The House Under the Sea Part 22

"And me not far from the sh.o.r.e when it's 'bout s.h.i.+p and home again,"

chimes in Peter Bligh. "G.o.d go with you, captain, for you are a brave man entirely!"

I laughed at their notion of it, and went a little way up the beach.

The respirator about my mouth, charged with some chemical substance I did not know the use of, permitted me to breathe at first with some ease. And what was more extraordinary was this, that while in the woods the fog had seemed to suffocate me, here it was exhilarating; bracing a man's steps so that he seemed to walk on air; exalting him so that his mind was on fire and his head full of the wildest notions. No coward that ever lived would have known a moment's fear under the stimulation of that clear blue vapour. I bear witness, and there are others to bear witness with me, that a whole world of strange figures and wonderful places opened up to our eyes when we began to push ash.o.r.e and to leave the sandy beach behind us. And that was but the beginning of it, for more fearful things were to follow after.

I will try to describe for you both the place and the scene, that you may realize my sensation, and follow me truly in this, my third journey to Ken's Island. Imagine, if you can, an undulating stretch of lush gra.s.s and pasture-land, a glorious meadow flooded with the clear, cold light; arched over with a heaven of stars; bordered about by heavy woods; dipping to the sea on two sides and extending s.h.i.+mmering sands to the breaking swell on the third. Say that a hot blue fog quivers in the air above this meadow-land, and is breathed in at every breath you take. Conceive a mind so played upon by this vapour that the meadows and the woods beyond the meadows are gradually lost to view, and a wonder-world quickly takes their place. Do this, and you may follow me more surely to a phantom city of majestic temples hewn out of a golden rock and lifting upward until they seem to touch the very skies; you may peer with me into abysses so profound that no eye can fathom their jewelled depths; you may pa.s.s up before walls built wholly of gems most precious; you may sleep in woods beneath trees silvered over with light; search countless valleys rich in unknown flowers. And the city is peopled with an unnumbered mult.i.tude of moving figures, the sensuous figures of young girls all glittering in gold and jewels; the shapes of an army of giants in blackest armour; and there are animals that no eye has seen before, and beasts more terrible than the brain can conceive.

Say, too, that this deadly vapour of the island so stimulates the faculties that earth no longer binds a man nor heaven imprisons him.

Say that he can rise above the spheres to unknown worlds, can, span the seas, and bridge the mountains. Depict him, as it were, throwing off his human shape and seeing the abodes of men so far below him, so puny, so infinitely small that he begins to realize eternity. Cast him down from these visions suddenly and in their place set up black woods and the utter darkness of nature impenetrable. Let the exaltation leave him, the sights fade utterly, the dismal abyss of the nether world close him in. Awake him from these again and let him reel up and stagger on and believe that he is sinking down to the eternal sleep.

Such sensations Ken's Island will give him until at last he shall fall; and lying trance-bound for the rain to beat upon his face, or the sun to scorch him, or the moon to look down upon his dreams, he shall lie and know that the world is there, and that nevermore may he have part or lot in it.

I have set down this account of my own experiences on the island that you may compare it with the books of others who have since visited this wonderful place; but I would not have you think that I, and the brave man who stood at my side, forgot that human errand which put us ash.o.r.e in those dismal swamps; or hung back to speak of our own sensations while others might need us so sorely. If we pa.s.sed from delirium to sanity, from the height of hysterical imagination to the depths of despair and gloom, none the less the faculty of action remained, the impulse which cried, "Straight on," and left us willing still to dare the worst if thereby a fellow-creature might be saved. Burning as our brains were, heavy the limbs, we could still push on across the meadows, search with our eyes for those poor people we had come out to save. How long this power of action would remain to us, what supreme misfortune would end our journey at last, throwing us, it might be, to the gra.s.s, there to sleep and end it all, we would not so much as consider. Good men were peris.h.i.+ng on Ken's Island, and every instinct said, "You, Jasper Begg, and you, James Nepeen, hold out a hand to them."

