When we parted it was with the agreement to meet again at the western extremity of the island, and I ventured to call my watchmate's attention to the fact that a lookout's duty was to look out.
"Why, bless me! – of course it is," he laughed. "Now that you mention it, I remember that I wasn't very faithful on the way over here. I'll reform, Mr. Preble, I will, truly." And he went on his way around the north beach toward the bay of the galleon wreck.
It is probably a rare thing for a crisis in the affairs of a group of nearly a score of people to turn upon so trivial a matter as the tobacco habit. There was still an unburned dottel in my pipe, and I could not think of wasting it. If I had not stopped and felt in my pockets for my one remaining match while the professor was still a trudging shadow on the white sands of the northern beach, the crisis might have come and gone undiscovered by any soul of our eighteen.
For, just as I had found the match and was in the act of striking it, the ghost-like bulk of a ship loomed silently in the starlight a short half-mile to the eastward; a ship headed directly for the island and showing no lights. It was the Andromeda again.
XV
THE MERRY WAR
Putting the unlighted match carefully away in my pocket, I made a quick dash down the north beach to overtake the professor.
I told him what I had seen, and he exclaimed, "Dear me – you don't say so!" much as if I had rushed up to assure him that the exact value of pi in the circle-squaring problem had finally been ascertained. And then, quite placidly: "What do we do next, Mr. Preble?"
I didn't want to tell him that, in all probability, the Andromeda mutineers were merely coming back to dig for gold. That was still Van Dyck's personal secret. But it was not difficult to convince him that the yacht's errand was not friendly to us.
"They are creeping up quietly, at the wrong end of the island, and with no lights showing," I pointed out. "Which means that they are not coming to take us off. If you will stay here and keep in touch with them while I run back to camp and give the alarm – "
"Certainly," he agreed. Then: "I'm not to show myself?"
"By no manner of means. Don't let them see you or hear you, but keep them in sight if you can do it without exposing yourself. I shan't be gone any longer than I can help."
It was the better part of a mile down the beach to a point opposite the glade where our camp was pitched, and the night was warm; but I took small thought for either the distance or the heat. At the camp everybody but Van Dyck had turned in; at least, none of the others was in sight. Bonteck was sitting beside the expiring embers of the bit of cooking fire, with his head in his hands and his gaze fixed upon the patch of white ashes with its center spot of red coals.
I came up behind him, touched his shoulder, and hastily whispered the news: "The Andromeda is clawing up to the other end of the island just as she did before – at half speed, and with no lights showing."
"Thank God she is back at last!" he muttered, starting up quickly. "It falls in at the right minute, Dick. I was just saying to myself that I'd go dippy if I couldn't fight somebody or something. Turn out the squad, as quietly as you can."
Moving cautiously so as not to awaken any of the non-combatants, I aroused Grey, Dupuyster and Billy Grisdale and told them what was to the fore. Van Dyck herded us quickly out of the camp circle, and on the beach he groped under the palmettos and uncovered our scanty arsenal; the three pistols and the two knives we had taken from our former captives. If our lately awakened recruits were surprised at the appearance of the weapons they said nothing, nor was there any comment made when, out of the same hiding place, Bonteck drew a half-dozen stout, serviceable clubs and distributed them as he had the more modern weapons.
"Now then, if you are all ready," he said, giving the word. "Set the pace, Dick, and we'll try to keep up with you." And a moment later we were running silently in single file along the north beach toward the eastern-point lookout where I had posted Sanford.
In making me the pace-setter, Bonteck builded more wisely than he knew – more wisely than any of us knew at the time. Having just completed a mile dash at the best speed I could compass, I was fain to set an easy dog-trot for the return, so we were all comparatively fresh when we reached the scene of action and found the professor.
Our lookout's report was brief and to the point. The Andromeda had steamed up silently and was lying off the south shore at no great distance from us, and as yet there was no movement aboard; at least, the professor said he hadn't been able to see anything stirring on her decks. But Van Dyck, making a hasty reconnaissance, came back with better information.
"They are lowering the electric launch by hand," he announced. Then he outlined the situation for us in a few brittle words. "You all understand, I take it, that they have not come back – secretly, this way – to rescue us. We may ignore their real object for the present and come to the immediate necessities. If we get possession of the yacht, we shall doubtless have to fight for it."
