← catalogue

The House Under the Sea: A Romance

by Max Pemberton · English · Gutenberg #29462 · 427,312 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The House Under the Sea: A Romance
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The House Under the Sea: A Romance

Author: Max Pemberton


        
Release date: July 20, 2009 [eBook #29462]
                Most recently updated: November 10, 2014

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29462

Credits: E-text prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE UNDER THE SEA: A ROMANCE ***


E-text prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer



Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
      file which includes the original illustrations.
      See 29462-h.htm or 29462-h.zip:
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/29462/pg29462-images.html)
      or
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29462/29462-h.zip)





THE HOUSE UNDER THE SEA

A ROMANCE

BY

MAX PEMBERTON

Author of Kronstadt, The Phantom Army, Etc.



ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1902


Copyright, 1902 By MAX PEMBERTON

All rights reserved

Published September, 1902



[Illustration: "Shall we go, or stay?"]



CONTENTS

I.--IN WHICH JASPER BEGG MAKES KNOWN THE PURPOSE OF HIS VOYAGE TO THE
PACIFIC OCEAN, AND HOW IT CAME ABOUT THAT HE COMMISSIONED THE
STEAM-SHIP SOUTHERN CROSS THROUGH PHILIPS, WESTBURY, AND CO.

II.--WE GO ASHORE AND LEARN STRANGE THINGS

III.--IN WHICH JASPER BEGG MAKES UP HIS MIND WHAT TO DO

IV.--WE GO ABOARD, BUT RETURN AGAIN

V.--STRANGE SIGHTS ASHORE, AND WHAT WE SAW OF THEM

VI.--JASPER BEGG MEETS HIS OLD MISTRESS, AND IS WATCHED

VII.--IN WHICH HELP COMES FROM THE LAST QUARTER WE HAD EXPECTED IT

VIII.--THE BIRD'S NEST IN THE HILLS

IX.--WE LOOK OUT FOR THE SOUTHERN CROSS

X.--WE ARE SURELY CAGED ON KEN'S ISLAND

XI.--LIGHTS UNDER THE SEA

XII.--THE DANCING MADNESS

XIII.--THE STORM

XIV.--A WHITE POOL--AND AFTERWARDS

XV.--AN INTERLUDE, DURING WHICH WE READ IN RUTH BELLENDEN'S DIARY AGAIN

XVI.--ROSAMUNDA AND THE IRON DOORS

XVII.--IN WHICH JASPER BEGG ENTERS THE HOUSE UNDER THE SEA

XVIII.--CHANCE OPENS A GATE FOR JASPER BEGG, AND HE PASSES THROUGH

XIX.--WHICH SHOWS THAT A MAN WHO THINKS OF BIG THINGS SOMETIMES FORGETS
THE LITTLE ONES

XX.--THE FIRST ATTACK IS MADE BY CZERNY'S MEN

XXI.--WHICH BRINGS IN THE DAY AND WHAT BEFELL THEREIN

XXII.--THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTY HOURS

XXIII.--THE END OF THE SIXTY HOURS

XXIV.--THE SECOND ATTACK ON CZERNY'S HOUSE

XXV.--IN WHICH THE SUN-TIME COMES AGAIN



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Shall we go or stay?"

Like dancers at a stage play.

A picturesque old figure standing there.

She looked at me with her big, questioning eyes.

We were all sitting at the supper table.

The drawing-room is a cave whose walls are of jewels.

"If there is a sound at the door, fire that gun."

Another man fell with a loud cry.



THE HOUSE UNDER THE SEA


CHAPTER I

IN WHICH JASPER BEGG MAKES KNOWN THE PURPOSE OF HIS VOYAGE TO THE
PACIFIC OCEAN, AND HOW IT CAME ABOUT THAT HE COMMISSIONED THE
STEAM-SHIP SOUTHERN CROSS THROUGH PHILIPS, WESTBURY, AND CO.

Many gentlemen have asked me to write the story of Ken's Island, and in
so far as my ability goes, that I will now do. A plain seaman by
profession, one who has had no more education than a Kentish grammar
school can give him, I, Jasper Begg, find it very hard to bring to
other people's eyes the wonderful things I have seen or to make all
this great matter clear as it should be clear for a right
understanding. But what I know of it, I will here set down; and I do
not doubt that the newspapers and the writers will do the rest.

Now, it was upon the third day of May in the year 1899, at four bells
in the first dog watch, that Harry Doe, our boatswain, first sighted
land upon our port-bow, and so made known to me that our voyage was
done. We were fifty-three days out from Southampton then; and for
fifty-three days not a man among the crew of the Southern Cross had
known our proper destination, or why his skipper, Jasper Begg, had
shipped him to sail for the Pacific Ocean. A pleasure voyage, the
papers said; and some remembered that I had been in and out of private
yachts ever since I ran away from school and booked with Skipper Higg,
who sailed Lord Kanton's schooner from the Solent; but others asked
themselves what pleasure took a yacht's skipper beyond the Suez, and
how it came about that a poor man like Jasper Begg found the money to
commission a 500-ton tramp through Philips, Westbury, and Co., and to
deal liberally with any shipmate who had a fancy for the trip. These
questions I meant to answer in my own time. A hint here and there of a
lady in whose interest the voyage was undertaken kept the crew quiet,
if it did not please its curiosity. Mister Jacob, my first officer, and
Peter Bligh (who came to me because he said I was the only man who kept
him away from the drink) guessed something if they knew little. They
had both served under me in Ruth Bellenden's yacht; neither had
forgotten that Ruth Bellenden's husband sailed eastward for the wedding
trip. If they put their heads together and said that Ruth Bellenden's
affairs and the steam-ship Southern Cross were not to be far apart at
the end of it, I don't blame them. It was my business to hold my tongue
until the land was sighted, and so much I did for Ruth Bellenden's
sake.

Well, it was the third day of May, at four bells in the first dog
watch, when Harry Doe, the boatswain, sighted land on the port-bow, and
came abaft with the other hands to hear what I had got to say to him.
Mr. Jacob was in his bunk then, he being about to take the first watch,
and Peter Bligh, who walked the bridge, had rung down for half-speed by
the time I came out with my glass for the first view of the distant
island. We were then, I must tell you at a rough reckoning, in
longitude 150 east of Greenwich, by about 30 north; and my first
thought was that we might have sighted the Ganges group, as many a ship
sailing from 'Frisco to Japan; but when I had looked at the land a
little while, and especially at a low spur of rocks to the northward, I
knew that this was truly the Ken Archipelago, and that our voyage was
done.

"Lads," I said, "yonder is your port. Good weather and good luck, and
we'll put about for home before three days have passed."

Now, they set up a great cheer at this; and Peter Bligh, whose years go
to fat, wiped his brow like a man who has got rid of a great load and
is very pleased to have done with it.

"Thank you for that," said he. "I hope I do my duty in all weathers,
Mr. Begg, but this sunshine do wear a man sadly. Will you stop her,
sir, or shall we go dead slow?"

"Dead slow, if you please, Mister Pugh," said I; "the chart gives two
thousand fathoms about the reef. We should have water enough, and water
is a good thing, as I believe you know."

"When there's nothing else, I can manage to make shift with it--and
feel a better man, sir," he added, as an after-thought. But I was
already busy with my glass and that was not the hour for light talk.
Yonder upon the port-bow a group of islands shaped on our horizon as
shadows upon a glassy sea. I could espy a considerable cliff-land
rising to the southward, and north of that the rocky spur of which I
have made mention. The sun was setting behind us in a sky of orange and
crimson, and it was wonderful to see the playful lights now giving
veins of gold to the dark mass of the higher rocks, or washing over the
shadows as a running water of flame. I have seen many beautiful sights
upon the sea, in storm or tempest, God's weather or the devil's; but I
shall never forget that sunset which brought me to Ken's Island on as
strange an errand as ever commissioned a ship. The deep blue of the
sky, the vastness of the horizon, the setting sun, the island's shaping
out of the deep: these, and the curiosity which kept the glass ever at
my eye, made an hour which a man might fear to tell of. True, I have
sighted many a strange land in my time and have put up my glass for
many an unknown shore; but yonder lay the home of Ruth Bellenden, and
to-morrow's sun would tell me how it fared with her. I had sailed from
England to learn as much.

Now, Mr. Jacob, the first officer, had come up to the bridge while I
was searching the shore for an anchorage, and he, who always was a
prudent man, spoke up at once for laying to and leaving our business,
whatever it was, until the morning.

"You'll lose the light in ten minutes, and yon's a port I do not like
the look of," said he. "Better go about, sir. Reefs don't get out of
the way, even for a lady."

"Mister Jacob," said I, for, little man that he was, he had a big wit
in his own way, "the lady would be very glad to get out of the way of
the reef, I'm thinking. However, that's for the morning. Here's Peter
Bligh as pleased as any school-boy at the sight of land. Tell him that
he isn't going ashore to-night, and he'll thank you nicely. Eh, Peter,
are you, too, of Jacob's mind? Is it sea or shore, a glass in my cabin
or what the natives will sell you in the log-cabins over yonder?" Peter
Bligh shut up his glass with a snap.

"I know the liquor, Mr. Begg," said he; "as the night is good to me,
I'm of Mister Jacob's way of thinking. A sound bed and a clear head,
and a fair wind for the morning--you'll see little of any woman, black
or white, on yonder rock to-night."

Jacob--his little eyes twinkling, as they always did at his own
jokes--muttered the old proverb about choosing a wife by candle-light;
but before any one could hear him a beacon shone out across the sea
from some reef behind the main island I had noticed, and all eyes were
turned anxiously to that. It was a queer place, truly, to set up a
light, and I don't wonder that the men remarked it.

"An odd kind of a lantern to help poor mariners," said Mister Jacob,
sagely. "Being kind to it, sir, I should say that it's not more than a
mile too much to the northward."

"Lay your course by that, and a miracle won't carry you by the reef,"
added Peter Bligh, sagaciously; "in my country, which is partly
Ireland, sir, we put up notice-boards for the boys that ride bicycles:
'This Hill is Dangerous.' Faith, in ould Oireland, they put 'em up at
the bottom of the hills, which is useful entirely."

Some of the crew, grouped about the ladder's foot, laughed at this;
others began to mutter among themselves as though the beacon troubled
them, and they did not like it. A seaman's the most superstitious
creature that walks the earth or sails on the sea, as all the world
knows. I could see the curiosity, which had followed my men from
Southampton, was coming to a head here about twelve thousand miles from
home.

"Lads," cried I, quick to take the point up, "Mister Bligh says that an
Irishman built yon light, and he knows, being a bit of a one himself.
We're not going in by it, anyway, so you can ask questions to-morrow.
There's a hundred pounds to be divided among you for your good
behaviour outward, and there'll be another hundred when we make Calshot
Light. To-night we'll find good sea-room, and leave their beacon to the
lumber-heads that put it up. I thank you, lads, for honest work in an
honest ship. Ask the purser for an extra tot of grog, and say the
skipper told you to."

They gave a hearty "Aye, aye, sir," to this, and without more ado we
put the ship about and went dead slow against a stiff tide setting east
by north-east. For my part, I reckoned this the time to tell my
officers what my intentions were, and when I had called them into the
cabin, leaving our "fourth"--a mere lad, but a good one--upon the
bridge, I ordered Joe, the steward, to set the decanters upon the
table. Mister Jacob, as usual, put on his glasses (which he always did
in room or cabin, just as though he would read a book), but Peter Bligh
sat with his cap between his knees and as foolish an expression upon
his face as I have ever seen.

"Now, gentlemen," I said, "no good talking in this world was ever done
upon a dusty table, so we'll have a glass round and then to business.
Mr. Bligh, I'm sure, will make no objection to that."

"Faith, and I know when to obey my superior officer, captain. A glass
round, and after that----"

"Peter, Peter," said I, "'tis the 'after that' which sends many a good
hulk to the bottom."

"Not meaning to apply the term to Peter Bligh, but by way of what the
landsmen call 'silime,'" said Mister Jacob.

"'Simile' you mean, Mister Jacob. Well, it's all the same, and neither
here nor there in the matter of a letter. The fact is, gentlemen, I
wish you to know why I have sailed this ship to Ken's Archipelago, and
under what circumstances I shall sail her home again."

They pricked up their ears at this, Peter turning his cap nervously in
his hands and Mister Jacob being busy with his glasses as he loves to
be.

"Yes," I went on, "you have behaved like true shipmates and spoken
never a word which a man might not fairly speak. And now it's my duty
to be open with you. Well, to cut it short, my lads, I've sailed to the
Pacific because my mistress, Ruth Bellenden, asked me."

They had known as much, I imagine, from the start; but while Mister
Jacob pretended to be very much surprised, honest Peter raised his
glass and drank to Mistress Ruth's good health.

"God bless her," he said, "and may the day come when I ship along
o' such a one again. Aye, you would have come out for her sake,
captain--no other, I'm sure!"

"She being Ruth Bellenden no longer, but the wife of a gentleman with a
name none but a foreigner can spell," added Mister Jacob; and then he
went on: "Well, you surprise me very much, captain--very much indeed.
Matrimony is a choppy sea and queer things swim in it. But this--this I
had not looked to hear."

I knew that this was only Mister Jacob's way, and continued my story.

"It was a promise to her upon her wedding day. Ten thousand pounds she
left with her lawyers for this very purpose. 'My husband has strange
ideas; I may not share them,' were her words to me. 'If his yacht
should not be at the islands when I wish to visit Europe again, I
should like you to find me a vessel in its place. I trust you, Jasper
Begg,' she said; 'you will sail for Ken's Archipelago twelve months
from today, and you will come to my house there, as you used to do in
the old time, for orders. Perhaps I shall send you home again, perhaps
I may like to have a yacht of my own once more. Who knows? I am quite
alone in the world,' she said, laughing, 'though my brother is alive.
And the Pacific Ocean is a long way from London--oh, such a long way,'
she said, or something of that sort."

"Aye, and right, too. A derned long way she meant, I don't doubt, if
what was in her mind came out," puts in Peter at this.

"Mr. Bligh," said I, "be pleased to hold your tongue until your opinion
is asked. What I am telling you is a confidence which you two, and no
others, share with me. To-morrow, as soon as daylight, I shall row
ashore and ask to see Mme. Czerny, as I suppose I must call little Ruth
now. If she says, 'Go home again,' very well, home we go with good
wages in our pockets. If she says 'Stay,' there's not a man on board
this ship that will not stay willingly--she being married to a
foreigner, which all the world knows is not the same as being married
to an Englishman----"

"To say nothing of an Irishman," said Peter Bligh, whose mother was
from Dublin and whose father was named sometimes for a man of
Rotherhithe and at other times put down to any country which it suited
Peter to boast about.

"Edmond Czerny was a Hungarian," said I, "and he played the fiddle
wonderful. What mad idea took him for a honeymoon to Ken's Island, the
Lord only knows. They say he was many years in America. I know nothing
about him, save that he had a civil tongue and manners to catch a young
girl's fancy. She was only twenty-two when she married him, Mister
Jacob."

"Old enough to know better--quite old enough to know better. Not that I
would say anything against Ruth Bellenden, not a word. It's the woman's
part to play the capers, sir, and we poor mortal men to be took by
them. Howsomever, since there was a fiddle in it, I've nothing more to
say."

We laughed at Mister Jacob's notion, and Peter Bligh said what it was
in my heart to say:

"Saving that if Ruth Bellenden needs a friend, she'll find twenty-six
aboard this ship, to say nothing of the cook's boy and the dog. You've
a nice mind, Mister Jacob, but you've a deal to larn when it comes to
women. My poor old father, who hailed from Shoreham----"

"It was Newport yesterday, Peter."

"Aye, so it were--so it were. But, Newport or Shoreham, he'd a precious
good notion of the sex, and what he said I'll stand by. 'Get 'em on
their feet to the music,' says he, 'and you can lead 'em anywheres.'
'Tis Gospel truth that, Mister Jacob."

"But a man had better mind his steps," said I. "For my part, I
shouldn't be surprised if Ruth Bellenden's husband gave us the cold
shoulder to-morrow and sent us about our business. However, the sea's
free to all men, lads, and the morn will show. By your leave we'll have
a bit of supper and after that turn in. We shall want all our wits
about us when daylight comes." They agreed to this, and without further
parley we went on deck and heard what the lad "Dolly" Venn had to tell
us. It was full dark now and the islands were hidden from our view. The
beacon shone with a steady white glare which, under the circumstances,
was almost uncanny. I asked the lad if he had sighted any ships in
towards the land or if signals had been made. He answered me that no
ship had passed in or out nor any rocket been fired. "And I do believe,
sir," he said, "that we shall find the harbour on the far sight of
yonder height."

"The morning will show us, lad," said I; "go down to your supper, for I
mean to take this watch myself." They left me on the bridge. The wind
had fallen until it was scarce above a moan in the shrouds. I stood
watching the beacon as a man who watches the window light of one who
has been dear to him.


CHAPTER II

WE GO ASHORE AND LEARN STRANGE THINGS

I have told how it came about that I sailed for Ken's Island, and now I
shall tell what happened when I went ashore to find Ruth Bellenden.

We put off from the ship at six bells in the morning watch. Dolly Venn,
who was rated as fourth officer, was with me in the launch, and Harry
Doe, the boatswain, at the tiller. I left Mister Jacob on the bridge,
and gave him my orders to stand in-shore as near as might be, and to
look for my coming at sunset--no later. "Whatever passes," said I, "the
night will find me on board again. I trust to bring you good news,
Mister Jacob--the best news."

"Which would be that we were to 'bout ship and home again," says he;
and that I did not contradict.

Now, we were to the westward of the island when we put off, and neither
my glass nor the others showed any good landing there. As the launch
drew in towards the cliffs I began to get the lie of the place more
clearly; and especially of what I call the mainland, which was
wonderfully fresh and green in the sunlight and seemed to have some of
the tropic luxuriance of more southern islands. About four miles long,
I judged it to be, from the high black rock to which it rose at the
southward point, to the low dog's-nosed reef which defended it to the
north. Trees I could see, palms and that kind, and ripe green grasses
on a stretch of real down-like land; but the cliffs themselves were
steep and unpromising, and the closer we drew the less I liked the look
of it.

"Dolly, my lad," I said at last, "you were the wise one, after all.
Yon's no shore for an honest man; he being made like a man and not like
an eagle. Let's try the starboard tack and see what luck will send us."

We headed the launch almost due south, and began to round the headland.
The men were elated, they didn't know at what; Dolly Venn had a boy's
delight in the difficulty.

"An ugly shore, sir," he said, pleased at my compliment. "A very ugly
shore. It would be a bad night which found a ship in these parts and no
better light than the fool's beacon we saw yesterday."

"As true as the parson's word," said I, "but, ugly or beautiful, I'll
be up on those heights before twelve o'clock if I have to swim ashore.
And speaking of that," said I, "there are men up yonder, or I'm a
Dutchman!" Well, he clapped his glass to his eye and searched the green
grass land as I had done; but the light was overstrong and the cliff
quickly shut the view from us, so that we found ourselves presently in
the loom of vast black rocks, with the tide running like a whirlpool,
and a great sword-fish reef a mile from the shore, perhaps, to catch
any fool that didn't want sea room. I took the tiller myself from this
point, and standing well out I brought the launch round gingerly
enough, but the water was deep and good once we were on the lee side;
and no sooner did we head north again than I espied the cove and knew
where Ruth Bellenden had gone ashore.

"It's there, lad," said I, "yonder, where the sand sparkles. There'll
be a way up the cliff and good anchorage. No one but an Irishman would
buy an island without a harbour; you tell Mr. Bligh that when we go
aboard again."

"Mr. Bligh says he's only Irish on the mother's side, sir; that's what
makes him bighearted towards the women. He'll be dying to come ashore
if there are any petticoats hereabouts."

"They haven't much use for that same garment on the Pacific Islands,"
said I. "Peter can marry cheap here, if it's the milliners' bills he's
minding--but I doubt, lad, from the look of it, whether we'll find a
jewel in this port. It's a wild-looking place, to be sure it is."

Indeed, and it was. Viewed from the eastward sea, I call Ken's Island
the most fearsome place I have come across in all my fifteen years
afloat. Vast cliffs, black and green and crystal, rose up sheer from
the water in precipices for all the world like mighty steps. By here
and there, as the ground sloped away to the northward, there were
forests of teak (at least, I judged them to be that), pretty woods with
every kind of palm, green valleys and grassy pastures. The sands of the
cove were white as snow, and shone like so many precious stones pounded
up to make a sea beach. On the north side only was there barrenness--
for that seemed but a tongue of low land and black rock thrust straight
out into the sea. But elsewhere it was a spectacle to impress a man;
and I began, perhaps, to admit that Edmond Czerny had more than a
crank's whim in his mind when he took little Ruth Bellenden to such a
shore for her honeymoon. He had a fancy for wild places, said I, and
this was the very spot for him. But Miss Ruth, who had always been one
for the towns and cities and the bright things of life--what did she
think of it? I should learn that, if she were ashore yonder. Now, we
put straight in to the cove where the silver sand was, and no sooner
was I ashore than I espied a rickety wooden ladder rising almost
straight up to the cliff's head, which hereabouts was no more than
sixty feet high. Neither man nor beast was on the beach, nor did I make
out any sign of human habitation whatever. It was just a little sandy
bay, lone and desolate; but directly I slipped out of the launch I
discovered footprints leading to the ladder's foot, and I knew that men
had gone up before me, that very morning it must be, seeing that the
tide had ebbed and the sand was still wet. At another time I might have
asked myself why nobody came out to meet us, and why there was no
lookout for the island to hail a strange ship in the offing; but I was
too eager to go ashore, and, for that matter, had my feet on the sand
almost before the launch grounded.

