The Clique of Gold Part 28

He reached without difficulty the banks of the Dong-Nai; but here obstacles presented themselves of which he had not thought. The night was so dark, that he could hardly see to find his way along a wharf in process of construction, and covered with enormous stones and timber. Not a light in all the native huts around. In spite of his efforts to pierce this darkness, he could discern nothing but the dark outline of the vessels lying at anchor in the river, and the light of the lighthouse as it trembled in the current.

He called. No voice replied. The silence, which was as deep as the darkness, was broken only by the low wash of the river as it flowed down rapidly.

"I am quite capable," thought Daniel, "of not finding the boat of 'The Conquest.'"

Still he did find it, after long search, drawn up, and half lost, in a crowd of native boats. But the boat seemed to be empty. It was only when he got into it, that he discovered a little midshipman fast asleep in the bottom, wrapped up in a carpet which was used to cover the seats for the officers. Daniel shook him. He rose slowly, and grumbling, as if overcome by sleep.

"Well, what is the matter?" he growled.

"Where are the men?" asked Daniel.

Quite awake now, the midshipman, who had good eyes, had noticed, in spite of the darkness, the gold of the epaulets. This made him very respectful at once; and he replied,- "Lieutenant, all the men are in town."

"How so? All?"

"Why, yes, lieutenant! When all the officers had gone on sh.o.r.e, they told the boatswain they would not come back very soon, and he might take his time to eat a mouthful, and to drink a gla.s.s, provided the men did not get drunk."

That was so; and Daniel had forgotten the fact.

"And where did they go?" he asked.

"I don't know, lieutenant."

Daniel looked at the large, heavy boat, as if he had thought for a moment to return in it to "The Conquest" with no other help but the little midshipman; but, no, that was impracticable.

"Well, go to sleep again," he said to the boy.

And jumping on sh.o.r.e, without uttering a word of disappointment, he was going in search of his comrades, when he saw suddenly a man turn up out of the darkness, whose features it was impossible to distinguish.

"Who is there?" he asked.

"Mr. Officer," answered the man in an almost unintelligible jargon, a horrible medley of French, Spanish, and English. "I heard you tell the little man in the boat there"- "Well?"

"I thought you wanted to get back on board your ship?"

"Why, yes."

"Well, then, if you like it, I am a boatman; I can take you over."

There was no reason why Daniel should mistrust the man. In all ports of the world, and at any hour of the day or the night, men are to be found who are lying in wait on the wharves for sailors who have been belated, and who are made to pay dear for such extra services.

"Ah! you are a boatman, you say?" Daniel exclaimed, quite pleased at the encounter. "Well, where is your boat?"

"There, Mr. Officer, a little way down; just follow me. But what ship do you want to go to?"

"That ship there."

And Daniel pointed out to him "The Conquest" as she lay not six hundred yards off in the river, showing her lights.

"That is rather far," grumbled the man; "the tide is low; and the current is very strong."

"I'll give you a couple of francs for your trouble."

The man clapped his hands with delight, and said,- "Ah! if that's the way, all right. Come along, Mr. Officer, a little farther down. There, that's my boat. Get in, now steady!"

Daniel followed his directions; but he was so much struck by the man's awkwardness in getting the boat off, that he could not help saying to him,- "Ah, my boy, you are not a boatman, after all!"

"I beg pardon, sir; I used to be one before I came to this country."

"What is your country?"

"Shanghai."

"Nevertheless, you will have to learn a great deal before you will ever be a sailor."

Still, as the boat was very small, a mere nutsh.e.l.l, in fact, Daniel thought he could, if needs be, take an oar himself. Thereupon, sitting down, and stretching out his legs, he was soon once more plunged in meditations. The unfortunate man was soon roused, however, by a terrible sensation.

Thanks to a shock, a wrong movement, or any other accident, the boat upset, and Daniel was thrown into the river; and, to fill the measure of his mishaps, one of his feet was so closely jammed in between the seat and the boat itself, that he was paralyzed in his movements, and soon under water.

He saw it all in an instant; and his first thought was,- "I am lost!"

But, desperate as his position was, he was not the man to give up. Gathering, by one supreme effort, all his strength and energy, he took hold of the boat, that had turned over just above him, and pushed it so forcibly, that he loosened his foot, and at the same moment reached the surface. It was high time; for Daniel had swallowed much water.

"Now," he thought, "I have a chance to escape!"

A very frail chance, alas!-so small a chance, in fact, that it required all the strong will and the invincible courage of Daniel to give it any effect. A furious current carried him down like a straw; the little boat, which might have supported him, had disappeared; and he knew nothing about this formidable Dong-Nai, except that it went on widening to its mouth. There was nothing to guide him; for the night was so dark, that land and water, the river and its banks, all melted together in the uniform, bottomless darkness.