"Just say when and how," Billy Grisdale cut in tersely, trying the strength of his club over his knee.
Van Dyck sketched his plan rapidly, and it was evident that he had worked out the details in advance, basing his conclusions upon what he and I had seen on the night of the storm.
"They will land a party in the launch, and our first move will be to capture every man of that landing party, dead or alive, and without making any noise. So don't use the firearms. If their boat's crew doesn't return within a reasonable time, they'll send again to find out what has become of it. When they do that, we'll repeat, and by eating them up a little at a time – but you get the idea, I'm sure." And to me: "Dick, will you take the command? You are better qualified than any of the rest of us."
"You are doing very well, yourself," I told him. "Show us the way and we'll stay with you."
"All right," he agreed briefly. "I think we all understand that this is likely to be our last chance, so far as the yacht is concerned. There are nine women up at the other end of the island who will, in all human probability, starve to death if we bungle this thing and let the Andromeda get away from us. Keep that in mind when you hit, and hit hard!"
Since the choice of position was one of the few advantages we should have in the coming struggle, we picked our way silently across the point to the wood fringe from which Van Dyck and I had witnessed the earlier landing. Judging from the little we could see in the starlight, the mutineers were making hard work of the job of clearing away the electric launch without the aid of the steam winch. In spite of Mr. Edison's continued and most ingenious efforts to find a substitute for the lead in them, storage batteries are still heavy contrivances; and at the end of it the weighty little tender got away from the men at the davit tackles and dropped into the sea with a resounding slap that might have been heard half-way around the island.
For a minute or two the small boat lay chafing against the side of the yacht, and there was no attempt made to man it; from which we inferred that the mutineers were waiting to ascertain if the crash of the sudden launching had given the alarm. In view of the fact that the invaders had every reason to believe that we were all either dead or dying from starvation by this time, it struck me that they were excessively cautious, and I spoke of this to Van Dyck.
"That is the 'spiggotty' of it," he commented in low tones. "Lequat's name is French, but I'd be willing to bet that he and his backers are of the mongrel breed – dock-rats who will fight only when they're cornered."
"Will they be well armed, do you think?" I asked.
"Heaven knows. Every man that Goff picked up in New York may have been a walking arsenal, for all I know to the contrary. As for the yacht itself, there were only a few sport guns in the cabins, as you saw for yourself."
Whether they were over-cautious, or only prudently careful, the intending invaders waited fully ten minutes, I should say, before making another move. But at last, silhouetting themselves as black shadows against the white paint of the Andromeda's side, a boat's crew came over the rail, dropping man by man into the launch. We counted the shadowy figures slipping over the yacht's side. As in the yawl's crew, there were seven; a man apiece for us, and one extra, for good measure.
"I'll take that odd man," Billy Grisdale whispered in my ear. "I can't go back to Edie with less than two scalps at my belt, you know."
"Shut up!" I hissed. "They'll hear you, and then you won't get even one."
The launch got under way at once and presently came skimming through the gap in the reef, the narrowness of which had proved the undoing of the yawl on the night of the hurricane. The electrically driven boat made no sound other than the purring murmur of its motor and the soft, ripping sheer of the sharp cutwater as it turned a tiny bow wave. Once within the lagoon, the launch was steered straight for the beach. This time, as it appeared, there was to be no shilly-shallying.
A landing was made within a few yards of our covert. Six of the men got out when the tender's prow slid up on the sand, and the remaining man rummaged under the thwarts and heaved a pick and a shovel ashore. Then a curious thing happened. Without a word uttered, the six men on the sands became suddenly involved in a fierce and mysterious struggle. Twice one of the six broke away, only to be instantly caught and dragged back by the others; and it was not until the brief battle was over, and five of the men were shoving the sixth ahead of them into the wood, that Van Dyck found the answer and passed the word to the rest of us.
"That's Goff, and they're making him show them the way! Come on!"