"Do you, Dolly, come up with me," said I; "the others will stand by to
anchor until we come down again. If it's not in an hour, lads, go back
and get your dinners; but look for me at sunset anyway, for I've no
mind to sleep ashore, and that you may be sure of."

They took the orders and pushed the launch off. Dolly and I ran up the
crazy ladder and found ourselves at the cliff's head, but no better off
in the matter of seeing than we had been before. True, the launch
looked far down, like a toy ship in a big basin of blue water; we could
distinguish the sword-fish reef, as the lad called it, and other reefs
to the east and north, but the place we stood on was shut in by a black
wood of teak and blue ebony, and, save for the rustling of the great
leaves, we couldn't hear a sound. As for the path through the
plantation, that was covered with long, rank grass, and some pit or
other--I don't know what it was--gave a pungent, heavy odour which
didn't suit a seaman's lungs. I was set against the place from the
first--didn't like it, and told the lad as much.

"Dolly," said I, "the sooner we have a ship's planking under our feet
again the better for our constitutions. If there's a house in this
locality, the ladder is the road to it, unless one of Peter Bligh's
countrymen built it. Put your best foot foremost, my lad. We'll dine
early if we don't lunch late."

With this I struck the path through the wood and went straight on, not
listening to the lad's chatter nor making any myself. The shade was
welcome enough; there were pretty places for those that had eyes to see
them--waterfalls splashing down from the moss-grown rocks above; little
pools, dark and wonderfully blue; here and there a bit of green, which
might have been the lawn of a country house. But of dwelling or of
people I saw nothing, and to what the boy fancied that he saw I paid no
heed.

"You're dreaming it, young gentleman," said I, "for look now, who
should be afraid of two unarmed seamen, and why should any honest man
be ashamed to show his face? If there are men peeping behind the trees,
well, let them peep, and good luck go with them. It doesn't trouble me,
and I don't suppose it will take your appetite away. You aren't afraid
of them, surely?"

It was an unkind thing to have said, and the lad rightly turned upon
me.

"Why, sir," cried he, "I would never be afraid while I was with you."

"Proudly put, my boy, and a compliment I won't forget. What sort of men
did you say that they were?"

"One was old, with a goat's beard. He wore ragged breeches and a
seaman's blouse. I saw him directly we entered the wood. The others
were up in the hills above the waterfall. They carried rifles."

"Come, come, Dolly," exclaimed I. "Put them in Prussian blue at once,
and fly the German ensign. Rifles in a place like this--and two unarmed
strangers against them! Why should the rogues hide their beautiful
faces? If they would know all about us, what's to prevent them? Do we
look like highwaymen or honest fellows? Be sure, my lad, that the young
lady I am going to see wouldn't have any blacklegs about her house.
Ruth Bellenden's too clever for that. She'd send them about their
business quick enough, as she's sent many a one when I was the skipper
of her yacht. Did they tell you that, Dolly--that your skipper used to
sail the smartest schooner-yacht that ever flew the ensign----"

The boy looked up at me and admitted frankly that he knew something.

"They said the young lady owned the Manhattan, sir. I never asked much
about it. The men were fond of her, I believe."

"Adored her, lad. She was the daughter of Rupert Bellenden, who made a
mint of money by building the Western American Railroad, and afterwards
in the steel way. He was drowned at sea when the Elbe went down. His
son got the business, but the daughter took the house and fortune--at
least, the best part of it. She was always a rare one for the sea, and
owned a biggish boat in her father's time. When he died she bought the
Manhattan, more's the pity, for it carried her to Mediterranean ports,
and there she took up with the fiddler. He was a Chevalier or
something, and could look a woman through and through. What money he
had was made, the Lord knows where, not out of fiddling, I'll be bound,
for his was no music to set the tongue lilting. He'd been in the
Pacific a while, they say, and was a Jack-of-all-trades in America.
That's how he came across these islands, you may imagine--slap in the
sea-way to Yokohama as they are. There's been many a good ship ashore
on Ken's Island, lad, believe me, and there'll be many another. 'Tis no
likely place to bring a young wife to, and none but a madman would have
done it."

I told him all this just in a natural way, as one man speaking to
another of something which troubled his mind. Not that he made much of
it--how should he?--for there were a hundred things to look at, and his
eyes were here and there and everywhere; now up at the great black
rocks above us; now peering into a deep gorge, over which a little
wooden bridge carried us, just for all the world like a scaffold thrown
from tree to tree of the wood. It was a rare picture, I admit, and when
we came out of the thicket at last and saw the lower island spread
before us like a chart, with its fields of crimson flowers, its
waterfalls, its bits of pasture, and its blue seas beyond, a man might
well have stood to tell himself that Nature never made a fairer place.
For my part, I began to believe again that Edmond Czerny knew what he
was about when he built a house for Miss Ruth on such a spot; and I was
just about to tell the lad as much when a man came running up the path
and, hailing us in a loud voice, asked us where the devil we were going
to--or something not more civil. And, at this, I brought to and looked
him up and down and answered him as a seaman should.

"To the devil yourself," said I; "what's that to do with you, and what
may your name happen to be?"

He was a big man, dressed in blue serge, with a peak cap and a seaman's
blouse. He had a long brown beard and a pock-marked face, and he
carried a spy-glass under his arm. He had come up from the grassy
valley below--and there I first saw the roof of a low bungalow, and the
gardens about it. That was Ruth's home, I said, and this fellow was one
of Czerny's yacht hands.

"Not so fast, not so fast," cried he; "do you know that this is private
land, and you've no business ashore here?"

"Why," says I, "haven't we come ashore to see you, my beauty, and
doesn't the spectacle reward us? 'Bout ship," says I, "and have done
with it. My business is with your mistress, whom I knew before your
brother was hanged at 'Frisco."

He swore a big oath at this, and, I do believe, was half of the mind to
try which was the better man; but when he had looked down at the
gardens of the bungalow, and a white figure was plainly to be seen
there, he seemed to think better of it, and changed his tone entirely.

"Avast," cries he, with a bit of a laugh, "you're one of the right
sort, and no mistaking that! And where would you be from, and what
would you be wanting here?" he asks, grown civil as a bagman with a bit
of ribbon to sell.

"Shipmate," says I, "if I'm one of the right sort, my port's
Southampton and my flag's the ensign. Take me down to Mme. Czerny, whom
I see among the flower-beds yonder, and you shall know enough about me
in five minutes to bring the tears to your beautiful eyes. And come,"
says I, chaffing him, "are there any girls in this bit of a paradise?
If so," says I, "I should call 'em lucky when I look at you."

Well, he took it sourly enough, but I could see he was mighty curious
to hear more about me, and as we went down a winding path to the
bungalow in the valley he put many questions to me, and I tried to
answer them civilly. Like all seamen he had no silent wits of his own,
and every word he thought, that he must speak.

"The guv'nor's not here," he said; "gone to 'Frisco. Lucky for you, for
he don't like strangers. Aye," he goes on, "he's a wonderful man for
his own way; to be sure he is. You'll be aboard and away before sunset,
or you might see him. Take my advice and put about. The shore's
unwholesome," says he.

"By the looks of you," says I, "you've nothing more than jaundice, and
that I can put up with. As for your guv'nor, I remember him well when
he and I did the light fandango together in European ports. He was
always a wonder with the fiddle. My mistress could lead him like a
pug-dog. I don't doubt she's a bit of a hand at it still."

Now, this set him thinking, and he put two and two together, I suppose,
and knew pretty well who I was.

"You'll be Jasper Begg that sailed the lady's yacht Manhattan?" says
he. "Well, I've heard of you often, and from her own lips. She'll be
pleased to see you, right enough--though what the guv'nor might say is
another matter. You see," he went on, "this same island is a paradise,
sure as thunder; but it's lonely for women-kind, and your mistress, she
don't take to it kindly. Not that she's complaining, or anything of
that sort. A lady who has rings for her fingers and bells for her toes,
and all real precious, same as any duchess might wear, she don't
complain long. Why, my guv'nor could make his very teeth out of diamonds
and not miss 'em, come to that! But his missus is always plaguing him
to take her to Europe, and that game. As if he don't want a wife in his
own home, and not in another man's, which is sense, Mister Begg, though
it is spoke by a plain seaman."

I said, "Aye, aye," and held my tongue, knowing that he would go on
with it. We were almost down at the house now, and the cliffs stood
like a great cloud of solid rock, above which a loom of smoke was
floating. Dolly walked at my heels like a patient dog. My own feelings
are not for me to tell. I was going to see Ruth Bellenden again. Why,
she was there in yonder garden, and nothing between us but this great
hulking yellow boy, who took to buttonholing me as a parson buttonholes
his churchwarden when he wants a new grate in his drawing-room.

"Now," says he, standing before me as one who had half a mind to block
the road, "you be advised by me, Mister Begg, and cut this job short.
Don't you be listening to a woman's parley, for it's all nonsense. I've
done wrong to let you ashore, perhaps--perhaps I haven't; but, ashore
or afloat, it's my business to see that the guv'nor's orders is carried
out, and carried out they will be, one man or twenty agen 'em. Do you
take a plain word or do you not, Mister Begg?"

"I take whatever's going, and don't trouble about the sugar," says I;
and then, putting him aside, I lifted the latch of the garden gate, and
went in and saw Miss Ruth.


CHAPTER III

IN WHICH JASPER BEGG MAKES UP HIS MIND WHAT TO DO

Now, she was sitting in the garden, in a kind of arbour built of
leaves, and near by her was her relative, the rats'-tailed old lady we
used to call Aunt Rachel. The pair didn't see me as I passed in, but a
Chinese servant gave "Good-day" to the yellow man we'd picked up coming
down; and, at that, Miss Ruth--for so I call her, not being able to get
Mme. Czerny into my head--Miss Ruth, I say, stood up, and, the colour
tumbling into her cheeks like the tide into an empty pool, she stood
for all the world as though she were struck dumb and unable to say a
word to any man. I, meanwhile, fingered my hat and looked foolish; for
it was an odd kind of job to have come twelve thousand miles upon, and
what to say to her with the hulking seaman at my elbow, the Lord
forgive me if I knew.

"Miss Ruth," says I at last, "I'm here according to orders, and the
ship's here, and we're waiting for you to go aboard----"

Well, she seemed to hear me like one who did not catch the meaning of
it. I saw her put her hand to her throat as though something were
choking her, and the old lady, the one we called Aunt Rachel, cried,
"God bless me," two or three times together. But the yellow man was the
next to speak, and he crossed right over to our Miss Ruth's side, and
talked in her ear in a voice you could have heard up at the hills.

"You'll not be going aboard to-day, lady. Why, what would the master
have to say, he coming home from foreign parts and you not ashore to
meet him? You didn't say nothing about any ship, not as I can remember,
and mighty pleased the guv'nor will be when he knows about it. Shall I
tell this party he'd better be getting aboard again, eh, ma'am? Don't
you think as he'd better be getting aboard again?"

He shouted this out for all the world like a man hailing from one ship
to another. I don't know what put it into my head, but I knew from that
moment that my mistress was afraid, aye, deadly afraid, as it is given
few to fear in this life. Not that she spoke of it, or showed it by any
sign a stranger might have understood; but there was a look in her eyes
which was clear to me; "and by my last word," said I to myself, "I'll
know the truth this day, though there be one or a hundred yellow boys!"
None the less, I held my tongue as a wise man should, and what I said
was spoken to the party with the beard.

"You've a nice soft voice for a nightingale, that you have," says I;
"if you'd let yourself out for a fog-horn to the Scilly Isles, you'd go
near to make your fortune! Is the young lady deaf that you want to bawl
like a harbour-master? Easy, my man," says I, "you'll hurt your
beautiful throat."

Well, he turned round savage enough, but my mistress, who had stood all
the while like a statue, spoke now for the first time, and holding out
both her hands to me, she cried:

"Oh, Captain Begg, Captain Begg, is it you at last, to walk right here
like this? I can't believe it," she said; "I really can't believe it!"

"Why, that's so," said I, catching her American accent, which was the
prettiest thing you ever heard; "I'm on the way to 'Frisco, and I put
in here according to my promise. My ship's out yonder, Miss Ruth, and
there's some aboard that knows you--Peter Bligh and Mister Jacob; and
this one, this is little Dolly Venn," said I, presenting him, "though
he'll grow bigger by-and-bye."

With this I pushed the boy forward, and he, all silly and blushing as
sailors will be when they see a pretty woman above their station--he
took her hand and heaved it like a pump-handle; while old Aunt Rachel,
the funny old woman in the glasses, she began to talk a lot of nonsense
about seamen, as she always did, and for a minute or two we might have
been a party of friends met at a street corner.

"I'm glad to find you well, Captain Begg," said she. "Such a dangerous
life, too, the mariner's. I always pity you poor fellows when you climb
the rattlesnakes on winter's nights."

"Ratlins, you mean, ma'am," said I, "though for that matter, a syllable
or two don't count either way. And I hope you're not poorly, ma'am, on
this queer shore."

"I like the island," says she, solemn and stiff-like; "my dear nephew
is an eccentric, but we must take our bread as we find it on this
earth, Mister Begg, and thankful for it too. Poor Ruth, now, she is
dreadfully distressed and unhappy; but I tell her it will all come
right in the end. Let her be patient a little while and she will have
her own way. She wants for nothing here--she has every comfort. If her
husband chooses such a home for her, she must submit. It is our duty to
submit to our husbands, captain, as the catechism teaches us."

"Aye, when you've got 'em," thought I, but I nodded my head to the old
lady, and turned to my mistress, who was now speaking to me.

"You'll lunch here; why, yes, captain--you mustn't find us
inhospitable, even if you leave us at once. Mr. Denton, will you please
to tell them that Captain Begg lunches with me--as soon as possible?"

She turned to the yellow man to give him the order; but there was no
mistaking the look which passed between them, saying on her side:
"Allow me to do this," on his, "You will suffer for it afterwards." But
he went up to the veranda of the house right enough, and while he was
bawling to the cook, I spoke the first plain word to Mme. Czerny.

"Mistress," I said, "the ship's there--shall we go or stay?"

I had meant it to be the plain truth between us; on her part the
confession whether she needed me or did not; on mine the will to serve
her whatever might happen to me. To my dying day, I shall never forget
her answer.

"Go," she said, so low that it was little more than a whisper, "but,
oh, for God's sake, Jasper Begg, come back to me again."

I nodded my head and turned the talk. The man Denton, the one with the
yellow beard (rated as Kess Denton on the island), was back at my side
almost before she had finished. The old lady began to talk about
"curling-spikes" and "blue Saint Peters," and how much the anchor
weighed, and all that sort of blarney which she thought ship-shape and
suited to a poor sailor-man's understanding. I told her a story of a
shark that swallowed a missionary and his hymn-book, and always swam
round our ship at service times afterwards--and that kept her thinking
a bit. As for little Dolly Venn, he couldn't keep his eyes off Miss
Ruth--and I didn't wonder, for mine went that way pretty often. Aye,
she had changed, too, in those twelve months that had passed since last
I saw her, the prettiest bride that ever held out a finger for a ring
in the big church at Nice. Her cheeks were all fallen away and flushed
with a colour which was cruelly unhealthy to see. The big blue eyes,
which I used to see full of laughter and a young girl's life, were
ringed round with black, and pitiful when they looked at you. The hair
parted above the forehead, as it always was, and brought down in curls
above her little ears, didn't seem to me so full of golden threads as
it used to be. But it was good to hear her plucky talk, there at the
dinner-table, when she chattered away like some sweet-singing bird, and
Dolly couldn't turn away his eyes, and the yellow boy stood, sour and
savage, behind her chair, and threw out hints for me to sheer off which
might have moved the Bass Rock. Not that he need have troubled himself,
for I had made up my mind already what to do; and no sooner was the
food stowed away than I up and spoke about the need of getting on
again, and such like. And with that I said "Good-bye" to Mistress Ruth
and "Good-bye" to the old woman, and had a shot left in my locker for
the yellow boy, which I don't doubt pleased him mightily.

"Good luck to you," says I; "if you'd a wisp of your hair, I'd put it
in my locket and think of you sometimes. When you want anything from
London you just shout across the sea and we'll be hearing you.
Deadman's Horn is nothing to you," said I; "you'd scare a ship out of
the sea, if you wasn't gentle to her."

Mind you, I said all this as much to put him off as anything else, for
I'd been careful enough to blab no word about the Southern Cross being
Miss Ruth's very own ship, nor about her orders that we should call at
Ken's Island; and I knew that when a man's angry at what you say to him
he doesn't think much of two and two making four, but as often as not
makes them eight or ten. May-be, said I, he'll make it out that I'm on
a tramp bound for 'Frisco and have touched here on the way--and
certainly he won't look for my coming back again once he sees our smoke
on the sky-line. Nor was I wrong. My mistress was to tell me that much
before twelve hours had passed.

And so it was that I said "Good-bye" to her, she standing at the
garden-gate with a brave smile upon her pretty face, and the yellow man
behind her like a savage dog that is afraid to bite, but has all the
mind to. At the valley's head I turned about, and she was still there,
looking up wistfully to the hills we trod. Thrice I waved my hand to
her, and thrice she answered, and then together, the lad and I, we
entered the dark wood and saw her no more.

"Your best leg forward, lad," said I to him, "and mum's the word.
There's work to do on the ship, and work ashore for a woman's sake. Are
you game for that, Dolly--are you game, my boy?"

Well, he didn't answer me. Some one up in the black gorge above fired a
rifle just as I spoke; and the bullet came singing down like a bird on
the wing. Not a soul could I see, not a sound could I hear when the
rolling echoes had passed away. It was just the silence of the thicket
and of the great precipices which headed it--a silence which might
freeze a man's heart because the danger which threatened him was
hidden.

"Crouch low to the rocks, lad, and go easy," cried I, when my wits came
back again; "that's a tongue it doesn't do to quarrel with. The dirty
skunks--to fire on unarmed men! But we'll return it, Dolly; as I live
I'll fire a dozen for every one they send us."

"Return it, sir," says he; "but aren't you going aboard?"

"Aye," says I, "and coming back again like drift on an open sea. Now
let me see you skip across that bridge, and no mistake about it."

He darted across the chasm's bridge like a chamois. I followed him
quick and clumsy. If my heart was in my mouth--well, let that pass. Not
for my own sake did I fear mortal man that day, but for the sake of a
woman whose very life I believed to be in danger.


CHAPTER IV

WE GO ABOARD, BUT RETURN AGAIN

We made the ship safely when twenty minutes were passed, and ten
minutes later, Mister Jacob and Peter Bligh were in my cabin with me.

"Lads," I said, for it was not a day when a man picked his talk;
"lads," said I, "this ship goes full steam ahead for 'Frisco, and
you'll be wanting to know the reason why. Well, that's right and
proper. Let me tell you that she's steaming to 'Frisco because it's the
shortest way to Ken's Island."

They looked queer at this, but my manner kept them silent. Every man
aboard the Southern Cross had heard the gun fired up in the hills, and
every one knew that Dolly Venn and the skipper had raced for their
lives to the water's edge. "What next?" they asked; and I meant to tell
them.

"Yes," said I, "the shortest way to Ken's Island, and no mistake about
it. For what does a man do when he sees some one in a house and the
front door's slammed in his face? Why, he goes to the back door
certainly, and for choice when the night's dark and the blinds are
down. That's what I'm going to do this night, lads, for the sake of a
bit of a girl you and I would sail far to serve."

They said, "Aye, aye," and drew their chairs closer. The men had been
piped down to dinner, but Peter Bligh forgot his, and that was
extraordinary peculiar in him. Mister Jacob took snuff as though it
were chocolate powder, and the whole of a man spoke from his little
eyes.

"Listen," said I, beginning to tell them what you know already, "here
have we sailed twelve thousand miles at Ruth Bellenden's order, and how
does she receive us? Why, with a nod she might give a neighbour going
by in the street----"

"They not being on speaking terms except in church," put in Peter
Bligh.

"Or she wishing him to get on with his business," said Mister Jacob,
"and not to gossip when there was work to do."

"Be that as it may," I ran on, "the facts are as plain to me as eight
bells for noon. Ruth Bellenden's married to a foreigner who's next door
to a madman. Why, look at it--what was the only word she had the time
or the chance to say? 'For God's sake, come back, Jasper Begg,' says
she. And what am I going to do upon that, gentlemen? Why, I'm going
back, so help me heaven, this very night to learn her trouble."

"And to bring her aboard where she could tell it on a fair course, so
to speak. You'll do that, sir?"

"The night will show what I shall do, Mister Jacob. Was there ever such
a story? A man to marry the best creature that ever put on a pretty
bonnet, and to carry her to a god-forsaken shore like this! And to
ill-treat her there! Aye, that's it. If ever a woman's eyes spoke to
me of hard treatment, it was Ruth Bellenden's this morning. She's some
trouble, lads, some dreadful trouble. She doesn't even speak of it to
me. The yellow boy I've made mention of stood by her all the time. We
talked like two that pass by on the ocean. Who'll gainsay that it was
an unnatural thing? No mortal man can, with reason!"

