Beyond this, we waited again while the minutes dragged on, leaden-winged, slowly but surely extinguishing the hope that Dupuyster had escaped. But, after hope was quite dead in the four hearts of us, and a hot thirst for vengeance was beginning to take its place, we saw Jerry in our own edge of the lagoon, swimming slowly and rolling from side to side with his stroke, like a man utterly spent.
I think all four of us dashed wildly into the shallows to drag him out and rush him to cover in the jungle edge. He was gasping for breath, and even in the poor light we could see a long red splash on one thigh; a cut from which the blood was still oozing. Van Dyck stripped his own shirt to bandage the wound, and the reincarnated one protested manfully.
"Bally lot of trouble you're takin' over a scratch," he gurgled. "Bleedin' will stop of its own accord when it gets ready. But if any gentleman should – er – happen to have a drop of cognac about him – "
Grisdale hadn't, and I hadn't, and I was pretty sure Van Dyck hadn't. But at a three-handed chorus of "Sorry, old man," Elijah Goff, the one dyed-in-the-wool teetotaller of the Andromeda's company, produced a pocket flask, and Dupuyster took a single swallow from it; swallowed, choked a bit over whatever fiery liquor it was, and then told us his story while we were giving him a rough-handed rub-down and helping him into his clothes.
"No, the swim wasn't anything, but I had a perishin' lot of trouble climbin' aboard the old tub. After that, it was easy; all I had to do was to cut a lot of the rope things you told me about and stand clear, what?"
"But the capstan?" Billy Grisdale wanted to know. "How the dickens did you contrive to put that out of commission?"
"Dynamited it, old dear; stuck the two bally pistol cartridges into the cogwheels, don't you know, and hoped they'd do their bit when the wheels began to turn. If you'll believe me, the shop was fairly dizzy with bits of iron and things when they put the steam on. I didn't wait to see the third act. His Jaglets was waitin' for me, and I took a header to get a fair start of him, don't you see."
"A shark!" gasped Billy.
"You've named him. The perishin' beggar had followed me all the way out to the yacht and couldn't quite make up his mind to try it on. But comin' back he got his nerve screwed up, by Jove. It was under the edge of the reef, and when he turned for the snap I stuck the bloomin' knife into him and left it there."
"But – but he bit you in the leg!" said Billy, and I knew he was swelling up like the frog in the fable with a huge access of hero-worship.
"Chuck it, Billy," said the shark fighter good-naturedly, and for once in a way the British accent was lacking. "Let's say that I scratched the leg climbin' over the reef. It'll sound better."
Just then Grey came back, having cut across the island from the north beach by way of the glade where the prisoners had been left. His report was reassuring. The women, and two of the men, the major and Holly Barclay, had been awakened by the firing, but there was no panic – proof positive that we had finally vanquished the greater part of the civilized conventions. Ingerson was still asleep, and Grey suspected that he had found the last of the brandy bottles, the one which Van Dyck had been jealously hoarding against an emergency. Grey admitted that he had lied freely to the non-combatants, particularly in assuring his wife and Conetta, Madeleine and Beatrice Van Tromp and Edie, that none of us was taking any chance of getting hurt. He had repeated Van Dyck's instructions, and they had promised not to scatter, and to stay under cover – such cover as the wood afforded. Finishing up, Grey spoke of the professor and his guard-mounting over the six pirates.
"He has the lantern between his knees, and I found him dissecting some leaves he had picked up, and poring over that little pocket Botany of his," he chuckled. "He didn't see me at all until I came up and said 'Scat!' to him."
This part of the report was rather disconcerting. With the professor engrossed in his favorite study, anything might happen in the way of a jail delivery, and I said as much.
"Go and see about it, Dick," was Van Dyck's order, and I was about to obey when Billy Grisdale gripped my arm and pointed toward the yacht. On the deck of the Andromeda, where everything had been quiet since the firing of the shot which had driven the capstan repairers from their job, a dimly defined group of toilers were hoisting some heavy object to the roof of the raised deck house. I couldn't make out what they were doing, but Bonteck's eyes were better than mine.
"Duck and scatter!" he commanded sharply. "It's the little signal gun, and they're training it on us!"
