Half-way down the path a shout from Messenger compelled Fisher to stop abruptly. As he did so he looked to the height above him, and saw that he had come to the place where one of the Spaniards stood poising a great stone and waiting for his coming. The man was in the very act of hurling the boulder when Messenger fired at him, and the fellow, being hit in the hand, let the rock go crashing down with a reverberating note to the depths of the chasm. At the same moment a warning cry from Messenger awakened Fisher to the danger behind him, and he turned on his heel sharply, to find the man who had pursued him already within arm's-length. The fellow had even raised his cudgel for the blow; but, Fisher quickly closing with him, he dropped backward upon the path with the lad holding to his throat.
There never was, it may be, a more hazardous place upon which two men might struggle than this. The track was not three feet wide; the rock rose up sheer on the one side of it; there was the chasm upon the other. Fisher himself had been dragged down upon the burly Spaniard in the fall; and the man had now gripped him about the waist and was making Herculean efforts to hurl him over the precipice. He, in turn, had his knee in the fellow's ribs and his hands about his throat; but the man, even in the face of the semi-suffocation from which he suffered, drew a sheath-knife from his belt, and made Fisher let go at the throat and clutch the arm which threatened him. But the lad's muscles strained and stood out as he twisted the fellow's hand downward upon him, and presently so mastered him that the point of the blade stood turned toward his chest.
In this convulsive and silent fight for sheer footing and for life the two men were watched by the other Spaniards and by Messenger, none of them for a space moving or crying out; but when some minutes had gone, the latter called with all his strength to Fisher that he should free himself, for the others were now running swiftly down the path to the help of their man. At this cry the lad raised himself backward by one surpassing effort, and then dropped with his weight again upon the Spaniard, driving the knife deep into his chesty so that the man gave one long groan and then lay still. But Fisher, fearing nothing now but the coming of the others, fled down the path with the shouts of the shoremen in his ears, and was at the hither side of the bridge while the Spaniards yet raved about the body of their man.
Being safely come over the chasm, the two Englishmen now hurried through the woods to the shore, finding as they went that pursuit was not continued. At the foot of the mountain path, when they had crossed a shallow wood, they came out upon the creek at the opposite side to that by which their boat lay; and, the Spaniards being not in sight, they whistled twice, and the craft put out for them; but no sooner had they made her fast in the cave again when there was sound of voices in the wood above them, and a boat, which appeared to be that of the coast-guard, appeared in the bay.
XV. KENNER AGREES
It was now far in the afternoon, there being a greater red light upon the hills and a deeper purple in the higher ravines. The tide being almost run out of the bay, the strange boat which approached the river kept to the centre of the stream, the men in her having undoubtedly come to shore to learn what was the business of the firing in the upland. A greater misfortune could not, it seemed, have come upon the party; for, on the one hand, there were the Spaniards, wild hillmen of Galicia, who would scarce let the hunt for the strangers lie; and, on the other, the representatives of Spanish authority, to fall into whose hands meant certain extradition to England for the whole of them.
This being so, at the very first sight of the coast-guard, Messenger, put up his hand for complete silence, having first dragged down the branches over the ship, and whispered to the others to hold her steady. And the whole of them waited with scarce a breath while the wash of oars sent water rippling into the creek, and eight men in rough uniform, but all armed heavily, rowed across the cove and made fast to the opposite bank.
It is no figurative statement to say that the five hid away under the bushes scarce moved a hand during this manœuvre. They were in some part relieved to find that the men made no attempt to search the banks of the cove (nor, indeed, did the Spanish guard suspect the presence of a boat upon the shore); but their uneasiness was greater when seven of the eight ran up to the hills and were heard whistling one to the other in the high places. What they did there, or whether the shoremen fled at their coming, in some part fearing that their share in the adventure should be discovered, the others never knew; for by-and-by they came again as they had gone, and, without as much as a look at the bushes, they rowed straight out toward the headland, and, indeed, toward the rocks where the end of the Semiramis had been.
At the sight of this course Kenner could no longer keep silence—
"Prince," said he, with a ghastly face, "they're rowing straight for the reef—did ye see that?"
"I did," said Messenger curtly. "Do you suggest that we should row after them?"
"But," cried Kenner, "they'll find the money——"
"Possibly," said Messenger. "It will be found by the first man that touches the point—if they're going there, they'll bring it back with them."
"He's right!" cried Burke, though he ground his teeth; "and they're laying dead on the tack. Look at 'em now!"
The boat, as he said, was holding on the tack, the course being set, as it seemed, straight out to sea. Once or twice there broke from the Americans snarling curses and muttered oaths, but Messenger sat very still, with deeper lines in his face, and his hands moved restlessly, as the hands of a nervous man will. Thus it was for one terrible quarter of an hour, when the distant boat went up the bay; but at the last a shout, which was not to be held back, burst from the five, and Kenner sobbed like a woman. The coast-guard had pulled round the headland, and the bay was empty.
"That," said Messenger, when the critical moment was obviously past, "was the worst ten minutes of my life," and be wiped from his forehead the sweat which streamed upon it. But Kenner was already helping himself to the rum, and the others drank, while Fisher began to tell them what had passed on shore, and to try and mend his rags. When he spoke of his meeting with the Spanish girl, Kenner looked up quickly, but checked the words upon his lips, and relapsed into moody silence, sitting through the whole narration as one thinking. Had Messenger noticed him he would have remembered his words at Monaco, when he said that he would meet the Spanish woman again. Bat the necessities of the moment outweighed any recollections, and Kenner maintained his silence until Fisher concluded. At the end of his tale, and when they had made a pretty bandage of one of his hands, which was sorely injured, Burke cut in with his advice—
"Look, now," said he, "it's mighty poor fortune; but ez far ez I ken see, when we put our feet in that hog-sty this morning, we went for to stir up blazes. You may bet that the man in the boots told his chaps, and they told other chaps, and it's round the town by this time, if ez there is a town. What you're going to do. Heaven knows. Prince! I've rid roads in my time; but I was never so near to the floor—never, as I'm living——"
"Wal," said Kenner, who at this forced himself to speak, "I've thought your way since morning; if you'd be asking for my word, I'd say let the stuff lie, and be d——d to it! There's money ashore if you live to get it; but what's your chance when it's more than your neck's worth to show in a town, and you've no craft to work in but a cockleshell which won't carry you ten mile in a sea, let alone against the kind of sea you've got to face to make Ferrol?"
"All that's true enough," replied Messenger, who had listened to them very patiently; "but it's argument that's as narrow as the bridge of your nose. In the first place, do you think we've any chance of walking through Spain without