"Aye, there's precious little reason in it, by what I make out,
captain. You'll know more when the young lady's aboard here----"

"And the yellow boy's head has a bump on the top of it, like the knob
what used to hang down from my mother's chandelay--but that's idle
talking. What time do you put her about to go ashore, sir?"

I was glad to see them coming to it like this, and I fell to the plan
without further parley.

"A fair question and a fair answer," said I; "this ship goes about at
eight bells, Peter. To Mister Jacob here I trust the safety of the good
fellows who go ashore with me. If we can bring the mistress aboard
to-night, well and good, we've done the best day's work we ever set our
hands to. If not, that work must rest until tomorrow night, or the
night after or the night after that. Eight days from now if it happens
that nothing is heard from the land and no news of us, well, the course
is plain. In that case it will be full steam ahead to 'Frisco, and from
there a cable to Kenrick Bellenden, and the plain intimation that his
sister has pretty bad need of him on Ken's Island."

"And of an American warship, if one is forthcoming."

"It may be, Mister Jacob; it may be that, though the devils ashore
there are the only ones that could tell you that. But you're a man of
understanding, and your part will be done. I rely upon you as between
shipmates."

He took a pinch of snuff, and flapping his coat-tails (for he was
always rigged out in the naval officer way) he answered what I wished.

"As between shipmates, I will do my duty," said he.

"I knew it; I've known it from the beginning," said I. "What's left
when you've done is the shore part, and that's not so easy. Peter
Bligh's coming, and I couldn't well leave Dolly on board. Give me our
hulking carpenter, Seth Barker, and I'll lighten the ship no more.
We're short-handed as it is. And, besides, if four won't serve, then
forty would be no better. What we can do yonder, wits, and not
revolvers, must bring about. But I'll not go with sugar-sticks, you
take my word for it, and any man that points a gun at me will wish he'd
gone shooting sheep."

"Aye, aye, to that," cried Peter, who was ever a man for a fight; "the
shooting first and the civil words after. That's sense and no blarney.
When my poor father was tried at Swansea, his native place, for hitting
an Excise man with a ham----"

"Mr. Bligh," cried I, "'tis not with hams you'll be hitting folks
yonder, take my word for it. This job may find us on a child's errand
or it may find us doing men's work. Eight bells on the first watch will
tell the whole of the story. Until that time I shall hold my tongue
about it, but I don't go ashore as I go to a picnic, and I don't make a
boast about what I may presently cry out about."

Well, they were both of my way of thinking, and when we'd talked a
little more about it, and I'd opened the arm-chest and looked over the
few guns and pistols we'd got there, and we'd called the lad Dolly down
and promised him that he should come with us, and the men had been
given to understand that the skipper was to go ashore by-and-bye on an
important business, Peter and the others went to their dinner and I
took my turn on the bridge. The swell was running strongly then, and
the wind blew fresh from the north-east. We'd lost all sight of the
island, and spoke but one ship, a small mail steamer from Santa Cruz
bound for the Yellow Sea, which signalled us "All well" at six bells in
the afternoon watch. From that time I went dead slow and began to bring
the Southern Cross about. The work was begun that very hour, I always
say.

Now, I've told all this, short and brief, and with no talk of my own
about it. The thing had come so sudden, I knew so little of Ruth
Bellenden's trouble or of what had befallen her on the island, that I
was like a man in the dark groping blindly, yet set on hearing the
truth. As for the crew, well, you may be sure that Dolly Venn had put
his side of the story about, and when they knew that my mistress was
ashore there and in some danger, I believe they'd have put me in irons
if I'd so much as spoken of going back.

Risky it was, so much I won't deny; but who wouldn't risk more than his
own paltry skin to save a woman in trouble, and she, so to speak, a
shipmate? There was not a man aboard, stake my life, who wouldn't have
gone to the land willingly for Ruth Bellenden's sake though he'd been
told, sure and certain, that Ken's Island must be his grave. And we'd
always the ship, mind you, and the knowledge that she would go to
'Frisco to get us help. A fool's hope, I say now. For how could we know
that the Southern Cross would be at the bottom of the sea, a thousand
fathoms down, before the week was run? We couldn't know it; yet that
was what happened, and that is why no help came to us.

We had put the ship about at six bells in the afternoon watch, but it
was eight bells in the second dog (the night being too clear for my
liking and a full moon showing bright in the sky) that we sighted Ken's
Island for the second time, and for the second time prepared to go
ashore. The longboat was ready by this time, her barrels full of water
and her lockers full of biscuit. Such arms as we were to carry were
partly stowed in water-proof sheeting--the rifles, and the cartridges
for them; but the revolvers we carried, and a good Sheffield knife a
man, which we weren't going to cut potatoes with. For the rest, I made
them put in a few stout blankets, and more rations than might have
served for such a trip. "Good beginnings make good endings," said I;
"what we haven't need of, lads, we can carry aboard again. The
longboat's back won't ache, be sure of it."

All this, I say, was done when the moon showed us the island like a
great barren rock rising up sheer from the sea. And when it was done,
Mister Jacob called my attention to something which in the hurry of
shore-going I might never have seen at all or thought about. It was
nothing less than this--that their fool's beacon was out to-night, and
all the sea about it as black as ink. Whoever set up the light, then,
did not use it for a seaman's benefit, but for his own whim. I reckoned
up the situation at a glance, and even at that early stage I began to
know the terrible meaning of it.

"Mister Jacob," said I, "those that keep that beacon are either fools
or knaves."

"Or both, sir," said he.

"Which one is the own brother to the other. Aye, captain, 'tis lucky
ye've the parish lantern, as my poor father used to say when----"

But Peter Bligh never finished it that night. The words were still in
his mouth when a rocket shot up over the sea and bursting in a cloud of
gold-blue sparks, cast a weird, cold light upon rock and reef and all
that troubled sea. And as the rocket fell our big carpenter, Seth
Barker, standing aft by the hatch, cries out,

"Ship ashore! Ship ashore, by----!"


CHAPTER V

STRANGE SIGHTS ASHORE, AND WHAT WE SAW OF THEM

Now, when Seth Barker cried out that a ship was ashore on the dangerous
reefs to the northward of the main island, it is not necessary to tell
you what we, a crew of British seamen, were called upon to do. The
words were scarcely spoken before I had given the order, "Stand by the
boats," and sent every man to his station. Excited the hands were, that
I will not deny; excited and willing enough to tell you about it if
you'd asked them; but no man among them opened his lips, and while they
stood there, anxious and ready, I had my glass to my eye and tried to
make out the steamer and what had befallen her. Nor was Mister Jacob
behind me, but he and Peter Bligh at my side, we soon knew the truth
and made up our minds about it.

"There's a ship on the reef, sure enough, and by the cut of her she's
the Santa Cruz we spoke this afternoon," said Mr. Jacob, and added, "a
dangerous shore, sir, a dangerous shore."

"But full of kind-hearted people that fire their guns at poor
shipwrecked mariners," put in Peter Bligh. I wouldn't believe him at
first, but there was no denying it, awful truth that it was, when a few
minutes had passed.

"Good God," cried I, "it can't be so, Peter, and yet that's a rifle's
tongue, or I've lost my hearing."

Well, we all stood together and listened as men listen for some poor
creature's death-cry, or the sounds which come in the stillness of the
night to affright and unnerve us. Sure enough, you couldn't have
counted ten before the report of guns was heard distinctly above the
distant roar of breakers; while flashes of crimson light, playing about
the reef, seemed to tell the whole story without another word from me.

"Those devils ashore are shooting the crew," cried I; "did man ever
hear such bloody work? I'll have a reckoning for this, if it takes me
twenty years. Lower away the boats, lads; I'm going to dance to that
music."

They swung the two longboats out on the davits, and the port crew were
in their seats, when Mister Jacob touched my arm and questioned my
order--a thing I haven't known him to do twice in ten years.

"Beg pardon, sir," said he, "but there's no boat that will help the
Santa Cruz to-night."

"And why, Mister Jacob--why do you say that?"

"Because she's gone where neither you nor I wish to go yet awhile,
Mister Begg."

I stood as though he had shot me, and clapping my glass to my eye I
took another look towards the northern reef and the ship that was
stranded there. But no ship was to be seen. She had disappeared in a
twinkling; the sea had swallowed her up. And over the water, as an
eerie wail, lasting and doleful, came the death-cries of those who
perished with her.

"God rest their poor souls and punish them that sent them there," said
Peter Bligh fervently; but Mister Jacob was still full of his prudent
talk.

"We're four miles out, and the moon will be gone in ten minutes, sir.
You couldn't make the reef if you tried, and if you could, you'd find
none living. This sea would best the biggest boat that ever a ship
carried--it will blow harder in an hour, and what then? We've friends
of our own to serve, and the door that Providence opens we've no right
to shut. I say nothing against humanity, Captain Begg, but I wouldn't
hunt the dead in the water when I could help the living ashore."

I saw his point in a moment, and had nothing to say against it. No
small boat could have lived in the reefs about the northern end of the
island with the sea that was running that night. If the devils who
fired down upon the poor fellows of the Santa Cruz were still watching
like vultures for human meat, fair argument said, the main island would
be free of them for us to go ashore as we pleased. A better opportunity
might not be found for a score of months. I never blame myself, least
of all now, when I know Ruth Bellenden's story, that I listened that
night to the clearheaded wisdom of Anthony Jacob.

"You're right, as always, Mister Jacob. I've no call to take these good
fellows on a fool's errand. And it's going to blow hard, as you say.
We'll take in one of the boats, and those that are for the shore will
make haste to get aboard the other."

This I said to him, but to the men I put it in a few seaman's words.

"Lads," I said, "no boat that Southampton ever built could swim in
yonder tide where it makes between the reefs. We'd like to help
shipmates, but the chance is not ours. There's another little shipmate
ashore there that needs our help pretty badly. I'm going in for her
sake, and there's not a man of you that will not do his duty by the
ship when I'm gone. Aye, you'll stand by Mister Jacob, lads, I may tell
him that?"

They gave me a rousing cheer, which was a pretty foolish thing to have
done, and it took all my voice to silence them. Lucky for us, there was
a cloud over the moon now, and darkness like a black vapour upon the
sea. Not a lamp burned on the Southern Cross; not a cabin window but
had its curtain. What glow came from her funnel was not more than a
hazy red light over the waters; and when five of us (for we took Harry
Doe to stand by ashore) stepped into the longboat, and set her head due
west for the land, we lost the steamer in five minutes--and, God knows,
we were never to see her again on the high seas or off.

Now, I have said that the wind had begun to blow fresh since sunset,
and at two bells in the first watch, the time we left the ship, the sea
ran high, and it was not oversafe even in the longboat to be cruising
for a shore we knew so little about. I have always accounted it more
good luck than good seamanship which brought us to the cove at last,
and set us all, wet but cheerful, on the dry, white sand about the
ladder's foot. There was shelter in the bay both for man and ship, and
when we'd dragged the longboat up on the beach we gave Harry Doe his
orders and left him to his duty.

"If there's danger fire your gun," said I--"once, if you wish to call
us; twice, if you think we should stand off. But you won't do that
unless things are at the worst, and I'm hoping for the best, when you
won't do it at all."

He answered, "Aye, aye," in a whisper which was like a bear's growl;
and we four, Peter Bligh, Seth Barker, and the lad Dolly, besides
myself, climbed the ladder like cats and stood at the cliff's head. To
say that our hearts were in our mouths would not be strict truth, for I
never feared any man, beast, or devil yet; and I wasn't going to begin
that night--nor were the others more ready, that I will answer for
them. But remembering the things we had seen on the reef, the words
which Ruth Bellenden had spoken to me, and that which happened to the
lad and myself last time we came ashore; remembering this, it's not to
be wondered at that our hearts beat a bit quicker, and that our hands
went now and again to the pistols we carried. For, just think of
it--there we were at nine o'clock of a dark night, in a thick wood,
with the trees making ghosts about us, and the path as narrow as a
ship's plank, and no knowledge who walked the woods with us, nor any
true reckoning of our circumstance. What man wouldn't have held his
tongue at such a time, or argued with himself that it might end badly,
and he never see the sun again? Not Jasper Begg, as I bear witness.

Now, I put myself at the head of our fellows and, the better to find
the track, I went down on my hands and my knees like a four-footed
thing, and signalling to those behind with a bosun's whistle, I led
them well enough through the wood to the wicker-basket bridge; and
would have gone on from there straight down to the house but for
something which happened at the clearing of the thicket, just as I
stood up to bid the men go over. Startling it was, to be sure, and
enough to give any man a turn; nor did I wonder that Peter Bligh should
have cried out as he did when first he clapped eyes upon it.

"Holy Mother of Music," says he, "'tis the angels singing, or I'm a
dirty nigger!"

"Hold your tongue," says I, in a whisper; "are you afraid of two young
women, then?"

"Of three," says he, "which being odd is lucky. When my poor
father----"

"To hell with your father," says I; "hold your tongue and wait."

He lay low at this, and the rest of us gaped, open-mouthed, as though
we were staring at a fairy-book. There, before us, coming down from the
black rocks above, leaping from step to step of the stone, were three
young girls; but, aye, the queerest sort that ever tantalized a man
with their prettiness. You may well ask, the night being inky dark, how
we managed to see them at all; but let me tell you that they carried
good rosin torches in their hands, and the wild light, all gold and
crimson against the rocks, shone as bright as a ship's flare and as
far. Never have I seen such a thing, I say, and never shall. There were
the three of them, like young deer on a bleak hillside, singing and
laughing and leaping down, and, what's more, speaking to each other in
an odd lingo, with here a word of French and there a word of German,
and after that something that was beyond me and foreign to my
understanding.

"God be good to me--saw man ever such a sight? And the dress of 'em,
the dress of 'em," whispers Peter Bligh. But I clapped my hand upon his
mouth and stopped him that time.

"The dress is all right," said I; "what I'm wondering is how three of
that sort came in such a place as this. And well born too, well born,
or I don't know the meaning of the term!"

They were pretty creatures and their dress was like the rest of them.
Short skirts all looped and filled with flowers, toggery above cut out
of some white skin, with caps to match and their hair falling in big
ramping curls about it--they were for all the world like the dancers
you see at a stage play and just as active. And to hear their voices,
sweet and musical, floating from ravine to ravine like a choir singing
in a place of echoes, aye that was something you might not soon forget.
But what they were doing in such a place, or how they came there, the
Lord above alone knew, and not a plain seaman like Jasper Begg.


[Illustration: Like dancers at a stage play.]


"What are they saying, Peter--what do you make of it?" I asked him,
under my breath.

"'Tis the French lingo," says he, foolish-like, "and if it's not that,
'tis the German--leastwise no Christian man that I know of could
distinguish between 'em."

"Peter," says I, "that's what you learn in the asylum. 'Tis no more the
French lingo than your own. Why, hearken to it."

Well, he listened, and soon we heard a pretty echo from the valley, for
they'd gone down towards the gardens now; and one word repeated often
had as nice a touch of music as I remember hearing. It was just this:
"Rosamunda--munda--munda," and you can't think how fresh the young
voice sounded in that lonely place, or what a chill it gave a man when
he remembered the devils over at the reef and what they'd done to the
crew of the Santa Cruz. I do believe to this day that our fellows
imagined they'd seen nothing more nor less than an apparition out of
the black rocks above them; and it wasn't until I'd spoken to them in
good honest English that I got them to go on again.

"Flesh or spirit, that's not a lot to whiten a man's gills," cried I;
"why, thunder, Peter Bligh, you're big enough to put 'em all in your
pocket, and soft enough they'd lie when they got there. Do you mean to
tell me," I asked him, "that four hale and strong men are to be
frightened out of their wits by three pretty girls?--and you a
religious man, too, Peter! Why, I'm ashamed of you, that I am, lads,
right down ashamed of you!"

They plucked up at this, and Peter he made haste to excuse himself.

"If they was Christian men with knives in their hands," says he, "I'd
put up a bit of a prayer, and trust to the Lord to shoot 'em; but them
three's agen all reason, at this time of night in such a lone place."

"Go on with you, Peter," chimes in Dolly Venn; "three ripping little
girls, and don't I wish they'd ask me in to tea! Why, look, they're
down by the house now, and somebody with them, though whether it's a
man or a woman I really don't pretend to say."

"I'm derned if I don't think it's a lion," says Seth Barker, asking my
pardon for the liberty.

We all stood still at this, for we were on the hillside just above the
house now; and down on the fair grass-way below us we espied the three
little girls with their torches still burning, and they as deep in talk
with a stranger as a man might have been with his own mother. A more
remarkable human being than the one these little ladies had happened
upon I don't look to see again the world around. Man or lion--God
forgive me if I know what to call him. He'd hair enough, shaggy hair
curling about his shoulders, to have stuffed a feather bed. His dress
was half man's, half woman's. He'd a tattered petticoat about his legs,
a seaman's blouse for his body, and a lady's shawl above that upon his
shoulders--his legs were bare as a barked tree, and what boots he had
should have been in the rag-shop. More wonderful still was it to
see the manner of the young ladies towards him--for I shall always
call them that--they petted him and fondled him, and one put a mock
crown of roses on his head. Then, with that pretty song of theirs,
"Rosamunda--munda--munda," they all ran off together towards the
northern shore and left us in the darkness, as surprised a party of
men as you'll readily meet with.

"Well," says Peter Bligh, and he was the first among us to speak,
"yon's a nice shipmate to speak on a quiet road. So help me thunder,
but I wouldn't pass round the tin for him in a beauty show, no, not
much! Did ye see the hair of him, captain--did ye see the hair?"

"And the girls kissing him as though he were Apollo," cries Dolly Venn,
who, I don't doubt, would have done the kissing willingly himself. But
I hushed their talk, and without more ado I went straight down to Ruth
Bellenden's house. All the strange things we'd seen and heard, the
uncanny sights, the firing on the reef, the wild man ashore, the little
girls from the hills--all these, I say, began to tell me my mistress's
story as a written book might never have done. "She's need of me," I
said, "sore need; and by God's help I'll bring her out of this place
before to-morrow's sun."

For how should I know what long days must pass before I was to leave
Ken's Island again?


CHAPTER VI

JASPER BEGG MEETS HIS OLD MISTRESS, AND IS WATCHED

I had made up my mind to take every proper precaution before going up
to the house where my mistress lived; and with caution in my head I
left Seth Barker, the carpenter, up on the hill path, while I set Peter
Bligh at the gate of the garden, and posted Dolly Venn round at the
northern side, where the men who had looted the Santa Cruz might be
looked for with any others that I had no knowledge of. When this was
done, and they understood that they were to fire a gun if the need
arose, I opened the wicket-gate and crept up the grass path for all the
world like an ill-visaged fellow who had no true business there. Not a
sound could I hear in all that place; not a dog barked, nor a human
voice spoke. Even the wind came fitful and gusty about the sheltered
house; and so quiet was it between the squalls that my own footfall
almost could scare me. For, you see, a whisper spoken at the wrong time
might have undone all--a clumsy step have cost us more than a man cared
to count. We were but four, and, for all I know, there might have been
four hundred on Ken's Island. You don't wonder therefore, if I asked
myself at times whether to-morrow's sun would find us living or what
our misfortune might spell for one I had come so far to serve.

It was very dark in the garden, as I have told you, but two of the
windows in the house were lighted up and two golden rings of light
thrown out upon the soft grass I trod. I stood a long time debating
which window to knock open--for it was a fearful lottery, I must
say--and when I'd turned it over and over in my head, and now made out
that it was this window and now plumped for the other, I took up a
pebble at last and cast it upon the pane nearest to the door--for that
seemed to me the more likely room, and I'd nothing else but common
sense to guide me. You may judge of my feelings when no notice was
taken of my signal except by a dog, which began to yap like a pup and
to make such a scare that I thought every window and every door must
be opened that very instant and as many men out on top of me. I said,
surely, that it was all up with Jasper Begg that journey; but odd to
tell it, the dog gave over at last, and no one showed himself, neither
was there any whistle from my company; and I was just making ready to
throw another stone when the second light was turned out all of a
sudden and, the long window being opened, Ruth Bellenden--or, to be
more correct, Mme. Czerny--herself came out into the garden, and stood
looking round about as though she knew that I was there and had been
waiting for me. When at last she saw me she didn't speak or make any
sign, but going about to the house again she held the window open for
me, and I passed into the dark room with her, and there held her hand
in mine, I do believe as though I would never let it go again.

"Jasper," says she, in a whisper that was pretty as the south wind in
springtime; "Jasper Begg, how could it be any one else! Oh, we must
light a candle, Jasper Begg," says she, "or we shall lose ourselves in
the dark."

"Miss Ruth," said I, "light or dark, I'm here according to my orders,
and the ship's here, and as I said to you before the yellow boy to-day,
we're waiting for our mistress to go aboard."

She had her back to me when I said this, and was busy enough drawing
the curtains and lighting the lamp again. The light showed me that she
wore a rich black gown with fluffy stuff over it, and a bit of a
sparkle in the way of diamonds like a band across her parted hair. The
face was deceiving, now lighted up by one of the old smiles, now hard
set as one who had suffered much for her years. But there was nothing
over-womanish in her talk, and we two thrashed it out there, just the
same as if Ken's Island wasn't full of devils, and the lives of me and
my men worth what a spin of the coin might buy them at.

"You mustn't call me Miss Ruth," says she, when she turned from the
lamp and tidied up her writing on the table; "of course you know that,
Jasper Begg. And you at my wedding, too--is it really not more than
twelve long months ago?"