We followed, and there was no need for any great amount of caution on our part. The men ahead of us were trampling through the jungle undergrowth with little heed for the noise they made, and we were close upon them when they halted in the small open space marked by the lump of coral. Since it was well-nigh pitch dark in the tree-shadowed glade, a light of some sort was a necessity, and one of the men knelt to kindle the wick of a ship's lantern. The sputtering flare of the match illuminated a striking tableau for us. Lequat, hatless, and with a red bandanna bound around his head in true buccaneer fashion, stood aside, leaning upon the bared blade of a huge weapon, half sabre and half machete. Two of the others held Goff pinioned by his arms, and the odd man had the pick and shovel.
Van Dyck held us back until the lantern was fairly alight and the kneeling man was about to rise. Then, at his whispered "Now!" we rushed the silent group.
It is a worn saying that a man knows no more of a battle than that small portion of it which may fall to his share. My share in the sharp struggle which followed was simple enough. Out of the confused tangle of legs and arms and writhing bodies I dragged my man, one of Goff's pinioners whom I had picked out in the brief flare of the lantern-lighting match. That, and a quieting tap from the butt of the big Navy pistol which had fallen to me in the distribution of weapons, was all there was to it. Before I could get in again, the fight was over, and Van Dyck was stooping to put a match to the wick of the ship's lantern which had been kicked aside and had gone out in the scuffling battle.
The scene revealed by the renewed lantern light was not without its element of grim humor. Our victory had been sweepingly complete, and the small open space was strewn with the prone figures of the vanquished. Van Dyck had been thoughtful enough to bring a coil of light tent rope with him from our camp, and Grey and Grisdale were already at work like trained thief-takers binding and gagging the captives. Over in the edge of the glade the professor was trying mercifully to replace the dislocated shoulder of a small man who was groaning and squirming under him, and begging in broken English to be spared; the patient pleading while the amateur surgeon was assuring him blandly that the disabled arm would be pulled out by the roots if he raised his voice above a whisper.
It was Elijah Goff, fully reinstated now as a victim of circumstances like ourselves, who went to the professor's assistance.
"Lemme sit on his head while you yank, Professor," he said with dry humor. "I'm owin' that tarnation little rat suthin' f'r the way he's been keelhaulin' me." And thereupon we saw that the professor's capture was the ex-steward, Lequat, whose formidable weapon the mild-mannered old scholar had actually broken off short at the hilt with the same shrewd bludgeon stroke that had crippled the ex-steward's sword arm.
After our five prisoners were safely trussed up and silenced with primitive gags made of knotted rope, we wasted no more time upon them. The man left with the boat remained to be secured, and his removal from the scene was a bit of routine. He had come ashore to stand by the bow of the beached launch, and apparently he mistook us for his own people returning. Anyway, he made scarcely a show of resistance when we surrounded him, and Billy Grisdale garroted him with the bit of knotted rope which was presently forced between his teeth to keep him quiet while we bound and dragged him back into the wood to the general rendezvous.
The launch's manning thus disposed of, we held a sober council of war, with Goff on the witness stand. The old skipper told his story briefly, and in the main it accorded fairly well with Van Dyck's prefigurings. The mutiny and seizure of the yacht had been real enough, and the conspirators had chosen the moment when the sham uprising was to have been staged; namely, the evening when Edie Van Tromp's cry of "Land-o-o-o!" had announced the Andromeda's approach to the island. Goff had been overpowered on the bridge, and the Americans, Haskell, Quinby and the others, had been imprisoned in the engine-room and fire hold, where, so Goff told us, they were still confined. The skipper could not say how many members of the crew proper were in the conspiracy, but those who were not had doubtless been overawed by threats of violence; given the choice between obedience and submission, and walking the plank.
"All I know is it ain't a sailormen's crowd," said the grizzled old Gloucesterman in summing up. "It's mostly cooks and cabin stewards, and that kind of riff-raff, with that fat Frenchman, Bassinette, at the head of 'em. Near as I could figger, they're revolutionaries o' some sort. They got an idee there was big money some'ere's aboard, and I cal'late they've dum near tore the insides out o' the yacht lookin' for it."
"Bassinette, the chef?" Van Dyck queried. "Then this fellow Lequat wasn't the ringleader?"
"No more 'n I be," said Goff. "He's nothin' but an understrapper, carryin' out orders. But he's a navigator – of a sort."
"Where has the yacht been all this time?" It was Grey who wanted to know.
