The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
Marooned
ON NAUSET BEACH, Alan and Barcus sprawled on the sands, some distance back from the water, and listened to the thumping of their overtaxed hearts, and panted. Now and again one would lift his head and stare out over the waters at a little line of reddish flames: all that remained to witness to the fact that, an hour since, these two had been in command of as trim and seaworthy a little schooner as ever ventured the trip from Portland to New York. Farther out again a green eye stared unblinking over the water: the starboard light of the becalmed fishing schooner whose crew had caused the disaster.
"Barcus," said Alan, "what I can't understand is why those damned thugs out there thought we'd be asses enough to stay aboard the Seaventure and get burned up."
The other replied: "Did they?"
"Looks that way. If they didn't, why were we permitted to swim ashore? There was nothing to prevent their rowing round to cut us off."
"Maybe they did, and missed us, Mr. Law-and-Order! We were a wee mite excited, you've got to admit. It's possible we didn't hear the noise of their oars. And it's black enough for them to have overlooked us. A man's head in the water isn't really a conspicuous object on a dark night."
"I suppose not," said Alan indifferently. "It doesn't matter. Tell me, Barcus, what's the nearest symptom of civilization?
"Chatham village," said Mr. Barcus, "six miles or so to the no'th'ards, and cut off by an inlet. Then there's the lighthouse on Monomoy Point, three miles to the south."
A silence followed, broken only when Mr. Law voiced a thought bred of malignant contemplation.
"I'd give a deal to know who's aboard that vessel."
"You don't mean you think your regular young woman!"
"It's possible," said Law. "Judith kidnapped her in Portland. That's not so far from Gloucester a motor-car couldn't have caught that schooner before she sailed to waylay us this morning. And what better way to take care of a girl you've kidnapped than to ship her somewhere by sea, in the care of trustworthy hellions?"
"Don't ask me. I've done very little kidnapping."
"For tuppence," said Law, "I'd swim off to that boat and see for myself."
"For two million dollars, I would not!" Barcus affirmed. "I'm as wet as I mean to be for the next twenty-four hours."
A moment later the line of little flames went out, and the owner of the late Seaventure fancied he could hear the hiss of smouldering timbers sucked under and drowned out.
"Exit," he announced moodily, "exit Seaventure. R. I. P.—a good little ship!"
"Oh, let up, can't you?" Mr. Law exclaimed peevishly. "I'm sorrier than you are—and, after all, it's my loss: I've got to buy you another boat. All you've actually lost is your temper."
"And my susceptibility to the charms of the sex," Mr. Barcus corrected. "Nothing can ever restore my lost faith in woman's gentleness. When you brought aboard that young woman I thought butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, and first thing I know she ups and points a gun at my head and tips me overboard, and then makes a pretty bonfire out of my sailboat."
For a moment the two maintained attentive silence. Then a little flutter of sound came from across the water. Gradually it gathered volume, and became recognizable as the lisp of cautious oars.
"I'm going away from here," Mr. Barcus announced firmly.
"Half a second," Alan Law pleaded. "I've got a scheme."
"Rot!" Barcus interrupted; "all you've got is what I've got—a bare chance for your life by running like hell for Monomoy Light. If we're sticking round here when that boat lands, this blithe elopement of yours is liable to finish like that Dead March from Saul!"
"Yes—but listen!" Alan insisted. "They've got to land, haven't they, and leave the boat while they look for us? Well, then, what's to prevent our hiding in the dunes and?"
"It's a head you've got on your shoulders," Barcus struck in admiringly. "Chances are they'll pot us in the act; but I never did dote on walking, and it's all of three miles to Monomoy Light!"
In the next breath, "Look out!" he shrieked. A blue flare had broken out in full blaze on the surface of the water near them, revealing a dory which had drawn in under cover of the darkness, and at the same time discovering to its occupants the two startled figures on the beach. Before they could stir, a spiteful tongue of flame spat out, and a bullet sang between them and buried itself in the sands behind them.
The two turned and pelted off down the beach, seeking to escape that deadly area of illumination. Other shots sped them, but none was so well aimed as the first; and presently they gained the grateful shelter of the night-wrapped dunes.
"Easy!" Barcus counselled, pulling up. "Not too far into this wilderness, or we'll be lost."
Meantime the dory had grounded on the beach, and its occupants, jumping out, set off in pursuit of the fugitives, following their tracks with the aid of electric flash-lamps. The darkness, however, conspired with the labyrinth of the dunes to save Alan and his companion. It was a matter of comparative ease to confuse the chase.
Within five minutes—while the chase floundered at random a quarter mile to the south—Law and Barcus were squirming snakelike up the back of a ten-foot bluff. From its brow they looked down on the spot where the dory lay—under armed guard—an unhappy fact made evident by the play of a flash-lamp intermittently raking the beach on every hand.
In an interval of blackness, slowly and stealthily Alan got to his feet and swung back a heavy club of driftwood which he had chanced upon. A pause ensued, of waiting for the flash-light to make sure of his aim. Instead of that, a match spluttered, revealing with its reddish glow a bronzed and evil visage intent upon the bowl of a pipe.
The guard puffed fast and had the tobacco well aglow when the sky took advantage of his trustfulness and fell upon him like an avalanche. Simultaneously, Alan and Barcus slid down the face of the bluff and finished what the treacherous sky had left undone. By the time the disarmed guard had recovered sufficiently to cry for help, the dory was a hundred yards off the beach and making excellent time in the direction of the green light.
They wrought at the oars with a machine-like precision that drove the boat fast and furiously. Concealment of their purpose from those aboard the schooner was out of the question. The racket and the play of flash-lamps along the beach must have betrayed the fact that they had turned the tables long before the dory left the inshore shoals.
Caution, however, made them rest on their oars while yet a little way from their goal. No sound was audible other than the whine of an ungreased block; nothing was visible beyond the glare of the green lantern.
"What think?" Barcus whispered.
"No telling," Alan replied. "All a chance."
"You've got that gun handy?"—with reference to the rifle of which they had despoiled the victim of the sky's ill-faith.
"Here."
"Then—let's go to it! Give way!"
A dozen strokes brought them alongside, and the two young men dropped oars, rose, and seizing the low gunwale, lifted themselves to the deck. Nothing opposed them: the deck was silent and deserted. Alan led the way aft and down the companion-way to the cabin where a dim light burned. Of the two stateroom doors, one disclosed an empty cabin, the other was locked, Trying the handle, Alan fancied he heard a sound within. Pausing, he called, with a thrill of fearful hope:
"Hello in there!"
The response was a cry of incredulous delight: "Alan!"
By way of answer he hurled all his hundred and eighty pounds against the door. The lock splintered away from its socket, the door flew open with a bang, and Alan strode into the room with a cry: "Rose!"
His sweetheart met him halfway, her arms uplifted, her countenance transfigured.
The discreet Mr. Barcus turned and ascended the companion-way, his nose wrinkled with misgivings.
"Blest if I know how he can tell 'em apart," he remarked. "Not that I blame him for taking a chance: it wouldn't pain me any to find out I'd kissed the wrong girl—not, that is, unless she didn't care for my technique. In that case, I guess the sequel would be apt to prove tolerable agonizing!"