A sigh passed her lips, such a sigh as tells a woman's story better
than all the books; and in that moment the new look came upon her face,
the look I had seen when the yellow man changed words with her in the
morning.

"It's thirteen months three weeks since you went up with Mr. Czerny to
the cathedral at Nice," was my next word; "the days go slow on this
out-of-the-way shore, I'll be bound--until our friends come, Miss Ruth,
until we're sure they haven't forgotten us."


I had a meaning in this, and be sure she took it. Not that she answered
me out and away as I wished; for she put on the pretty air of wife and
mistress who wouldn't tell any of her husband's secrets.

"Why, yes," she said, very slowly, "the days are long and the nights
longer, and, of course, my husband is much away from here."

I nodded my head and drew the chair she'd offered me close to the
table. On her part she was looking at the clock as though she wished
that the hands of it might stand still. I read it that we hadn't much
time to lose, and what we had was no time for fair words.

"Miss Ruth," says I, without more parley, "from what I've seen to-night
I don't doubt that any honest man would be glad to get as far as he
could from Ken's Island and its people at the first opportunity. You'll
pardon what a plain seaman is going to say, and count him none the less
a friend for saying it. When you left money in the banker's hands to
commission a ship and bring her to this port, your words to me were, 'I
may have need of you.' Miss Ruth, you have need of me--I should be no
more than a fool if I couldn't see that. You have sore need of me, and
if you won't say so for yourself, I take leave to say it for you."

She raised a hand as though she would not hear me--but I was on a clear
course now, and I held to it in spite of her.

"Yes," I said, "you've need of your friends to-night, and it's a lucky
wind that brought them to this shore. What has passed, Miss Ruth, in
these months you speak of, it's not for me to ask or inquire. I have
eyes in my head, and they show me what I would give my fortune not to
see. You're unhappy here, Miss Ruth--you're not treated well."

I waited for her to speak; but not a word would she say. White she was,
as a flower from her own garden, and once or twice she shivered as
though the cold had struck her. I was just going on to speak again,
when what should happen but that her little head went down on the table
and she began to sob as though her heart would break.

"Oh, Jasper Begg, how I have suffered, how I have suffered!" said she,
between her sobs; and what could I do, what could any man do who would
kiss the ground a woman walks upon but has no right or title to? Why,
hold his tongue, of course, though it hurt him cruelly to do any such
thing.

"Miss Ruth," said I, very foolish, "please don't think of that now. I'm
here to help you, the ship's here, we're waiting for you to go aboard."

She dried her tears and tried to look up at me with a smile.

"Oh, I'm just a child, just a child again, Jasper," cries she; "a year
ago I thought myself a woman, but that's all passed. And I shall never
go away on your ship, Jasper Begg--never, never. I shall die on Ken's
Island as so many have died."

I stood up at this and pointed to the clock.

"Little friend," I said, "if you'll put a cloak about your shoulders
and leave this house with me I'll have you safe aboard the Southern
Cross in twenty minutes by that clock, as God is my witness."

It was no boast--for that I could have done as any seaman knows; and
you may well imagine that I stood as a man struck dumb when I had her
answer.

"Why, yes," she said, "you could put me on board your boat, Captain
Jasper, if every step I took was not watched; if every crag had not its
sentinel; if there were not a hundred to say 'Go back--go back to your
home.' Oh, how can you know, how can you guess the things I fear and
dread in this awful place? You, perhaps, because the ship is waiting
will be allowed to return to it again. But I, never, never again to my
life's end."

A terrible look crossed her face as she said this, and with one swift
movement she opened a drawer in the locker where she did her writing,
and took from it a little book which she thrust, like a packet, into my
hands.

"Read," she said, with startling earnestness, "read that when you are
at sea again. I never thought that any other eyes but mine would see
it; but you, Jasper, you shall read it. It will tell you what I myself
could never tell. Read it as you sail away from here, and then say how
you will come back to help the woman who needs your help so sorely."

I thrust the book into my pocket, but was not to be put off like that.

"Read it I will, every line," said I; "but you don't suppose that
Jasper Begg is about to sail away and leave you in this plight, Miss
Ruth! He'd be a pretty sort of Englishman to do that, and it's not in
his constitution, I do assure you!"

She laughed at my earnestness, but recollecting how we stood and what
had befallen since sunset, she would hear no more of it.

"You don't understand; oh, you don't understand!" she cried, very
earnestly; "there's danger here, danger even now while you and I are
talking. Those who have gone out to the wreck will be coming home
again; they must not find you in this house, Jasper Begg, must not,
must not! For my sake, go as you came. Tell all that thought of me how
I thank them. Some day, perhaps, you will learn how to help me. I am
grateful to you, Jasper--you know that I am grateful."

She held out both her hands to me, and they lay in mine, and I was
trying to speak a real word from my heart to her when there came a low,
shrill whistle from the garden-gate, and I knew that Peter Bligh had
seen something and was calling me.

"Miss Ruth," says I, "that's old Peter Bligh and his danger signal.
There'll be some one about, little friend, or he wouldn't do it."

Well, she never said a word. I saw a shadow cross her face, and
believed she was about to faint. Nor will any one be surprised at that
when I say that the door behind us had been opened while we talked, and
there stood Kess Denton, the yellow man, watching us like a hound that
would bite presently.


CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH HELP COMES FROM THE LAST QUARTER WE HAD EXPECTED IT

Now, no sooner did I see the yellow man than my mind was fully made up,
and I determined what harbour to make for. "If you're there, my lad,"
said I to myself, "the others are not far behind you. You've seen me
come in, and it's your intention to prevent me going out again. To be
caught like a rat in a trap won't serve Ruth Bellenden, and it won't
serve me. I'm for the open, Kess Denton," said I, "and no long while
about it, either."

This I said, but I didn't mean to play the startled kitten, and without
any token of surprise or such-like I turned round to Miss Ruth and gave
her "good-evening."

"I'm sorry you're not coming aboard, Mme. Czerny," says I; "we weigh in
an hour, and it will be a month or more before I call in again. But you
sha'n't wait long for the news if I can help it; and as for your
brother, Mr. Kenrick, I'll trust to hear from him at 'Frisco and to
tell you what he thinks on my return. Good-night, madame," said I, "and
the best of health and prosperity."

I held out my hand, and she shook it like one who didn't know what she
was doing. The yellow man came a step nearer and said, "Halloa, my
hearty." I nodded my head to him and he put his hand on my shoulder.
Poor fool, he thought I was a child, perhaps, and to be treated as one;
but I have learnt a thing or two about taking care of myself in Japan,
and you couldn't have counted two before I had his arm twisted under
mine, and he gave a yell that must have been heard up in the hills.

"If you cry out like that, you'll ruin your beautiful voice," said I;
"hasn't any one ever asked you to sing hymns in a choir? Well, I'm
surprised. Good-night, my boy; I shall be coming back for your picture
before many days have passed."

Upon this, I stepped towards the door, and thought that I had done with
him; but no sooner was I out in the garden than something went singing
by my ear, and upon that a second dose with two reports which echoed in
the hills like rolling thunder. No written music vas necessary to tell
me the kind of tune it was, and I swung round on my heel and gripped
the man by the throat almost before the echoes of the shot had died
away.

"Kess Denton," said I, "if you will have it, you shall!" and with that
I wrenched the pistol from his grasp and struck him a blow over the
head that sent him down without a word.

"One," said I, to myself, "one that helped to make little Ruth
Bellenden suffer;" and with that I set off running and never looked to
the right of me nor to the left until I saw Peter Bligh at the gate and
heard his honest voice.

"Is it you--is it you yourself, Mr. Begg? Thank God for that!" cries
he, and it was no longer in a whisper; "there's men in the hills, and
Seth Barker whistling fit to crack his lips. Is the young lady coming
aboard, sir? No?--well, I'm not surprised, neither, though this shore
do seem a queerish sort of place----"

I cut him short, and Dolly Venn running round from his place in the
garden I asked him for his news. The thing now was to find a road to
the sea. What could be done for Ruth Bellenden that night was over and
passed. Our chance lay on the deck of the Southern Cross, and after
that at 'Frisco.

"What have you seen, Dolly Venn--be quick, lad, for we can't linger?"
was my question to him so soon as he was within hail. He answered me by
pointing to the trees which border the garden on the eastward side.

"The wood is full of armed men, sir. Two of them nearly trod upon me
while I was lying there. They carry rifles, and seem to be Germans--I
couldn't be sure of that, sir."

"Germans or chimpanzees, we're going by them this night. Where's Seth
Barker--why doesn't he come down? Does he think we can pass by the
hill-road?--the wooden block! Call him, one of you."

They were about to do this when Seth Barker himself came panting down
the hillpath, and, what was more remarkable, he carried an uncouth sort
of bludgeon in his hand. I could see that there had been a bit of a
rough and tumble on the way, but it wasn't the time for particulars.

"Come aboard, sir," says he, breathing heavy; "the gangway's blocked,
but I give one of 'em a bit of a knock with his own shillelagh, and
that's all right."

"Is there any more up there?" I asked quickly.

"May be a dozen, may be more. They're up on the heights looking for you
to go up, captain."

"Aye," said I, "pleasant company, no doubt. Well, we must strike
eastward somehow, lads, and the sooner the better. We'll hold to the
valley a bit and see where that leads us. Do you, Seth Barker, keep
that bit of a shillelagh ready, and, if any one asks you a question,
don't you wait to answer it."

Now, I had resolved to try and get down to the sea by the valley road
and, once upon the shore, to signal Harry Doe, if possible, and, if not
him, then the ship herself as a last resource. Any road seemed to me
better than this trap of a house with armed men all about it and a
pistol bullet ready for any stranger that lingered. "Aboard the ship,"
said I, "we'll show them a clean pair of heels to 'Frisco and, after
that, ask the American Government what it can do for Ruth Bellenden and
for her husband." We were four against a hundred, perhaps, and
desperate men against us. If we got out of the scrape with our skins,
we should be as lucky a lot as ever sailed the Northern Pacific Ocean.
But should we--could we? Why, it was a thousand to one against it!

I said this when we plunged into the wood; and yet I will bear witness
that I got more excitement than anything else out of that venture, and
I don't believe the others got less. There we were, the four of us,
trampling through the brushwood, crushing down the bushes, now lying
low, now up a-running--and not a man that wouldn't have gone through it
twice for Ruth Bellenden's sake. If so be that the night was to cost us
our lives, well, crying wouldn't help it--and those that were against
us were flesh and blood, all said and done, and no spirits to scare a
man. To that I set it down that we went on headlong and desperate. As
for the thicket itself, it was full of men--I could see their figures
between the trees. We must have passed twenty of them in the darkness
before one came out, plump on our path and cried out to us to halt.

"Hold, hold," shouts he; "is it you, Bob Williams?"

"It's Bob Williams, right enough," says I, and with that I gave him one
between the eyes, and down he went like a felled ox. The man who was
with him, stumbling up against Seth Barker, had a touch of the
shillelagh which was like a rock falling upon a fly. He just gave one
shuddering groan and fell backwards, clutching the branches. Little
Dolly Venn laughed aloud in his excitement, elbowed Peter Bligh who
gave a real Irish "hurrugh"; but the darkness had swallowed it all up
in a minute, and we were on again, heading for the shore like those
that run a race for their very lives.

"Do you see any road, Peter Bligh?" asked I, for my breath was coming
short now; "do you see any road, man?"

"The devil a one, sir, and me weighing fourteen stone!"

"You'll weigh less when we get down, Peter."

"And drink more, the saints be praised!"

"Was that a rifle-shot or a stone from the hills?" I asked them a
moment later. Dolly Venn answered me this time.

"A rifle-shot, captain. They'll be shooting one another, then--it's
ripping, ripping!"

"Look out, lad, or it'll be dripping!" cried I; "don't you see there's
water ahead?"

I cried the warning to him and stood stock-still upon the borders of as
black a pool as I remember to have seen in any country. The road had
carried us to the foot of the hills, almost to the chasm which the
wicker-bridge spanned; and we could make out that same bridge far above
us like a black rope in the twilight. The water itself was covered with
some clinging plants, and full of winding, ugly snakes which caused the
whole pool to shine with a kind of uncanny light; while an overpowering
odour, deadly and stifling, steamed up from it, and threatened to choke
a man. What was worse than this was a close thicket bordering the pond
on three sides, so that we must either swim for it or turn back the way
we came. The latter course was not to be thought of. Already I could
hear footsteps, and boughs snapping and breaking not many yards from
where we stood. To cross the pond might have struck the bravest man
alive with terror. I'd have sooner forfeited my life time over than
have touched one of those slimy snakes I could see wriggling over the
leaves to the bottom of the still water. What else to do I had no more
notion than the dead. "It's the end, Jasper Begg," said I to myself,
"the end of you and your venture." But of Ruth Bellenden I wouldn't
think. How could I, when I knew the folks that were abroad on Ken's
Island?

I will just ask any traveller to stand with me where I stood that night
and to say if these words are overmuch for the plight, or if I have
spoken of it with moderation. A night as black as ink, mind you; my
company in the heart of a wood with big teak trees all round us, and
cliffs on our right hand towering up to the sky like mountains. Before
us a pool of inky water, all worming with odd lights and lines of blue
fire, like flakes of phosphorus on a bath, and alive with the hissing
of hundreds of snakes. Upon our left hand a scrubby thicket and a marsh
beneath it, I make sure; Czerny's devils, who had shot the poor folks
on the Santa Cruz, at our heels, and we but four against the lot of
them. Would any man, I ask, have believed that he could walk into such
a trap and get out of it unharmed? If so, it wasn't Jasper Begg, nor
Peter Bligh, nor little Dolly Venn, nor Seth Barker with the bludgeon
in his hand. They'd as good as given it up when we came to the pool and
stood there like hunting men that have lost all hope.

"Done, by all that's holy!" says Peter Bligh, drawing back from the
pond as from some horrid pit. "Snakes I have seen, nateral and
unnateral, but them yonder give me the creeps----"

"Creeps or no creeps, the others will be up here in five minutes, and
what are you going to do then, Peter Bligh, what then?" asks I, for as
I'm a living man I didn't know which way to turn from it.

Seth Barker was the one that answered me.

"I'm going to knock some nails in, by your leave," says he, and with
that he stood very still and bade us listen. The whole wood was full of
the sound of "halloaing" now. Far and wide I heard question and answer,
and a lingering yodle such as the Swiss boys make on the mountains. It
couldn't be many minutes, I said, before the first man was out on our
trail; and there I was right, for one of them came leaping out of the
wood straight into Peter Bligh's arms before I'd spoken another word.
Poor devil--it was the last good-night for him in this world--for Peter
passes him on, so to speak, and he went headlong into the pond without
any one knowing how he got there. A more awful end I hope I may never
hear of, and yet, God knows, he brought it on himself. As for Peter
Bligh, the shock set him sobbing like a woman. It was all my work to
get him on again.

"No fault of ours," said I; "we're here for a woman's sake, and if
there's man's work to do, we'll do it, lads. Take my advice and you'll
turn straight back and run for it. Better a tap on the head than a cry
in yonder pool."

They replied fearsomely--the strain was telling upon them badly. That
much I learnt from their husky voices and the way they kept close to
me, as though I could protect them. Seth Barker, especially, big man
that he was, began to mutter to himself in the wildest manner possible;
while little Dolly burst into whistling from time to time in a way that
made me crazy.

"That's right, lad," cried I, "tell them you're here, and ask after the
health of their womenfolk. You've done with this world, I see, and made
it straight for the next. If you've a match in your pocket, strike it
to keep up their spirits."

Well, he stopped short, and I was ashamed of myself a minute after for
speaking so to a mere lad whose life was before him and who'd every
right to be afraid.

"Come," said I, more kindly, "keep close to me, Dolly, and if you don't
know where I am, why, put out your hand and touch me. I've been in
worse scrapes than this, my boy, and I'll lead you out of it somehow.
After all, we've ship over yonder and Mister Jacob isn't done with yet.
Keep up your heart, then, and put your best leg forward."

Now, this was spoken to put courage into him--not that I believed what
I said, but because he and the others counted upon me, and my own
feelings had to go under somehow. For the matter of that, it looked all
Lombard Street to a China orange against us when we took the woodland
path again; and so I believe it would have been but for something which
came upon us like a thunder-flash, and changed all our despair to a
desperate hope. And to this something Peter Bligh was the first to call
our attention.

"Is it fireflies or lanterns?" cries he all at once, bringing out
the words like a pump might have done; "yonder on the hillside,
shipmates--is it fireflies or lanterns?"

I stood to look, and while I stood Seth Barker named the thing.

"It's lanterns," cries he; "lanterns, sure and certain, captain."

"And the three ripping little girls carrying them," puts in Dolly Venn.

"'Tis no woman ever born that would hunt down four poor sailor-men,"
cries Peter Bligh.

"To say nothing of the he-lion they was a-fondling of"--from Seth
Barker.

"Lads," said I, in my turn, "this is the unlooked for, and I, for one,
don't mean to pass it by. I'm going to ask those young ladies for a
short road to the hills--and not lose any time about it either."

They all said "Aye, aye," and we ran forward together. The halloaing in
the wood was closing in about us now; you could hear voices wherever
you turned an ear. As for the lanterns, they darted from bush to bush
like glow-worms on a summer's night, so that I made certain they would
dodge us after all. My heart was low down enough, be sure of it, when I
lost view of those guiding stars altogether, and found myself face to
face with the last figure I might have asked for if you'd given me the
choice of a hundred.

For what should happen but that the weird being, whom Seth Barker had
called the "he-lion," the old fellow in petticoats, whom the little
girls made such a fuss of, he, I say, appeared of a sudden right in the
path before us, and, holding up a lantern warningly, he hailed us with
a word which told us that he was our friend--the very last I would have
named for that in all the island.

"Jasper Begg," cried he, in a voice that I'd have known for a
Frenchman's anywhere, "follow Clair-de-Lune--follow--follow!"

He turned to the bushes behind him, and, seeming to dive between them,
we found him, when we followed, flat on his stomach, the lantern out,
and he running like a dog up a winding path before him. He was leading
us to the heights, I said; and when I remembered the great bare peaks
and steeple-like rocks, upstanding black and gloomy under the starry
sky, I began to believe that this wild man was right and that in the
hills our safety lay.

But of that we had yet to learn, and for all we knew to the contrary it
might have been a trap.


CHAPTER VIII

THE BIRD'S NEST IN THE HILLS

There had been a great sound of "halloaing" and firing in the woods
when we raced through them for our lives; but it was all still and cold
on the mountain-side, and you could hear even a stone falling or the
drip of water as it oozed from the black rocks to the silent pools
below. What light there was came down through the craggy gorge; and it
was not until we had climbed up and up for a good half-hour or more
that we began to hear the sea-breeze whistling among the higher peaks
like wild music which the spirits might have made. As for the path
itself, it was oftentimes but a ledge against the wall of some sheer
height; and none, I think, but seamen could have followed it, surely.
Even I remembered where I was, and feared to look down sometimes; but
danger bridges many a perilous road, and what with the silence and the
fresh breezes and the thought that we might live through the night,
after all, I believe I could have hugged the wild old man who led us
upward so unflinchingly.

I say that he went on unflinchingly, and surely no goat could have
climbed quicker than he did. Now standing over an abyss which made you
silly to look down into; now pulling himself up by bush or branch; at
other times scrambling over loose shale as though he had neither hands
nor knees to cut, he might well have scared the coolest who had met him
without warning on such a road. As for the four men he had saved from
the devils in the thickets below, I don't believe there was one of them
who didn't trust him from the first. The sea is a sure school for
knowing men and their humours. If this old Frenchman chose to put a
petticoat about his legs, and to wear a lion's mane down his back, we
liked him all the better for that. What we had seen of the young girls'
behaviour towards him made up for that which we did not know about him.
He must have had a tender place somewhere in his heart, or three young
women wouldn't fondle him like a dog. Like a ship out of the night had
he crossed our path; and his port must be our port, since we knew no
other. That's why, I say, we followed him over the dangerous road like
children follow a master. He was leading us to some good haven--I had
no doubt of it. The thing that remained to tell was, had we the
strength and the breath to reach it?

You may imagine that it was no light thing to run such a race as we had
run, and to be asked to climb a mountain on the top of it. For my part,
I was so dead tired that every step up the hillside was like a knife in
my side; and as for Peter Bligh, I wonder he didn't go rolling down to
the rocks, so hard did he breathe and so heavy he was. But men will do
wonders to save their necks, and that is how it is that we went up and
still up, through the black ravine, to the blue peaks above. Aye, a
fearsome place we had come to now, with terrible gorges, and wild
shapes of rocks, like dead men's faces leering out of the darkness. The
wind howled with a human voice, the desolation of all the earth seemed
here. And yet the old man must push on--up, up, as though he would
touch the very sky.

"The Lord be good to me," cried Peter Bligh, at last; "I can go no
farther if it's a million a mile! Oh, Mister Begg, for the love of God,
clap a rope about the wild man's legs."

I pushed him on over a sloping peak of shale, and told him to hold his
tongue.

"Will you lie in the pool, then? Where's your courage, man? Another
hundred yards and you shall stop to breathe. There's the old lion
himself waiting for us, and a big bill of thanks he has against us, to
be sure."

I said no more, but climbed the steep to the Frenchman's side, and
found him waiting on the bank of that which seemed to be a great
cup-like hole, black and bottomless and the last place you'd have
picked for a camp on all the hillside. Dolly Venn was already there,
and Seth Barker, lying on the stones and panting like a great dog.
Old Clair-de-Lune alone was fresh and ready, and able in his broken
English to tell us what he wished.

