"Don't forget the water, if you can lift it," cried the latter, "and throw any spare rope there is; we shall want it yonder."
This was a wise thought, and Fisher quickly rolled the two kegs from the waist of the ship to the side, and, with the nigger's help, got them aboard. Then, having also taken all the ropes they could lay hands upon, they pushed off and let go the ketch's painter, at which she drifted slowly for some moments until the current took her, and she went swirling away, with the dog barking pitifully at the taffrail. She was out of sight in five minutes, and then began that long and laborious row to the distant haven—a row which might never have been accomplished but for the fact that tide and current swept strongly under them, and that the wind, full from the west, eased their labour. Yet they dared not to sail, so strong was the breeze; and when they had rowed for an hour, the light on the headland beyond their bay was still afar off.
During this journey Burke lay in a state of semi-insensibility near the bows. Fisher had suggested giving him water, but Messenger intervened, crying to let him lie. He, for his part, cared nought whether the man lived or died: and all his hope was that of getting quickly to the creek where Kenner waited. After that the future would be apparent; but at the moment it was as doubtful as the night above them. With this in his mind he urged the others to greater effort; but scarce had he spoken when the rowers ceased suddenly to work and a cry broke from all of them.
For with his words a gun boomed out over the sea by the far headland, and a rocket left a fiery trail upon the curtain of the sky.
XVIII. SEA-WOLVES AT WORK
The gunshot and the flare of the rocket (as I say) stopped the rowers in their work. For a while they sat waiting for a second report, or for some light upon the origin of the first; and they did not move until an answering rocket leaped up from the headland in their bay, and another from the watch-tower upon the promontory at which they had first come ashore. These flights of fiery light drew a second gunshot from the sea, and at that Messenger made up his mind.
"There's either a ship ashore," said he, "or they've smelt out Kenner in his hole. That's bad for us, anyway, for there'll be coast-guards down on the beach, and ships about from somewhere. If I'm not mistaken, there are lights moving in the village yonder already."
"Be gor! plenty lanterns there, sah!" cried the nigger. "What you say 'bout this country, sah?—all cut-throat here by de profession, sah."
"There's no doubt about the lanterns," interposed Fisher; "and I believe I see a couple of small boats rounding the headland. It must be a ship ashore, and they're going to bring off the crew."
At this Messenger smiled.
"If there's any crew brought off to-night," said he, "Galicia isn't what I thought it. It's lucky for us any way. We may get through while they're flying at the other game."
The ship, which, as they came to know afterwards, had gone ashore in the shallows of the second bay, now fired more guns; bat the wind blew so strongly, sending spray clean over the longboat, even in the calmer water on the hither side of the reef, that they could but just hear them, and they began to row again. They had taken twenty strokes, perhaps, when the nigger let go the handle of his oar once more, and, with a "Lord have mercy!" covered his eyes. The others, looking over the side as he pointed, saw the corpse of a man turned upon its back, and showing a white face, over which the spray sported as if in victory. So close came the dead man to them that they could perceive the water rushing in and out of his opened mouth; but the eyes, fixed and lustreless, did not move at the touch of the sea, and the hair upon the forehead lay dank and streaming.
A second corpse—that of a woman, with black hair, and the mark of terror still binding the features to distortion—now touched gently against the prow of the longboat, only to be carried more swiftly out upon the broad of the bay to the waste of water and the loneliness of the night. For one moment the derelict body, about which there was a life-belt, hugged the shelter of the gunnel, then it went onward, passing out in the black swirl of the current to the fury of the breakers in the open. But the watching men, speaking no word one to the other, rowed on the faster, as though wishing to shut the sight from their eyes, and the horror of it from their minds.
They had now come well into their own bay, but two luggers passed them as they went, and they lay on their oars breathlessly; but were not seen, so keen were the wolves to reach the carcass of the ship. It was vastly harder work, this rowing in the bay, for the current flowed right round it and against them; and for more than an hour they pulled desperately, still observing lanterns upon the shore, and many lights over against the point by which the trouble was. They were now so near that the sound of voices came to their ears; and the cries as of men fighting, and others encouraging them, were to be heard above the sough of the wind. But the headland of the bay sheltered them from the rougher waves they had known in the open; and a final effort brought them to the cove and to the inner lagoon, where Kenner awaited them, though exceeding anxious for their coming and the safety of the camp.
"Hello!" said he, as he stood on the ribbon strip of beach and helped the boat up; "I was beginning to think you were took with convulsions. Where's old Burke?"
"On his back, there," said Messenger, springing to the sand, "and pretty bad at that. We'd better get him upstairs to begin on."
"By thunder!" exclaimed Kenner, when he saw him, the bandage blood-covered, and the man groaning heavily. "What's he been at? I guess there's half of his features wanting! You've had a stick-up, then?"
"As you say," said Messenger, "but the news will wait; we must get him on his back first. One of you hand up the canvas while I hold him."
"Wal," said Kenner, "that's the Spanish way of drawing teeth, I calculate. Poor old Burke! it'll be many a day before he can show at a soirée, any way. Did you get all the stuff?"
"We left a keg," said Messenger quickly, "which you can fetch if you'll roll a dead man over. Have you seen any thing of what's going out over yonder?"
"There's boats been by here three times in the hour, and the beach at the bottom of the bay is thick with men," replied Kenner. "I saw that by climbing up the rock, there, and holding on like a tenderfoot. I've no head for tall places."
"I'll look myself when the stuff's down," said Messenger; and with that the four of them hauled Burke to the ledge of rock, and, having given him some of the liquor, they bound up his face, using the sleeve of Kenner's shirt for the operation; and so they laid him upon the sheet of the longboat; he yet groaning, though his pain seemed less. After that it was half-an-hour's work to sink the gold in the creek and to store the few provisions they had taken from the Spaniards' boat; but the four worked with silent zeal, and Fisher not the least readily, since the rough philosophy he was master of told him again to go through with it.
When the bullion was quite sunk, and the longboat high in the water again. Messenger began to think of the scene being played in the bay without. Indeed, his attention was called to it before his own work was quite done, for the sky above the haven was suddenly lighted with a glowing red light, and this endured for some minutes before the four men were able to put the boat out and get to the bay. Kenner had reached the open, as he told them, by swarming along the face of the rock from ledge to ledge; but they rowed; and, having come into the bay, they saw at once from the loom of the land the striking development of the mystery. A great fire was now burning some half-a-mile from the opposite shore, and from the lapping tongues of red there stood up the masts of a fore-and-aft schooner which had come ashore near the point, and was then surrounded by fishing-boats and small craft, whose crews seemed waiting patiently until the beacon of the sea should be engulfed. A mighty holocaust it was, the sparks leaping up on the breeze and falling hissing to the breakers; the smoke rolling in clouds of inky blackness away to the hills, the red light striking upon the waters and showing the environing fleet, whose fierce shouts of triumph the watchers heard all plainly. And anon there came a