"Stand by you! Why, of course! Is there any one else I should stand by if it isn't you?"
The mutual confidence would have been beautiful if it had not been all on one side—an exchange of frankness for lies, of love for a selfish liking. Yet Messenger had the greatest satisfaction at that moment in having at least one honest hand with him on the ship; and if the truth be told, he trusted the boy alone of all the company. Kenner was a tricky rogue, who would turn upon him at any moment; Burke was a ranting bully who—then, at any rate—had the command of the situation; Messenger had to depend upon his wits and fine talent to come out of the undertaking even with his life. In such a situation the boy he had before befriended could be-friend him; and befriend him he did, as the development of the narrative proves all conclusively.
If I, the recorder, have harked back somewhat in an endeavour to make the situation upon the Semiramis clear, I can now progress more rapidly in laying it down that, with the one instance of the flogging excepted, the first three days of the flight lacked any episode of moment. There was the unrest I have spoken of upon the yacht, the mutterings, the occasional outbursts of temper; but, beyond these, no tour de force on the part of the men, no event of any interest upon the sea. So far, indeed, did the yacht stand off the shore that the light of Cape Wrath was not even seen; and, Burke believing that the notion of pursuit was an old woman's dream, they passed through the Minch on the evening of the third day, and at eight bells in the forenoon watch they sighted Skerryvore Lighthouse many miles distant on their port quarter. From that point they shaped a course west by south to run past Malin Head; and although they passed many steamers of considerable size which were making for Scottish ports, they stood as far from them as possible, and spoke none, nor, indeed, invited any observation.
This, then, was the situation on the third day, and it did not alter until midnight, when Fisher came on deck to take the middle watch. It had been agreed by the cabin party that they should, one by one, take duty at the head of the companion, lest the great temptation of the gold should lure any of the crew aft, and this duty the boy shared loyally with the others. For the matter of that, not one of them aboard took his clothes off from the first hour of the flight, nor did any of them let his revolver go far from his sight and grip. As for Fisher, he had been given a couple of pistols, and told to shoot down any man who attempted to enter the saloon without an open account of himself; and while he might have hesitated literally to obey this order, Messenger and Kenner got nearer to sleep during his watch than at any other time.
The boy being thus upon guard, and quiet reigning in the ship, the fourth day began with squalls from the north-west, and a tumbling sea, which spread sheets of bubbling foam upon the foredeck and sent gushing streams from the lee scuppers. The night was very dark, with mountains of heavy cloud which hid the heavens, and for the first two hours of the watch there was no moon. It was even bitterly cold, as with the cold of later winter; and Fisher, who paced the quarter-deck with many lively thoughts, shivered in his oilskins, and suppressed his yawns with difficulty. Burke was at that time sleeping, and his subordinate—a thin and very humble man, named Parker—paced the bridge, while aft the whistling of the sharp gusts in the shrouds alone broke the stillness.
Once or twice, as the lad strode up and down in the utter darkness, he had thoughts that others moved upon the deck near him; but his nerves were overwrought and weary, and the singing of a rope, or the thud of the heavier fleas, sent them twitching. As the bells were struck until four were numbered the depth of night was more intensified; the wind was shriller; the motion of the yacht more irregular. He found himself hanging to the rail at the top of the hatchway for sheer footing, and was there haunted by innumerable phantoms of suspicion to which the bleakness of the night gave birth. There were moments when he was certain that he heard, at the fall of the gale, whispers from the darker places by the bulwarks; other moments when he conjured up visions of figures, dark and armed, lurking behind the skylight. Or, again, he suffered from that illogical conviction, which many suffer in solitude, that some one stood by him in the dark and was about to clutch him; and this feeling was so strong that he was truly of a mind to awaken Messenger and the others, but did not, fearing to look a coward.
In this approach to terror he watched for some moments longer, when of a sudden, chancing to look down the higher line of the deck, he was absolutely sure that all was not a dream. There, almost at his feet, the hunched-up figure of a man lay timidly, as of a man watching to spring, but fearing. Hal looked at the man for a moment, whipping out his revolver as he did so, and was in the very act of firing when the watcher rose and gripped his arm.
"Billy no hurt!" he chattered; "you don't shoot Billy! They cut your throat jess now, cut every one. Billy know, he see 'em; oh, he see 'em!"
In this mood the daft lad raved whisperingly; but Hal stood wondering and still with the sudden alarm. Should he descend the companion silently, or should he fire a shot and bring the sleepers to their feet that way? For a moment he did not know, and as he waited twenty figures—armed, most of them, with knives and iron bars, but three carrying revolvers—came with cat-like tread from the deckhouse amidships to the poop.
VI. LIGHT—BUT NOT OF DAWN
The purpose of the men being no longer hid, Fisher set himself quickly to action. He fired three rounds from his Colt, and then bawled with all his strength for those below to come up. The sing of the bullets held back the throng for a moment, but no longer. They had not further need of stealth, and began to shout savagely, hugging close the one to the other for encouragement. Their answer to the pistol-shots was a discharge of their own weapons and many imprecations. In another moment they would have been all atop of the ladder and swarming down to the cabin; but of a sudden they held together with a great cry, and many of them fell upon their knees in an extremity of terror which no phrase could convey. And upon them there shone a great light, full of whiteness and dazzling—a light that came in focussed radiance across the sea, and cut a path of spreading brightness out of the very blackness of the fullest night.
The light fell upon them, as I say, and for many minutes they could neither speak, nor move, nor did any man ask his neighbour, whence comes the terror? It lay on many of their minds that some visitation of God had opened the sky to shed light upon their work; and until reason had rolled back upon her balance, they had neither tongues nor ears. But anon, when Burke and Messenger had come running up from the aft cabin, and the skipper had observed the dark hull of a cruiser, whose search-light played upon the yacht from a point some two miles away on the starboard quarter, they passed from their fear to wild oaths; and as the sound of a gun rolled over the sea, the white faces and bright eyes of the whole of them turned quickly to that place where the danger was to be observed.
So far as one can learn from his later narrative the first man to speak in that moment of panic was Burke, the skipper. Suddenly, as with the sound of a wild animal roaring, bis curses and orders echoed through the ship.
"Curse you for a parcel of lazy swine, get up!" he roared. "Get up, I say! Do you think ez it's the Day of Judgment, ye Chicago hogs? All hands on deck and to their places, ye white-livered lubbers! Move, move, or, by thunder! I'll come down and move ye!"
"UPON THEM THERE SHONE A GREAT LIGHT"
They awoke at this, rushing to their places. A double watch tumbled into the stoke-holes; a couple of gunners cleared the three-inch Nordenfelt guns which were fixed in the bow and amidships. In five minutes the whole thought of the contemplated scuffle for the gold was forgotten. Bells were ringing, orders were bawled, the forced draught began to roar in the furnaces. The whole deck, which had been a hive of silence ten minutes before, now echoed with movement, with voices, with the clamour of action. Nor was there need of explanation. Instinctively all aboard knew that the pursuit was no longer a possibility, but an actuality; that