What had become of the boatman, however? At all events, he called,- "Ahoy, my man!"

No answer. Had he been swept off? Or did he get back into the boat? Perhaps he was drowned already.

But all of a sudden Daniel's heart trembled with joy and hope. He had just made out, a few hundred yards below, a red light, indicating a vessel at anchor. All his efforts were directed towards that point. He was carried thither with an almost bewildering rapidity. He nearly touched it; and then, with incredible presence of mind, and great precision, at the moment when the current drove him close up to the anchor-chain, he seized it. He held on to it; and, having recovered his breath, he uttered three times in succession, with all the strength of his lungs, so sharp a cry, that it was heard above the fierce roar of the river,- "Help, help, help!"

From the ship came a call, "Hold on!" proving to him that his appeal had been heard, and that help was at hand.

Too late! An eddy in the terrible current seized him, and, with irresistible violence, tore the chain, slippery with mud, out of his stiffened hands. Rolled over by the waters, he was rudely thrown against the side of the vessel, went under, and was carried off.

When he rose to the surface, the red light was far above him, and below no other light was in sight. No human help was henceforth within reach. Daniel could now count only upon himself in trying to make one of the banks. Although he could not measure the distance, which might be very great, the task did not seem to him beyond his strength, if he had only been naked. But his clothes enc.u.mbered him terribly; and the water which they soaked up made them, of course, every moment more oppressive.

"I shall be drowned, most a.s.suredly," he thought, "if I cannot get rid of my clothes."

Excellent swimmer as he was, the task was no easy one. Still he accomplished it. After prodigious efforts of strength and skill, he got rid of his shoes; and then he cried out, as if in defiance of the blind element against which he was struggling,- "I shall pull through! I shall see Henrietta again!"

But it had cost him an enormous amount of time to undress; and how could he calculate the distance which this current had taken him down-one of the swiftest in the world? As he tried to recall all he knew about it, he remembered having noticed that, a mile below Saigon, the river was as wide as a branch of the sea. According to his calculation, he must be near that spot now.

"Never mind," he said to himself, "I mean to get out of this."

Not knowing to which bank he was nearest, he had resolved, almost instinctively, to swim towards the right bank, on which Saigon stands.

He was thus swimming for about half an hour, and began already to feel his muscles stiffening, and his joints losing their elasticity, while his breathing became oppressed, and his extremities were chilled, when he noticed from the wash of the water that he was near the sh.o.r.e. Soon he felt the ground under his feet; but, the moment he touched it, he sank up to his waist into the viscous and tenacious slime, which makes all the Cochin China rivers so peculiarly dangerous.

There was the land, no doubt, and only the darkness prevented his seeing it; and yet his situation was more desperate than ever. His legs were caught as in a vice; the muddy water was boiling nearly up to his lips; and, at every effort to extricate himself, he sank deeper in, a little at a time, but always a little more. His presence of mind now began to leave him, as well as his strength; and his thoughts became confused, when he touched, instinctively feeling for a hold, the root of a mangrove.

That root might be the saving of his life. First he tried its strength; then, finding it sufficiently solid, he hoisted himself up by it, gently, but with the frenzied energy of a drowning man; then, creeping cautiously on the treacherous mud, he finally succeeded in reaching firm ground, and fell down exhausted.

He was saved from drowning; but what was to become of him, naked, exhausted, chilled as he was, and lost in this dark night in a strange and deserted country? After a moment, however, he rose, and tried to get on; but at every step he was held back on all sides by lianes and cactus thorns.

"Well," he said, "I must stay here till day breaks."

The rest of the night he spent in walking up and down, and beating his chest, in order to keep out the terrible chills which penetrated to the very marrow of his bones. The first light of dawn showed him how he was imprisoned within an apparently impenetrable thicket, out of which, it seemed, he could never find his way. He did find it, however, and after a walk of four hours, he reached Saigon.

Some sailors of a merchant-ship, whom he met, lent him a few clothes, and carried him on board "The Conquest," where he arrived more dead than alive.

"Where do you come from, great G.o.d! in such a state?" exclaimed his comrades when they saw him.

"What has happened to you?"

And, when he had told them all he had gone through since they parted, they said,- "Certainly, my dear Champcey, you are a lucky fellow. This is the second accident from which you escape as by a miracle. Mind the third!"

"Mind the third!" that was exactly what Daniel thought.

For, in the midst of all the frightful sufferings he had undergone during the past night, he had reflected deeply. That block which had fallen on his head, no one knew whence; this boat sinking suddenly, and without apparent cause-were they the work of chance alone?

