrest, and crouched as beasts that await their prey. The boat was rippling onward; was being punted, in the light of a lantern, through the tunnel; and, as the water from its prow lapped the stonework the Spaniards prepared quickly for action.
It was at this moment that the woman's design first became apparent to Messenger. He saw, as some of the Spaniards crawled swiftly into the cavern, what he had not seen before. A great portcullis of iron covered the shoreward end of the tunnel, which here had comparatively a small arch, and this portcullis was now to do the work which neither knife nor pistol could do. It was at the best a rough contrivance, drawn up with chains which turned about iron drums; but the spikes at the lower end of it were heavy as pike-heads, and the weight of it was to be measured in tons. Toward such a trap the long-boat now came slowly, and the party watched as they would have watched a snake waiting to spring upon a rabbit.
At the very head of the tunnel, less than a half of the boat being in the lagoon, the rowers ceased to work, and stood under the death-trap while they lighted another flare. As the brilliant blue light flashed up, and the whole of the Spaniards instantly became visible, the sixteen seamen in the craft uttered a loud shout of triumph, and sprang to their oars again; but it was their last action. In that instant the Spanish woman, with hands clenched and streaming hair, cried out in a shrill treble voice which rang through the cave, and the great portcullis, being let go at the drums, fell, with a grating of iron and a horrid crash, upon the boat and its crew, and the shout of triumph became a shout of agony.
The fall of the iron gate split the long-boat as a hammer will split a nut. One of the lance-like bars actually drove through the body of a burly seaman sitting amidships, and, cleaving his skull, ultimately pinned him upon the bottom of the pool as a moth is pinned upon a board. The craft herself was shivered and crashed down upon the hard rocks, and, being cut almost in half, the two ends of her rose up all splintered, and were chased furiously by the seamen, now at their last extremity. Of these four were held down under the sluice of the tunnel, but two rose on the seaward side of the portcullis, and ten in the pool, and all of them, swimming or clutching wreckage, or seeking to come to the quay, cried out for mercy most pitifully.
As well might they have clamoured for the fall of the sky. Urged on by the Spanish woman, who shouted incessantly: "Cut them down! cut them down!" the defenders began to use their clubs and knives with savage jubilation. Where a face showed above the water they struck at it; they beat and cut the hands of the driven men who held to the quay; they dived boldly into the water and stabbed those who had harbourage at the fragments of the broken boat. In ten minutes there was not a cry, not a sound, where there had been uproar. Only a breathless throng of savage men, whose clothes were in many cases dripping upon their backs, whose hands were weary with the pursuit of the butchery.
Thus was the peril from the sea turned, and at the end of another hour, it being then near to eleven o'clock, the whole of the money had been bound to the backs of the mules, and the party moved from up the steep road from the creek, and soon gained the wooded heights at the back of the castle.