We had dodged and run nimbly to right and left before the little brass signal piece belched fire and sent a volley of nondescript missiles hurtling into the scrub palmettos under which we had been crouching. What the desperate chief cook of the Andromeda hoped to accomplish by this haphazard bombardment of the jungle which, so far as he knew, sheltered a half-dozen of his own men as well as whatever enemy he thought he was firing at, was a mystery unexplained until after our scattered force was reassembled safely out of range.
But we were made to understand quickly enough. Under cover of the cannon fire, the electric launch slid out from its landing place upon the placid waters of the lagoon, cut a swift half-circle and headed for the open sea and the yacht. While we were watching and waiting, some one of the mutineers had emulated Dupuyster's daring example, and had swum ashore to steal the launch, thus putting an end to any notion we may have had of fighting the little war to a conclusion on the Andromeda's deck.
XVI
A MARATHON AND AN ULTIMATUM
Calling this bold cutting-out of the electric launch the close of the first bout, we were obliged to admit that the enemy had taken a hard fall out of us at the finish. As matters now stood, the advantage was with the mutineers. To be sure, we had six of their men, including their first mate and navigator, safely laid by the heels; and Jerry Dupuyster's plucky adventure had tied up the yacht, temporarily, at least. But without a boat we could not press the fighting, and the six hostages were more likely to prove a burden than a forfeit with which to bargain. Bassinette, or whoever it was who was commanding the mutineers, would know that he was dealing with men who would neither starve nor slay their prisoners; though he should have known, and doubtless did know, that we ourselves were by this time in dire straits for food. And as to the tethering anchor chain, they would surely be a witless lot aboard of the Andromeda if they should not remember that they could compel Haskell and his mechanician assistants to cut the cable.
It soon developed, however, that the amateur pirates were not thinking of running away. Shortly after the electric launch had whisked to safety under the stern of the yacht, it appeared again with a new crew to man it. At first we thought the militant chief cook was going to attempt a sortie and a rescue of the prisoners, but he had a better scheme than that, as we were presently to learn. Keeping outside of the enclosing reef, he sent the launch slowly westward, holding it far enough out to be beyond pistol range, but paralleling the reef as if seeking for another inlet. Elijah Goff hazarded a guess at his intention.
"You folks 've got a camp o' some sort, hain't ye?" he asked; and when Van Dyck gave the expected affirmative: "I guess maybe he's spyin' 'round to find that camp. He cal'lates that'll be your weak spot, if you've got one."
That was enough to set us swiftly in motion, of course, and by hastening we kept abreast of the launch all the way along the south side of the island, though with no little difficulty, since, under the fair certainty that the boat's crew had firearms, we dared not show ourselves on the beach. At the western end of the island Grey cut across to carry word to the women, while the rest of us fought with the jungle and so kept the launch in sight all the way around the point.
Doubling the western reef ledge, the reconnoitering boat party proceeded to pass the northern shore of the island in review; and again we kept the pace, watching each inlet through the reef narrowly as the launch approached it, and hoping, rather than fearing, that the mutineers would turn in and attempt a landing and so bring matters to a crisis. It was grueling work keeping abreast of the motor-driven tender, and by the time we had made the complete circuit of the island, we were wringing wet with perspiration, and spent with running.
It was not until after a second circuit of the island was begun, with the launch still dribbling along outside of the reef, that we came to the full knowledge of what the mutineer chief was doing. He assumed that we would be following him and keeping him in sight, and he meant to run us to death; in other words, to keep us running until we could run no more. He doubtless knew, or guessed, that our camp was at the opposite end of the island from the treasure plantation, and that we couldn't guard both at the same time.
The second lap of the Marathon was a sheer fight for life, or, rather, for the breath to sustain life. If we could have kept to the beach without drawing the fire of the launch it would not have been so bad, but a single attempt to do this brought a flash and crack from the sea, and we had to dive to cover again. By the time we reached the camp end of the island this second time, Grey was reeling and tripping like a drunken man, and Van Dyck ordered him out of the running ranks.
"Stay by the women!" was the gasped-out command, and thereupon we lost Grey.
The completion of the second lap practically finished the five of us who were still in the race. When we came in sight of the Andromeda we were staggering and stumbling and caroming helplessly against the trees and other obstacles. Unless we should be given a breathing space we all knew that the game was up, so far as we were concerned; but happily the breath-catching interval was given us. Reaching the inlet opposite the yacht, the mutineers steered the motor-driven tender boldly through it and headed for the island beach. The chief was evidently taking it for granted that he had worn us out and left us behind, and was making a quick dash to gain possession of the island.
