Pirates' Hope

VII

SHORE LEAVE

Coincident with the taking over of the yacht by the mutineers, the engines stopped; but after Lequat had locked us in and left us, the trampling tune of the machinery began again, though it presently became apparent that we were proceeding at something less than half speed. At first I thought the creeping progress might be Haskell's way of showing his reluctance to obey his new masters; but after the engines had made a few of the slow revolutions we heard the sing-song cry of a seaman in the main chains taking soundings.

"Feeling for an anchorage," said Van Dyck, speaking for the first time since he had asked Lequat that mush-mild question as to whether or not the outbreak was a mutiny. "Wouldn't you put it up that way?"

His query seemed too trivial to merit an answer.

"I haven't any time to waste on the guesses," I said, and most likely the tone was as crabbed as the words. Then: "Are you fully awake at last? Do you realize that you've been held up and robbed of a five-hundred-thousand-dollar yacht?"

His shrug was perfectly spineless.

"'What can't be cured must be endured'," he quoted, handing me the time-worn maxim as if it sufficiently accounted for everything. "Of course, as the person chiefly responsible, I'm all kinds of sorry for you and the others. It's a horribly rude interruption to our pleasure jaunt, and I take it there is no telling what these fellows may do to us." Then, with still more of the air of the completest detachment: "The nervy beggars! Who would ever have suspected it of them? And to carry it off so neatly, too."

"It was all plotted and planned beforehand, of course. Didn't this man Lequat say that it was cut-and-dried? Goff is the head and front of it, isn't he?"

"Heaven knows. You wouldn't imagine it of Goff – or would you?"

"I can easily imagine him breaking rock in a Federal prison – which is what he will do – if he succeeds in keeping his leathery old neck out of the hangman's noose!"

"Naturally," Van Dyck agreed easily. "But that is an after consideration. The present realities are what concern us just now. I'm wondering what their next move will be."

"You don't seem to be letting your wonderment disturb you very much." I was still warm, both over the bootless little tussle with Lequat, and because Van Dyck had so ignominiously failed to rise to the occasion – and was still continuing to fail.

"What's the use?" he queried. "We are like the harmless and inoffensive citizen who wakes up in the middle of the night to find a burglar's spot-light shining in his eyes and the burglar's gun shoved in his face. Discretion is always the better part of valor. Haven't you learned that invaluable lesson, knocking about in this harsh old world? But getting back to things present and pressing – there goes our anchor."

The brief roar of the cable running through its hawse-hole told us that the Andromeda was in comparatively shallow soundings. We could feel the snub of the anchor as the yacht's way was checked, and a little later the sounds overhead advertised the fact that the mutineers were lowering one of the boats.

Beyond the slap of the lowered boat as it took the water, the noises were less easily definable. There were bumpings and bangings which seemed to come from forward of the bridge, muffled sounds like those of a busy baggage-room at train-time, the shrilling of blocks and tackle, and a skirling chatter suggestive of a steam winch in action. Following these we could hear the low humming of the motor in the dropped electric launch; a murmur which gradually died away as we listened.

Somewhat farther along, after the buzzing motor murmur had come and gone often enough to tell us that the launch was plying industriously between the yacht and some other destination, Van Dyck said: "You'd say they were taking an entire cargo ashore, wouldn't you? – provided the Andromeda carried any cargo." Then: "I've cornered a guess, Dick – which you may have for what it is worth. I believe these fellows are meaning to take a leaf out of the book of the old buccaneers of the Spanish Main and maroon us."

"What makes you think that?" I demanded.

"Putting two and two together. That is the hoist winch making all the clatter up forward. They are unloading the forehold – of our dunnage and some part of the provisions, we'll say – and lightering the stuff ashore in the launch. Assuming that they expect to find a quarter of a million dollars hidden away somewhere in the Andromeda, they'll figure that they need to get rid of us, and run fast and far to make their get-away, won't they?"

"That sounds sufficiently barbarous to fit in with the rest of it," I fumed.

