Pirates' Hope

"Couldn't start the long-boat without that pop-engine makin' a racket that'd wake the dead," he explained; "and, besides, she's up on the sand till it'll take half a dozen men to shove her off. And the way they're out o' their heads, I cal'lated they wouldn't miss the launch – not first off, anyways."

"I suppose they've all gone crazy digging for the Spanish gold," Bonteck said, meaning, as I made sure, to give the captain a lead upon which he was at liberty to enlarge in the hearing of the rest of us.

"'Crazy' ain't a big enough word f'r it. You'd think the whole kit and b'ilin' of 'em was just out of a 'sylum. That's how it comes they hain't missed me yet. But we'll have to talk sort o' middlin' fast, I guess. When they do miss me, I shouldn't wonder a mite if there'd be blood on the moon. Now you've got a boat, what you goin' to do, Mr. Van Dyck?"

With a boat, even a disabled one, in our hands we were once more upon a fighting basis. Goff had quickly confirmed Bonteck's assumption that Le Gros hadn't the smallest idea of keeping his word to us about the turning over of the long-boat, so we were justified in declaring war again if we chose. Bonteck's first proposal was to load our fighting squad into the launch, in which we could paddle our way through the nearest reef gap and around to the Andromeda, on the chance of taking the yacht by a surprise attack with Haskell and his engine-room and stoke-hold contingent to help us if we could contrive to liberate them.

To this expedient Goff raised a very pertinent objection, which was immediately sustained by all. While we should be fighting to gain possession of the yacht, the women would be left practically undefended on the island – hostages whom Le Gros would immediately seize, and for the restoring of whom – not to mention any worse thing that he might do – he could exact any price he might ask us to pay.

"No, that won't do," said Goff, when we were brought up standing by the insurmountable objection; "lemme get in with my notion. There's three oars in the launch, and a piece of another. By crowdin' the folks up a mite, you can get 'em all in at one load. S'pose you do it, and paddle round outside o' the reef and board the yacht, the whole kit and caboodle of ye. There won't be much fightin' to do. That pirate's got most of his bullies ashore with him. That's why he towed the launch – didn't want to leave it behind f'r the shaky ones to get hold of."

Van Dyck drew a long breath.

"That will do, if we're given time. But we shan't have time, Captain 'Lige. Long before we can paddle this dead weight of a tender down to the other end of the island, get our people aboard, and paddle back to the yacht with a load that will put us fairly down to the gunwales, it will be too late. The yacht will be gone."

"Meanin' that these scamps'll get through with their job and beat you to it?" said the old Gloucesterman. "I been figgerin' that it's my job to see that they don't. While you're doin' your little do, I'll tack back to that place up in the woods and see if I can't keep 'em busy at the diggin' f'r a while longer. If you folks can make your turn and get things quieted down on the 'Meda, all you got to do then is to slip that anchor cable quick as you can and put to sea. You're a navigator, Mr. Van Dyck, and you can take her anywhere that I could."

"And leave you behind in the hands of these scoundrels who would burn you at the stake in revenge?" Bonteck exclaimed; a protest that was echoed instantly by every man of us. But the brave old skipper wouldn't listen.

"There has come a time more 'n once afore this when it was a ch'ice between one life and a-many," he said, in his clipped New England drawl. "You folks go ahead and do your part, and I'll do mine."

And before we could stop him he was gone.

XVIII

UNDER A GIBBOUS MOON

Being thus committed by Goff's capture of the electric launch to what promised to be the most chanceful of all the hazards of that strenuous night, we lost no time in setting about it. With all the good will in the world, the old skipper might not be able to do much for us in the way of delaying the return of the mutineers to the Andromeda, and it said itself that our one slender hope of success lay in capturing the yacht while it was, in a certain measure, undefended.

Luckily, the launch's painter was long enough to serve as a tow line, and with five of us towing, and Billy Grisdale steering against the shoreward drag with an oar, we soon had the launch out of the danger zone. Once fairly out of sight of the long-boat and the beach of peril, we ran like flying fugitives, as jealous of the flitting moments as a miser of his gold. To save the utmost number of these precious moments, Van Dyck and Jerry Dupuyster dropped out of the towing rank after we were well down toward the western end of the island and cut across through the wood to arouse the camp, leaving four of us to take the launch around to the point at which the embarkation could be most quickly made.

Having but a comparatively short distance to go after Van Dyck and Jerry left us, we arrived first at the agreed rendezvous, and I went aboard the launch to try to determine how we were going to handle and propel it with eighteen people crowded into its narrow limits. As Goff had said, there were three good oars, and the broken halves of another; but rowing from the thwarts, with the jammed lading we should have, was clearly out of the question. And the alternative – two or three of us standing up to use the oars as paddles – seemed to be quite as clearly impracticable. If the launch would suffice to float eighteen of us, trimming it as carefully as we could and sitting as tight as the shipwrecked sailors in the old song, we could hardly ask more of it.