Van Dyck kept his head, in spite of the maddening fatigue that was fairly killing every man of us.
"Down!" he panted hoarsely. "Get ready and hold your fire until you can see their faces – then let 'em have it!"
At the most, we wouldn't have had to wait more than a minute or so; but Billy Grisdale was too young and too excited to wait. While the launch was still so far out as to make a shot a mere guess hazard in the starlight, Billy pulled the trigger of the pistol which had fallen to him in the distribution of the captured weapons, and the mischief was done. Of course, we all banged away at the crack of Billy's pistol, but there was every reason to believe that the volley went wide of the mark. In a twinkling the tender's motor was reversed, and there was a wild scramble aboard of her to get the emergency oars out to help her around. In the thick of it Van Dyck took a long-distance chance with the old-model rifle. There was a shrill scream and a flash of blue-and-green electric fire from the boat's motor to follow the shot, and the power went off. Goff's chuckle was like the creaking of a rusty door-hinge.
"I cal'late they won't run the legs off'n us any more with that push boat," he said; and since the launch's crew paddled hurriedly out to the Andromeda with the motor still dead, the prophecy seemed to be in the way of fulfilling itself.
Shortly after the last man had disappeared over the yacht's rail, the empty launch, apparently towed from the deck above, also disappeared around the stern of the Andromeda, by which we inferred that the mutineers had some notion of trying to repair it, or at least of determining to what extent its motor was crippled. Pending another move, we waited again, and were glad enough of a chance to lie quiet and have a breathing spell.
While we were resting, Grey came up, pluckily refusing to be left out of the forefront of things. As before, he had skirted the northern beach and had crossed through the treasure glade to come up behind us as we lay watching the yacht. Sanford, he reported, was still holding the lantern upon the pages of his Botany book, and was only mildly curious to know what all the running and racing and shooting portended.
At "Camp Hurricane," as Edie Van Tromp had named our storm-driven refuge, there was plenty of excitement, and quite naturally a good bit of alarm. Of the three men who might be said to be posing as "home guards," only one, Major Terwilliger, Grey told us, had offered to join the fighting force. Barclay was again playing sick, and Ingerson was sleeping, log-like, through it all.
"I took it upon myself to turn the major down," said Grey. "He is too old to keep the pace we've been setting, so I told him to stay by the women, and left my pistol with him to chirk him up a bit. But I doubt if he'd put up much of a fight, for all his military title."
"Ow, I say, old dear; you're off, there," Jerry put in quickly. "Uncle Jimmie will fight like a dashed old billy goat if he's pushed to it, don't you know!" And we were obliged to take Jerry's word for it.
After the disappearance of the electric launch around the stern of the Andromeda there were no sounds for a time; nothing that would enable us to guess what the mutineers' next move would be. But later there came a creaking of tackles, and the clanking of a steam winch – one of the smaller winches operating the boat falls.
"Taking the tender aboard for repairs," I suggested; but Van Dyck said they were more likely lowering the long-boat, which was also motor-driven with a small gasoline engine for its propelling power.
"How about it, Captain 'Lige?" he queried; and the sailing-master confirmed the guess, saying:
"That's about the way of it. That con-dummed Frenchman is layin' off to give us another chance to play ring-around-the-rosy with him."
Billy Grisdale had kept quiet for five full minutes, which was little less than miraculous.
"Say," he broke in, "I've been hearing something like a file or a saw going out there on the yacht ever since the scrimmage was called off. Listen!"
We did listen, and the sound was unmistakable. Van Dyck clicked the lever of the repeating rifle and sent a shot whistling over the Andromeda's bow. There was a clatter as of hastily dropped tools and the filing noise ceased.
"It'll begin again, just as soon as he's toled us away from here," Goff predicted. "He's got to gnaw himself loose from that anchor, and he knows it."
Van Dyck took the hint.
"We are going to keep as much as we've got," he declared. And then to Grey: "How well do you shoot, Jack?"
"Couldn't hit the side of a barn, not even if it were painted white," confessed the rising young lawyer.