The awkwardness of the boatman who had so unexpectedly turned up to offer him his services had filled his mind with strange doubts. This man, a wretched sailor, might be a first-cla.s.s swimmer; and, having taken all his measures before upsetting the boat, he might easily have reached land after the accident.

"This boatman," Daniel thought, "evidently wanted me to perish. Why, and what purpose? Evidently not for his sake. But who is interested in my death? Sarah Brandon? No, that cannot be!"

What was still less likely was, that a wretch in Sarah Brandon's pay should have found his way on board "The Conquest," and should then have been precisely at the right moment at the wharf, the first time Daniel went on sh.o.r.e. Still his suspicions troubled him to such a degree, that he determined to make every effort to solve the mystery.

To begin, he asked for a list of all the men who had been allowed to go on sh.o.r.e the night before. He learned in reply, that only the crews of the different boats had been at Saigon, but that all the emigrants having been allowed to land, several of these men had also gone on sh.o.r.e. With this information, and in spite of his great weakness, Daniel went to the chief of police at Saigon, and asked him for an officer. With this agent he went to the wharf, to the spot where the boat of "The Conquest" had been lying the night before, and asked him to make inquiries there as to any boatman that might have disappeared during the night.

None of the boatmen was missing; but they brought Daniel a poor Annamite fellow, who had been wandering about the river-bank ever since early morning, tearing his hair, and crying that he had been robbed; that they had stolen his boat. Daniel had been unable the night before to distinguish the form or the dress of the man whose services he had accepted; but he had heard his voice, and he recalled the peculiar intonation so perfectly, that he would have recognized it among thousands. Besides, this poor devil did not know a word of French (more than ten persons bore witness to it); and born on the river, and having always lived there, he was an excellent sailor. Finally, it was very clear, that, if this man had committed the crime, he would have been careful not to claim his boat.

What could Daniel conclude from this summary inquiry?

"There is no doubt about it," he thought. "I was to be murdered."

XXIII.

There is no man, however brave he may think himself, who would not tremble at the idea that he has, just by a miracle, escaped from the a.s.sa.s.sin's hand. There is not one who would not feel his blood grow chill in his veins at the thought that those who have failed in their attempt once will no doubt renew their efforts, and that perhaps the miracle may not be repeated.

That was Daniel's position.

He felt henceforth this terrible certainty, that war had been declared against him, a savage warfare, merciless, pitiless, a war of treachery and cunning, of snare and ambush. It had been proved to him that at his side, so to say, as his very shadow, there was ever a terrible enemy, stimulated by the thirst of gain, watching all his steps, ever awake and on the watch, and ready to seize the first opportunity to strike. The infernal cunning of the first two attempts enabled Daniel to measure the superior wickedness of the man who had been chosen and enlisted-at least Daniel thought so-by Sarah Brandon.

Still he did not say a word of the danger to which he was exposed, and even a.s.sumed, as soon as he had recovered from the first shock, a certain cheerfulness which he had not shown during the whole voyage, and under which he concealed his apprehensions.

"I do not want my enemy," he said to himself, "to suspect my suspicions."

But from that moment his suspicions never fell asleep; and every step he took was guided by most careful circ.u.mspection. He never put one foot before the other, so to say, without first having examined the ground; he never seized a man-rope without having first tried its solidity; he had made it a law to eat and drink nothing, not even a gla.s.s of water, but what came from the officers' table.

These perpetual precautions, these ceaseless apprehensions, were extremely repugnant to his daring temper; but he felt, that, under such circ.u.mstances, careless would be no longer courage, but simple folly. He had engaged in a duel in which he wanted to be victorious; hence he must at least defend himself against the attack. He felt, moreover, that he was the only protector his beloved had now; and that, if he died, she would certainly be lost. But he also thought not only of defending himself, but of getting at the a.s.sa.s.sin, and, through him, at the infamous creature by whom he was employed, Sarah Brandon.

He therefore pursued his search quietly, slowly, but indefatigably. Certain circ.u.mstances which he had at first forgotten, and a few points skilfully put together, gave him some hope. He had, for instance, ascertained that none but the crews of the boats had been on sh.o.r.e, and that, of these, not one had been for ten minutes out of sight of the others. Hence the pretended boatman was not a sailor on board "The Conquest." Nor could it have been one of the marines, as none of them had been allowed to leave the vessel. There remained the emigrants, fifty or sixty of whom had spent the night in Saigon.