"Messieurs," he said, "speak not long but go down. I myself am shipmate
too. Ah, messieurs, you do wise to follow me. Down there no dog bark. I
show you the ladder, and all be well. To-morrow you speak your ship--go
home. For me, never again--I die here with the children, messieurs;
none shall come for old Clair-de-Lune, none, never at no time--but you,
you I save for the shipmates' sake----"

It was odd talk, but no time to argue about it. I saw a ladder thrust
up out of the pit, and when the old man went down I followed without
hesitation. A lantern lighted in the darkness showed me a hollow nest
20 feet deep, perhaps, and carpeted over with big brown leaves and rugs
spread out; and in one corner that which was not unlike a bed.
Moreover, there was a little stove in the place and upon one side an
awning stretched against the rain; while cooking pots and pans and
other little things made it plain at a glance that this was the man's
own refuge in the mountains, and that here, at least, some part of his
life was spent. No further witness to his honesty could be asked for.
He had brought us to his own home. It was time to speak of thanks.

"What you've done for us neither me nor mine will ever forget," said I,
warmly. "Here's a seaman's hand and a seaman's thanks. Should the day
come when we can do a like turn to you, be sure I'll be glad to hear of
it; and if it came that you had the mind to go aboard with us--aye, and
the young ladies, too--why, you'll find no one more willing than Jasper
Begg."

We shook hands, and he set the lantern down upon the floor. Peter Bligh
was lying on his back now, crying to a calendar of saints to help him;
Seth Barker breathed like a winded horse; little Dolly Venn stood
against the wall of the pit with his head upon his arm, like a runner
after a race; the old Frenchman drew the ladder down and made all snug
as a ship is made for the night.

"No one come here," he said, "no one find the way. You sleep, and
to-morrow you signal ship to go down where I show. For me and mine,
not so. This is my home; I am stranger in my own country. No one
remember Clair-de-Lune. Twelve years I live here--five times I sleep
the dreadful sleep which the island make--five times I live where
others die. Why go home, messieurs, if you not have any? I not go;
but you, you hasten because of the sleep."

We all pricked up our ears at this curious saying, and Dolly Venn, he
whipped out a question before I could--indeed, he spoke the French
tongue very prettily; and for about five minutes the two of them went
at it hammer and tongs like two old women at charring.

"What does he mean by sleep-time, lad?" I asked in between their
argument. "Why shouldn't a man sleep on Ken's Island? What nonsense
will he talk next?"

I'd forgotten that the old man spoke English too, but he turned upon me
quickly to remind me of the fact.

"No nonsense, monsieur, as many a one has found--no nonsense at all,
but very dreadful thing. Three, four time by the year it come; three,
four time it go. All men sleep if they not go away--you sleep if you
not go away. Ah, the good God send you to the ship before that day."

He did his best to put it clearly, but he might as well have talked
Chinese. Dolly, who understood his lingo, made a brave attempt, but did
not get much farther.

"He says that this island is called by the Japanese the Island of
Sleep. Two or three times every year there comes up from the marshes a
poisonous fog which sends you into a trance from which you don't
recover, sometimes for months. It can't be true, sir, and yet that's
what he says."

"True or untrue, Dolly," said I, in a low voice, "we'll not give it the
chance. It's a fairy tale, of course, though it doesn't sound very
pretty when you hear it."

"Nor is that music any more to my liking," exclaimed Peter Bligh, at
this point, meaning that we should listen to a couple of gunshots
fired, not in the woods far down below us, but somewhere, as it seemed,
on the sea-beach we had failed to make.

"That would be Harry Doe warning us," cried I.

"And meaning that it was dangerous for us to go down."

"He'll have put off and saved the longboat, anyway. We'll hail him at
dawn, and see where the ship is."

They heard me in silence. The tempest roaring in the peaks above that
weird, wild place; our knowledge of the men on the island below; the
old Frenchman's strange talk--no wonder that our eyes were wide open
and sleep far from them.

Dawn, indeed, we waited for as those who are passing through the
terrible night. I think sometimes that, if we had known what was in
store for us, we should have prayed to God that we might not see the
day.


CHAPTER IX

WE LOOK OUT FOR THE SOUTHERN CROSS

The wind blew a hurricane all that night, and was still a full gale
when dawn broke. To say that no man among us slept is to put down a
very obvious thing. The roaring of the breakers on the reefs below us,
the showers of stones which the heights rained down, the dreadful
noises like wild human voices in the hills, drove sleep far from any
man's eyes. And more than that, there was the ship to think of. What
had become of the ship? Where did she lie? When should we see her
again? Aye, how often we asked each other that question when the blast
thundered and the lightning seemed to open the very heavens, and the
spindrift was blown clean over the heights to fall like a salt spray
upon our faces. Was it well with the ship or ill? Mister Jacob we knew
to be a good seaman, none better. With him the decision lay to run for
the open water or to risk everything for our sakes. If he made up his
mind that the safety of the Southern Cross demanded sea-room he would
take it, and let to-morrow look after itself. But I was anxious, none
the less; for, if the ship were gone, "God help us on Ken's Island," I
said.

Now, the old Frenchman was the first to be moving when the day came,
and no sooner did all the higher peaks show us a glimmer of the
dawn-light--very beautiful and awesome to look upon--than he set up
the ladder and began to show us the way to the mountain-top.

"You make signal; you fetch ship. Sailormen go down where landman
afraid. Little boat come in; shipmate go out. Old Clair-de-Lune he
know. Ah, messieurs, the wind is very dreadful to-day--what you call
harriken. Other day, all quite easy plan--but this day not so, great
water, all white--no go, no man."

It was queer talk, and we might have laughed at him if we'd have
forgotten that he saved our lives last night and was waiting to save
them again this morning. But you don't laugh at a friend, talk as he
may, and for that matter we were all too excited to think of any such
thing, and we made haste to scramble up out of the pit and to follow
him to the heights where the truth should be known--the best of it or
the worst. For the path or its dangerous places we cared nothing now.
The rocks, upstanding all about us, shut in the view as some great
basin cut in the mountain's heart. You could see the black sky above
and the bottomless chasms below--but of the water nothing. Imagine,
then, how we raced for the summit: now up on our feet, now on all-fours
like dogs; now calling, man to man, to hasten; now saying that haste
wouldn't help us. And no wonder--no wonder our hearts beat high and our
hands were unsteady, for beyond the basin we should find the sea, and
the view might show us life or death.

Old Clair-de-Lune was the first to be up, but I was close upon his
heels, and Dolly Venn not far behind me. Who spoke the first word I
don't rightly recollect; but I hadn't been on the heights more than ten
seconds when I knew why it was spoken, and what the true meaning of it
might be.

The ship was gone!

All the eyes in the wide world could not have found her on that angry
sea below us, or anywhere on the black and looming horizon beyond. The
night had taken her. The ship was gone. Hope as we might, speak up as
we might, tell each other this story or tell each other that--the one
sure fact remained that the Southern Cross had steamed away from Ken's
Island and left us to our fates.

"He'll be running for sea-room, and come in when the gale falls," said
Peter Bligh, when we had stood all together a little while, as
crestfallen a lot as the Pacific Ocean could show that day; "trust
Mister Jacob to be cautious--he's a Scotchman, and would think first of
the ship. A precious lot of good his wages would do him if the ship
were down in sixty fathoms and he inside her!"

"That's true," cried Dolly Venn, "though your poor old father didn't
say it, Mister Bligh. The ship's gone, but she'll come back again." And
then to me he said, very earnestly, "Oh, she must come back, captain."

"Aye, lad," said I, "let her ride out the gale, and she'll put back
right enough. Mister Jacob isn't the one to desert friends. He'll have
learned from Harry Doe how it stands with us, and he'll just say,
''Bout ship'; that's what Mr. Jacob will say. I've no fear of it at
all. I'm only wondering what sort of shore-play is to keep us amused
until we sight the ship again."

Well, they looked doleful enough; but not a man among them complained.
'Tis that way with seamen all the world over. Put them face to face
with death and some will laugh, and some will curse, and some talk
nonsense; but never a man wears his heart upon his sleeve or tells you
that he's afraid. And so it was that morning. They understood, I do
believe, as well as I did, what the consequences of the gale might be.
They were no fools, to imagine that a man could get from Ken's Island
to San Francisco in any cockleshell the beach might show him. But none
of them talked about it; none charged me with it; they just put their
hands in their pockets like brave fellows who had made up their minds
already to a very bad job; and be sure I was not the one to give a
different turn to it. The ship had gone; the Lord only knew when she
would come back again. It was not for me to be crying like a child for
that which neither I nor any man could make good.

"Well," said I, "the ship's gone, sure enough, and hard words won't
bring her back again. What Mister Jacob can do for his friends, that, I
know, will be done. We must leave it to him and look after ourselves
far as this place is concerned. You won't forget that the crew
downstairs will be ready enough to ask after our health and spirits if
we give them a look in, and my word is for lying-to here until night
comes or the ship is sighted. It must be a matter of hours, anyway. The
gale's abating; a landsman would know as much as that."

They said, "Aye, aye," to it, and Peter Bligh put in a word of his
humour.

"The ship's gone, sure enough," said he; "but that's more than you can
say for my appetite! Bear or dog, I'm not particular, captain; but a
good steak of something would come handy, and the sooner the better.
'Twere enough to bring tears to a man's eyes to think of all the good
grub that's gone aboard with Harry Doe. Aye, 'tis a wonderful thing is
hunger, and the gift of the Lord along with good roast beef and pork
sausages. May-be you find yourself a bit peckish, captain?"

I answered "Yes," though that was far from the truth, for what with
watching through the night and thinking about the ship and little Ruth
Bellenden's loneliness in this place of mystery, and far worse than
mystery, I'd forgotten all about meal-times, and never once had asked
myself where breakfast was to come from. But now the long faces of my
shipmates brought me to a remembrance of it, and when little Dolly Venn
cried, "Oh, captain, I am so hungry!" I began to realize what a parlous
plight we were in and what a roundabout road we must tread to get out
of it. Lucky for us, the old Frenchman, who had stood all this time
like a statue gazing out over the desolate sea, now bobbed up again,
good Samaritan that he was, and catching Master Dolly's complaint, he
spoke of breakfast on his own account.

"Ah! you hungry, you thirst, messieurs; sailor-man always like
that. Your ship gone? Never mind, he shall come back again, to-day,
to-morrow, one, two, three day--pray God it be not longer, shipmate,
pray God!"


[Illustration: A picturesque old figure standing there.]


I thought him a fine, picturesque old figure, standing there on the
headland with his long hair streaming in the wind like a woman's, and
his brawny arms outstretched as though he would call the ship back to
us from the lonely ocean. Truth to tell, the place was one to fill any
man with awe. Far as the eye could see, the great waste was white with
the foam of its breaking seas; the headland itself stood up a thousand
feet like some mighty fortress commanding all the deep. Far below us
were the green valleys of the island, the woods we had raced through
last night; pastures with little white houses dotted about on them; the
bungalow itself wherein Ruth Bellenden lived. No picture from the
gallery of a high tower could have been more beautiful than that
strange land with the wild reefs lying about it and the rollers
cascading over them, and the black glens above which we stood, and the
great circle of the water like some measureless basin which the whole
earth bounded. I did not wonder that old Clair-de-Lune was silent when
he looked down upon a scene so grand. It seemed a crime to speak of
food and drink in such a place; and yet it was of these that Peter
Bligh must go on talking.

"We'll do the prayin', shipmate, if you'll do the cookin'," cried he,
hopefully; "as for that--you speak like a wise man. 'Tis wonderful easy
to pray on a full stomach! There isn't a hunger or a thirst this side
of 'Frisco which I would not pray out of this same island if you'll be
pleased to bring 'em along. Weigh anchor, my man," says he, "and we'll
pipe down to dinner."

Well, the old man laughed at his manner of putting it, and, without
further ado, we all went down to the bird's nest in the hollow,
and there we lighted a fire in the shelter of the pit, and old
Clair-de-Lune going away in search of rations, he returned presently
with victuals enough to feed a missionary, and more than that, as
pretty a trio to serve them as any seaman could hope for. For what
should happen but that the three young girls we'd seen yesterday in
the woods came romping up the hill together; and one bringing a great
can for the coffee, and another a basket of luscious fruit, and a
third some new-made bread and biscuit--they ran down the ladder to us
and began to talk in their pretty language, and now and then in
English which did not need much understanding.

"I am Rosamunda," says one.

And the second, she says:

"I am Sylvia--Sylvia--Sylvia."

And the third, she chimes in with:

"I am Celestine, and I have brought you bread."

And they all stood together, shy and natural, looking now at one, now
at another of us; but most often, I thought, at little Dolly Venn, who
had a way of making them understand which an older man might have
envied.

"And wonderful pretty names, too, young ladies, though a seaman doesn't
often hear the likes of 'em," cries Peter Bligh, gallant enough, as all
Irishmen are. "They're all Pollies in our parts, and it do come easier
to the tongue and more convenient if you know many of 'em. Whereby did
you hitch up names like those?" asks he; "which, askin' your pardon,
seem to me to be took out of a picture-book."

They giggled at this; but old Clair-de-Lune, who was mighty proud of
them, and justly, answered Peter Bligh as though the question were
serious.

"Monsieur, in my own country I am artiste; I play the drama, the
comedy, the tragedy. Clair-de-Lune they call me at the theatre. To the
daughters of my master I give the artiste's name--why not? Better the
good name than the bad name! It was long year ago, shipmate; the Belle
Ile was wrecked on these reef; the maitre is drowned, but I and the
young ladies are save. We come, we go, none interfere. The Governor is
angry, we hide in the hill; the Governor laugh, we go down to the
valley. When the sleep-time comes, we go to the house under the sea:
you shall find him a dangerous time, but we hide far down. None
frighten Clair-de-Lune; they frighten of him. He become the father
according to his best."

It was touching, I must say, to hear this old man's broken story; and
prettier still to see the affectionate eyes with which these little
girls watched every movement of one to whom, I am sure, they were
beholden for all that they got out of Ken's Island. For the rest, the
tale was plain enough. The father had been wrecked and drowned on the
sword-fish reef; the servant had saved the children and himself from
the ship, and his own natural cleverness had done the rest. No one
interfered with him, he said; and this was true. I verily believe that
the devils in the valley below believed that he and the children with
him were nothing more or less than spirits.

I say his story was plain, and yet there was something in it which was
Greek to me. He had named a house under the sea, and what that meant,
or how any man could build such a house, lay beyond my understanding. I
should have asked a question about it there and then, and have sought
light on the matter if it hadn't been that the food was already cooked,
and, the others being mighty anxious, we sat down to steaming coffee
and broiled kid's flesh and good bread and sweet fruit, and I was very
willing to keep my curiosity. Once, it is true, the young girl who
called herself "Rosamunda" came and sat by my side and wished to talk
to me; but, prettily as she spoke our tongue, her measure of it was
limited, and we did not get very far, in spite of good intentions.

"Do you like the island, do you like living here?" I asked her.

She answered me with a doubting shake of her pretty head.

"In the sun-months, yes, I like it; but not in the sleep-time. You will
go away before the sleep-time, monsieur?"

"Really, young lady," said I, "it seems to me that it depends upon
Mister Jacob and the ship. But, supposing I cannot go away--what then?
How does the sleep-time concern me?"

"You must not stay," she said, quickly; "for us it is different; we--we
live in the house under the sea, but no stranger may live there--the
Governor would not permit it. On the island all things sleep. If you do
not go to the house under the sea--ah, monsieur, but you will sail
away, you will sail in your ship."

She put it very childishly, the same cock-and-bull story that the old
Frenchman had been at last night. What to make of it, I knew no more
than the dead. Here we seemed to be on as fair an island as the whole
Pacific might show you; and yet these odd folk could talk of sun-months
and sleep-time, and other stuff which might have been written in a
fairy-book. Do you wonder that I laughed at them and treated it as any
sane man, not given to fables, would have done?

"Sleep-time or sun-time, I'll be away before then, please God,
mademoiselle," said I; "do not fear for Jasper Begg, who was always
fond of his bed and won't grumble overmuch, be it sleep or waking. For
the rest, we'll take our chance, as others must do here, I fancy. Mme.
Czerny, for instance--do you know Mme. Czerny, young lady?"

She nodded her head and said that she did.

"Yes, yes, we know Mme. Czerny; she is the Governor's wife. I think she
is unhappy, Monsieur Captain. In the sun-months I see her, but in the
sleep-time she lives in the house under the sea, and no one knows. You
are her friend, perhaps; you would know that she is unhappy?"

I knew it well enough; but I wished to lead this little talker on, and
so I said I did not.

"Unhappy, young lady! Why should she be unhappy?"

I asked it naturally, as though I was very surprised; but you could not
deceive Mlle. Rosamunda. A more artful little witch never played at
fairies in a wood.

"If she is not unhappy, why have you come here, Monsieur Captain? You
come to help her--oh, I know! And you say that you do not."

"Perhaps so, young lady; perhaps I do--that I will tell you by-and-bye.
But I am curious about the Governor. What sort of a man is he, and
where does he happen to be at this particular moment? I'm sure you
could say something nice about him if you tried."



[Illustration: She looked at me with her big, questioning eyes.]


She looked at me with her big, questioning eyes, as though the question
were but half understood. Presently she said:

"You laugh at me. M. Czerny has gone away to the world. Of course he
would go. He has gone in the ship. What shall I tell you about him?
That he is kind, cruel; that we love him, hate him? Every one knows
that; every one has told you. He is the Governor and we are his people
who must obey: When he comes back he will ask you to obey him too, and
you must say 'yes.' That will be at the sleep-time: eight, nine, ten
days. But why do you ask, Monsieur Captain? Has not Mme. Czerny said it
because you are her friend? I know that you tease me. Sailors love to
tease little girls, and you are no better than the other ones."

She cast down her eyes at this, and looked for all the world the taking
little coquette that she was. Her odd speech told me something, enough
at least to put a hundred questions into my head and as many useless
answers. The Governor was away. The island alternately hated and feared
him. The sleep-time, whatever it was, might be looked for in ten days'
time. We must be away and on board the ship by then or something
dreadful would happen to us. Ruth Bellenden's unhappiness was known
even to these little girls, and they surmised, as the others had
surmised, that we were on shore to help her. For the rest, the men on
Ken's Island, I imagined, would hunt us night and day until we were
taken. Nor was I mistaken in that. We'd scarcely finished our meal when
there was the sound of a gunshot far down in the valley, and, old
Clair-de-Lune jumping up at the report, we were all on our feet in an
instant to speak of the danger.

"Halloa, popguns," cries Peter Bligh, in his Irish way; "what for now
would any man be firing popguns at this time of the morning?"

"It's to ask after your health, Peter," said I, when we'd listened
awhile, "what else should a man be firing after, unless he takes you
for a rabbit? Will you run down and thank him kindly?"

He hitched up his breeches and pulled out his briar-pipe.

"If this is track-running, take down my number. I'm through with it,
gentlemen, being not so young as I was."

A gunshot, fired out at sea, cut short his talk. Old Clair-de-Lune,
nipping up the ladder, bade us follow him, while to the girls he cried,
"_Allez-vous en!_" All our quiet talk and content were gone in an
instant. I never answered little Dolly Venn when he asked me, "Do you
think there's danger, sir?" but, running up the hill after the
Frenchman, I helped him to carry the ladder we'd dragged out of the
pit, for I knew he'd need of it.

"What is it, Clair-de-Lune? Why are they firing?" I asked him, as he
ran.

"Governor home," was his answer--"Governor home. Great danger,
_capitaine_."


CHAPTER X

WE ARE SURELY CAGED ON KEN'S ISLAND

We ran up the hill, I say, as men who raced for their lives. The little
girls, snatching up their bags and baskets, exchanged a quick word with
Clair-de-Lune and then hurried off towards the bungalow. Our own path
lay over difficult rocks and steep slopes and chasms fearful to see. Of
these our leader made nothing, and we went on, up and up, until at last
the road carried us right round the highest peak, on whose very walls
we walked like chamois on a mountain crag. It was here, on a narrow
ledge high above the sea, that the Frenchman stopped for the first
time.

"Shipmates," said he, when he had got his breath, "journey done, all
finish, you safe here, you rest. I go down to see Governor; but come
back again, come back again, messieurs, with bread and meat."

Well, I don't think one of us had the voice to answer him. The place
itself--the ledge above the sea and the little low, cramped cave behind
it--occupied all our thoughts. Here, in truth, a man might lie safely
enough--yet in what a situation. The very door of the house opened upon
an abyss a thousand feet above the rocks below. We had the sea before
our eyes, the sea beneath us, the sea for our distant horizon. Day and
night the breakers thundered on the sword-fish reef; the wind moaned in
the mighty eaves of those tremendous crags. We were like men placed
suddenly on a steeple's side and left there to live or fall, as fortune
went.

I tell you this, plain and straightforwardly, because five days passed
on that awful ledge, and, except for one day, there is nothing but a
seaman's talk of question and answer and idle hope to set down on these
pages. If every hour of the day found one of us with eyes which yearned
for our lost ship, with hearts grown heavy in waiting and
disappointment--that was his affair, and of no concern to others. Be
sure we didn't confess, one to the other, the thought in our heads or
the future we must live through. We had come to Ken's Island to help
little Ruth Bellenden, and this fearful plight was the result of
it--ship gone, the island full of devils that would have cut our
throats for nothing and thought themselves well paid--no knowledge,
not the smallest, of any way of escape--food short and likely to be
shorter. Friends we had, true friends. Night and morning Clair-de-Lune
and the little girls found their way up to us with bread and meat and
the news that was passing. It was on the fifth day that they came no
more, and I, at least, knew that they would never come again.