"Do you see anything, captain?" I asked my companion again and again; "we should be near them now. Do you hear any sound?"

He answered me, gasping for his breath:

"Not a whisper."

"Yonder," I would go on, "yonder by the little wood; they landed there.

Can you get as far, captain?"

"I'll try, by Heaven!" said he, between his teeth.

"They'll not be far from the wood," said I, "that's common sense. Shut your eyes to all the things you see and don't think about it. It's an awful place, captain. No living man can picture its fellow."

I waited for him to come up to me, and so placed myself that his eyes, I hoped, might turn seaward and not up towards the woods where such weird sights were to be seen. For this place, the angle of the great pasture-land where it met the forest, was occupied by sleeping cattle, white, and still, and frigid, so that all the scene, glimmering in the moonlight, might have been cut out of some great block of marble; and cows and sheep, and trees and hills, all chiselled by the hand of Death. That a living thing should be speaking and moving there seemed almost an outrage upon the marvellous beauty of that field of sleep.

The imagination reeled before this all-conquering trance, this glory of nature spellbound. It were as though a man must throw himself to the earth, do what he would, and surrender to the spell of it. And that, perchance, we had done, and the end had been there and then, but for a woman's cry, rising so dolefully in the woods that every impulse was awakened by it and all our resolutions retaken.

"Did you hear that?" I cried to him, wildly; "a woman's voice, and near by, too! You'll not turn back now, Captain Nepeen!"

"Not for a fortune!" said he, bravely; "it would be Gertrude Dolling, the purser's sister; we cannot leave her!"

The desire was like a draught of wine to him. He had been near falling, I make sure, but now, steadying himself for an instant upon my arm, he set off running at all his speed, and I at his heels, we crossed the intervening gra.s.s and were in the wood. There we found the purser's sister, stumbling blindly to and fro, like a woman robbed of sight, while children were clinging to her dress and crying pitifully because she did not heed them.

It was an odd scene, and many must come and go before I forget it. Dark as the wood might be by day, the moonlight seemed to fill every glade of it, showing us the gnarled trunks and the flowering bushes, the silent pools and the gra.s.sy dells. And in the midst of this sylvan rest, remote from men, a lonely thicket of the great Pacific Ocean, was this figure of civilization, a young girl decked out in white, with a pretty hat that Paris might have sent her, and little children, in their sailors' clothes, clinging trustingly, as children will in confidence to a woman's protecting hand. No surprise was it to me then, nor is it a surprise now, that the girl neither saw nor heard us. The trance had gripped her surely; the first delirium of exaltation had robbed her of sight and sense and even knowledge of the children. That doleful wailing song of hers was the first chant of madness. Her steps were undirected, now carrying her to the wood's heart, now away from it a little way towards the sea's beach. My order, twice given, that she should stand and wait for us was never answered; I do not even think that she felt my hand upon her shoulder. But she fell at last, limp and shuddering, into my arms, and I picked her up and turned towards the sea.

"The children to you, and straight ahead," said I to the captain; "run for your life, and for the lives of these little ones. It will be something to save them, captain."

He answered me with a word that was almost a groan; but stooped to his task, nevertheless. He knew that it was a race for their lives and ours.

I had the burden in my arms, I say, and no feather's weight was less to me in the hope of my salvation and of those we strove for. The way lay straight down, through a ravine of the low cliffs to the beach we had left and the good boat awaiting us there. Nothing, it seemed, but a craven will could stand henceforth between us and G.o.d's fresh air that night. And yet how wrong that reckoning was! There were a dozen of Czerny's men halloaing wildly on the cliff-side when we came out of the wood; and almost before we had marked them, they were after us headlong like devils mad in wine.