"Been mostly standin' off and on over to the Central American coast, unloadin' a cargo of guns and ammynition that was picked up off the Isle o' Pines," was the calm reply. "When they got through with that, Bassinette told me he was comin' back here to take you folks off. I mistrusted he was lyin' like a whitehead about what he was comin' for, but it looked 's if any chance was better 'n none, so I give him his bearin's, which I suspicion Lequat wa'n't sailorman enough to figger out f'r himself. There was bad weather brewin' when we got here, and they had to cut and run f'r it afore a gale o' wind."
"Did they try to land at all?" Billy Grisdale asked.
"Couldn't prove nothin' by me," said Goff, and I got the idea he was trying to fight off from the question. "They had me locked up in one o' the cabins."
At this, Grey broke in again.
"You say you mistrusted that these fellows were not coming back to take us off, Captain Goff: what were they coming for, then? And what were they planning to do back here in the wood with a pick and shovel just now when we closed in on them?"
I saw Van Dyck's hand shoot out to grip the sailing-master's arm. If it were a warning, the old skipper was quick to act upon it.
"There's an old yarn about a buried gold-mine some'res in these waters," he drawled. "I guess putty near everybody's heard it, fust 'r last. Shouldn't wonder if Bassinette and his crowd think they've got a pointer on it. Maybe they thought that was what we was headin' here for. Wouldn't supprise me a mite."
The explanation was certainly an ingenious one, and it fully proved the justice of Van Dyck's trust in the old fisherman skipper. But the questioner was still unsatisfied. In his proper environment, as I have said, Mr. John Grey figured as an able young lawyer, and when he could forget Annette and his new-found happiness long enough, the lawyer gifts came easily to the front.
"What made them bring you ashore, Captain Goff?" he asked shrewdly.
But Goff proved to be far too old a bird to be caught napping.
"Maybe they was cal'latin' to have me do the diggin'," he returned with a sly chuckle. "Wouldn't put it a mite beyond 'em."
It was Van Dyck who brought the talk back to things present and pressing.
"We know definitely now what we are up against," he said. "How many of the men are in this with Bassinette, Captain 'Lige?"
"They kep' me too close to tell. Maybe half of 'em, 'r maybe more. And another thing – they've got guns and pistols, plenty of 'em."
Some earnest of this we had had in the taking of the prisoners in the glade. They were all armed, but the weapons were for the most part out of date; pistols and knives, one repeating rifle of an old model, a pair of brass knuckles, a wicked looking "life-preserver" – a short leather club, lead-loaded in the striking end. But we found only a scattering score or so of cartridges for the firearms.
These weapons we now shared impartially among ourselves, and when the professor volunteered to go back in the wood and stand guard over the prisoners, Van Dyck suggested that it was time we were making a reconnaissance in force in the enemy's direction, the war council having been held at a point about half-way between the glade and the beach. Nobody could say certainly what move the mutineers on the yacht would make next, and in spite of Goff's assurances to the contrary, Van Dyck was afraid they might take the alarm and run away, abandoning the launch's crew to whatever fate had befallen it.
"Not much danger o' that," Goff insisted; and after Grisdale, Grey and Dupuyster had been posted in the forest fringe with instructions to keep a sharp lookout for renewed activities upon the Andromeda, Van Dyck drew Goff and me aside and went straight to the heart of things.
"Mr. Preble and I were here on the beach that night when the yacht came up and then had to make a run for it, Captain 'Lige," he began. "Didn't you know they sent a boat's crew ashore that night?"
Goff nodded. "Didn't know how much 'r how little you wanted t'other folks to know. Had me locked up in a cabin on the starb'd side and I saw the yawl get off – and saw that it didn't get back. Maybe you can tell me what happened to that boat-load o' scamps?"
Van Dyck told our part in the happenings briefly, and the old Banksman chuckled delightedly.
"Good stroke o' business – catchin' 'em that way when they was all fagged out with swimmin'," – adding vindictively: "only you ought to 've knocked every single one on 'em in the head, when you had 'em. As it was – "
"Yes," said Van Dyck; "as it was? – "
"As it was, we clawed back here just afore day the next mornin', and with the seas putty near rollin' the yacht's rail under, Bassinette made out to get ashore with the gasoline launch when it was just about as much as any man's life was worth to try it. He fetched back five o' the seven men that went ashore in the yawl. You said two of 'em was drowned, didn't you?"