"Right-o. That being the case, they have only to stow us away in some safe place – where we won't be found and rescued too soon – and then up stick and away; put steam to the yacht and vanish. Once they get going, they'll be safe enough. The Andromeda will outrun anything of her inches, short of the torpedo chasers and the hydroplanes, when she is pushed to it. What do you say?"

"I'm not saying anything," I returned crustily. "I'm too busy wondering what in Heaven's name has thinned your blood to the milk-and-water consistency, Bonteck. I've heard a few queer things about you during the past three years, but I wasn't told that you had gone completely dippy. Why, man alive! if your guess is right, you stand to lose a cool half-million in the value of the yacht – to say nothing of what may happen to the bunch of us if we are marooned on some lonesome island in the southern Caribbean!"

"Yes, there is the marooning to be considered, of course," he said coolly, filling his pipe and lighting it. "But we needn't cross that bridge until we come to it. As to the possible loss of the yacht, that is the least of my troubles, just now. She'll turn up again somewhere, I guess; if they don't smash or sink her."

It seemed utterly hopeless to try to arouse him to any adequate sense of the enormity of the thing that had befallen us, and I jumped up and began to pace the narrow limits of the little cabin. Van Dyck's attitude seemed explainable only upon the hypothesis that he had lost his mind, and I wondered if his brooding over the wretched dilemma into which his love for Madeleine Barclay had plunged him hadn't thrown him off his balance. It was certainly beginning to look that way.

While I was tramping back and forth in a fever of gloomy rage and helplessness, with Van Dyck sitting at the table and calmly smoking his pipe, the ship's noises took new forms. There was much tramping up and down the saloon stairs, a rattling of keys in locks, opening and shutting of doors, and the like. Again and again the motor launch repeated its short trips, and between two of them there were voices raised in the adjoining saloon; Ingerson's in savage and profane protest, and Mrs. Van Tromp's in tearful inquiry as to what had been done with Mr. Van Dyck. In due course of time our own turn came, and it was Lequat who unlocked and opened our door.

"Ze momment ees come," he announced, with a bow and a smirk. "Ze anchor ees – vat ees it you say? – hove short, and ze launch ees wait' for you zhentleman. You vill come peaceab'? – or ees it that ve have to asseest you?"

It was now or never, if we meant to try conclusions with this little scoundrel, and I looked to Van Dyck for the answer. He had put on his cap, slung a cased field-glass over his shoulder, and was closing and locking the drawers of the writing-table. As I have said, it was his final chance for making some show of resistance, and he was weakly letting it go.

When we reached the deck, guarded closely by four or five of the mutineers, it became evident that we were the last of the ship's company to be summoned. The night was fine, with a sickle of a moon in its first quarter, and the sea undisturbed by so much as a ripple. The Andromeda was at anchor a short distance from one of the many cays with which the southern Caribbean is dotted; a long, low-lying island plumed with palms and densely jungled with tropical undergrowth. The yacht lay within a stone's throw of an outer reef, and the reef enclosed a broad lagoon reflecting the shadows of the palms like a silver mirror under the shimmering moonlight; and the shadowy background of foliage was made blacker by contrast with a ribbon of white sand beach.

Though there was a passage through the reef just opposite the Andromeda's temporary berth, the mutineers had apparently been too cautious to try to enter it with the yacht. They had merely felt their way with the sounding line to within bottoming distance on the outside of the reef, and dropped the anchor. There was little question now as to their intention. They were stopping only long enough to get rid of us.

In ominous silence Van Dyck and I were herded toward the accommodation ladder, at the foot of which lay the electric launch. Up to the final moment I was hoping to see Bonteck reassert himself, at least to the extent of protesting against the high-handed crime these scoundrels were committing. When it became apparent that he was not going to say anything, I took a chance for myself.

"I suppose you know what you are doing, Lequat," I barked, after we had taken our places in the launch. "This is piracy on the high seas, and you don't have to be much of a sailorman to know what that means."

"You vill not be trouble you'self 'bout me, Mistaire Preb'," he returned politely. Then, as the man at the ladder foot pushed us off: "Bon voyage, M'sieu' Van Dyck. Bon soir, and – how you say it? – G-o-o-d-by!"

