Major Vigoureux Part 5

"Ahoy! Mr. Rogers, it is. What's wrong?"

"Thank G.o.d I've found you!" The voice sounded suddenly quite close at hand, and a man blundered against the doorstep.

"Eh?"--the others saw Mr. Rogers give back in astonishment--"The Lord Proprietor?"

"Safe and sound, too, by Heaven's mercy," said the Lord Proprietor, plucking off his peaked cap and shaking the water from it. He carried a lantern, and his jacket and loose trousers of yellow oilskin shone with the wet like a suit of mail. "All the way from Inniscaw I've come, in the gig. Peter Hicks and old Abe pulled me, and the Lord knows where we made land or what has become of them. Man, there's a vessel ash.o.r.e--a liner, they say! Didn't you hear the gun a minute since?"

"Yes, yes; but where is she?"

"That's more than I know. Somewhere among the Off Islands; on the Terrier, maybe, or the h.e.l.l-meadows. All I can tell you is that old Abe brought the news to the Priory, almost three hours ago: his son-in-law, young Ashbran, had seen her in a lift of the fog--a powerful steamship with two funnels and a broad white band upon each. She hadn't struck when he saw her; but she was nosing into an infernal mess of rocks, and the light closing down fast. I didn't see Ashbran himself; Abe believed he had put across to warn your men. But as the old man couldn't swear to it I told him to get out the gig and fetch Peter Hicks, and so we started."

"I'm wondering why those men of mine haven't brought me warning.

Ashbran can't have reached them."

"He started late, belike, and lost his way in the fog; or it's even possible--though you won't believe it--that your men started to find you and have lost themselves. My good sir, you never knew such a fog!"

"Yet I left word with the chief boatman," mused Mr. Rogers. "He knows perfectly well where I am."

"Does he?" said the Lord Proprietor. "Then it's more than I do. What house is this?"

"Why, Fossell's. Good Lord! didn't you know?"

"My dear Sir Caesar--" Mr. Fossel stepped forward solicitously.

"Eh? So it is.... Good evening, Mr. Fossell! That picture of the Waterloo Banquet seemed familiar, somehow." The Lord Proprietor nodded towards a framed engraving on the wall. "Yes, to be sure--and Landseer's 'Twa Dogs.' But this is worse than the Arabian Nights! We must have missed the harbour by miles!"

"You came ash.o.r.e at Cam Point, most probably," Mr. Fossell suggested.

"The tide sets that way, and from Cam Point it is but a step."

"A step, is it? Man, I've been wandering in blank darkness for a full hour. Twice I've found myself on the edge of a cliff. I've followed walls only to be led into open fields. I've struck across open fields, only to tumble against troughs, midden heaps, pig-styes. I walked straight up against this house, supposing myself somewhere near the batteries on Garrison Hill--though how I had managed to miss the town was more than I could explain."

"The wonder is you ever fetched across from Inniscaw."

"It's my belief we had never done it, but for the tide. The night was black as your hat when we started, but fairly clear. We kept sight of the lamp on the pier-head until half-way across. Then the fog came down; and then----!"

"Well, it's good hard causeway between this and St. Hugh's," said Mr.

Rogers. "We can't miss it. Afterwards.... However, you'll step along with me to the Guard-house, Sir Caesar, and as soon as the weather lifts at all one of my men shall put you back to Inniscaw."

"On the contrary, my good sir, I go with you."

Mr. Rogers looked at him, as he b.u.t.toned up his pea-jacket.

"We won't argue it here," he said. "You don't guess what it means, though, searching for a wreck among the Off Islands on a night like this. Not to mention that there's a sea running...."

And yet, apart from the fog, there was nothing in the weather to suggest shipwreck and horrors. For a fortnight the Islands had lain steeped in the sunshine of Indian summer; a fortnight of still starry nights and days almost without a cloud. As a rule, such weather breaks up in a gale, of which the gla.s.s gives timely warning. But the mercury in Mr. Fossell's barometer indicated no depression--or the merest trifle. The drenched night air was warm: to Miss Gabriel, inhaling it in the pa.s.sage by the drawing-room door, it seemed to be laden with the scents of summer, and Miss Gabriel had not lived all her life in Garland Town without learning the subtle aromas of the wind, to distinguish those that were harmless or beneficent from those that warned, those that threatened, those that were morose, savage, malignant, those that piped a note of madness and meant a hurricane.

Nor did the fog in itself appear to her very formidable. To be sure, she had never known a thicker one; but the Lord Proprietor (saving his presence) had probably exaggerated its terror. He was--let this excuse be made for him--a landsman, comparatively new to the Islands.

Probably Mr. Fossell and Mr. Pope and the Vicar took the same view. The news of the wreck had excited them, and they were offering to accompany Sir Caesar and Mr. Rogers to St. Hugh's Town, on the chance of some information.

"And we had best go with them, my dear," suggested Miss Gabriel to Mrs.

Pope. (Their houses stood side by side and contiguous, on a gentle rise at the foot of Garrison Hill, where the peninsular of New Town broadens out and New Town itself melts into St. Hugh's.)

Mrs. Fossel begged them to wait and keep her company until the gentlemen returned. "It is impossible," she urged as an inducement, "that Selina can go on making this noise forever."

But Miss Gabriel had taken her decision, and from a decision Miss Gabriel was not easily turned.

"My dear," said she, reaching for her cloak, "the gentlemen may not return until goodness knows when, and I have a prejudice against late hours."

They started in a body. The fog, to be sure, was a deal worse than ever Miss Gabriel could have credited. Still, the gentlemen using their lanterns and tapping to right and left with their sticks, they found the hard causeway, and blundered along it towards St. Hugh's, the ladies with their shawls drawn over their heads and their heads held down against the drifting wall of moisture.

They had made their way thus for about four hundred yards--that is to say, about a third of the length of the causeway--when suddenly the fog ahead of them became luminous, and they perceived torches waving.

"Mr. Rogers! Is that Mr. Rogers?" called a voice.

"Ay, ay, men!" Mr. Rogers hailed in answer, recognising his coastguard.

"I am coming--fast as I can," he added, having at that moment run into a wall.

"A wreck, sir!"

"Ay! Where is it?"

"Somewhere beyond St. Ann's, sir, as we make it--out towards the Monk.

There was a gun fired, and d.i.c.k, here, thinks as he saw the lighthouse send up a signal; but lights there's none that the rest of us can make out----"

"Hark!"

Again the fog shook with the concussion of a gun.

"Due west, as I make it out," said Mr. Rogers. "Are the boats ready?"

"Aye, sir; the jolly-boat manned and off, and the gig launched and lying by the slip."

"Then run, men!"

"Why, they've left us!" gasped Mrs. Pope, as the glare of the torches melted into the fog.

"It doesn't matter," Miss Gabriel a.s.sured her bravely. "We have only to keep straight on."

CHAPTER V

THE S.S. MILO

Major Vigoureux fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. He owed this habit originally to a clear conscience, and although (as the reader knows) his conscience was no longer quite clear, the habit had not forsaken him.