Dick Leslie's Luck Part 25

The camp being in complete darkness, d.i.c.k took his station just inside the tent-flap and, with the aid of his night-gla.s.s, maintained a close watch upon the barque. Hitherto there had been something very much in the nature of a carouse carried on aboard her every night since her arrival, the revel usually lasting up until nearly midnight. But on this particular night there was a difference, the singing and shouting coming to an end before four bells, or ten o'clock, a circ.u.mstance that further confirmed d.i.c.k in his impression that the mutineers meditated some step of a more or less decisive character. Yet when, by the carefully screened lamp in the tent, he consulted his watch and found that the hour of midnight was already past, he had entirely failed to detect any sign of life or movement on board the _Minerva_.

He now called Nicholls, and when the latter appeared he said to him--

"If you will sit here, where I have been sitting, you will be able, by using the night-gla.s.s, to keep a very perfect watch upon the barque without being yourself seen, and the moment that you detect anything like the appearance of a boat coming ash.o.r.e, please wake me. And be especially careful not to light your pipe where you can be seen, as I am particularly anxious not to scare those fellows from coming ash.o.r.e.

And, in their present state of mind, I am afraid that anything which might excite within them the suspicion that they are being watched would suffice to scare them back to the ship again."

Then he, in his turn, stretched himself out and was presently sound asleep.

It seemed as though he had been asleep scarcely five minutes, although it was really more than an hour when Nicholls shook him by the shoulder and said--

"Mr Leslie, wake up, sir, please. There's a boat of some sort coming ash.o.r.e from the barque. She's been in sight for the last quarter of an hour, but she's coming along very slowly, and I expect it'll be quite another quarter of an hour before she reaches the beach."

"Where is she?" demanded Leslie, seizing the night-gla.s.s. "Oh, there she is," he continued, as he brought the instrument to bear. "I see her. She appears to be one of the barque's quarter-boats, Nicholls, and, so far as I can make out, there are only two men in her."

"It's difficult to tell by starlight, sir," replied Nicholls, "but I should say there's about that number. There can't be less, for she is pulling two oars, and one man wouldn't be likely to attempt the job of pulling a heavy boat like a gig ash.o.r.e, much less pull her back again against the wind. And I don't think there's likely to be more than two of 'em, otherwise they wouldn't be pulling only two oars."

"Just so," agreed Leslie. "Now where are those seizings? Oh, here they are! That's all right; we must have them where we can put our hands upon them at a moment's notice. And are your pistols all ready, in case you should need to use them? That's well. Now all that remains for us to do is to quietly await the arrival of those gentlemen here, in the darkness of the tent. They will be pretty certain to come here first.

And when they do, I will cover them with my revolvers while you lash their hands behind them. And take care that you lash them so securely that there will be no possibility of their getting adrift again."

"Ay, ay, sir; never fear. You may trust me for that," answered Nicholls, cheerfully.

And with that the two men seated themselves well back within the deepest shadows of the tent, and quietly awaited the approach of their nocturnal visitors.

The boat was by this time so close to the beach that it was apparent that the men in her were pulling with m.u.f.fled oars; and presently she glided in upon the sand so gently that she grounded without a sound.

Then the two figures in her silently rose to their feet, and, laying in their oars with such extreme care that the deposition of them upon the thwarts was accomplished with perfect noiselessness, stepped gently out of her on to the yielding sand. They conferred earnestly together for a minute or two and then, turning, came cautiously up the beach, each of them carrying a short length of rope in his hand.

"By Jove," whispered Leslie to his companion, "they are determined to leave nothing to chance; they have actually brought along with them the lashings wherewith to bind me!"

Nicholls chuckled quietly. "So they have, sir," he whispered. "It'll be a joke to see the way that they'll be taken aback presently."

Treading carefully and using every precaution to avoid the slightest noise, the two men slowly made their way up the beach and on to the thick gra.s.s of the little savannah upon which the tent stood. They now seemed to think that the necessity for such extreme caution was past, and advanced much more rapidly, until they arrived within about twenty yards of the tent, when they again paused for a moment to confer together.

