XVII
CAPTAIN ELIJAH SCORES
Reaching the camp under the palms we found a "state of affairs," as Conetta phrased it. The small fire had been kindled – not for any needed warmth, to be sure, but solely for the heartening effect of it, I imagined – and the women were huddled about it in various attitudes of more or less hysterical suspense, for which there was undeniably sufficient excuse, heaven knows.
There were sobs and gaspings of relief when we came in with our original number undiminished; and I let the others answer the inevitable outburst of eager and anxious questions and drew Conetta out of the fire circle to tell her briefly what had transpired, and what we had failed to do.
"And those horrid men are actually on the island with us now – at this very moment?" she breathed, the slate-blue eyes dilating. "What are they here for? What are they doing?"
"They have come to get the boat-load that we captured; the six that Goff brought ashore," I evaded, still trying to keep Bonteck's foolish secret intact.
"Then they will go away again?"
"That is one comfort; and very soon, I should say."
"But I don't understand. If they are not going to take us in the
Andromeda
, why have they come back to the island?"
I hated to go on prevaricating to her, but until Bonteck should give me leave, I was not at liberty to tell her the whole truth.
"Suppose we give them the credit of being at least partly human," I suggested. "Possibly they couldn't find it in their hearts to let us stay here and famish slowly. You mustn't forget that they've promised to leave us the long-boat and some eatables."
I could see well enough that she wasn't satisfied with that answer. She was far too clear-headed to take any such niggardly part for the whole.
"You're not making it very plausible," she said. "How far is it to where we're going in the long-boat?"
"Oh, it's quite some little distance," I replied, as easily as I could. "But with the sea as calm as it is now – "
"It may not stay calm," she broke in; and then: "You say Captain Elijah was with you. Where is he now?"
"He – er – he had to let himself be taken again, you know. The pirates insisted upon that. They have no real navigator in their outfit. That is probably the reason why they didn't put him ashore with us in the beginning."
"Then Bonteck was right? Captain Elijah wasn't one of them?"
"No, indeed. I'm frank to say I did him an injustice. He was overpowered and made a prisoner, along with Haskell and Quinby and the other Americans."
"But why did that first six that you had the fight with bring the captain ashore with them?"
Again I had to evade. "Goff didn't tell us that."
She was silent for a moment. Then I got it hot and heavy.
"Dick Preble, do you mean to stand there with a face like a Hindoo idol and tell me that six of you made a bargain with that wretched French cook to give old Uncle Elijah up?"
"It was Goff's own proposal," I hastened to say, "and he insisted upon it – wouldn't have it any other way. Let us hope that he knew what he was doing – that he has some plan that may turn out better for us than a voyage in the long-boat." Then I switched forcibly, endeavoring to drag the talk away from the vicinity of Bonteck's secret. Thus far it had been kept hidden through all the various vicissitudes, and I didn't intend to be the first to betray it. "Goff's play was heroic, and all that, but not a bit more so than Jerry Dupuyster's swim out to the yacht. I'm taking back all the insulting things I've been saying about that young man, Conetta, dear. In spite of the frills and the idleness and the English apings, he is a man, a grown man, and altogether worthy of a good woman's love and respect. Now I've said it and I feel better."
She looked up quickly, with that pert little cocking of her head that I had always loved.
"Worthy of
my
love and respect, do you mean?"
I bowed. "Yes; that is what I mean."
"And you want me to marry him?" It was a dreadful thing for her to ask at such a time and in such a place, with the others almost within arm's-reach. But they were all talking at once, and nobody was paying much attention to anybody else.
"You are promised," I reminded her; "and if you can forgive him for chasing around after another woman – "
"Hush!" she commanded, with a sudden retreat into the arms of discreetness. "They will hear you and say things about you – behind your back. What are we to do now – just lie down and go calmly to sleep, forgetting all about these horrid pirates at the other end of our island? I can't quite see us doing that. Can you?"
It was just here that Bonteck cut in, saving me the necessity of answering.