It was at this conjuncture that Jerry Dupuyster surprised us again.
"Me for the bally old pot-shotting. I'm fairly good at the birds, don't you know. Took the blue ribbon over the field at Lord Erpin'am's last fall – what? Give me the gun, and say when and where."
Bonteck passed the rifle over to the reincarnated club idler.
"You heard what Goff said. That infernal French sea cook will begin to run us again as soon as he gets the long-boat over the side. When that happens, you stay here and keep your ear out for that anchor-chain filing. If it begins again, aim a little high and invite them to quit."
"I'm on," said Dupuyster. "But I'm dashed if I know why you want me to hold high on the perishers."
"For the simple reason that they may be forcing Haskell or Quinby to do the work, and we don't want to kill any of our friends," was Bonteck's explanation.
While he was speaking we heard the first broken sputterings of the long-boat's gasoline engine, and a little later the boat itself slid out like a white shadow past the Andromeda's stem, and a third circumnavigation of the island was begun. Van Dyck stood up, tightened his belt and groaned. "We're in for another ride on the merry-go-round!" he lamented. "Fall in, you fellows."
We fell in, and the word was well-chosen. Lying by for the half-hour or so after doing the double Marathon had stiffened every weary leg muscle. Cursing the mutineers for the lack, or seeming lack, of originality which was leading them to repeat an expedient that had failed, we ran on, taking to the beach now, and risking a volley from the long-boat for the sake of having a better running track.
So running, and keeping cannily abreast of the white shadow in the offing, we had covered possibly half of the distance to the western end of the island when the crack of a rifle from the rear, followed instantly by a scattering fusillade, halted us abruptly.
The rifle was replying spitefully to the fusillade as Van Dyck, who had been leading the race, wheeled, spread his arms and herded us into the back track.
"They've played it on us!" he yelled. "There's only one man in that long-boat, and the others are trying to put something over on Jerry!"
They were; and the trick had almost succeeded when we reached the strip of beach that Dupuyster was defending. The crippled electric launch, propelled by oars, and carrying possibly a dozen men, was half-way across the lagoon, heading straight for the beach, and coming on regardless of Jerry's rifle. Above the din of battle we could hear the shrill, squeaky voice of the fat cook encouraging his men. "Pull on ze oar, mes braves! Sacré tonnerre! eet is but wan man dat shoot ze gon!"
But when we came up there were five more to shoot, and instant and utter demoralization fell upon the attacking force. Shrieks of surrender in half a dozen different languages rent the still night air, and in a mad endeavor to turn the boat an oar was lost overboard.
If our situation had not been so critically desperate, there was enough of the comic-opera element in the frantic attempt to retreat to have brought down the house. As it was, Van Dyck stopped the firing and shouted to the mutineers to come ashore and surrender. Some of the men were evidently sick of their bargain and wanted to quit, but the squeaky cries of the chief robber dominated the tumult, and under a renewal of our bombardment the launch was got around and headed back to the yacht with much splashing and hard swearing. Also, when the goal of safety was reached, we could make out dimly that the accommodation ladder was let down, and that two or three members of the boat's crew had to be helped aboard.
A few minutes after this, we had audible proof of the correctness of Van Dyck's guess about the long-boat and the ingenious ruse to draw us off. The gasoline craft was coming back, as we could determine by the increasing loudness of its exhaust. Following its return to the yacht we were given another little breathing spell, and John Grey's quality of professional curiosity had an opportunity to show itself again.
"I can't understand for the life of me why these fellows should come back here and fight us so desperately for a chance to get ashore," he protested. "You can't make me believe that they're doing it on the strength of a silly yarn that is three hundred years old."
"What do you think about it, Captain 'Lige?" said Bonteck, ungenerously handing the tangle over to Goff.
"I wouldn't put it a mite apast 'em," was the skipper's guarded reply. "There was a good deal o' talk among the men about buried gold-mines and such on the way down from New Orleans. I ain't no gre't hand at the foreign lingoes, myself, but I picked up a word or two here and there."
"I don't more than half believe it, just the same," Grey persisted. "I tell you, these fellows are not fighting for the bare chance of proving or disproving that old story about the Santa Lucia's buried treasure. They've got inside information of some sort, and I'll bet on it."