"Lads," I said, "one of two things has happened. Either they've been
watched and followed, or the time of which they made mention has come.
I trust the old Frenchman as I would trust my own brother. He knows how
it will fare with five men left on a lonely rock without food or drink.
If he doesn't come up here today, it's because he daren't come or
because he's ordered elsewhere."

They turned it over in their minds, and Dolly Venn spoke next.

"Last night in my watch I heard a bell ringing, sir. At first I thought
it was fancy--the sea beating on the rocks or the wind moaning in the
hills; but I got the ladder and went down the hill, and then I heard it
distinctly, and saw lights burning brightly on the reef far out to the
north. There were boats passing, I'm sure, and what was so wonderful
that I didn't like to speak about it, the whole of the sea about the
reef shone yellow as though a great lantern were burning far down below
its heart. I could make out the figures of men walking on the rocks,
and when the moon shone the figures disappeared as though they went
straight down into the solid rock. You may not believe it, captain,
but I'm quite sure of what I say, and if Clair-de-Lune does not come
to-night, I ask you to go down the hillside with me and to see for
yourself."

Now, the lad spoke in a kind of wonder-dream, and knowing how far from
his true nature such a thing was, it did not surprise me that the
others listened to him with that ready ear which seamen are quick to
lend to any fairy tale. Superstitious they were, or sailors they never
would have been; and here was the very stuff to set them all ears, like
children about a bogey. Nor will I deny that Dolly Venn's tale was
marvellous enough to make a fable. Had it been told to me under any
other circumstances, my reply would have been: "Dolly, my lad, since
when have you taken to sleep-walking?" But I said nothing of the kind,
for I had that in my pocket which told me it was true; and what I knew
I deemed it right that the others should know also.

"When a man sees something which strikes him as extraordinary," said I,
"he must first ask himself if it is Nature or otherwise. There are lots
of things in this world beyond our experience, but true for all that.
Ken's Island may be rated as one of them. The old Frenchman speaks of a
sleep-time and a sun-time. Lads, I do believe he tells the truth. If
you ask me why--well, the why is here, in these papers Ruth Bellenden
gave me five days ago."

I took the packet from my pocket, and turned the pages of them again as
I had turned them--aye, fifty times--in the days which had passed.
Thumbed and dirty as they were (for a seaman's pocket isn't lined with
silk); thumbed and dirty, I say, and crumpled out of shape, they were
the first bit of Ruth Bellenden's writing that ever I called my own,
and precious to me beyond any book.

"Yes," I went on, "this is the story of Ken's Island, and Ruth
Bellenden wrote it. Ten months almost from this day she landed here.
What has passed between Edmond Czerny and her in that time God alone
knows! She isn't one to make complaint, be sure of it. She has suffered
much, as a good woman always must suffer when she is linked to a bad
man. If these papers do not say so plainly, they say it by implication.
And, concerning that, I'll ask you a question. What is Edmond Czerny
here for? The answer's in a word. He is here for the money he gets out
of the wreckage of ships!"

It was no great surprise to them, I venture, though surprise I meant it
to be. They had guessed something the night we came ashore, and seamen
aren't as stupid as some take them for. Nevertheless, they picked up
their ears at my words, and Peter Bligh, filling his pipe, slowly,
said, after a bit:

"Yes, it wouldn't be for parlour games, captain!"

The others were too curious to put in their word, and so I went on:

"He's here for wreckage and the money it brings him. I'll leave it to
you to say what's done to those that sailed the ships. There are words
in this paper which make a man's blood run cold. If they are to be
repeated, they shall be spoken where Edmond Czerny can hear them,
and those that judge him. What we are concerned about at this moment
is Ken's Island and its story. You've heard the old Frenchman,
Clair-de-Lune, speak of sleep-time and sun-time. As God is in heaven,
he spoke the truth!"

They none of them answered me. Down below us the sea shimmered in the
morning light. We sat on a ledge a thousand feet above it, and, save
for the lapping waves on the reef, not a sound of life, not even a bird
on the wing, came nigh us. You could have heard a pin drop when I went
on.

"Sleep-time and sun-time, is it fable or truth? Ruth Bellenden says its
truth. I'll read you her words----"

Peter Bligh said, "Ah," and struck a match. Seth Barker, the carpenter,
sat for all the world like a child, with his great mouth wide open and
his eyes full of wonder. Dolly Venn was curled up at my feet like a
dog. I opened the papers and began to read to them:

"On the 14th of August, three weeks after the ship brought us to Ken's
Island, I was awakened at four o'clock in the morning by an alarm-bell
ringing somewhere in the island. The old servant, she whom they called
'Mother Meg,' came into my room in great haste to tell me to get up.
When I was dressed my husband entered and laughingly said that we must
go on board the yacht at once. I was perplexed and a little cross about
it; but when we were rowed out to the ship, I found that all the white
people were leaving the island in boats and being rowed to those rocks
which lie upon the northward side. Edmond tells me that there are
dangerous seasons in this beautiful place, when the whole island is
unfit for human habitation and all must leave it, sometimes for a week,
sometimes for a month."

I put the paper down and turned another page of it.

"That, you see," said I, "is written on the 14th of August, before she
knew the true story or what the dangerous time might mean. Passing on,
I find another entry on September 21st, and that makes it clearer:

"There is here a wonderful place they call 'The House Under the Sea.'
It is built for those who cannot escape the sleep-time otherwise. I am
to go there when my husband sails for Europe. I have asked to accompany
him and am refused. There are less delicate ways of reminding a woman
that she has lost her liberty.

"November 13th.--I have again asked Edmond to permit me to accompany
him to London. He answers that he has his reasons. There is a way of
speaking to a woman she can never forget. My husband spoke in that way
this morning.

"December 12th.--I know Edmond's secret, and he knows that I know it!
Shall I tell it to the winds and the waves? Who else will listen? Let
me ask of myself courage. I can neither think nor act to-night.

"December 25th.--Christmas Day! I am alone. A year ago--but what shall
it profit to remember a year ago? I am in a prison-house beneath the
sea, and the waves beat against my windows with their moaning cry,
'Never, never again--never again!' At night, when the tide has fallen,
I open my window and send a message to the sea. Will any hear it? I
dare not hope.

"January 1st.--My husband has returned from his cruise. He is to go to
Europe to see after my affairs. Will he tell them, I wonder, that Ruth
Bellenden is dead?

"January 8th.--The sleep-time has now lasted for nine weeks. They tell
me that vapours rise up from the land and lie above it like a cloud.
Some think they come from the great poppies which grow in the marshy
fields of the lowlands; others say from the dark pools in the gorges of
the hills. However it may be, those that remain on the island fall into
a trance while the vapour is there. A strange thing! Some never wake
from it; some lose their senses; the negroes alone seem able to live
through it. The vapours arise quite suddenly; we ring the alarm-bell to
send the people to the ships.

"January 15th.--We returned to the island to-day. How blind and selfish
some people are! I do believe that Aunt Rachel is content to live on
this dreadful place. She is infatuated with Edmond. 'I am anchored
securely in a home: she says. 'The house under the sea is a young man's
romantic fancy.' The rest is meaningless to her--a man's whim. 'I
cannot dissipate my fortune on Ken's Island.' Aunt Rachel was always a
miser.

"February 2d.--This morning Edmond came to me for that which he calls
'an understanding.' His affection distresses me. Oh, it might all be so
different if I would but say 'yes.' And what prevents me--the voices I
have heard on the reef; or is it because I know--I know?

"February 9th.--I am on the island again and the sun is shining. What I
have suffered none shall ever know. I prefer Edmond Czerny's anger to
his love. We understand each other now.

"February 21st.--My message to the sea remains unanswered. Will it be
forever?

"March 3d.--If Jasper Begg should come to me, how would they receive
him? How could he help me? I do not know--and yet my woman's heart says
'Come!'

"April 4th.--There has been a short recurrence of the sleep-time. A
ship struck upon the reef, and the crew rowed ashore to the island. I
saw them last night in the moonlight, from my windows. They fell one by
one at the border of the wood and slept. You could count their bodies
in the clear white light. I tried to shut the sight from my eyes, but
it followed me to my bed-room!

"May 3d.--I whispered my message to the sea again, but am alone--God
knows how much alone!"

I folded up the paper and looked at the others. Peter Bligh's pipe had
gone out and lay idle in his hand. Dolly Venn was still curled at my
feet. Seth Barker I do not believe had budged an inch the whole time I
was reading. The story gripped them like a vice--and who shall wonder
at that? For, mark you, it might yet be our story.

"Peter," said I, "you have heard what Mme. Czerny says, and you know
now as much as I do. I am waiting for your notion."

He picked up his pipe and began to fill it again.

"Captain," says he, "what notions can I have which wouldn't be in any
sane head? This island's a death-trap, and the sooner we're off it the
better for our healths. What's happened to the ship, the Lord only
knows! At a guess I would say that an accident's overtook her. Why
should a man leave his shipmates if it isn't by an accident? Mister
Jacob is not the one to go psalm-singing when he knows we're short of
victuals and cooped up here like rats in a trap! Not he, as I'm a
living man! Then an accident's overtook him; he doesn't come, because
he can't come, which, as my old father used to say, was the best of
reasons. Putting two and two together, I should speak for sailing away
without him, which is plain reason anyway."

"We walking on the sea, the likes of which the parson talks about?"
chimed in Seth Barker.

"If you haven't got a boat," says Dolly Venn, "I don't see how you are
to make one out of seaweed! Perhaps Mister Jacob will come back
tomorrow."

"And perhaps we sha'n't be hungry before that same time!" added Peter
Bligh; "aye, that's it, captain, where's the dinner to come from?"

I thought upon it a minute, and then I said to them:

"If Dolly Venn heard a bell ringing last night that's the danger-bell
of which Miss Ruth speaks. We cannot go down to the island, for doesn't
she say it's death to be caught there? We cannot stop up here or we
shall die of hunger. If there's a man among you that can point to a
middle course, I shall be glad to hear him. We have got to do
something, lads, that's sure!"

They stared at me wonderingly; none of them could answer it. We were
between the devil and the deep sea, and in our hearts I think we began
to say that if the ship did not come before many hours had passed, four
of her crew, at least, would cease to care whether she came or stopped.


CHAPTER XI

LIGHTS UNDER THE SEA

The day fell powerfully hot, with scarce a breath of wind and a Pacific
sun beating fiercely on the barren rocks. What shelter was to be had we
got in the low cave behind the platform; but our eyes were rarely
turned away from the sea, and many a time we asked each other what kept
Clair-de-Lune or why the ship was missing. That the old man had some
good reason I made certain from the beginning; but the ship was a
greater matter. Either she was powerless to help us or Mister Jacob had
mistaken his orders. I knew not what to think. It was enough to be
trapped there on that bit of a rock and to tell each other that,
sleep-time or sun-time, we should be dead men if no help came to us.

"Belike the Frenchman's took with the fog and is doing a bit of a doze
on his own account," said Peter Bligh, gloomily, towards three bells in
the afternoon watch--and little enough that wasn't gloomy he'd spoken
that day. "Well, sleep won't fill my canteen anyway! I could manage a
rump-steak, thank you, captain, and not particular about the onions!"

They laughed at his notion of it, and Seth Barker sympathetically
pegged his belt up one. I was more sorry for little Dolly Venn than any
of them, though his pluck was wonderful to see.

"Are you hungry, Dolly, lad?" I asked him, by-and-bye. Foolish question
that it was, he answered me with a boy's bright laugh and something
which could make light of it:

"It's good for the constitution to fast, sir," he said, bravely; "our
curate used to tell us so when I went to church. We shall all be
saints--and Mr. Peter will have a halo if this goes on long enough!"

Now, Peter Bligh didn't take to that notion at all, and he called out,
savagely:

"To blazes with your halos! Is it Christianity to rob an honest man of
his victuals? Give me a round of top-side and leave me out of the
stained-glass window! I'm not taking any, lad--my features isn't
regular, as my poor----"

"Peter, Peter," said I, bringing him to, "so it's top-side to-day?
It was duck and green peas yesterday, Peter; but it won't be that
to-night, not by a long way!"

"If we sit on this rock long enough," chimed in Seth Barker, who was
over-patient for his size, "some on us will be done like a rasher. I
wouldn't make any complaint, captain; but I take leave to say it isn't
wisdom."

I had meant to say as much myself, but Peter Bligh was in before me,
and so I let him speak.

"Fog or no fog," cries he, "I'm for the shore presently, and that's
sure and certain. It ain't no handsome vulture that I'm going to feed
anyway! I don't doubt that you'll come with me, captain. Why, you could
play 'God save the King' on me and hear every note! I'm a toonful drum,
that's what I am----"

"Be what you like, but don't ask us to dance to your music," said I,
perhaps a little nettled; "as for going down, of course we shall,
Peter. Do you suppose I'm the one to die up here like a rat in a trap?
Not so, I do assure you. Give me twilight and a clear road, and I'll
show you the way quick enough!"

I could see that they were pleased, and Dolly Venn spoke up for them.

"You won't go alone, sir?" asked he.

"Indeed, and I shall, Dolly, and come back the same way. Don't you fear
for me, my lad," said I; "I've been in a fog before in my life, and out
of it, too, though I never loved them overmuch. If there's danger down
below, one man has eyes enough to see it. It would be a mortal waste
and pity that four should pay what one can give. But I won't forget
that you are hungry, and if there's roast duck about, Peter Bligh shall
have a wing, I promise him."

Well, they all sat up at this; and Peter Bligh, very solemnly crossing
his fingers after the Italian fashion, swore, as seamen will, that we'd
all go together, good luck or bad, the devil or the deep sea. Seth
Barker was no less determined upon it; and as for Dolly Venn, I believe
he'd have cried like a child if he'd been left behind. In the end I
gave way to them, and it was agreed that we should all set out
together, for better or worse, when the right time came.

"Your way, lads, not mine," said I; and pleased, too, at their
affection. "As you wish it, so shall it be; and that being agreed upon
I'll trouble Peter Bligh for his tobacco, for mine's low. We'll dine
this night, fog or no fog. 'Twould want to be something sulphurous, I'm
thinking, to put Peter off his grub. Aye, Peter, isn't that so? What
would you say now to an Irish stew with a bit of bacon in it, and a
glass of whisky to wash it down? Would fogs turn you back?"

"No, nor Saint Patrick himself, with a shillelagh in his hand. I'm
mortal empty, captain; and no man's more willing to leave this same
bird's nest though he had all the sulphur out of Vesuvius on his
diagram! We'll go down at sunset, by your leave, and God send us safely
back again!"

The others echoed my "Amen," and for an hour or more we all sat dozing
in the heat of the angry day. Once, I think towards seven bells of the
watch, Dolly Venn pointed out the funnels of a steamer on the northern
horizon; but the loom of the smoke was soon lost, and from that time
until six o'clock of the afternoon I do not think twenty words were to
be heard on the rock. We were just waiting, waiting, like weary men who
have a big work to do and are anxious to do it; and no sooner had the
sun gone down and a fresh breeze of night begun to blow, than we jumped
to our feet and told each other that the time had come.

"Do you, Peter, take the ladder and let Seth Barker steady the end of
it," said I. "The road's tricky enough, and precious little dinner
you'll get at the bottom of a thousand-foot chasm! If there's men on
the island, we shall know that soon enough. They cannot do more than
murder us, and murder has merits when starvation's set against it. Come
on, my lads," said I, "and keep a weather-eye open."

This I said, and willingly they heard me; no gladder party ever went
down a hillside than we four, whom hunger drove on and thirst made
brave. Dangerous places, which we should have crossed with wary feet at
any other time, now found us reckless and hasty.

We bridged the chasms with the ladder, and slid down it as though it
had been a rope. The bird's nest, where five days ago we'd first found
shelter from the islanders, detained us now no longer than would
suffice for thirsty men to bathe their faces and their hands in the
brook which gushed out from the hillside, and to drink a draught which
they remembered to their dying day. Aye, refreshing it was, more than
words can tell, and such strength it gave us that, if there had been a
hundred men on the mountain path; I do believe our steps would still
have been set for the bungalow. For we were about to learn the truth.
Curiosity is a good wind, even when you're hungry.

Now, there was a place on the headland, three hundred feet above the
valley, perhaps, whereat the hill path turned and, for the first time,
the island was plainly to be seen. Here at this place we stopped all
together and began to spy out the woods through which we had raced for
our lives six days ago. The sun had but just set then, and, short as
the twilight is in these parts, there was enough of it for us to make a
good observation and to be sure of many things. What I think struck us
all at the first was the absence of any fog such as we had heard about
both from the Frenchman and Ruth Bellenden's diary. A bluish vapour, it
is true, appeared to steam up from the woods and to loom in hazy clouds
above the lower marshland. But of fog in the proper sense there was not
a trace; and although I began to find the air a little heavy to
breathe, and a curious stupidness, for which I could not altogether
account, troubled my head, nevertheless I made sure that the story of
sleep-time was, in the main, a piece of nonsense and that we should
soon prove it to be so. Nor were the others behind me in this.

"It is no fog I see which would slow me down a knot!" said Peter Bligh,
when the island came into view; "to think that a man should go without
his dinner for yon peat smoke! Surely, captain, they are simple in
these parts and easy at the bogeys. 'Twill be roast duck, after
all--and, may-be, the sage thrown in!"

This was all well said, but Dolly Venn, quicker with his eyes, remarked
a stranger fact.

"There's no one about, sir, that I can see," said he, wisely, "and no
lights in the houses either. I wonder where all the people are? It's
curious that we shouldn't see some one."

He put it as a kind of question; but before I could answer him Seth
Barker chimed in with his deep voice, and pointed towards the distant
reef:

"They've lit up the sea, that's what they've done," said he.

"By thunder, they have!" cries Peter Bligh, in his astonishment; "and
generous about it, too. Saw any one such a thing as that?"

He indicated the distant reef, which seemed, as I bear witness, ablaze
with lights. And not only the reef, mark you, but the sea about it, a
cable's length, it may be, to the north and the south, shone like a
pool of fire, yellow and golden, and sometimes with a rare and
beautiful green light when the darkness deepened. Such a spectacle I
shall never see again if I sail a thousand ships! That luscious green
of the rolling seas, the spindrift tossed in crystals of light, foam
running on the rocks, but foam like the water of jewels, a dazzling
radiance--aye, a very carpet of quivering gold. Of this had they made
the northern channel. How it was done, what cleverness worked it, it
needed greater brains than mine to say. I was for all the world like a
man struck dumb with the beauty of something which pleases and awes him
in the same breath.

"Lights under the sea, and people living there! It's enough to make a
man doubt his senses," said I. "And yet the thing's true, lads: we're
sane men and waking; it isn't a story-book. You can prove it for
yourselves."

"Aye, and men going in and out like landsmen to their houses," cried
Peter, almost breathless; "it's a fearsome sight, captain, a fearsome
sight, upon my word."

The rest of us said nothing. We were just a little frightened group
that stared open-mouthed upon a seeming miracle. If we regarded the
things we saw with a seaman's reverence, let no one make complaint of
that. The spectacle was one to awe any man; nor might we forget that
those who appeared to live below the sea lived there, as Ruth Bellenden
had told us, because the island was a death-trap. We were in the trap
and none to show us the road out.

"Peter," said I, suddenly, for I wished to turn their thoughts away
from it, "are you forgetting it's dinner-time?"

"I clean forgot, captain, by all that's holy," said he.

"And not feeling very hungry, either," exclaims Dolly Venn, who had
begun to cough in the steaming vapour, which we laughed at. I was
anxious about the lad already, and it didn't comfort me to hear Seth
Barker breathing like an ox and telling me that it should be clearer in
the valley.

I said, "Yes, it might be," and all together we began to march again. A
sharp walk carried us from the hill path through the tangle of bushes
into the woods wherefrom danger first had come to us. The night had set
in by this time and a clear moon was showing in the sky. Rare and
beautiful, I must say, that moonlight was, shimmering through the hazy
blue vapour and coming down almost as a carpet of violet between the
broad green leaves. No scene that I have witnessed upon the stage of a
theatre was more pleasing to my eyes than that silent forest with its
lawns of grass and its patches of wonderful, fantastic light, and its
strange silence, and the loneliness of which it seemed to speak. So
awesome was it that I do not wonder we went a considerable way in
silence. We were afraid, perhaps, to tell each other what we thought.
When Peter Bligh cried out at last, we started at the sound of his
voice as though a stranger hailed us.

"Yonder," cried he, in a voice grown deep and husky; "yonder, captain,
what do you make of that? Is it living men or dead, or do my eyes
deceive me?"

I stopped short at his words and the others halted with me. We were in
a deep glen by this time; and all the surrounding woodland was shut
from our sight. Great trees spread their branches like a canopy above
us; the grass was soft and downy to the feet; the bewitching violet
light gave unnatural yet wonderful colours to the flowery bushes about
us. No fairy glen could have showed a heart more wonderful; and yet, I
say, we four stood on the borders of it, with white faces and blinking
eyes, and thoughts which none would change even with his own brother.

Why did he do it, you ask? Ah, I'll tell you why.