"When you are quite through making Dick jump the hurdles for you," he said to Conetta; and then he explained. We were not to take the mutineers wholly at their word regarding the implied promise not to molest us. The six of us who had been on the firing front were to do picket duty while the others tried to get a little sleep. The professor and Billy were to take the north beach, Jerry Dupuyster and Grey the south, and Bonteck and I were to vibrate between the two beaches, keeping in touch with the shoreward couples on either hand, thus maintaining a guard line all across the island.
It was not until after this rather elaborate picketing plan had been put in train, and Van Dyck and I were cautiously feeling our way toward the agreed-upon frontier half-way down the island, that I ventured to find fault.
"I don't know why you should make six of us unhappy when one or two would be enough," I complained. "You know well enough that our fat cook is asking nothing but to be let alone until he can make off with the loot. He's not going to trouble us any more."
His reply was a cryptic generality.
"I am hoping we are not entirely through with the fat cook, yet, Dick; in fact, I'm almost certain we're not."
"What's gnawing at you now?" I asked sourly.
"Just a suggestion," he answered half-absently, I thought. "We have something at our end of the island that is much more valuable – and desirable – than anything the pirates will find where they are digging now."
The way in which he said it, as much as the thing itself, made my blood run cold.
"The women, you mean?"
"It's only a suggestion," he hastened to say; "a suggestion based upon a name. Let's forget it, if we can."
We had groped our way for another hundred yards before I said: "It's a beautiful muddle! They won't find
your
gold – the whereabouts of which seems to be a lot more mythical than any of the old Spanish sea tales – and they
will
find the tidy little fortune we turned up for Madeleine."
"Of course; they'll be sure to find that," he agreed, still speaking half-absently.
"You talk as if you didn't care," I snapped. "Is Madeleine's dilemma any less sharp pointed now than it was when you cooked up this romantic scheme of yours for helping her?"
"You shouldn't hit a man when he's down, Dick," he replied soberly. "You know how I was planning to play the god-in-the-car to this little bunch of people, and what a chaotic, heart-breaking mess I've made of it. With all sorts of horrors staring us in the face, you can't blame me if I go batty now and then. You'd do it yourself if you were staggering under my load. I'm to blame for all this, Dick; I, and nobody else."
It doesn't do any particular good to rub salt into a wound – even a foolish wound. So I contented myself with asking a sort of routine question:
"Does Madeleine know how she is being robbed?"
"She does. I was obliged to tell her that much."
"How did she take it?"
"Like the angel that she is, Dick. She says the gold doesn't belong to her, any more than it does to anybody else who might dig it up; and that, anyway, it doesn't matter when there are so many more important things at stake."
"She is quite right about that," I agreed. "With a chancy voyage in an open boat ahead of us – "
"We'll never make that voyage, Dick," he said solemnly. "I think you know that as well as I do."
"Why won't we?"
"Because we are never going to be given the chance. You are not confiding enough to believe that this fat devil is going to keep his promise, to us, are you?"
"But, good heavens – you're keeping our promise to him, aren't you?" I burst out.
"To the letter – exactly and precisely to the letter," was his calm reply. "You heard what the Frenchman asked, and what I agreed to. He made three conditions; we were to go back to our camp; he was to be permitted to land in peace; and Goff was to be given up. We have kept faith in all three particulars. But he isn't meaning to keep faith with us at all."
"You mean that he won't leave us the boat?" I gasped.
"Not on your life. Goff told me we couldn't put the slightest dependence in anything he might say; and if I had been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt over Goff's warning, his own boasting would have turned the scale against him. Did you remark what he said, just as he was leaving? – about Santa Cruz and the liberator?"
I don't know why the fat man's boast hadn't made the proper impression upon me when he shrilled it out at us, or why I had failed to recall the name he had given as that of a Nicaraguan bandit whose cruelty and rapacity had long been a byword in the Central American republics. There must have been a blind spot in my memory at the moment, for the name and ill fame of Gustave the Fat were known even in distant Venezuela.
"That fiend!" I choked. And then: "You never shipped Gustave Le Gros in New York as cook on the
Andromeda!