"Maybe they have," said Goff, in a tone which said plainly that the matter was one not worth worrying about.
Grey got upon his feet.
"We have six of these pirates back here in the woods: why can't we make them talk and tell us what they are trying to do?"
At this, Van Dyck took a hand.
"They would lie about it, as a matter of course," he interjected. "Besides, their particular object doesn't make any vital difference to us. They are here, and our present business is to see to it that they don't get away again – with the yacht."
Grey sat down again, grumbling.
"I don't see that we are getting ahead very fast," he complained. "What in Sam Hill do you suppose they're waiting for now?"
The answer to Grey's impatient query was at that moment coming around the Andromeda's stern. It was the disabled electric launch again this time with only one man in it, and he was sculling it with an oar over the stern, slowly working his way toward the gap in the reef. When it came a bit nearer we could see that the loom of a broken oar had been rigged as a mast in the bow, with a white flag of some sort dangling from it.
"A parley," I said; and Goff grunted acquiescence. But Jerry Dupuyster worked the lever of his rifle to reload.
"Don't shoot, Jerry," Bonteck cautioned in low tones; whereat the emancipated idler chuckled.
"Couldn't if I wanted to, by Jove; the bally cartridges are all gone, what?"
The huge lump of a man in the stern of the launch stopped sculling when he was within easy calling distance of the shore, and the boat lost way.
"Ahoy ze island!" he hailed, in a voice ridiculously out of proportion to his barrel-girthed bigness.
"Get to work with that oar and come ashore!" was Van Dyck's brusque command, to which he added: "We've got you covered."
"Non, non! it ees ze flag of ze truce!" shrilled the voice. And then the fat cook handed out an argument that was much more binding: "Ve haf ze enchineers in ze hold shut up, and eef you shoot wiz ze gon, zey will be keel!"
"Talk it out, then," said Van Dyck. "What do you want?"
"Ve make ze proposal – w'at you call ze proposition. It ees zat you vill all go to ze ozzer end of zis island, immédiatement. W'en you do zat, ve leave you ze long-boat to go 'way, w'erever you like to go. W'at you do wiz Lequat and hees mens?"
"Lequat and his men are where you won't find them in a hurry," was Bonteck's answer. "As to your demand that we go away and let you steal the yacht again, there's nothing doing."
"Sacré bleu! It ees ze – w'at you call heem? – ze ooltimatum. W'en ees come daylight, ve put ze leetle cannon on ze long boat and keel all —oui!"
At this savage pronouncement we held a whispered consultation, the fat pirate sitting back in the stern sheets of the launch and calmly lighting a cigarette. Could we, dare we, take the risk of a daylight bombardment, even though the single piece of artillery were only the yacht's little brass muzzle-loading signal piece, with such iron scraps as the mutineers might be able to find or manufacture for the missiles? It was a dubious question. Though our island was nearly if not quite a mile in length, its greatest width did not exceed four or five hundred yards, and the little gun would easily put it under a cross-fire from either side.
"Have they powder?" I asked of Goff.
"Tain't likely they haven't – with them a-handlin' all that war stuff from the Isle o' Pines."
"But nothing that would answer for grape-shot?"
"Pots and kittles in the galley, and a hammer to smash 'em with," said the old Gloucesterman. "That's good enough, I cal'late."
"Speak up, all of you," said Van Dyck. "Shall I try to drive a bargain with him for the long-boat? If he gives us enough gasoline, we might be able to make Willemstadt, on the island of Curaçao – with fair weather and a smooth sea. That is the nearest inhabited land, but it is something over a hundred-and-fifty-mile run."
Grey was the first to "speak up."
"I have more at stake than any of you," he said, thereby showing that the married lover may be stone blind to all things extraneous to his own particular and private little Eden. "Just the same, I say, fight it out."
"Here, too," echoed Billy Grisdale; and Jerry Dupuyster also came up promptly in his carefully acquired accent: "Ow, I say! we cawn't knuckle down to a lot of bally cooks and sailormen, what?"
"And you, Preble?" queried Van Dyck, turning to me.
I refused to vote, merely saying: "You know I'm with you, either way."
It was Goff's turn, but instead of taking it, he leaned over to whisper hoarsely: "Make him talk some, Mr. Van Dyck; tell him to work his proposition off ag'in, and say it slow. That boat's a-driftin' in, and if it comes a leetle mite nearer – "
Van Dyck stood up and called to the maker of ultimatums.