There were three men sleeping in the glen, and the face of one was
plainly to be seen. He lay upon his back, his hands clenched, his limbs
stiff, his eyes wide open as though some fearsome apparition had come
to him and was not to be passed by. Of the others, one had dropped face
downward and lay huddled up at the tree's foot; but the third was in a
natural attitude and I do believe that he was dead. For a long time we
stood there watching them--for he whose eyes were to be seen uttered
every now and then a dismal cry in his sleep, and the second began to
talk like a man in a delirium. Spanish he spoke, and that is a tongue I
do not understand. But the words told of agony if ever words did, and I
turned away from the scene at last as a man who couldn't bear to hear
them.

"They're sleeping," said I, "and little good to wake them, if Miss Ruth
speaks true. Come on, lads--the shore's our road and short's the time
to get there."

Peter Bligh reeled dizzily in his walk and began to talk
incoherently--a thing I had never heard him do before in all his life.

"They're sleeping, aye, and what's the waking to be? Is it the madhouse
or the ground? She spoke of the madhouse, and who'll deny, with reason?
There was air for a man in the heights and no parlour plants. I walked
forty miles to Cardiff Fair and didn't dance like this. Take bread when
you've no meat, and, by thunder, I'll fill your glasses."

Well, he gabbled on so, and not one of us gave him a hearing. I had my
arm linked in Dolly Venn's, for he was weak and hysterical, and I
feared he'd go under. Seth Barker, a strong man always, crashed through
the underwood like an elephant stampeding. The woods, I said, could
show us no more awesome sight than we had happed upon in the hollow;
but there I was wrong, for we hadn't tracked a quarter of a mile when
we stumbled suddenly upon the gardens of the bungalow, and there, lying
all together, were five young girls I judged to be natives, for they
had the shape of Pacific Islanders, and, seen in that strange light,
were as handsome and taking as European women. Asleep they were, you
couldn't doubt it; but, unlike the white men, they lay so still that
they might have been dead, while nothing but their smiling faces told
of life and breathing. They, at least, did not appear to suffer, and
that was something for our consolation.

"Look yonder, Dolly lad, and 'tell me what you see," said I, though,
truth to tell, every word spoken was like a knife through my chest;
"three young women sleeping as though they were in their own beds.
Isn't that a sight to keep a man up? If they can go through with it,
why not we--great men that have the sea's good health in them? Bear up,
my boy, well find a haven presently."

I didn't believe it, that goes without saying, nor, for that matter,
did he. But wild horses wouldn't have dragged the truth from him. He
was always a rare plucky one, was little Dolly Venn, and he behaved as
such that night.

"Better leave me? sir," he said; "I'm dead weight in the boat. Do you
go to the beach, and perhaps the ship will come back. You've been
very kind to me, Mister Begg, so kind, and now it's 'good-bye,' just
'good-bye' and a long good-night."

"Aye," said I, "and a sharp appetite for breakfast in the morning. Did
you ever hear that I was a bit of a strong man, Dolly? Well, you see, I
can pick you up as though you were a feather, and now that I have got
you into my arms I'm going to carry you--why, where do you think?--into
Ruth Bellenden's house, of course."

He said nothing, but lay in my arms like a child. Peter Bligh had
fallen headlong by the gate of the bungalow, and Seth Barker was about
raving. I had trouble to make him understand my words; but he took them
at last and did as I told him.

"Open that door--with the bludgeon if you can't do it otherwise. But
open it, man, open it!"

He drew himself up erect and dealt a blow upon the door which might
have brought down a factory chimney. I ran into the house with Dolly
Venn in my arms, and as I ran I called to Barker, for God's sake, to
help Mister Bligh. There would be no one in the house, I said, and
nothing to be got by whispers. We ran a race with death, and for the
moment had turned the corner before him.

"Get Mister Bligh to the house and bar up the door after you. The fog
will fill it in five minutes, and what then? Do you hear me, Seth
Barker--do you hear me?"

I asked the question plainly enough; but it was not Seth Barker who
replied to it. You shall judge of my feelings when a bright light
flashed suddenly in my face and a pleasant voice, coming out of
nowhere, said, quite civilly:

"The door, by all means, if you have any; regard for your lives or
mine!"


CHAPTER XII

THE DANCING MADNESS

It was a great surprise to me that here should have been one of Edmond
Czerny's men left in the bungalow; and when I heard his voice I stood
for a full minute, uncertain whether to go on or to draw back. The
light of the lamp was very bright; I had Dolly Venn in my arms,
remember, and it was all Seth Barker's work to bring in Mister Bligh,
so that no one will wonder at my hesitation, or the questions I put to
myself as to how many men were in the house with the stranger, or what
business kept him there when the island was a death-trap. These
questions, however, the man answered for himself before many minutes
had passed; and, moreover, a seaman's instinct seemed to tell me that
he was a friend.

"Walk right in here," he cried, opening a door behind him and showing
me a room I had not entered when I visited Mme. Czerny. "Walk right in
and don't gather daisies on the way. You've been on a pleasure cruise
in the fog, I suppose--well, that's a sailor all the time--just all the
time."

He opened the door, I say, upon this, and when we had followed him into
the room he shut it as quickly. It was not a very large apartment, but
I noticed at once that the windows were blocked and curtained, and that
half the space was lumbered up with great machines which seemed made up
of glass bowls and jars; while a flame of gas was roaring out of an
iron tube, and a current of delicious fresh air blowing upon our faces.
Whatever we were in for, whether friendship or the other thing, a man
could breathe here, and that was something to be thankful for.

"We were caught in the woods and ran for it," said I, thinking in time
to make my explanations; "it may have been a fool's errand, but it has
brought us to a wise man's door. You know what the lad's trouble is, or
you wouldn't be in this house, sir. I'll thank you for any kindness to
him."

He turned a pleasant face towards me and bade me lay Dolly on the sofa
near the flaming burner. Peter Bligh was sitting on a chair, swearing,
I fear, as much as he was coughing. Seth Barker, who had the lungs of a
bull, looked as though he had found good grass. The fog wasn't made, I
do believe, which would harm him. As for the doctor himself, he seemed
like a perplexed man who has time for one smile and no more.

"The lad will be all right in five minutes," said he, seriously; "there
is air enough here, we being five men, for," he appeared to pause, and
then he added, "for just three days. After that--why, yes, we'll begin
to think after that."

I did not know what to say to him, nor, I am sure, did the others.
Dolly Venn had already opened his eyes and lay back, white and
bloodless, on the sofa. A hissing sound of escaping gas was in the
room. I breathed so freely that a sense of excitement, almost of
intoxication, came upon me. The doctor moved about quietly and
methodically, now looking to his burners, now at the machines. Five
minutes came and went before he put another question.

"What kept you from the shelter?" he asked, at last. I knew then that
he believed us to be Edmond Czerny's men; and I made up my mind
instantly what to do.

"Prudence kept us, doctor," said I (for doctor plainly he was);
"prudence, the same sense that turns a fly from a spider's web. It is
fair that you should know the story. We haven't come to Ken's Island
because we are Edmond Czerny's friends; nor will he call us that. Ask
Mme. Czerny the next time you meet her, and she'll tell you what
brought us here. You are acting well towards us and confidence is your
due, so I say that the day when Edmond Czerny finds us on this shore
will be a bad one for him or a bad one for us, as the case may be. Let
it begin with that, and afterwards we shall sail in open water."

I said all this just naturally, not wishing him to think that I feared
Edmond Czerny nor was willing to hoist false colours. Enemy or friend,
I meant to be honest with him. It was some surprise to me, I must say,
when he went on quietly with his work, moving from place to place, now
at the gas-burner, now at his machine, just for all the world as though
this visitation had not disturbed him. When he spoke it was to ask a
question about Miss Ruth.

"Mme. Czerny," said he, quietly; "there is a Mme. Czerny, then?"

Now, if he had struck me with his hand I could not have been more
surprised at his ignorance. Just think of it--here was a man left
behind on Ken's Island when all the riffraff there had fled to some
shelter on the sea; a man working quietly, I was sure, to discover what
he could of the gases which poisoned us; a man in Mistress Ruth's own
house who did not even know her name. Nothing more wonderful had I
heard that night. And the way he put the question, raising his eyebrows
a little, and looking up over his long, white apron!

"Not heard of Mme. Czerny!" cried I, in astonishment, "not heard of
her--why, what shore do you hail from, then? Don't you know that she's
his wife, doctor--his wife?"

He turned to his bottles and went on arranging them. He was speaking
and acting now at the same time.

"I came ashore with Prince Czerny when he landed here three days ago.
He did not speak of his wife. There are others in America who would be
interested in the news--young ladies, I think."

He paused for a little while, and then he said quietly:

"You would be friends of the Princess's, no doubt?"

"Princess be jiggered," said I; "that is to say, God forgive me, for I
love Miss Ruth better than my own sister. He's no more a prince than
you are, though that's a liberty, seeing that I don't know your name,
doctor. He's just Edmond Czerny, a Hungarian musician, who caught a
young girl's fancy in the South, and is making her suffer for it here
in the Pacific. Why, just think of it. A young American girl----"

He stopped me abruptly, swinging round on his heel and showing the
first spark of animation he had as yet been guilty of.

"An American girl?" cried he.

"As true as the Gospels, an American girl. She was the daughter of
Rupert Bellenden, who made his money on the Western American Railroad.
If you remember the Elbe going down, you won't ask what became of him.
His son, Kenrick Bellenden, is in America now. I'd give my fortune,
doctor, to let him know how it fares with his sister on this cursed
shore. That's why my own ship sails for 'Frisco this day--at least, I
hope and believe so, for otherwise she's at the bottom of the sea."

I told the story with some heat, for amazement is the enemy of a slow
tongue; but my excitement was not shared by him, and for some minutes
afterwards he stood like a man in a reverie.

"You came in your own ship!" he exclaimed next. "Why, yes, you would
not have walked. Did Mme. Czerny ask you here?"

"It was a promise to her," said I. "She left the money with her lawyers
for me to bring a ship to Ken's Island twelve months after her
marriage. That promise I kept, doctor, and here I am and here are my
shipmates, and God knows what is to be the end of it and the end of
us!"

He agreed to that with one of those expressive nods which spared him a
deal of talk. By-and-bye, without referring to the matter any more, he
turned suddenly to Peter Bligh and exclaimed:

"Halloa, my man, and what's the matter with you?"

Now, Peter Bligh sat up as stiff as a board and answered directly.

"Hunger, doctor, that's the matter with me! If you'll add thirst to it,
you've about named my complaint."

"Fog out of your lungs, eh?"

"Be sure and it is. I could dance at a fair and not be particular
about the women. Put me alongside a beef-steak and you shall see some
love-making. Aye, doctor, I'll never get my bread as a living skeleton,
the saints be good to me, my hold's too big for that!"

It was like Mister Bligh, and amused the stranger very much. Just as if
to answer Peter, the doctor crossed the room and opened a big cupboard
by the window, which I saw to be full of victuals.

"I forget to eat, myself, when the instruments hustle me," said he,
thoughtfully; "that's a bad habit, anyway. Suppose you display your
energy by setting supper. There are tinned things here and eggs, I
believe. You'll find firewood and fresh meat in the kitchen yonder.
Here's something to keep the fog out of your lungs while you get it."


[Illustation: We were all sitting at the supper-table.]


He tossed a respirator across the table, and Peter Bligh was away to
the kitchen before you could count two. It was a relief to have
something to do, and right quickly our fellows did it. We were all
(except little Dolly Venn, who wanted his strength yet) sitting at the
supper table when half an hour had passed and eating like men who had
fasted for a month. To-morrow troubled the seamen but little. It did
not trouble Peter Bligh or Seth Barker that night, I witness.

A strange scene, you will admit, and one not readily banished from the
memory. For my part, I see that room, I see that picture many a time in
the night watches on my ship or in the dreaming moments of a seaman's
day. The great machines of glass and brass rise up again about me as
they rose that night. I watch the face of the American doctor, sharp
and clear-cut and boyish, with the one black curl across the forehead.
I see Peter Bligh bent double over the table, little Dolly Venn's eyes
looking up bravely at me as he tries to tell us that all is well with
him. The same curious sensations of doubt and uncertainty come again to
plague me. What escape was there from that place? What escape from the
island? Who was to help us in our plight? Who was to befriend little
Ruth Bellenden now? Would the ship ever come back? Was she above or
below the sea? Would the sleep-time endure long, and should we live
through it? Ah! that was the thing to ask them. More especially to ask
this clever man, whose work I made sure it was to answer the question.

"We thank you, doctor," I said to him, at one time; "we owe our lives
to you this night. We sha'n't forget that, be sure of it."

"I'll never eat a full meal again but I'll remember the name of
Doctor--Doctor--which reminds me that I don't know your name, sir,"
added Peter Bligh, clumsily. The doctor smiled at his humour.

"Dr. Duncan Gray, if it's anything to remember. Ask for Duncan Gray, of
Chicago, and one man in a thousand will tell you that he makes it his
business to write about poisons, not knowing anything of them. Why,
yes, poison brought me here and poison will move me on again; at least
I begin to imagine it. Poison, you see, holds the aces."

"It's a fearsome place, truly," said I, "and wonderful that Europe
knows so little about it. I've seen Ken's Island on the charts any time
these fifteen years, but never a whisper have I heard of sleep-time or
sun-time or any other death-talk such as I've heard these last three
days. You'll be here, doctor, no doubt, to ascertain the truth of it?
If my common sense did not tell me as much, the machinery would. It's a
great thing to be a man of your kind, and I'd give much if my education
had led me that way. But I was only at a country grammar school, and
what I couldn't get in at one end the master never could at the other.
Aye, I'd give much to know what you know this night!"

He smiled a little queerly at the compliment, I thought, and turned it
off with a word.

"I begin to know how little I know, and that's a good start," said he.
"Possibly Ken's Island will make that little less. The master of Ken's
Island is generously sending me to Nature's university. I think that I
understand why he permitted me to come here. Why, yes, it was smart,
and the man who first set curiosity going about Prince Czerny in
Chicago is well out of Prince Czerny's way. I must reckon all this up,
Captain--Captain----"

"Jasper Begg," said I, "at one time master of Ruth Bellenden's yacht,
the Manhattan."

"And Peter Bligh, his mate, who is a Christian man when the victuals
are right."

Seth Barker said nothing, but I named him and spoke about Dolly Venn.
We five, I think, began to know each other better from that time, and
to fall together as comrades in a common misfortune. Parlous as our
plight was, we had food and drink and tobacco for our pipes afterwards;
and a seaman needs little more than that to make him happy. Indeed, we
should have passed the night well enough, forgetting all that had gone
before and must come after, but for a weird reminder at the hour of
midnight, which compelled us to recollect our strange situation and all
that it betided.

Comfortable we were, I say, for Dr. Gray had found fine berths for us
all: Dolly on the sofa, his skipper in an arm-chair, Peter Bligh and
Seth Barker on rugs by the window, and he himself in a hammock slung
across the kitchen door. We had said "good-night" to one another and
were settling off to sleep, when there came a weird, wild calf from the
grounds without; and so dismal was it and so like the cries of men in
agony that we all sprang to our feet and stood, with every faculty
waking, to listen to the horrible outcry. For a moment no man moved, so
full of terror were those sounds; but the doctor, coming first to his
senses, strode towards the window and pulled the heavy curtain back
from it. Then, in the dazzling light, that wonderful gold-blue light
which hovered in mist-clouds about the gardens of the bungalow, I saw a
spectacle which froze my very blood. Twenty men and women, perhaps,
some of them Europeans, some natives, some dressed in seamen's dress,
some in rags, some quite naked, were dancing a wild, fantastic,
maddening dance which no foaming Dervish could have surpassed, aye, or
imitated, in his cruellest moments. Whirling round and round, extending
their arms to the sky, sometimes casting themselves headlong on the
ground, biting the earth with savage lips, tearing their flesh with
knives, one or two falling stone-dead before our very eyes, these poor
people in their delirium cried like animals, and filled the whole woods
with their melancholic wailing. For ten minutes, it may be, the fit
endured; then one by one they sank to the earth in the most fearful
contortions of limb and face and body, and, a great silence coming upon
the house, we saw them there in that cold, clear light, outposts of the
death which Ken's Island harboured.

We saw the thing, we knew its dreadful truth, yet many minutes passed
before one among us opened his lip. The spell was still on us--a spell
of dread and fear I pray that few men may know.

"The laughing fever," exclaimed the doctor, at last, letting the
curtain fall back with trembling hand. "Yes, I have heard of that
somewhere."

And then he said, pointing to the lamp upon the table:

"Three days, my friends, three days between us and that!"


CHAPTER XIII

THE STORM

You have been informed that Dr. Gray promised us three days' security
in the bungalow, and I will now tell you how it came about that we
quitted the house next morning, and set out anew upon the strangest
errand of them all.

There's an old saying among seamen that the higher the storm the deeper
the sleep, and this, may-be, is true, if you speak of a ship and of an
English crew upon her. It takes something more than a capful of wind to
blow sleep from a sailor's eyes; and though you were to tell him that
the Judgment was for to-morrow, I do believe he would take his four
hours off all the same. But at Ken's Island things went differently;
and two, at least, of our party knew little sleep that night. Again and
again I turned on my bed to see Dr. Gray busy before his furnace and to
hear Peter Bligh snoring as though he'd crack the window-glass.
Nevertheless, sleep came to me slowly, and when I slept I dreamed of
the island and all the strange things which had happened there since
first we set foot upon it. Many sounds and shapes were present in my
dream, and the sweet figure of Ruth Bellenden with them all. I saw her
brave and patient in the gardens of the bungalow; the words which she
had spoken, "For God's sake come back to me!" troubled my ears like the
music of the sea. Sometimes, as dreams will, the picture was but a
vague shadow, and would send me hither and thither, now to the high
seas and an English port, again to the island and the bay wherein I
first landed. I remember, more than all, a dream which carried me to
the water's edge, with my hand in hers, and showed me a great storm and
inky clouds looming above the reef and the lightning playing vividly,
and a tide rising so swiftly that it threatened to engulf us and flood
the very land on which we stood. And then I awoke, and the dawn-light
was in the room and Dr. Gray himself stood watching by the window.

"Yes," he said, as though answering some remark of mine, "we shall have
a storm--and soon."

"You do not say so!" cried I; "why, that's my dream! I must have heard
the thunder in my sleep."

He drew the curtain back to show me the angry sky, which gave promise
of thunder and of a hurricane to follow; the air of the room seemed
heavy as that of a prison-house. In the gardens outside a shimmer of
yellow light reminded me of a London fog as once I breathed it by
Temple Bar. No longer could you distinguish the trees or the bushes or
even the mass of the woods beyond the gate. From time to time the loom
of the cloud would lift, and a beam of sunlight strike through it,
revealing a golden path and a bewitching vision of grass and roses all
drooping in the heat. Then the ray was lost again, and the yellow
vapour steamed up anew.

"A storm undoubtedly," said the doctor, at last, "and a bad one, too.
We should learn something from this, captain. Why, yes, it looks
easy--after the storm the wind."

"And the wind will clear Ken's Island of fog," cried I. "Ah, of course,
it will. We shall breathe just now and go about like sane men. I am
younger for hearing it, doctor."

He said, "Yes, it was good news," and then put some sticks into the
grate and began to make a fire. The others still slept heavily. Little
Dolly Venn muttered in his sleep a name I thought I had heard before,
and, truth to tell, it was something like "Rosamunda." The doctor
himself was as busy as a housemaid.

"Yes," he continued, presently, "we should be pretty well through with
the sleep-time, and after that, waking. Does anything occur to you?"

I sat up in the chair and looked at him closely. His own manner of
speech was catching.

"Why, yes," said I, "something does occur. For one thing, we may have
company."

He lit a match and watched the wood blazing up the chimney. A bit of
fire is always a cheerful thing, and it did me good to see it that
morning.

"Czerny has more than a hundred men," said he, after some reflection.
"We are four and one, which makes five; five exactly."

Now, this was the first time he had confessed to anything which might
let a man know where his sympathies lay. Friend or enemy, yesterday
taught me nothing about him. I learnt afterwards that he had once known
Kenrick Bellenden in Philadelphia. I think he was glad to have four
comrades with him on Ken's Island.

"If you mean thereby, doctor, that you'd join us," was my reply, "you
couldn't tell me better news. You know why I came here and you know why
I stay. It may mean much to Mme. Czerny to have such a friend as you.
What can be done by five men on this cursed shore shall be done, I
swear; but I am glad that you are with us--very glad."

I really meant it, and spoke from my heart: but he was not a
demonstrative man, and he rarely answered one directly as one might
have wished. On this occasion, I remember, he went about his work for a
little while before he spoke again; and it was not until the coffee was
boiling on the hob that he came across to me and, seating himself on
the arm of my chair, asked, abruptly:

"Do you know what fool's errand brought me to this place?"

"I have imagined it," said I. "You wanted to know the truth about the
sleep-time."

He laughed that queer little laugh which expressed so much when you
heard it.

"No," said he, "I do not care a dime either way! I just came along to
advertise myself. Ken's Island and its secrets are my newspaper. When I
go back to New York people will say, 'That's the specialist, Duncan
Gray, who wrote about narcotics and their uses.' They'll come and see
me because the newspapers tell them to. We advertise or die, nowadays,
captain, and the man who gets a foothold up above must take some risks.
I took them when I shipped with Edmond Czerny."

It was an honest story, and I liked the man the better for it. No word
of mine intervened before he went on with it.