"
"Oh, no. We shipped the real Bassinette, doubtless. Where and how the change was made – unless our repair stop at Gracias á Dios gave them their chance – I don't know."
"Wait a minute," said I. "Isn't it occurring to you now that the Gracias á Dios stop might have been prearranged? Haskell couldn't account for that propeller shaft running dry, and neither could I, after I had examined it. It had every appearance of having been tampered with; sand or some other abrasive put into it. If such a thing were done, and timed so that we'd have to put in at Gracias – "
"Sure!" he replied. "And the gold – my gold – was probably the main-spring of the whole plot. The secret of it must have leaked out some way in New York, and it was handed on to this bandit bunch; with Lequat to trail us, first to Havana, and afterwards to New Orleans. But that's all ancient history now. Our original job is still before us, and that is not to let them get away with the yacht and leave us as we were."
We had reached the appointed picket line, and short detours to right and left put us in touch with Dupuyster and Grey on the south beach and Sanford and Billy Grisdale on the north. Grey had scouted ahead a little way, and he told us that the long-boat and the disabled electric launch were lying at the beach at the place which had been our late battle-ground, with two men guarding them. And Grisdale and the professor had a similar report to make concerning the mutineers' vigilance. Billy had also made a forward reconnaissance, and he had seen two sentries pacing back and forth on the sands in the little indentation which we had named "Spaniards' Bay."
Van Dyck made no comment until after we had gone back to our mid-island post in the wood. Then he said abruptly: "How long do you think it will take them to dig up those gold bars and carry them down to the boat, Dick?"
"Why, I don't know; with the number of men they've probably got on the job it oughtn't to take more than half an hour or so," I returned.
"Thirty minutes; it's short – frightfully short," he said, as if he were thinking aloud. Then; "It's this suspense that takes the heart out of a man."
It seemed a little odd that he should lament the shortness of the time in one breath, and in the next give the impression that he wished it were shorter.
"What difference does their speed or slowness make to us?" I asked.
"It is just a chance – just the rawest of all chances," he went on, ignoring my query. "I suppose I ought not to have let it hang upon such a weak thread; but there was no choice – no choice at all."
"If you would describe the thread I might be able to come a little nearer guessing what you are talking about," I retorted.
"Goff has a plan of some sort, but he couldn't take the time to go into details. As I've told you, he warned me that no dependence whatever could be placed upon the Frenchman's promise to leave the long-boat and the provisions. He advised me to accept the terms as they stood, and to make a show of keeping our part of them – as we have. Past that, we were to get in touch again, holding ourselves in readiness for whatever might happen."
"And you don't know what is going to happen?"
"No more than you do. You know how secretive Goff is, and, as I say, our time was short. I can't, for the life of me, see what Goff can possibly do to help out. I don't need to tell you the real reason why Le Gros insisted upon our surrendering him. He is the one man besides myself who knows, or is supposed to know, where my gold bars are buried, and Le Gros meant to make him point out the spot – has probably done so before this time. What Goff hoped to gain by putting himself into their hands, I don't know, but we may be sure that he has some scheme in his clever old head. He told me to watch the beaches, both of them, and to be ready to bunch our fighting half-dozen at any point, and at any minute."
"Well, we're here and we're ready," I said, and the words were scarcely out of my mouth before Grey came over from the southern beach, groping his way blindly in the thicker darkness of the palm shadows.
"Van Dyck – Preble!" he called cautiously, and then he stumbled fairly into our arms. "Something doing," he told us hurriedly. "One of the boats – the smaller one – is adrift and moving down this way. It doesn't seem to have anybody in it."
"But I thought you said a few minutes ago that there were two men guarding the boats," I struck in.
"There were, but they've gone somewhere. Jerry and I supposed they were sitting down in the tree shadows where we couldn't see them, but I guess they must have gone up into the woods with the others. If they were still on the beach they wouldn't let that launch drift away without trying to catch it."
"That drifting boat is probably our cue," said Bonteck, instantly alert. Then to me: "Hurry over to the other shore and get Sanford and Billy, Dick – quick! Strike straight across the island with them, and work your way along the south beach until you find us!"