"Small room for so many of us, Mr. Preble – is that what is troubling you?" asked the professor, standing by while Grey and Billy Grisdale ran up to the camp in the glade to hasten the laggards.

"Little space, and still less tonnage," I said. "I'm doubtful if she will float all of us at once."

"Those useless storage batteries," he pointed out; "they are quite heavy, aren't they? Can't we lighten the boat by taking them out?"

It was a good thought, and I set about acting upon it. But the batteries were built in snugly, and without a wrecking tool of some sort they could not be dislodged. There was a locker under the stern sheets, and rummaging in this for tools, I came upon a leather-cased object which proved to be far more serviceable than any wrecking crow-bar. It was an electric flashlight, and a touch of the switch showed that its batteries were alive and in working order.

"Let's have a look at this driving mechanism before we jettison it," I said; and the professor held the light while I looked to see what Van Dyck's disabling rifle shot had done to the motor.

To my great joy I found that the bullet had not short-circuited the motor, as we supposed; it had merely smashed the switch of the controlling rheostat. Working rapidly while Sanford held the flashlight, I was able to make a temporary repair that would enable us to utilize the motor, and I was giving the propeller shaft a few trial turns when Van Dyck and Jerry, and Grey and Billy came down to the beach with the hastily gathered ship's company; sixteen of them and the bull pup – for which latter Billy had been shrewd enough to make Edie Van Tromp sponsor and special pleader.

As I had feared we should be, the eighteen of us and the dog were a frightful overload for the small launch, this though Van Dyck had made the fugitives leave every ounce of dead-weight behind in the camp. In addition, there was honest terror to make the hurried embarkation almost a panic. We had no assurance that the mutineer-pirates would take our quiescence for granted; we knew they wouldn't if the loss of the launch should be discovered. Every instant I was half expecting to see the fat bandit and his mongrel crew burst out of the shadowy wood to charge down upon us. In which event, there would be a bloody massacre; it could hardly be less.

Fortunately, the attack did not materialize. In feverish haste we packed the small boat, with beseechings to all and sundry to sit close and sit tight, and even Ingerson, roused only a few minutes earlier from his brutish sleep, helped as he could, planting himself stolidly at the launch's gunwale and lending a hand like a man ashamed. When we were ready to put to sea, and I had shoved off and climbed in cautiously over the stern of the heavily laden boat, it became quickly apparent that the rehabilitation of the motor was the only thing that made the venture even tentatively possible. With the crowding there would have been no slightest chance of using the oars in any manner whatsoever.

I am quite sure that the memory of that perilous boat voyage across the lagoon, out through the nearest break in the reef and along the seaward edge of the barrier coral to the point at which we had our first sight of the Andromeda lying a bulking gray shadow in the light of a gibbous moon which was just rising, will stand out clear-cut for every soul of our little ship's company long after all other pictures have grown dim.

Happily for us, the sea was as quiet as an inland lake; the open water hardly less than that of the sheltered lagoon. In passing through the gap in the reef the launch shipped a few bucketfuls, and for the moment I thought we must founder – as we should have if any one of us had stirred or grown panicky. But upon giving the silent little motor a bit more current we weathered the passage, and out beyond, where the gentle swell lifted and subsided evenly, we rode dry again.

It was after we had passed the miniature surf line and were creeping eastward at the best speed I dared give the launch that I whispered to Bonteck, who was crouching with me over the motor controls.

"How much have you told the others?" I asked.

"Nothing more than that we were going aboard the yacht, and that there might be an attempt made to drive us off."

"You could scarcely have said less. Is Goff still holding the treasure hunters, do you think?"

"Something is holding them. We'd be hearing from them if there wasn't."

"If we're lucky enough to reach the yacht without being seen and fired upon, how are we going to get aboard – with this crowd?"

"The accommodation ladder is down."

"I know. But it's on the starboard side – toward the shore. We can't rush it, not if there is any sort of defense – with the moon rising."

"Don't throw chocks under the wheels!" he bit out. "It isn't a thing to be speculated upon; it's a thing to be done!"

Somehow, I felt better after he said that. This was the old Bonteck – the Bonteck I knew best – coming to the front again, with the indomitable spirit that had once made him a leader who never knew when he was beaten – or rather a leader who refused to be beaten. Like all the rest of us, he, too, had suffered his sea-change and was the better and bigger man for it.

Why we were not seen from the deck of the yacht long before we could come within striking distance was a circumstance for which we could not at the moment account. As I have said, the night was crystal clear; clearer, if possible, than at that earlier hour when the Andromeda had come creeping up out of the east. Besides, the shrunken moon was now something more than a hand's-breadth above the horizon, and while its light was pale, it was enough to cast long shadows of the motionless vessel far out toward us. Yet there was no stir on the yacht's decks, and no alarm raised as our deeply laden boat stole along the outer edge of the coral reef, giving the rocks only so much margin as would serve to keep the low gunwales out of the back wash of the slight swell breaking over the barrier.