"Luck put me in the way of the thing," he continued, the mood being on
him now and my silence helping him; "I met Czerny's skipper in 'Frisco,
and he was a talker. There's nothing more dangerous than a loose
tongue. The man said that his master was the second human being to set
foot on Ken's Archipelago. I knew that it was not true. A hundred years
ago Jacob Hoyt, a Dutchman, was marooned on this place and lived to
tell the story of it. The record lies in the library at Washington;
I've read it."

He said this with a low chuckle, like a man in possession of a secret
which might be of great value to him. I did not see the point of it at
the time, but I saw it later, as you shall hear.

"Yes," he rattled on, "Edmond Czerny holds a full hand, but I may yet
draw fours. He's a clever man, too, and a deep one. We'll see who's
the deeper, and we will begin soon, Captain Begg--very soon. The
sleep-time's through, I guess, and this means waking."

Now, this was spoken of the storm without, and a heavy clap of thunder,
breaking at that moment, pointed his words as nothing else could have
done. I had many questions yet to ask him, such as how it was that he
persuaded Czerny to take him aboard (though a man who knew so much
would have been a dangerous customer to leave behind), but the rolling
sounds awoke the others, and Peter Bligh, jumping up half asleep, asked
if any one knocked.

"I thought it was the devil with the hot water--and bedad it is!" cries
he. "Is the house struck, or am I dreaming it, doctor? It's a fearsome
sound, truly."

Peter meant it as a bit of his humour, I do believe; but little he knew
how near the truth his guess was. The storm, which had threatened us
since dawn, now burst with a splendour I have never seen surpassed. A
very sheet of raging fire opened up the livid sky. The crashing thunder
shook the timbers of the house until you might have thought that the
very roof was coming in. In the gardens themselves, leaping into your
view and passing out of it again as a picture shuttered by light, great
trees were split and broken, the woods fired, the gravel driven up in a
shower of pelting hail. I have seen storms in my life a-many, but never
one so loud and so angry as the storm of that ebbing sleep-time. There
were moments when a whirlwind of terrible sounds seemed to envelop us,
and the very heavens might have been rolling asunder. We said that the
bungalow could not stand, and we were right.

Now, this was a bad prophecy; but the fulfilment came more swiftly and
more surely than any of us had looked for. Indeed, Dolly Venn was
scarce upon his feet, and the sleep hardly out of Seth Barker's eyes,
when the room in which we stood was all filled by a scathing flame of
crimson light, and, a whirlwind of fire sweeping about us, it seemed to
wither and burn everything in its path and to scorch our very limbs as
it passed them by. To this there succeeded an overpowering stench of
sulphur, and ripping sounds as of wood bursting in splinters, and beams
falling, and the crackling of timber burning. Not a man among us, I
make sure, but knew full well the meaning of those signals or what they
called him to do. The bungalow was struck; life lay in the fog without,
in the death-fog we had twice escaped.

"She's burning--she's burning, by----!" cried Seth Barker, running
wildly for the door; and to his voice was added that of Duncan Gray,
who roared:

"My lead, my lead--stand back, for your lives!"

He threw a muffler round his neck and ran out from the stricken
bungalow. The whole westward wing of the house was now alight. Great
clouds of crimson flame wrestled with the looming fog above us; they
illumined all the garden about as with the light of ten thousand fiery
lamps. Suffocating smoke, burning breezes, floating sparks, leaping
tongues of flame drove us on. Cries you heard, one naming the heights
for a haven, another clamouring for the beach, one answering with an
oath, another, it may be, with a prayer; but no man keeping his wits or
shaping a true course. What would have happened but for the holding fog
and the sulphurous air we breathed, I make no pretence to say; but
Nature stopped us at last, and, panting and exhausted, we came to a
halt in the woods, and asked each other in the name of reason what we
should do next.

"The sea!" cries Peter Bligh, forgetting his courage (a rare thing for
him to do); "show me the sea or I'm a dead man!"

To whom Seth Barker answers:

"If there's breath, it's on the hills; we'll surely die here."

And little Dolly, he said:

"I cannot run another step, sir; I'm beat--dead beat!"

For my part I had no word for them; it remained for Doctor Gray to lead
again.

"I will show you the road," cried he, "if you will take it."

"And why not?" I asked him. "Why not, doctor?"

"Because," he answered, very slowly, "it's the road to Edmond Czerny's
house."


CHAPTER XIV

A WHITE POOL--AND AFTERWARDS

We must have been a third of a mile from the shore when the doctor
spoke, and three hundred yards, perhaps, from the pool in the glens. It
is true that the storm seemed to clear the air; but not as we had
expected, nor as fair argument led us to hope. Wind there was, hot and
burning on the face; but it brought no cool breath in its path, and did
but roll up the fog in banks of grey and dirty cloud. While at one
minute you would see the wood, green and grassy, as in the evening
light, at another you could scarce distinguish your neighbour or mark
his steps. To me, it appeared that the island dealt out life and death
on either hand; first making a man leap with joy because he could
breathe again; then sending him gasping to the earth with all his
senses reeling and his brain on fire. Any shelter, I said, would be
paradise to men in the bond of that death-grip. Sleep itself, the
island's sleep, could have been no worse than the agony we suffered.

"Doctor," I cried, as I ran panting up to him, "Edmond Czerny's house
or another--show us the way, here and now! We cannot fare worse; you
know that. Lead on and we follow, wherever it is."

The others said, "Aye, aye, lead on and we follow." Desperation was
their lot now; the madman's haste, the driven man's hope. There, in
that fearful hollow, lives were ebbing away like the sea on a shallow
beach. They fought for air, for breath, for light, for life. I can see
Peter Bligh to this day as he staggers to his feet and cries, wildly:

"The mouth of blazes would be a Sunday parlour to this! Lead on,
doctor, I am dying here!"

So he spoke; and, the others lurching up again, we began to race
through the wood to a place where the fog lay lighter and the mists had
left. Wonderful sights met our eyes--aye, more wonderful than any words
of mine could picture for you. In the air above flocks of birds wheeled
dizzily as though the very sky was on fire. Round and round, round and
round, they darkened the heaven like some great wheel revolving; while,
ever and anon, a beautiful creature would close its wings and swoop to
death upon the dewy grass. Other animals, terrified cattle, wild dogs,
creatures from the heights and creatures from the valleys, all huddled
together in their fear, raised doleful cries which no ear could shut
out. The trees themselves were burnt and blackened by the storm, the
glens as dark as night, the heaven above one canopy of fiery cloud and
stagnant vapour.

Now, I knew no more than the dead what Duncan Gray meant when he said
that he would lead us to Czerny's house. A boat I felt sure he did not
possess, or he would have spoken of it; nor did he mean that we should
swim, for no man could have lived in the surf about the reefs. His
steps, moreover, were not carrying him towards the beach, but to that
vile pool in the ravine wherein a man had died on the night we came to
Ken's Island. This pool I saw again as we ran on towards the headland;
and so still and quiet it seemed, such a pretty lake among the hills,
that no man would have guessed the terror below its waters or named the
secret of it. Nevertheless, it recalled to me our first night's work,
and how little we could hope from any man in Czerny's house; and this I
had in my mind when the doctor halted at last before the mouth of an
open pit at the very foot of the giant headland. He was blown with
running, and the sweat dropped from his forehead like water. The place
itself was the most awesome I have ever entered. On either hand, so
close to us that the arms outstretched could have touched them, were
two mighty walls, which towered up as though to the very sky beyond the
vapour. A black pit lay before us; the fog and the burning wind in the
woods we had left. Silence was here--the awful silence of night and
solitude. No eye could fathom the depths or search the heights. What
lay beyond, I might not say. The doctor had led us to this wilderness,
and he must speak.

"See here," he cried, mopping the sweat from his face and rolling up
his shirt-sleeves, like a man who has good work to do, "the road's down
yonder, and we need a light to strike it. Give me your hand, one of
you, while I fetch up the lantern. A Dutchman didn't write of Ken's
Island for nothing. I guess he knew we were coming his way."

He stretched out a hand to me with the words, and I held it surely
while he bent over the pit and groped for the lantern he spoke of.

"Three days ago," said he, "I ran a picnic here all to myself. It is as
well to find new lodgings if the old don't suit. I left my lantern
behind me, and this it is, I reckon."

He pulled up from the depths a gauze lantern such as miners use, and,
lighting it, he showed us the heart of the pit. It was a deep hole, 30
feet down, perhaps, and strewn with rubbish and fragments of the iron
rocks. But what was worth more to us, aye, than a barrel of gold, was
the sweet, fresh air which came to us through a tunnel's mouth as by a
siphon from the open sea herself; and, blowing freshly on our faces,
sent us quickly down towards it with glad cries and the spirits of men
who have broken a prison gate.

"The sea, the sea, by all that's holy!" cries Peter Bligh. "Oh, doctor,
I breathe, I breathe, as I am a Christian man, I breathe!"

We tumbled down into the pit headlong and sat there for many minutes
wondering if, indeed, the death were passed or if we must face it again
in the minutes to come. There before us, once we had passed the
tunnel's mouth, stood a vast, domed hall which, I declare, men might
have cut and not Nature in the depths of that strange cavern.

Open to the day through great apertures high up in the face of the
cliff, a soft glow like the light which comes through the windows of a
church streamed upon the rocky floor and showed us the wonders of that
awesome place. Room upon room, we saw, cave upon cave; some round like
the mosques a Turk can build, others lofty and grand as any cathedral;
some pretty as women's dens, all decked with jewels and ornament of
jasper and walls of the blackest jet. These things I saw; these rooms I
passed through. A magician might have conjured them up; and yet he was
no magician, but only Duncan Gray, the man I knew for the first time
yesterday, but already called a comrade.

"Doctor," I said, "it is a house of miracles, truly! But where to
now--aye, that's the question; where to?"

He sat upon a stone, and we grouped ourselves about him. Peter Bligh
took out a pipe from his pocket and was not forbidden to light it.
There was a distant sound in the cave like that of water rushing, and
once another sound to which I could give no meaning. The doctor himself
was still thinking deeply, as though hazarding a guess as to our
position.

"Boys," he said, "I'll tell you the whole story. This place was
discovered by Hoyt, a Dutchman. If Czerny had read his book, he would
know of it; but he hasn't. I took the trouble to walk in because I
thought it might be useful when he turned nasty. It is going to be
that, as you can see. Follow through to the end of it, and you are in
Czerny's house. Will you go there or hold back? It's for you to say."

I filled my pipe, as Peter had done, and, breathing free for the first
time for some hours, I tried to speak up for the others.

"A sailor's head tells me that there is a road from here to the reef;
is that true?" asked I at last; "is it true, doctor?"

He put on his glasses and looked at me with those queer, clever eyes of
his. I believe to this day that our dilemma almost pleased him.

"A sailor's head guesses right first time," was his answer. "There is a
road under the sea from here to Czerny's doorstep. I'm waiting to know
if it's on or back. You know the risks and are not children. Say that
you turn it up and we'll all go back together, or stay here as wisdom
dictates. But it's for you to speak----"

We answered him all together, though Peter Bligh was the first he
heard.

"The lodgings here being free and no charge for extras," said Peter,
sagely.

And Dolly Venn, he said:

"We are five, at any rate. I don't suppose they would murder us. After
all, Edmond Czerny is a gentleman."

"Who shoots the poor sailormen that's wrecked on his shore;" put in
Seth Barker, doggedly.

"He'd be of the upper classes, no doubt;" added Peter Bligh; "he'll see
that we don't sleep in damp sheets! Aye, 'tis the devil of a man,
surely!"

Doctor Gray heard them patiently--more patiently than I did--and then
went on again:

"If you stop here, you starve; if you go on--well, you take your luck.
Should the fog lift up yonder, you'll be having Czerny back again. It's
a rule-of-three sum, gentlemen. For my part, I say 'go on and take your
luck,' but I won't speak for you unless you are willing."

"None more willing," cried I, coming to a resolution on the spot.
"Forward let it be, and luck go with us. We'd be fools to die like rats
in a trap when there's light and food not a mile away. And cowards,
too, boys--cowards!" I added.

The others said: "Aye, aye, we're no cowards!" And all being of one
mind we set out together through that home of wonders. Edmond Czerny's
house we sought, and thither this iron road would carry us. A path more
beautiful no man has trodden. From this time the great, church-like
grottos gave place to lower roofs and often black-dark openings. By
here and there we dived into tunnels wondrously cut by some forgotten
river of fire in the ages long ago, and, emerging again, we entered a
wilderness of ravines wherefrom even the sky was to be seen and the
cliffs towering majestically above us. Then, at last, we left the
daylight altogether, and going downward as to the heart of the earth I
knew that the land lay behind us and that the sea flowed above our
heads.

Reader of a plain seaman's story, can you come with me on such a
journey as I and four stout hearts made on that unforgotten day? Can
you picture, as I picture now, that dark and lonesome cavern, with the
sea beating upon its roof and the air coming salt and humid to the
tongue, and the echo of distant breakers in your ears, and always the
night and the doubt of it? Can you follow me from grotto to grotto and
labyrinth to labyrinth, stumbling often by the way, catching at the
lantern's dancing rays, calling one to the other, "All's well--lead
on"? Aye, I doubt that you can. These things must be seen with a man's
own eyes, heard with his own ears, to be understood and made real to
him. To me that scene lives as though yesterday had brought it. I see
the doctor with his impatient step. I see Peter Bligh stumbling after
him. I hear little Dolly Venn's manly voice; I help Seth Barker over
the rocks. And these four stand side by side with me on the white
pool's edge. The danger comes again. The fear, the loathing, are
unforgotten.

I speak of fear and loathing and of dread white pool, and you will ask
me why and how we came thereto. And so I say that the water lay,
may-be, a third of a mile from the land, in a clear, transparent basin
of some quartz or mica, or other shining mineral, so that it gave out
crystal lights even to the darkness, and the arched grotto which held
it was all aglow, as though with hidden fires. A silent pool it was, we
said, and our path seemed to end upon its brink; but even as we stood
asking for a road, all the still water began to heave and foam, and, a
great creature rising up from the depths, the lantern showed us a
monster devil-fish, and we fell back one upon the other with affrighted
cries. Nor let any man charge us with that. A situation more perilous I
have never been in, and never shall. The fish's terrible suckers
searching all the rocks, the frightful eye of the brute, the rushing
water, the half-light worse than darkness, might well have driven back
a stronger man than I. And upon the top of that was the thought that by
such lay the road to safety. We must pass the grotto, or perish of
starvation.

Now, the first fright of this encounter was done with in a minute or
two, and when it was plain to us that the devil-fish was stuck in the
pool which some tide of the sea fed, perhaps, and that his suckers
could not reach the higher part of the rock, we began to speak of it
rationally, and to plan a way of going over. I was for emptying our
revolvers into the fish straight away; but the doctor would have none
of it, fearing the report, and, remembering what he had read in the
Dutchman's book, he came out with another notion.

"Hoyt went over the rocks," said he, calmly, while we still drew back
from the pool affrighted, our hearts in our boots I make sure, and not
one of us that did not begin to think of the fog again when he saw the
devil-fish struggling to be free. "It's not a sweet road, but better
than none at all. Keep behind me, boys, and mind you don't slip or
you'll find something worse than sharks. Now for it, and luck go with
us."

With this he began to clamber round the edge of the pool, but so high
up that it did not seem possible for the fish to touch him. There was
good foothold on the jagged hunks of rock, and a man might have gone
across safely enough but for the thought of that which was below him.
For my part, I say that my eyes followed him as you may follow a walker
on a tight-wire. One false step would send him flying down to a death I
would not name, and that false step he appeared to make. My God! I see
it all so clearly now. The slip, the frantic clutch at the rocks, the
great tentacle which shot out and gripped his leg, and then the flash
of my own revolver fired five times at the terrible eyes below me.

There were loud cries in the cave, the wild shouts of terrified men,
the smoke of pistols, the foaming and splashing of water, all the signs
of panic which may follow a fellow-creature about to die. That the
devil-fish had caught the doctor with one of his tentacles you could
not doubt; that he would drag him down into that horrid stomach, I
myself surely believed. Never was a fight for life a more awful thing
to see. On the one hand a brave man gripping the rocks with hands and
foot until the crags cut his very flesh; on the other that ghoul-like
horror seeking to wind other claws about its prey and to drag it
towards its gaping mouth. What miracle could save him, God alone knew;
and yet he was saved. A swift act of his own, brave and wonderful,
struck the sucker from the limb and set him free. Aye, what a mind to
think of it! What other man, I ask, would have let go his hold of the
rocks when hold meant so much to him and that fish swam below?
Nevertheless, the doctor did so. I see it now--the quick turn--the
knife drawn from its sheath--the severed tentacle cut clean as a cork,
the devil-fish itself drawing back to the depths of the crimson pool.
And then once more I am asking the doctor if he is hurt; and he is
answering me, cheerily, "Not much, captain, not much," and we four are
following after him as white as women, I do believe, our nerves
unstrung, our hearts quaking as we crossed the dreadful pit.

Well, we went over well enough, shirk it as we might. The bullets which
sent the devil-fish to the bottom sent him there to die, for all I
knew. The pool itself was red with blood by this time, and the waters
settling down again. I could see nothing of the fish as I crossed over;
and Seth Barker, who came last and, like a true seaman, had forgotten
his fear already, swung the lantern down to the water's edge, but
discovered nothing. The doctor himself, excited as you might expect,
and limping with his hurt, simply said, "Well over, lads, well over";
and then, taking the lantern from Seth Barker's hands, he would not
wait to answer our curiosity, but pushed on through the tunnel.

"It's not every man who has a back-door with a watch-dog like that,"
said he, as he went; "Edmond Czerny, may-be, does not know his luck;
I'll tell him of it when we're through. It won't be a long while now,
boys, and I'm glad of it. My foot informs me it's there, and I shall
have to leave a card on it just now."

"Then the sooner you let us look at it the better, doctor," said I.
"Aye, but you were nearly gone. My heart was in my throat all the time
you stood there."

"Which is no place for a man's heart to be," said he, brightly;
"especially at the door of Edmond Czerny's house."

He stood a moment and bade me listen. We were in an open place of the
tunnel then, and a ray of light striking down from some lamp above us
revealed an iron ladder and a wooden trap above it. The sea I could
hear beating loudly upon the reef; but with the sea's voice came
others, and they were human.

"Yes," said the doctor, quietly, "we are in the house all right, and
God knows when we shall get out of it again!"

And then, with a cry of pain, he fell fainting at my feet.


CHAPTER XV

AN INTERLUDE, DURING WHICH WE READ IN RUTH BELLENDEN'S DIARY AGAIN *

   * The editor has thought it well to give at this point the
     above extract from Ruth Bellenden's diary, as permitting some
     insight into the events which transpired on Ken's Island after
     Jasper Begg's discovery and Edmond Czerny's return.

May 5TH.--My message to the sea has been heard. Jasper Begg is on Ken's
Island. All that this means to me, all that it may mean, I dare not
think. A great burden seems lifted from my shoulders. I have found a
friend and he is near me.

May 6th.--I have seen Jasper to-night, and he has gone away again. He
is not changed, I think. It is the same honest, English face, the same
cheery English voice. I have always said that Jasper is one of the
handsomest Englishmen I have ever seen. And just as on my own yacht, so
here on Ken's Island, the true English gentleman speaks to me. For
Jasper is that above all things, one of Nature's gentlemen, whom the
rough world will never disguise nor the sea life change. He would be
thirty-five years of age now, I remember, but he has not lost his
boyish face, and there is the same shy reticence which he never could
conquer. He has come here according to his promise. A ship lies in the
offing, and he would have me go to it. How little he knows of my true
condition in this dreadful place. How may a woman go when a hundred
watch her every hour?

May 7th.--Clair-de-Lune, the Frenchman, came to the bungalow very early
this morning to tell me of certain things which happened on the island
last night. It seems that Jasper is still here, and that the storm has
driven away his ship. I do not know whether to be sorry or glad. He
cannot help me--he cannot!--and yet a friend is here. I take new
courage at that. If a woman can aid a brave man to win her liberty, I
am that woman and Jasper is the man. Yesterday I was alone; but to-day
I am alone no longer, and a friend is at my side, and he has heard me.
His ship will come back, I say. It is an ecstasy to dream like this!

May 10th.--I have spent four anxious days--more anxious, I think, than
any in my life. The ship has not returned, and Jasper Begg is still a
fugitive in the hills. There are three of his companions with him, and
we send them food every day. What will be the end of it all? I am more
closely watched than ever since this was known. I fear the worst for my
friends, and yet I am powerless to help them.

May 10th (later).--My husband, who has now returned from San Francisco,
knows that Jasper is here and speaks of it. I fear these moods of
confidence and kindness. "Your friend has come," Edmond says; "but why
am I not to know of it? Why is he frightened of me? Why does he skulk
like a thief? Let him show himself at this house and state his
business; I shall not eat him!" Edmond, I believe, has moments when he
tries to persuade himself that he is a good man. They are dangerous
moments, if all a man's better instincts are dead and forgotten.

May 11th.--Clair-de-Lune, Edmond tells me, has been sent to the lower
reef. I do not ask him why. It was he who helped my friends in the
hills. Is it all real or did I dream it? Jasper Begg, the one man who
befriended me, left to die as so many have been left on this unpitying
shore! It cannot be--it cannot be! All that I had hoped and planned
must be forgotten now. And yet there were those who remembered Ruth
Bellenden and came here for love of he

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/29462