But was not the idea that one of these men might have led Daniel into the trap contradicted by the circ.u.mstances of the first attempt? By no means; for many of the younger men among these emigrants had asked permission to help in the working of the ship in order to break the monotony of the long voyage. After careful inquiry, Daniel ascertained even that four of them had been with the sailors on the yards from which the heavy block fell that came so near ending his life.

Which were they? This he could not ascertain.

Still the result was enough for Daniel to make his life more endurable. He could breathe again on board ship; he went and came in all safety, since he was sure that the guilty man was not one of the crew. He even felt real and great relief at the thought that his would-be a.s.sa.s.sin was not to be looked for among these brave and frank sailors; none of them, at least, had been bribed with gold to commit a murder. Moreover, the limits of his investigations had now narrowed down in such a manner, that he might begin to hope for success in the end.

Unfortunately the emigrants had, a fortnight after the landing, scattered abroad, going according as they were wanted, to the different establishments in the colony, which were far apart from each other. Daniel had therefore, at least for the moment, to give up a plan he had formed, to talk with every one of them until he should recognize the voice of the false boatman.

He himself, besides, was not to remain at Saigon. After a first expedition, which kept him away for two months, he obtained command of a steam-sloop, which was ordered to explore and to take all the bearings of the River Kamboja, from the sea to Mitho, the second city of Cochin China. This was no easy task; for the Kamboja had already defeated the efforts of several hydrographic engineers by its capricious and constant changes, every pa.s.s and every turn nearly changing with the monsoons in direction and depth.

But the mission had its own difficulties and dangers. The Kamboja is not only obstructed by foul swamps; but it flows through vast marshy plains, which, in the season of rains, are covered with water; while in the dry season, under the burning rays of the sun, they exhale that fatal malaria which has cost already thousands of valuable lives.

Daniel was to experience its effects but too soon. In less than a week after he had set out, he saw three of the men who had been put under his orders die before his eyes, after a few hours' illness, and amid atrocious convulsions. They had the cholera. During the next four months, seven succ.u.mbed to fevers which they had contracted in these pestilential swamps. And towards the end of the expedition, when the work was nearly done, the survivors were so emaciated, that they had hardly strength enough to hold themselves up. Daniel alone had not yet suffered from these terrible scourges. G.o.d knows, however, that he had not spared himself, nor ever hesitated to do what he thought he ought to do. To sustain, to electrify these men, exhausted as they were by sickness, and irritated at wasting their lives upon work that had no reward, a leader was required who should possess uncommon intrepidity, and who should treat danger as an enemy who is to be defied only by facing him; and such a leader they found in Daniel.

He had told Sarah Brandon on the eve of his departure,- "With a love like mine, with a hatred like mine, in the heart, one can defy all things. The murderous climate is not going to harm me; and, if I had six b.a.l.l.s in my body, I should still find strength enough to come and call you to account for what you have done to Henrietta before I die."

He certainly had had need of all that dauntless energy which pa.s.sion inspires to sustain him in his trials. But alas! his bodily sufferings were as nothing in comparison with his mental anxiety. At night, while his men were asleep, he kept awake, his heart torn with anguish, now crushed under the thought of his helplessness, and now asking himself if rage would not deprive him of his reason.

It was a year now since he had left Paris to go on board "The Conquest," a whole year.

And he had not received a single letter from Henrietta,-not one. Every time a vessel arrived from France with despatches, his hopes revived; and every time they were disappointed.

"Well," he would say to himself, "I can wait for the next." And then he began counting the days. Then it arrived at last, this long-expected ship, and never, never once brought a letter from Henrietta- How could this silence be explained? What strange events could have happened? What must he think, hope, fear?

To be chained by honor to a place a thousand leagues from the woman he loved to distraction, to know nothing about her, her life, her actions and her thoughts, to be reduced to such extreme wretchedness, to doubt- Daniel would have been much less unhappy if some one had suddenly come and told him, "Miss Ville-Handry is no more."

Yes, less unhappy; for true love in its savage selfishness suffers less from death than from treason. If Henrietta had died, Daniel would have been crushed; and maybe despair would have driven him to extreme measures; but he would have been relieved of that horrible struggle within him, between his faith in the promises of his beloved and certain suspicions, which caused his hair to stand on end.

But he knew that she was alive; for there was hardly a vessel coming from France or from England which did not bring him a letter from Maxime, or from the Countess Sarah. For Sarah insisted upon writing to him, as if there existed a mysterious bond between them, which she defied him to break.

"I obey," she said, "an impulse more powerful than reason and will alike. It is stronger than I am, stronger than all things else; I must write to you, I cannot help it."

At another time she said,- "Do you remember that evening, O Daniel! when, pressing Sarah Brandon to your heart, you swore to be hers forever? The Countess Ville-Handry cannot forget it."