"They were," said I.
"This man Bassinette," Van Dyck broke in. "He is the cook you picked up in New York. Did you know anything about him when you shipped him?"
Goff shook his head. "Somethin' kind o' queer about that big lummux," he averred. "If I didn't know better, I'd 'most be willin' to go into court and swear he isn't the man I shipped in New York. Looks as much like him as two peas, but that's all. If we'd been anywheres to get rid o' him and pick up his double – "
"Wait," I interposed. "We laid up for a day at Gracias á Dios with a disabled propeller shaft. Didn't some of the men have shore leave that day?"
"By gravy, I b'lieve you've hit it, Mr. Preble!" Goff exclaimed. "It was after we left Gracias that I took to noticin' that Bassinette seemed sort o' different, somehow; didn't grin same as he used to when I'd stick my head into his galley. And he was consider'ble thick with a bunch o' them outlandishmen we picked up in New York ha'bor. Look 's if we'd all ought to be bored f'r the hollow-horn, Mr. Van Dyck!"
It was beginning to look that way to me, too, but Van Dyck didn't push the inquiry any further.
"We can let that part of it rest for the present," he said, and at his suggestion we joined the other three in the ambush at the beach edge.
Up to this time there had been no further sign of life on board the yacht. Though there were no premonitory symptoms of a storm brewing, the night was oppressively warm and there was hardly a breath of air stirring. Nevertheless, there is always some little movement in the sea, and during the interval which had elapsed since the launch party had left her, the Andromeda had drifted a bit nearer in and was now fairly opposite the narrow reef inlet, and not more than a short cable's length outside of it.
"If we could only contrive some means of making them come to anchor," Van Dyck muttered. "A bit of breeze would turn the trick, but there is no promise of that."
"He'd be too foxy to anchor, even if 'twas blowin' half a gale," was Goff's reply to this. "What I say is to take the launch and board him. There's six of us, and we've got the tools, such as they are. I cal'late if we could fight our way to the engine-room hatch and let Haskell and his gang out – "
"I am afraid to risk the boarding," Van Dyck admitted. "Not for ourselves, but for the women who will be left if we shouldn't succeed. There are good glasses on board, and those fellows probably know how to use them. If it were only a little darker, so that we might stand some chance of getting out to them before they could recognize us – but they'd be sure to, and put steam to the yacht."
I guess the suspense was getting on our nerves. I am sure it was on mine. The very silence was oppressive, and it seemed as if the lapping of the little waves on the sands and the rise and fall of the gentle swell on the reef were hushed. Then, too, the white yacht in the near offing grew more and more like a ghost ship as we strained our eyes watching her for some sign of life. It was Dupuyster who broke the spell.
"I say, Bonteck, old dear, don't you know, I'm the only original human fish, when it comes to swimmin'," he whispered. "Toss me the sharpest knife in the lot, and I'll toddle out there and anchor the Andromeda for you – dashed if I don't."
Of course, there was a low-toned chorus of protest. Sharks occasionally came into the lagoon, as we all knew, and since ships usually have a following of them in tropical waters, there would certainly be one or more of the man-eaters in the deeper water beyond the reef. Also, admitting that a swimmer could reach the Andromeda without having a leg or an arm bitten off on the way, there were mechanical difficulties to be overcome. The anchors were catted at the bows of the yacht, with the slack of the cables taken in, and the anchor flukes themselves triced up in heavy hempen slings in man-o'-war style. It would be a man's job to cut the slings with anything short of a sharp axe.
Our arguments nugatory were hurried but thorough. If Dupuyster should live to reach the yacht and climb aboard, he would certainly be discovered from the bridge before he could cut the lashings to free an anchor. And, admitting that the thing could be done, what would be gained? What was to prevent the mutineers from throwing the steam winch into gear and heaving the anchor up again?
While we were expostulating, Jerry – not the carefully Anglicized clubman we had known, but a most surprisingly red-blooded reincarnation of him – was calmly preparing to get himself shark-bitten.
"I say, by Jove, you chappies had better hedge on some of those bets you're making," he drawled. "If Uncle Jimmie were here, he'd take you, don't you know. Find me that knife, and a couple of the biggest pistol cartridges. That's all I want."