I established contact with the professor and Billy without any difficulty and transmitted Van Dyck's order. Billy wanted to know what good the disabled electric launch would do us, even if it should drift ashore at some point where we could capture it, but I couldn't tell him that.
"That's a future," I said. "Our job just now is to obey orders. Come on."
Together the three of us plunged into the wood on a direct line across the island, and in a very few minutes we found Van Dyck, Grey and Jerry Dupuyster crouching in the shadows of the tree fringe on the south shore. Far up the white line of the beach we could see the dark bulk of the long-boat at rest, and in the nearer distance was the electric launch, still drifting down the lagoon toward us.
"What's your guess, Dick?" said Van Dyck, as we came up. "There isn't a particle of current in that lagoon – you know there isn't."
There wasn't, as we had proved many times, and yet the drifting boat was moving steadily in our direction. It was Billy Grisdale's eyes – the youngest pair of the half-dozen – that solved the mystery.
"There's somebody in the boat – paddling," he declared. "Look steadily and you'll see his arm reaching over the side. He's lying down or kneeling so that you can't see anything but the arm."
In a short time we could all see the propelling arm making its rhythmic swing over the side of the boat, and while we looked, the man in the boat sat up and went at his task in more vigorous fashion, beaching the boat presently in a small cove within a stone's throw of our crouching place.
"It's Goff," said Van Dyck, when the paddler stepped out of the launch, and we made a rush for him.
The old skipper had little enough to say for himself, save that he had improved a chance to slip away from the mutineers in the darkness, and had stolen the launch with the idea of getting it into our hands. Questioned by Grey as to how he had been able to get away with the boat without giving the alarm, the sailing-master gave such an evasive reply that I was set to wondering if he hadn't slain the two boat guards out of hand. But as to that, he was too full of his plan for our rescue to go into the particulars of his own adventure.
Briefly, the plan he had evolved turned upon his success in securing one of the boats. For obvious reasons he had picked upon the launch, which the mutineers had towed ashore – probably because there were men left on the
Andromeda
whom they were afraid to trust and they wished to keep in their own hands all means of communication between the yacht and the island.
"Couldn't start the long-boat without that pop-engine makin' a racket that'd wake the dead," he explained; "and, besides, she's up on the sand till it'll take half a dozen men to shove her off. And the way they're out o' their heads, I cal'lated they wouldn't miss the launch – not first off, anyways."
"I suppose they've all gone crazy digging for the Spanish gold," Bonteck said, meaning, as I made sure, to give the captain a lead upon which he was at liberty to enlarge in the hearing of the rest of us.
"'Crazy' ain't a big enough word f'r it. You'd think the whole kit and b'ilin' of 'em was just out of a 'sylum. That's how it comes they hain't missed me yet. But we'll have to talk sort o' middlin' fast, I guess. When they do miss me, I shouldn't wonder a mite if there'd be blood on the moon. Now you've got a boat, what you goin' to do, Mr. Van Dyck?"
With a boat, even a disabled one, in our hands we were once more upon a fighting basis. Goff had quickly confirmed Bonteck's assumption that Le Gros hadn't the smallest idea of keeping his word to us about the turning over of the long-boat, so we were justified in declaring war again if we chose. Bonteck's first proposal was to load our fighting squad into the launch, in which we could paddle our way through the nearest reef gap and around to the
Andromeda
, on the chance of taking the yacht by a surprise attack with Haskell and his engine-room and stoke-hold contingent to help us if we could contrive to liberate them.
To this expedient Goff raised a very pertinent objection, which was immediately sustained by all. While we should be fighting to gain possession of the yacht, the women would be left practically undefended on the island – hostages whom Le Gros would immediately seize, and for the restoring of whom – not to mention any worse thing that he might do – he could exact any price he might ask us to pay.
"No, that won't do," said Goff, when we were brought up standing by the insurmountable objection; "lemme get in with my notion. There's three oars in the launch, and a piece of another. By crowdin' t