As we drew nearer, with the motor running as silently as a murmur of bat's wings, we saw the reason for our temporary immunity from discovery. The treasure diggers were returning to the island beach with their spoil, or rather they were coming and going in a double procession, like an endless chain of roustabouts loading a Mississippi River steamboat, and, quite naturally, all eyes on board the yacht would be turned in that direction. A fire had been kindled on the beach to give light for the loading of the gold bars into the long-boat, and its red glow made boat and men and the backgrounding jungle stand out with sharp distinctness. Conetta, squeezed in next to Van Dyck, leaned over to whisper: "Are we back in the days of the old buccaneers? Have we been only dreaming that we were living in the twentieth century?"

"What you are seeing is no dream," said Bonteck. "It's the real thing, and you'll probably never look upon its like again." Then to me: "A little more speed if she'll take it, Dick. They are rushing that boat-loading business, and what we do will have to be done swiftly or we'll be too late."

I gave the boat's motor another notch of the electric throttle, and the bat's-wing murmur increased to a low humming. As if drawn by invisible hands the laden launch approached the yacht's bow on the seaward side. The need for haste was pricking me as sharply as it was Van Dyck, but prudent care came first. As matters stood, we were as helpless as a packed pleasure boat. One armed man at the yacht's rail could have held us off, encumbered as we were. Until we could have room in which to spread out a bit we were like a lot of shackled prisoners. So, when the yacht's bulk came between us and the fire-lighted scene on the beach, I switched the power off and let the launch drift by slow inchings until Dupuyster, crouching in the bow, was fending with his hands to keep us from bumping against the side of the Andromeda.

So far so good. We had made contact, as the modern militarists say, but what the next move should be, I couldn't imagine. Above, and overhanging us, since our point of contact was under the flaring out-sheer of the yacht's bow, stretched the smooth white wall of the Andromeda's body plating, with the bulwarks and rail far beyond the reach of the tallest of us. True, the accommodation ladder had been let down on the starboard side, and was probably still down; but with the moon rising, and the light of the beach fire playing full upon that side of the yacht, it would be simply inviting defeat to try for that.

Fortunately for us, we had an inspired leader, and he knew exactly what he meant to do. Amidships on our side of the yacht the davit falls by which the long-boat had been lowered were still hanging as they had been left when the boat was put overside. Van Dyck passed a whispered word to Dupuyster to hand the launch along toward these hanging tackles, and I held my breath. Quite possibly six of us – counting Ingerson as one of the half-dozen – were young enough and agile enough to climb the tackles one at a time, but I couldn't see the barest chance of carrying out any such manoeuver as that with the overloaded launch for a take-off.

"What's the notion?" I asked Van Dyck. "We can't board by way of those boat tackles. We shall swamp the launch, as sure as fate!"

"Wait," he whispered back. "You've forgotten the coaling port."

His reminder was entirely justified. But if I had remembered the two square openings, one on either side of the ship, through which the bunkers were filled, I should have dismissed their possibilities at once. The rawest landsman in our company would know that these openings would be closed from the inside – closed and gasketed and bolted to make them water-tight.

"But how – " I began; but Van Dyck interrupted quickly. We were nearing the hanging tackles and he whispered his commands hurriedly. "Here is the port," he said, pointing out the joint lines of the coal opening. "Hand the launch back to it after I'm gone." And, as the boat falls came within reach: "Catch the tackle and steady her, and be ready to trim ship when I take my weight out."

Mechanically I grasped the ropes as we drifted up to them, and with the cat-like agility of a practiced sailor, Van Dyck lifted himself gently out of our cockleshell and went up the dangling tackle to disappear silently over the yacht's rail. His purpose was evident enough now. He was going to try to get below and open the fuel port for us.

Passing the word along to Dupuyster to hand the launch back to the coaling port, I helped as I could with the blade of the broken oar. Motionless presently under the outline of the square opening, we entered upon a period of breathless suspense. Being on the seaward side of things, we could not see how the long-boat loading was progressing, but every moment I was expecting to hear the pop-pop of the gasoline motor which would tell us that the gold robbers were putting off for the yacht.

We could easily visualize the obstacles Bonteck would have to overcome in trying to reach the other side of the bunker port. He must make his way undiscovered to the engine-room hatch – which might or might not be guarded – get into communication with the imprisoned engineers and firemen and direct them to open the port for us. Past that, it was entirely within the possibilities that certain tons of coal might have to be moved before the port could be opened – an undertaking which would devour still more time, and which could hardly be carried out without giving the alarm to whatever ship's guard the fat pirate had left on board.