Dragon's blood Part 23

"Ow!" cried Nesbit, "lucky beggar!"--"Sincerely glad," said Mr.

Forrester. And a volley of compliments went round the board. The captain plainly took heart, and flus.h.i.+ng still redder at so much praise and good will, stood now at ease, chuckling.

"Most men," he began, when there came a lull, "most men makes a will after they're dead. That's a sh.o.r.e way o' doing things! Now _I_ want to see the effects, living. So be 'anged, here goes, right and proper. To Miss Drake, for her hospital and kiddies, two thousand rupees."

In the laughter and friendly uproar, the girl sat dazed.

"What shall I say?" she whispered, wavering between amus.e.m.e.nt and distress. "I can't accept it--"

"Nonsense!" grumbled Heywood, with an angry glance. "Don't spoil the happiest evening of an old man's life."

"You're right," she answered quickly; and when the plaudits ended, she thanked the captain in a very simple, pretty speech, which made him duck and grin,--a proud little benefactor.

"That ain't all," he cried gayly; then leveled a threatening finger, like a pistol, at her neighbor. "Who poked fun at me, first and last?

Who always came out aboard to tell me what an old a.s.s I was? Fixed ideas, eh? No go?--Look you here. What did I come so many hundred miles for? To say what I always said: half-shares." The light-blue eyes, keen with sea-cunning and the lonely sight of many far horizons, suffered an indescribable change. "My boy, the half's yours. There's two rich men here to-night. I've come to take you Home."

It was Heywood's turn to be struck dumb. He grew very pale.

"Oh, I say," he stammered at last, "it's not fair--"

"Don't spoil the happiest evening--" whispered the girl beside him.

He eyed her ruefully, groaned, then springing up, went swiftly to the head of the table and wrung the captain's brown paw, without a word to say.

"Can do, can do," said Captain Kneebone, curtly. "I was afraid ye might not want to come."

Then followed a whirlwind; and Teppich rose with his moustache bristling, and the ready Nesbit jerked him down again in the opening sentence; and everybody laughed at Heywood, who sat there so white, with such large eyes; and the dinner going by on the wings of night, the melancholy "boy" circled the table, all too soon, with a new silver casket full of n.o.ble cigars from Paiacombo, Manila, and Dindigul.

As the three ladies pa.s.sed the foot of the table, Rudolph saw Mrs.

Forrester make an angry signal. And presently, like a prisoner going to his judge, Chantel slipped out of the room. He was not missed; for already the streaming candle-flames stood wreathed in blue layers, nor was it long before the captain, mounting his chair, held a full gla.s.s aloft.

"Here," he cried in triumph, "here's to every nail in the hoof--"

The gla.s.s crashed into splinters and froth. A flying stone struck the boom of the punkah, and thumped on the table. Through the open windows, from the road, came a wild chorus of yells, caught up and echoed by many voices in the distance.

"Shutters!" called Heywood. "Quick!"

As they slammed them home, more stones drummed on the boards and clattered against the wall. Conches brayed somewhere, followed by an unaccountable, sputtering fusillade as of tiny muskets, and then by a formidable silence. While the banqueters listened in the smoky room, there came a sullen, heavy sound, like a single stroke on a large and very slack ba.s.s-drum.

"_Kau fai!_" shrilled the voices below; and then in a fainter gabble, as though hurrying off toward the sound,--"_kau fai!_"

"The Black Dog," said Heywood, quietly. "He has barked. Earlier than we figured, Gilly. Lucky the scaffolding's up. Gentlemen, we all know our posts. Guns are in the first bedroom. Quietly, now. Rudie, go call Chantel. Don't frighten the women. If they ask about that noise, tell 'em anything--Dragon Boat Festival beginning. Anything.--We can easily hold this place, while the captain gets 'em out to his s.h.i.+p."

The captain wheeled, with an injured air.

"What s.h.i.+p?" he inquired testily. "Told ye, plain, I was retired. Came the last bit in a stinking native boat, and _she's_ cleared by now.

Think I carry s.h.i.+ps in my pocket?"

Outside, the swollen discord of shouts, thunder of gongs, and hoa.r.s.e calling of the conches came slowly nearer, extending through the darkness.

CHAPTER XVI

THE GUNWALE

Rudolph's mission began quietly, with a glimpse which he afterward recalled as incredibly peaceful. Two of the women, at least, showed no fear. In the living-room sat Mrs. Earle, her chin cramped on her high bosom, while she mournfully studied his colored picture-book of the Rhine. Miss Drake, who leaned in one of the river windows, answered him, saying rather coldly that Chantel and Mrs. Forrester had gone down to the garden.

In the court, however, he ran across Ah Pat, loitering beside a lantern.

The compradore grinned, and in a tone of great unconcern called out that the pair were not in the garden. "Walkee so." He pointed down the pa.s.sage to the main gate, and hooked his thumb toward the right, to indicate their course. "Makee finish, makee die now," he added calmly; "too muchee, no can."