Now these men, as we learned afterwards, driven by hunger and thirst to the point of raving, had come ash.o.r.e that very evening; it may be to rifle the stores on the island; it may be in that spirit of sheer madness which sometimes drives a seaman on. Twenty in all when they landed, there were eight asleep already when we encountered them; and lying on the cliff's side, some with arms and heads overhanging, some shuddering in the fearful sleep, one at least bolt upright against the rock with his arms outstretched as though he were crucified, they dotted that dell like figures upon a battle-field. The rest of them, a st.u.r.dy twelve, fired by the dancing madness, brandis.h.i.+ng their knives, uttering the most awful imprecations, ran on the cliff's head above us, and seemed to be making straight for the cove where our boat lay. And that is why we said that the race was for life or death.

There are moments in his life when a man must decide "aye" or "nay"

without checking his step to do so. As things stood, the outlook could not have been blacker while we ran through the ravine to the water's edge. Behind, in the wood, lay the dancing death; before us these madmen with their gleaming knives, their unearthly yells, their reeling gait and fearful gesticulations. We had to choose between them, the sleep in the lonely glen, or the race downward to the sh.o.r.e; and we chose the latter, believing, I think, that the end must be the same, turn where we would.

"Keep your course, keep your course!" I cried to the captain as we ran on. "Hold to it, for your life--it's our only chance!"

He set one of the children on the sand, and, bidding the little one run on ahead, he drew his revolver and stood shoulder to shoulder with me.

"A straight barrel and mark your men," cried he, very quietly; "it's a cool head that wins this game. We have ten shots and the b.u.t.ts will do for two. You will make that twelve if you add it up, captain."

His coolness surprised me, but it was not to be wondered at. Never from the first had I heard this man utter one word which complained of our situation or of its difficulty. To Captain James Nepeen a tight corner was a pleasure-ground; and now with these yelling devils all round him, and the vapour steaming in the woods behind, and the sea s.h.i.+mmering like a haven that would beckon us to salvation, he could yet wear that cynical smile of his, and go with lighter step, and bear himself like the true seaman that he was. Of all that I have ever sailed with I would name him first as a true comrade in peril or adversity. To his skill I owed my life that night.

"One," said he, suddenly, when a great head showed itself on the cliff above us and was instantly drawn back. So quick had he been, so wild did the aim appear, that when a body rolled presently down the gra.s.sy bank and lay stark before us I could not believe that a bullet had done its work.

"One," cried he again, triumphantly--"and one from twelve leaves eleven. Ha, that's your bird, captain, and a big one!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Another man fell with a loud cry.]

I had pulled my trigger, prompted by his example, and another man from the cliff above lifted his arms and fell with a loud cry. And this was the astonis.h.i.+ng thing, that though we two were caged in a ravine like rats in a trap, and had shot two of the devils stone-dead, no answering shot was fired from above, no rifle levelled at us.

"No arms," cries the captain, presently; "and most of them half drunk.

We're going through this, Mister Begg, right through, I a.s.sure you!"

Well, I began to believe it; nevertheless, there were men on the sh.o.r.e before us, halloaing madmen, with clasp-knives in their hands and murder in their faces. Clear in the moonlight you could see them; the still air sent up their horrid imprecations. Those men we must pa.s.s, I said, if we would reach the boat. And we pa.s.sed them. It seems a miracle even when I write of it.

Now, we had halted at the foot of the ravine and were just prepared to go headlong for the six, believing, it may be, that one at least of us must fall, when they fired a shot, not from the gun at the watch-tower gate, but from Czerny's own yacht away in the offing; and coming plump down upon the sand, not a cable's length from our own boat, a sh.e.l.l burst with a thunderous explosion, and scattering in fragments of steel, it scared the mutineers as no rifle could have done. Roaring out like stricken bulls, cursing their master in all tongues, they began to storm the cliff-side nimbly and to run for the shelter of the woods; but some fell and rolled backward to the sand, some turned on their own knives and lay dead at the gully's foot; while those who gained the summit stood all together, and wailing their doleful song they yelled defiance at Czerny's s.h.i.+p.