"Now!" whispered Leslie; and, at the word, he and his companion rose to their feet and stepped forward into the open. The new arrivals did not see them at once, for their heads were close together as they whispered to each other, and there were perhaps never two more surprised men than they were when Leslie's voice smote upon their ears with the words--

"Don't move an inch, or you are both dead men. And throw up your hands!

If you dare to move I will fire; and, as you may see, I am covering you both!"

As Leslie spoke the two men started guiltily apart, and then stood staring in stupefaction at the two figures that had so suddenly appeared before them.

"Up with your hands, both of you," reiterated Leslie, sharply, for the strangers had apparently been taken too completely by surprise to fully comprehend all that was said to them. "And," he continued, "listen carefully to me, both of you. You are my prisoners, and I intend to make perfectly sure of you. I know all about you; I know you to be two men who are engaged in a desperate enterprise, and are likely to stick at nothing. Now, understand me well: I am just as resolute as you are, and if you give me the slightest trouble I will put a bullet through you, as surely as you stand there; so do not attempt any nonsense if you value your lives. Now you," indicating one of them with his levelled revolver, "move three paces to your right--so; halt! that will do. Now, Nicholls, lash that fellow's hands firmly behind his back."

"Well, here's a pretty go," yelled one of them to the other in an access of impotent fury. "A dandy old mess you've made of this job, Mister bloomin' Peter Burton, haven't you? and dragged me into it along with yer! I wish I'd never had nothin' at all to do with the cussed business, now, I do; I _knowed_ it was boun' to go a mucker, from the very fust! But you and that bloomin' s...o...b..nk of a Turnbull _would_ drag me into it, temptin' me with your yarns of treasure, and bein' as rich as a Jew, and a lot more rot o' the same sort, and now, here I am, landed--"

"There, that will do, my man," interrupted Leslie, sharply, as Nicholls deftly proceeded to lash the fellow's hands behind him; "your repentance comes just a little too late to be of any use to you. You are a mutineer and a murderer, and you must take the consequences of your evil deeds."

"What do _you_ know about it?" growled the man who had been addressed as Burton. "Who's been blowin' the gaff to _you_? If it's Turnbull that's been doin' a split, I'll wring his neck for 'im!"

"There, sir, number one is all right," exclaimed Nicholls as he stepped away from his victim. "If he gets adrift I'll give him leave to eat me, body and bones! Shall I go ahead with this other chap now?"

"Yes," a.s.sented Leslie; "truss him up, and let us have done with them both as quickly as possible."

Burton, who was an immensely powerful fellow, poured forth a volley of the most horrible curses and threats as Nicholls approached him; but Leslie stood but half a dozen paces from him, with his revolver levelled straight at the fellow's head, and a stern word of caution sufficed to quell the fast-rising inclination to resistance that shone in the man's eyes; he subsided suddenly to a state of sullen silence, and submitted in his turn to be bound. The whole episode had not occupied more than five minutes, at the outside. Then, with their hands firmly secured behind them, the two men were marched off to the hut that had been built by the savages, where they were compelled to lie down and submit to a further process of binding, upon the completion of which they found themselves absolutely helpless; for now both their hands and their feet were lashed together so tightly and securely that it was quite impossible for them to move otherwise than to give an occasional feeble, impotent wriggle.

This accomplished to their complete satisfaction, Leslie and Nicholls returned to the tent, and resumed their alternate vigils until the morning; for they knew not what arrangements these men might have made with their fellow-mutineers, and deemed it wisest not to relax their vigilance now until the entire adventure had been brought to a successful issue.

The remainder of the night pa.s.sed, however, without further incident, and at daybreak the occupants of the tent were once more astir and preparing breakfast. Then, having satisfied their own appet.i.tes, they took a good liberal supply of food to the hut and, loosing their prisoner's bonds sufficiently to allow them the use of their hands, bade them eat and drink freely.

