This defiance struck a new note, and I made no doubt that it would have been echoed by the others, ripe for a villainy, but for the glimmer of an idea which came to the engineer, Dingo, and was not to be passed by. If the Frenchman had lived through the waters of the tunnel, and was harboured in the cave outside, what easier than to board the Zero and to take him where he stood? No sooner put to them than every man Jack seemed ripe for it. Crying, "All aboard to go below!" the man Dingo leaped to the platform of the ship and swung the hatches open. I saw the nigger Sambo tumble aboard, Jack and the Dane after him. Even the wounded Yankee crawled to the water's edge, and swore he would not be left. They pulled him down with unpitying hands, and cast the warpings free. And then, almost before I realized that I stood alone, the Zero sank into the bosom of the pool and the surges foamed in the pit.
For a long while I stood watching the dwindling eddies and reflecting upon the tremendous hazard of this venture. Let the pirates succeed, and I knew that they would tear the "Leopard" to pieces, as wild beasts tear a sheep in the jungle. But let them fail—aye, and what then? What of Black's ship, of the secrets of the caverns, of the vast treasure they harboured? Let the Frenchman get clear away, and the nations would thunder at these doors before a new day dawned. Such a truth must be heard before all others. I said that the hour was momentous beyond any in Black's life, and yet he could know nothing of it.
A Spaniard at my elbow recalled me from the reverie, and I saw that he, with his fellows, who had fled from the brawl, was now returned to the grotto, and by no means unacquainted with the situation. A certain insolence attended the man's offer of service, and when I gave him an order he laughed in my face. The great Captain's absence had made mutineers of these wild men of the hills, as it had made madmen of his own crew, and I could not but reflect that a rash word might bring them upon me headlong. To be quit of them chiefly, but also to be alone with an idea which had come to me, I returned to Black's room, and shut the iron door upon the Spaniards. A clock told me that it was five of the afternoon, but the beat of its pendulum was the only sound that I heard in that still cavern. Hot and weary, and worn out with the suspense of it all, I lay upon the bed, and thought anew of all that had befallen us since the Captain went away.
What a Nemesis was this, that he should shut me in this gloomy prison when my liberty might have been all precious to him! Could I but have gained the heights, and sent a message such as I had conceived, he might even yet outwit his foes. But that was out of the question while the Spaniards stood between me and my liberty. That they themselves would pass freely from the caverns to the heights, I never doubted. And now it came to me that Black himself would never have been caught in such a snare, and that there must be another door to the hills if I could but find it.
This latter thought attracted me beyond others, and I returned to it again and again. There must be a road to the hills, I said, and a good wit should find it. I remembered that my own life might depend upon such a discovery should the Zero not return to the caves; and this firing me to an endeavour, I rose from my bed at the very instant the lights in the cavern failed and left me in black darkness.
To move now was a hazardous task. I had but little acquaintance with Black's room, and when I opened the iron door a hand's-breadth there was no light in the tunnel beyond to help me out. Standing there, I could hear the songs and laughter of the Spaniards, and presently, while I peered intently down the passage, a man's bright eyes met my own, and I knew that he was ready to spring, as a tiger at its prey. Prudence said that it would be madness to engage in a brawl with such a fellow; and, slamming the door in his face, I turned back to the cavern with my hope at an ebb.
I have told you that the electric light failed suddenly and left me in utter darkness. Such was the truth as my eyes perceived it; but when they had become a little accustomed to the swift change, they began to tell another story. I became aware that the darkness had given place to a gloom as of twilight; and, searching for the source of this, I discovered it presently at the far end of the room, where faint rays of a filtered light split the rock in twain, and disclosed an aperture of whose existence I had never doubted. In a flash I surmised that this was Black's secret door, this the exit to the mountain of which he alone was the master. And by it I also might pass to the heights!
I had matches upon me, and I struck one of them and examined the place more carefully.
And first I discovered a lantern hanging from a ring in the solid rock; and, lighting this, I could see other rings at intervals, and they were such as men use to climb up from a depth when a permanent ladder is desirable. As for the light which had beckoned me to the spot, I could see a star far, far above me, and. I said it would be almost at the head-land's height—a fearful goal, but not unattainable. Calling upon my courage, I slung the lantern to my arm with my handkerchief, and, gripping the rings firmly, I began to go up. Step by step, my heart in my mouth, and a horrid fear of the abyss driving me, I mounted that fearful chimney, and watched the light grow clearer. A slip upon that smooth iron, a moment's dizziness, and my brains had been dashed out for a certainty. But a cold determination sent me on, and, clinging with trembling fingers to the iron rings, I dragged myself up and up, ever toward the day and my liberty.
I shall tell you no more of this dire exploit than to say that I achieved it in the end, with hands blistered and fingers cold as ice, and with such a torture of brain and body that I hurled myself from the pit more dead than alive. Lying prostrate, as it seemed, for the best part of an hour, burning rays upon my face and God's air from the sea in my lungs, I opened my eyes at last to find myself in a grassy hollow over whose high banks I could see nothing but an infinitely blue sky and the great golden ball of the sun rolling through the ether. A spell and I had climbed the steep, to discover myself upon the very summit of the great headland, with such a panorama of sea and sky unfolded that I stood transfixed as one who has happed upon a new world. Oh, glorious to stand there and feel the salt breezes upon my face; glorious to say that I was free and the cavern a prison no longer!
It was a sea bare of ships as I then beheld it; and when the breath of it, as life in my veins, had given me back my strength, I turned my eyes landward and began to inspect the country. There is no more desolate shore than this of the extreme north-west of the Spanish peninsula, and I could well understand why Black had chosen it for his haven. West and east and south I saw nothing but rolling downs of the stubbly grass, bleak and lonely and forbidding. Not a house, not a man; no loom of a city's smoke nor spire of a village church upon all my horizon. Had I been a new Columbus come to discover the western world, assuredly would I have turned my ships about, and thought of home again. The idea of helping Black by a vague telegram—which he would understand—to one of the Paris newspapers now appeared a chimera indeed. I lay upon the grass to laugh at myself that such an idea should have come to me; and as I lay I saw the Zero rise to the surface of the sea, perhaps at a distance of a mile from the shore.
Now this was something beyond all expectation, and it fired my curiosity in no common way.
The pirates had set out to capture the Frenchman if they could; yet here they were grown reckless beyond all imagination, and so little mindful of the Captain's orders that they sailed boldly westward as though to the coast of France. Amazed beyond all belief, I lay and watched that beautiful silver ship, as she sported in the foam or plunged like some great fish into the rollers of the bay. No one stood upon her platform, and it was evident that her hatches were closed. As she had appeared, without any warning, a sheen of silver in the green waters, so did she disappear; but not before I had espied another ship, steaming straight toward the headland from the northern horizon, and now so clearly to be seen that all doubt of her was at an end.
She was a French cruiser, I said, and no man might doubt that she had discovered the Zero and started in pursuit of her.
CHAPTER XXII
THE HORROR OF THE "VENGEUR"
I heard a step beside me on the hard grass, and, looking up, I found myself face to face