But we--we made the boat; and falling half-dead in it, we thrust it from the beach and heard our comrades' voices again.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE END OF THE SIXTY HOURS

_The same night. Off Ken's Island. Half-past twelve o'clock._

We have not returned to the watch-tower rock, nor can we bring ourselves to that while there is any hope left to us of helping those whom Czerny marooned on the dangerous sh.o.r.e. Our gig drifts lazily in a pool of the whitest moonlight. We can still make out the s.h.i.+p's boats lying about Czerny's yacht, and the angry crews which man them. From the beach itself rises up the mutineers' wail of agony, like a wild beast's cry, at one time loud and ferocious, then dying away in a long-drawn cry, which haunts the ear. Ever and anon, as the mood takes them, the gunners on Czerny's yacht let fly at us with their erring sh.e.l.ls; but they smite the air or hurt the water, or drop the bounding fire on the s.h.i.+mmering spread of sand beyond us. Perhaps it is that this employment occupies the minds of the longboats' crews and keeps them from reckoning with the master who has befooled them. They, at least, are at the crisis of their peril. Afloat there on a gentle swell they must know that any hour may bring a changing wind and a breaking sea, and a sh.o.r.e rockbound and unattainable. They are playing with chance, and chance will turn upon them presently. Let them make for the island where the laughing woods say "Come!" and the heralds of sleep will touch them upon the foreheads, and raving, dreaming, they will fall at last, just victims of the island visions. Say that their brute intelligences do not yet understand this; but hunger and thirst will teach them ere the dawn, and then reckoning must come!

All this I foresaw as we let the boat drift by the sandy bays, and spake, one to another, of to-morrow and that which it must bring.

Whatever our own misfortune might be, that of Czerny's men was worse a hundredfold. For the moment it amused them to see the sh.e.l.ls plunging and hissing in the sea about us; for the moment the desire to be quit of us made them forget how it stood with them and what must come after.

But the reckoning would be sure. Let a capful of wind come scudding across that gla.s.sy sea, and all the riches in the world would not buy Edmond Czerny's life of these sea-wolves who sought it.

"They'll stand by until they know the worst, and then nothing will hold them," I said to my comrades. "If they think they can get aboard the yacht, they'll do so and make for some safe port. If not, they'll try to rush the house. a.s.sume that they are driven hard enough and no gun will keep them off. Let ten or twenty go down, the rest will come in. I am thinking that we should get back to the house, lads, and not leave it to younger heads. We've done what we could here, and it's plainly useless to go on with it!"

They were all with me in this, none more so than Captain Nepeen, who, up to this time, had been for the sh.o.r.e and the friends who might be found there.

"At least we have made every prudent effort; and there are others to think of," said he. "If they had a gunner worth a groat, we should not be where we are, captain. You must allow something to chance and a lucky shot. They may get home even yet. I will not ask you what that would mean, for you are a seaman and you know."

His words, I think, recalled us to the danger. No hope of rescue rewarded our eyes when we scanned the black woods and the lonely fore-sh.o.r.e of the forbidden land. Dark and terrible in the moonlight, like some mighty beacon of evil rising up above that sleeping sea, it seemed to say to us, "Go, turn back; remember those who count upon you." And we pulled from it reluctantly out into the broad sea, and breathed a full breath as we left its vapours and its fetid sh.o.r.es.

Three shots were fired at us while we crossed the open channel, and one fell so close that we could see the cleavage of the water and feel the silver spray upon our heated faces. This quickened our oars, you may be sure, and set our course true and straight for the house, whose iron gate stood up like a fortress of the deep and opened its rocky shelter to us. Clair-de-Lune was there, too, halted and motionless by the sea's brink; Dolly Venn stood at his side; and once I thought that I saw Miss Ruth herself peering across the lapping wavelets and watching us with a woman's anxious eyes.

Nor did we go un.o.bserved by those who had so much to gain if mischance should befall us in that last endeavour. Like pirates' junks, slipping from a sheltered creek, the devils in the longboats espied us in the moonlight and began to row towards us and to hail us with those wild shouts which yesterday we had heard even in the House Under the Sea.