Then, when at length Burton and his companion--whose name, it transpired, was Samuel Cunliffe--sullenly acknowledged that they had eaten and drunk all that they desired, their hands were once more lashed securely behind them, their feet released, and they were bidden to follow Leslie, who went ahead while Nicholls, as rear-guard, walked close behind. And thus they all proceeded until the cave was reached, where the two new arrivals were forced to join their fellow-prisoner, Turnbull. And there, in that gloomy cavern, the exigencies of the situation demanded that, for a time at least, they should be once more subjected to the extreme discomfort of being lashed, hands and feet together, as they had been in the hut on the previous night, in order to avoid all possibility of their getting together and releasing each other.

Having satisfied himself that his prisoners were absolutely secure, and dressed Turnbull's wound afresh, Leslie, accompanied by Nicholls, next made his way to the cove, where he found the cutter lying at anchor in the centre of the little basin with all her canvas set and gently flapping in the light breeze. And a marvellously pretty picture the little craft presented with her snow-white hull, surmounted by a broad expanse of scarcely less white cotton canvas, sitting daintily and jauntily upon the water, the white of her hull and sails, and the ruddy sheen of her copper sheathing brilliantly reflected upon the smooth, dark surface of the element she rode in such saucy fashion. d.i.c.k stood for some minutes feasting his eyes upon the pretty picture she presented against the dark-brown background of scarred and riven rock that formed the sides of the basin, and then he and Nicholls quickly descended the precipitous slope to where the catamaran lay moored, and, jumping on board her, paddled off to the _Flora_, whose namesake fortunately happened to be on board her at the moment, but was just preparing to go ash.o.r.e for another ramble.

"I am afraid, dear, you cannot go just now," said d.i.c.k, "unless indeed you would like to walk over to the camp, for we are about to return there at once, preparatory, I hope, to sailing for home to-morrow."

"Do you think d.i.c.k, it would be quite safe for me to take the walk alone? Because, if so, and we are actually going to sail to-morrow, I should so like to do it. It is a lovely walk; and there are a.s.sociations connected with it that endear it to me," she said shyly.

"Very well, little girl," responded d.i.c.k. "Then take the walk, by all means, for it is perfectly safe. Only be very careful not to look in at the cave on your way, for I have three prisoners stowed away there, now, and although they are too firmly secured to be able to hurt you, they may say things that would offend your ears."

Flora promised that she would most carefully avoid the cave, and was set ash.o.r.e by the catamaran, d.i.c.k instructing Nicholls and Simpson to afterwards proceed round to the camp in that craft while he himself undertook to work the cutter round to the same point single-handed.

While, therefore, the two seamen were conveying Flora to the landing-place, Leslie busied himself in taking a pull upon the halliards all round and getting up the cutter's anchor. He was still thus engaged when the catamaran pushed off, under sail, and, pa.s.sing close under the cutter's stern, hailed, inquiringly which way she was to steer.

"Keep the land close aboard on your starboard hand all the way, and you cannot go wrong," answered Leslie, adding: "But I shall be after you in a few minutes, and will give you a lead."

The catamaran stood out of the cove, and headed away to the eastward on the starboard tack; and a few minutes later d.i.c.k followed in the cutter.