"State your proposal again, and let us have it in detail. Will you leave a supply of gasoline in the long-boat? Will you give us provisions, and a compass and sextant?"
The fat chef flung his cigarette away and we heard the little hiss of the spark as the water quenched it.
"Ze proposal ees zis: zat you take your fran's and go back to ze ladees. Again I h-ask you w'at you done wiz Monsieur Lequat and hees men?"
"They are here."
"Bien! You vill all go back to ze camp and ze ladees. You vill leave ze prisonaire; aussi, you will leave ze Captain Goff wiz ze rope tie on hees hand and on hees feets. To-morrow you come back on zis place, and you vill find ze longboat wiz ze gasoline, ze provisionments, et ze compass et ze sextant, to make ze voyage to La Guaira, to Curaçao, to anyw'ere you like to gone. Voila! dat ees all."
Again we took hasty counsel among ourselves, and whatever design Goff had been nursing in asking Van Dyck to prolong the parley was frustrated by another turn of the launch's drift. The boat was now edging farther out from the beach. One and all we were for refusing the detailed terms point blank, if for no other reason than that we were required to leave one of our number bound and at the mercy of the mutineers; one and all, I say, but Goff himself said nothing.
"We can't consider the proposal in its entirety for a minute," said John Grey, voicing the sentiments of at least five of us. But now Goff cut in.
"You're my owner, Mr. Van Dyck: if I could have a little over-haulin' of things with you – "
Van Dyck promptly went aside with the skipper. They didn't go so far but what we could hear their voices – though not the words – and Goff seemed to be doing all the talking, and to be doing it very earnestly. But when they came back, as they did very shortly, it was Bonteck who told us the outcome.
"Captain Goff has explained to me that the mutineers are obliged to make the terms include his surrender. Lequat is only a rule-of-thumb navigator, and if they don't have Goff they are likely to make a mess of themselves and of the yacht. For the sake of those whom we must consider first of all – the women – he is willing to take his chance again as a prisoner. If I thought there was any doubt about this fat devil carrying out his threat to bombard the island, I'd say 'No,' and fight for it. But we must remember that he can hardly fail to get some of us with the gun, or, if he shouldn't do that, he can keep us away from our water supply until we all die of thirst."
Grey raised the only question that seemed to be worth considering.
"We shall have only this scoundrel's word for it that the long-boat and provisions will be left for us," he objected.
Van Dyck put the suggestion aside hastily; rather too hastily, I fancied.
"We are obliged to take some chances, of course. Goff, here, will insist upon the fulfilment of the treaty terms. If they are not fulfilled to the letter, he will put the Andromeda on the reef and take the consequences." Then he called once more to the man in the boat: "One word with you before we close this deal. This is piracy on the high seas. I suppose you know what that means when you are caught – as you will be, sooner or later?"
We could see a big arm waving in airy bravado.
"Eet is not'ing, Monsieur Van Dyck. I blow it away —pouf! In Santa Cruz you vill h-ask ze gr-r-eat liberador w'at he shall tell you about 'Gustave Le Gros.' W'en you shall h-ask heem zat, you shall know it ees not'ing."
"All right," Bonteck returned. "We'll fall back and leave the prisoners. Captain Goff will be with them, and he will surrender when you come ashore. But he will not be bound, and he will be armed, so you can govern yourself accordingly."
The fat man waved an arm again and took up his sculling oar, raising no objection to the single modification of the ultimatum – that relating to the way Goff should be left. We waited until we saw the disabled launch creep out through the gash in the reef. Then we fell back upon the professor, who was still reading quietly by the miserable light of the ship's lantern.
In a few words we explained the new situation, and the mild-eyed rider of an engrossing hobby got up and carefully dusted his trousers.
"You gentlemen were on the ground, and you doubtless knew what was best to be done," he said in gentle resignation. "Shall we go back to the ladies?"
We left Elijah Goff to watch over the trussed-up figures in the little open glade and set out upon our retreat, taking the northern beach for our route. Just before we came opposite the camp at the farther end of the island, we heard the renewed sputterings and poppings of the gasoline engine in the long-boat. The amateur pirates were landing, this time without let or hindrance.