Provided with his simple armament, Jerry, stripped to the buff, and with the knife and the cartridges secured in an impromptu belt made of his discarded undershirt, wormed his way down to the beach and took the water under the bilge of the stranded launch as silently as a fish. When he came up from the long dive we could trace him by the faint phosphorescence showing now and then in the ripples of his wake.
It was a horrible strain, watching him as he worked his way across the lagoon to the inlet through the reef. Every instant we were expecting to see the disturbance which would mark the lunge and back-roll of an attacking man-eater, and I could not help wondering which of the two women, Conetta or Beatrice Van Tromp, would reproach us the more bitterly for letting him go to his death.
We lost trace of him after his faintly luminous trail disappeared at the gap in the reef. Just then the windless calm was broken by a mere breath of air stirring out of the southeast, and the Andromeda, still a dead hulk swinging gently to the slow heave and dip of the scarcely perceptible swell, was now drifting landward by more than the measured inchings; she had decreased her earliest distance by considerably more than half. It could be only a matter of minutes before whoever was in command would have to give her sternway with the engines to keep her from going on the reef, in which case Dupuyster would have taken his life in his hand for nothing. A half-dozen backward turns of the big twin screws would take the yacht out of his reach, and would probably take her out of soundings so that a dropped anchor would find no bottom.
Van Dyck whispered all this to me while we were holding our breath and making our eyes water in the effort to get another glimpse of the swimmer's trail.
"He'll never make it – never in this world!" Van Dyck concluded in the stifled whisper. "We were criminal fools for letting him try it. It's sheer suicide, and we all knew it!"
"I have forgiven him," I said grimly.
"Forgiven him? For what?"
"For playing fast and loose with Conetta. He has asked her, you know, and she has said 'Yes.' And in spite of that, he has been making open love to Beatrice Van Tromp ever since we were put ashore here."
"Don't make a damned jealous idiot of yourself!" was the hot retort. "If you weren't bat-blind in both eyes – "
The interruption was the thunderous racket we had by this time given up all hope of hearing. With a mighty splash and a deafening clamor from the paying-out cable, the Andromeda's starboard anchor let go, and from the shortness of the uproar we knew that it had taken ground upon the outer ledges of the reef. Following the rattling clamor, we heard the pad-pad of running men, and were able to guess that the slack discipline of the mutineers had been responsible for a deserted forward deck. There was a barked-out order in a foreign tongue from the bridge, a hissing of steam, and the power capstan was promptly set in motion to break the anchor out of its hold.
At the second or third turn of the capstan something happened; a snapping explosion up forward, and a prolonged hammering and grinding, as if the steam hoisting machinery were patiently and painstakingly wrecking itself. In the midst of this new turmoil we saw a slender white figure shoot over the yacht's bow in a headlong dive, and heard the crackling spatter of a pistol fusillade opened upon the diver from the bridge.
"We'll hang the last living man of them if they got him!" Van Dyck declared vindictively, when the velvety silence of the tropical night had settled down again, and we had looked earnestly but in vain for some sign of the diver from the yacht's bows. Then he turned to Grey: "Jack, you'd better drop out and run back to camp. It is hardly possible that the women are sleeping through all this war noise. You'll know what to say. Tell them to keep together and to make no noise. They're out of the danger zone, and we'll make it our business to try to prevent the scrapping from drifting down to that end of the island. Don't say anything about Jerry. We won't give him up until we have to. That's all; but hurry back. We'll probably be needing you by the time you've made the round trip."
Grey slipped off silently, doubling the sandspit point of the island in order to have the unmenaced north beach for his speedway. After he was gone there was a terrible wait for the four of us left crouching in the shadow of the palms. For what seemed like an age there was no sign of our forlorn-hope swimmer. As nearly as we could judge from the noises on board the yacht, the mutineers were trying to repair the disabled capstan. Apparently it didn't suit them to be tied by the leg and unable to run away.
"Let me have that old rifle, Billy," said Van Dyck; this after the capstan noises had been located. Lying flat, Bonteck aimed as well as he could in the uncertain light, and we distinctly heard the clang of the bullet as it penetrated the metal bulwarks of the yacht's stem. The single shot did the business, and we heard no more hammerings at the crippled machinery.