Within the cove, the breeze that came in over the overlapping headlands was light and baffling, yet the _Flora_ gathered way quickly and glided along at a pace that rejoiced Leslie's heart. But when she pa.s.sed outside beyond the shelter of the heads, and felt the full strength of the briskly blowing trade wind, her solitary navigator found that he would have his hands full when it presently came to working her. For Simpson had hoisted the big jack-yard topsail, to give the sail a good stretching, and d.i.c.k had been too preoccupied to notice the fact; the little craft therefore made her first essay _in_ the open ocean under precisely the same canvas that she would show to the most gentle of breezes, whereas the trade wind was piping up quite fresh. The breeze struck her with something of the suddenness and violence of a squall, with everything creaking and tw.a.n.ging to the violence of the strain, and the little craft heeled to it until her lee rail was buried and the water was halfway up the deck to her tiny skylight; but with a plunge, like that of a mettlesome horse to the touch of the spur, she darted forward, burying her sharp bows deep in the heart of the first sea that came sweeping down upon her, and in another moment she was thrashing along in the wake of the catamaran like a mad thing, leaping and plunging with long floaty rushes over the sharply running sea that overran the ponderous Pacific swell. Within the first five minutes it became quite clear to Leslie that the catamaran was nowhere compared with this smart and handsome little ship, for to d.i.c.k the former craft seemed to sag away to leeward like an empty cask, while the cutter walked up to her as though the other had been at anchor. By the time that the _Flora_ had overtaken the catamaran, the two craft had gained a sufficient offing to enable them to fetch the entrance channel on the next tack, and they accordingly hove about, the cutter whisking round with a celerity that gave Leslie as much as he could do to trim over the head sheets in time to catch a turn with them as she paid off on the other tack. And now the _Flora_ ran away from the catamaran at such a rate that she had reached her anchorage and was just rounding into the wind to bring up when the other craft pa.s.sed through the channel and entered the lagoon. This little trip round from the cove to the lagoon had not only given the cutter's sails a nice stretching, but it had also stretched her new rigging to such an extent that d.i.c.k saw it would be quite necessary to set it up afresh all round before he started on his voyage, if he did not wish to risk the loss of his spars. This, however, was a matter that would have to wait; he had something of an even more pressing nature that called for his immediate attention.

By the time that the catamaran had arrived alongside the cutter, the latter's anchor was down and the jib and foresail taken in. The big gaff topsail was next hauled down and carefully stowed away, and finally the mainsail was lowered, stowed, and the coat put over it.

Then d.i.c.k jumped aboard the catamaran. "I suppose you both have your revolvers?" he said to Nicholls and Simpson. "Are they fully loaded?"

The two men replied in the affirmative. "Then up with your canvas," he commanded; "and we will be off to the barque and settle this business forthwith. I will explain my plans to you as we go."

With the cutter no longer sailing alongside her, the catamaran once more took rank as a fast-sailing and weatherly craft, and soon worked out to the spot where the _Minerva_ rode at anchor. d.i.c.k, of course, by this time knew the curious craft well, and handled her with such consummate judgment that when at length he luffed her into the wind's eye and ordered her sails to be lowered, she just handsomely slid up alongside the barque and came to a standstill abreast her starboard gangway.

"Look out there and catch a turn with this 'ere painter," exclaimed Simpson, tossing a rope's-end to a couple of men who peered down from the _Minerva's_ bulwarks upon the catamaran and her crew with mingled astonishment and dismay; and at the same moment Leslie and Nicholls made a spring for the barque's side-ladder, and, shinning up it, tumbled in on deck to the further discomfiture of the two men aforesaid, leaving Simpson to follow, which he promptly did. The whole thing was done so smartly that the only two visible members of the barque's crew--who seemed to be quite slow-moving and slow-thinking men--were completely taken by surprise, and evidently knew not what to make of it.

Meanwhile Leslie, with a single glance about the ship's deserted decks, seemed to grasp the situation intuitively.

"Are you two men named Royston and Hampton?" he demanded.

"Ay, ay, sir; that's us, sure enough," answered one of the two, with a visible appearance of relief for some reason best known to himself.

"Unbuckle your belts and throw them down on deck," commanded d.i.c.k, quietly drawing a brace of revolvers somewhat ostentatiously from his side-pockets.

"What for?" demanded one of the fellows. "Who be you, mister, to come aboard here and order--"

"Come, no nonsense," interrupted Leslie, sternly. "You will do exactly what I order you to do, at once, and without hesitation, or it will be the worse for you. You understand?" And he levelled a pistol at the head of each man.

Thus gently persuaded, the two men grumblingly did as they were told.

And when the discarded belts were flung savagely to the deck, it was seen that attached to each was a formidable sheath-knife.