The launch, manned by a crew numerous enough to have thrown us overboard if we had raised a hand in rebellion, sped silently across to the narrow inlet in the reef and entered the peaceful lagoon. Almost at once a sickening, terrifying conviction began to force itself upon me. From the first out-of-door glance at the surroundings there had been something familiar in the appearance of the reef, the pond-like lagoon, and the low-lying island. As we were passing through the inlet the moonbeams struck out the black and shattered remains of a wreck hanging upon the outer reef a short distance on our right, and then I knew!

"The Lord have mercy!" I gasped; and Van Dyck looked up quickly.

"What is it?" he asked.

"The wreck of the Mary Jane!" I whispered, pointing to the black skeleton on the rocks. "This is the island I told you about – the horrible place where we were shipwrecked a year ago last winter!"

"You don't say so!" he returned; and then, to make the reply still more trite: "What a remarkable coincidence!"

His indifference was maddening, and my temper – the temper that had once cost me any shadow of a chance that I might have had in persuading Miss Mehitable Gilmore that, money or no money, Conetta's happiness, as well as my own, was of more importance than any mere fortune lost or gained – this flyaway temper got the better of me and I said things for which I was sorry the moment they were said.

"Pile it on as thick as you please, old man," Van Dyck rejoined, meekly, after I had abused him like an angry fishwife. "It is coming to you – and to the others, as well. What they will do to me presently will doubtless be good and plenty, and you'll have your revenge."

Two minutes later the launch was nosing the white sand of the beach, and the man at the tiller made motions for us to get out. Van Dyck stepped ashore and I followed him. A few yards away, at the edge of the jungle thicketing, our cabin castaways were huddled around a great pile of luggage and ship's stores. Their greeting of Van Dyck when he joined them was all that his most vindictive accuser could have desired; cries and reproaches, eager questionings and sobbing protests from the women; and from the men a fierce storm of demandings led by the major and Holly Barclay. Since Jerry Dupuyster made no move to do it, I drew Conetta quickly out of the Babel and walked her beyond earshot. Major Terwilliger was so far forgetting himself as to swear savagely at his late host, and Ingerson's language was brutal.

"Tell me, reasonably and sanely, if you can, Dick, just what has been done to us," urged my companion, with a little shiver of fright or disgust – or possibly of both; this when we paused to watch the retreating launch cleave its way across the lagoon to the waiting yacht.

"I don't know very much more about it than you do," I told her. "There is a mutiny, with a plot to steal the Andromeda, it seems, and it is quite evident the thing was carefully planned. I was below when it climaxed and so saw nothing of what was happening on deck. They didn't hurt anybody, did they?"

"I think not. It came so suddenly that they didn't need to use force. We were under the awning, just as you left us. Edie Van Tromp saw this island and called out 'Land-o,' and the next thing we knew a lot of men with guns had surrounded us and were ordering us to go to our staterooms and to be quick about it. That little dark-faced under-steward who talks so brokenly seemed to be the leader. He was polite enough about it, but when Jack Grey and Billy began to protest, he made four of his men grab them."

"Then you were hustled below?"

"Yes. When we got down to the saloon, more of the armed men were shoving the bridge players into the staterooms, and Hobart Ingerson was swearing awfully. So was the major when they dragged him out of the smoking-room."

"They are swearing yet," I said. "What did your aunt say?"

"She didn't say a single word; she just walked into our stateroom ahead of me, as stiff as a poker, and I couldn't get a word out of her. I don't know whether she was scared, or just too angry for words. She sat on the edge of her bed like a frozen statue until they came to take us ashore. What are the wretches going to do? – leave us here on this deserted little strip of an island?"

The answer to her question was at that very moment shaping itself before our eyes. While its propeller was still churning idly, the electric launch was hooked and hoisted to its davits, the anchor was broken out, and the Andromeda began to forge slowly ahead, again with a man in the bow heaving the lead and calling out the soundings.

"We are marooned," I said soberly enough, I guess. "It may be for a day, a week, a month or a year. I happen to know this island only too well. I was shipwrecked upon it once. Those are the bones of our old schooner, the Mary Jane, out yonder on the reef."

She gave a little gasp of shocked surprise.