The Great Quest Part 43

"Father!" she cried, and ran down the path, where occasional arrows still fell, and bent over the dead man.

"Come up, you little fool," Gleazen shouted. "Come back!" Then he jumped and swore, as an arrow with a longer flight than its fellows pa.s.sed above his head.

The canoes were drawing in upon the sh.o.r.e, very cautiously, deliberately, grimly, in a great half-moon, and more of them were arriving at every moment.

I leaped from the porch and sped down beside the girl.

"Come," I cried, "you--we--can do nothing for him."

"Is it you?" she said. "You--I--go back!"

"Come," I cried hoa.r.s.ely.

"Don't leave him here."

I bent over and lifted the body, and staggering under its weight, carried it up into the house and laid it on the couch in the big front room.

All this time the noise within and without the mission was deafening. The blacks on the river were howling with fury, and those ash.o.r.e, who had not already fled to the woods, were wailing in grief and terror. Gleazen and Arnold Lamont had joined forces to organize a defense, the one raving at the arrant cowards who were fleeing from first sight of an enemy, while the other turned the place upside down in search of arms. And still the blacks on the river held off, probably for fear of firearms, though there were indications that as their numbers grew, they were s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up their courage to decisive action.

The girl, suddenly realizing the object of Arnold's search, said quietly, "There are no weapons."

Arnold threw his hands out in a gesture of despair.

"If you wish to leave," she coldly said, "there is a boat half a mile downstream. You can reach it by the path that leads from the chapel. No one will notice you if you hurry."

"Then," I cried, "we'll go and you shall come with us."

Gleazen spoke to the trader in Spanish.

Abe Guptil was beside me now and Arnold behind me. We three, come what would, were united.

A louder yell than any before attracted our attention, and Matterson, who stood where he could see out of the window, called, "They're coming! Run, Neil, run!"

At that he turned and fled, with the others after him.

I stopped and looked into the girl's gray eyes.

"Come!" I cried, "in heaven's name, make haste!"

I had clean forgotten that the dead man by whom the girl was standing was her father; but her next words, which were spoken from deepest despair, reminded me of it grimly.

"I will not leave him," she said.

"You must!"

"I cannot."

"What," said I, "would he himself have had you do?"

Her determination faltered.

"Come! You cannot do anything more for him! Come."

She shook her head.

"Then I shall stay," I said.

"No," said she, and I saw that there was a change in her manner toward me. "You will go and I--I--"

Then she whistled and cried, "Paul! Paul!"

The great black Fantee servant whom I had seen with her in the canoe on that day when first we met, appeared suddenly.

"Come," she said.

I now saw that Arnold Lamont was running back to the door of the room.

"Quick!" he called. "_Mon dieu_, be quick!"

He stepped aside and let her go through the door first.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FIGHT AT THE LANDING

As we ran down the footpath, we heard them after us like hounds on the trail, and I tell you, it galled me to run from that cowardly pack. Oh, for one good fight, I thought! For a chance to avenge Seth Upham, who lay miles away beside the spring at the king's grave, to avenge the stern man who had fallen so bravely in front of the mission! For a chance to show the black curs that we would and could meet them, though the odds against us were a hundred to one! A chance to hold our own with them in defiance of their arms and numbers!

The hot pride of youth burned in my cheeks, and I was actually tempted to turn on them there and then; but now I thought of something besides myself, of something besides Seth Upham's rights and my own: I thought of the girl who ran ahead of me so lithely and easily. Be the hazards what they might, be the shame of our retreat ever so great, she must not, while one of us lived, be left to that herd at our heels.

So, running thus in headlong flight, out we came on the river bank.

There was a boat on the river, made fast to a peg on the bank, and there was a long canoe drawn up in the bushes. But at a great distance, where a narrow channel led through the mangroves, we saw t.i.tanic waves rolling on the bar in s.h.i.+ning cascades from which the sun was brightly reflected, and which, one after another, hurled ton upon ton of water into a welter of foaming whirlpools. And over the lifting crests of the surf we saw, standing offsh.o.r.e, the topsails of a brig. The prospect of riding that surf in any boat ever built gave me, I confess without shame, a miserably sick feeling; and as if that were not enough, in through the mangroves to the sh.o.r.e in front of us shot three canoes of the war, and cut us off from the river.

Our time now had come to fight. With blacks behind us and blacks before us, we could no longer double and turn. The river, we knew, was alive with the canoes of the war. Already the black hornets were swarming through the woods and swamps around us. Three times now we had eluded them; this time we must fight. Our guns were lost and only pistols were left. No longer, as in that fatal hut on the king's grave,--in my heart I cursed the bull-headed stupidity of the man who built it and who had paid but a fraction of the price with his own life!--could we hold them at a distance by fear of firearms.

Their frenzy by now brooked no such fear. To the brig, whose topsails we could descry miles off sh.o.r.e, we must win our way; there lay our only hope.

I thought of the voice of the wizard--"White man him go Dead Land."

Verily to the door of his Dead Land we had come; and it seemed now that we must surely follow Bull and Seth Upham and Bud O'Hara and many another over the threshold.

"Men," said Arnold Lamont,--and his voice, calm, precise, cutting, brought us together,--"stones and clubs are not weapons to be despised in an encounter hand to hand."

"Have into 'em, then!" Gleazen gasped. "All hands together!"

"Mademoiselle," said Arnold, "keep close at our heels."