Rudolph experienced his first shock of terror, like an icy blow on the scalp. They had gone outside before the alarm; she, Bertha, was swept away in that tumult which came raging through the darkness.--He stood transfixed, but only for an instant, rather by the stroke of helplessness than by fear; and then, blindly, without plan or foresight, darted down the covered way. The tiny flame of a pith wick, floating in a saucer of oil, showed Heywood's gatekeeper sitting at his post, like a gnome in the gallery of a mine. Rudolph tore away the bar, heard the heavy gate slam shut, and found himself running down the starlit road.

Not all starlight, however; a dim red glow began to flicker on the shapes which rushed behind him in his flight. Wheeling once, he saw two broad flames leaping high in wild and splendid rivalry,--one from Heywood's house, one from the club. He caught also a whirling impression of many heads and arms, far off, tiny, black, and crowded in rus.h.i.+ng disorder; of pale torches in the road; and of a hissing, snarling shout, a single word, like "_Sha, sha_!" repeated incessantly in a high key.

The flame at the club shot up threefold, with a crash; and a glorious criss-cross mult.i.tude of sparks flew hissing through the treetops, like fiery tadpoles through a net.

He turned and ran on, dazzled; fell over some one who lay groaning; rose on hands and knees, groped in the dust, and suddenly fingered thin, rough cloth, warm and sopping. In a nausea of relief, he felt that this was a native,--some unknown dying man, who coughed like a drunkard.

Rudolph sprang up and raced again, following by habit the path which he and she had traversed at noon. Once, with a heavy collision, he stopped short violently in the midst of crowded men, who shouted, clung to him, wrestling, and struck out with something sharp that ripped his tunic. He kicked, shook them off, hammered his fists right and left, and ran free, with a strange conviction that to-night he was invincible. Stranger still, as the bamboo leaves now and then brushed his bare forehead, he missed the sharp music of her cicadas.

The looming of a wall checked him. Here stood her house; she had the briefest possible start of him, and he had run headlong the whole way; by all the certainty of instinct, he knew that he had chosen the right path: why, then, had he not overtaken her? If she met that band which he had just broken through--He wavered in the darkness, and was turning wildly to race back, when a sudden light sprang up before him in her window. He plunged forward, in at the gate, across a plot of turf, stumbled through the G.o.ddess of Mercy bamboo that hedged the door, and went falling up the dark stairs, crying aloud,--for the first time in his life,--"Bertha! Bertha!"

Empty rooms rang with the name, but no one answered. At last, however, reaching the upper level, he saw by lamplight, through the open door, two figures struggling. Just before he entered, she tore herself free and went unsteadily across the room. Chantel, white and abject, turned as in panic.

"Oh!" Plainly he had not expected to see another face as white as his own. Breathless and trembling, he spoke in a strangely little voice; but his staring eyes lighted with a sudden and desperate resolution. "Help me with her," he begged. "She won't listen. The woman's out of her wits."

He caught Rudolph by the arm; and standing for a moment like close friends, the two panting rivals watched her in stupefaction. She ransacked a great cedar chest, a table, shelves, boxes, and strewed the contents on the floor,--silk scarfs, s.h.i.+ning Benares bra.s.s, Chinese silver, vivid sarongs from the Preanger regency, Kyoto cloisonne, a wild heap of plunder from the bazaars of all the nations where Gilly's meagre earnings had been squandered. A Cingalese box dropped and burst open, scattering bright stones, false or precious, broadcast. She trampled them in her blind and furious search.

"Come," said Chantel, and s.n.a.t.c.hed at her. "Leave those. Come to the boat. Every minute--"

She pushed him aside like a thing without weight or meaning, stooped again among the gay rubbish, caught up a necklace, flung it down for the sake of a brooch, then dropped everything and turned with blank, dilated eyes, and the face of a child lost in a crowd.

"Rudolph," she whimpered, "help me. What shall I do?"

Without waiting for answer, she bent once more to sort and discard her pitiful treasures, to pause vaguely, consider, and wring her hands.

Rudolph, in his turn, caught her by the arm, but fared no better.

"We must humor her," whispered Chantel, and, kneeling like a peddler among the bazaar-stuffs, spread on the floor a Java sarong, blue and brown, painted with men and buffaloes. On this he began to heap things pell-mell.

The woman surrendered, and all at once flung her arms about Rudolph, hiding her face, and clinging to him as if with the last of her strength.

"Come, he'll bring them," she sobbed. "Let's go--to the boat. He must find his own way. Take me." Hurry and fright choked her. "Take me--leave him, if he won't come--I scolded him--then the noises came, and we ran--"

"What boat?" said Rudolph.

Chantel did not look up.

"I have one ready and stocked," he mumbled, tugging with his teeth at the knot in the sarong corners. "You can come. We'll drop down the river, and try it along the coast. Only chance. Come on."