The Iron Pirate Part 15

"Ha! Englishman! and no money; ho! ho! ye've got to find it, little man. Mother Catch likes you; but she spits on it!"

She spoke the last words in such a loud voice that several men near me turned to look, and I feared to become the centre of a brawl. This would have defeated everything, so I threw her a half-sovereign, and, feigning her own savage merriment, I said--

"Gold, little woman, English gold; spit on it for luck, little woman"; and I am bound to say that she did so, hobbling out of the room with the gold piece clenched in her nut-cracker jaws. Then I began to search with my eyes for Paolo; and, although the smoke was very thick, I saw him seated near the drinking-bar, a tumbler of brandy before him, his arms resting on the edge of the counter where the liquor was sold. I judged then that he had made no idle visit to this place; and in a quarter of an hour or so my surmise was proved. The gla.s.s door again swung open; three men entered through it, and I recognised the three of them in a moment. The first was the Irishman, "Four Eyes"; the second-was the lantern-jawed Scotsman, who had been addressed in Paris as "d.i.c.k the Ranter"; the third was "Roaring John," into whose face Dan had emptied the contents of his duck-gun three days before. The ruffian had his mouth all bound in a b.l.o.o.d.y rag, so I hugged myself with the knowledge that he had been well hit; but he was in nowise depressed; and, although the gun had stopped his speech, he smacked Paolo on the back when he greeted him, and the others soon had their faces in the great brown jugs.

The sight of this company warmed me to the work. I seemed to stand on the threshold of discovery. If only I could follow them hence to Black's house the whole aim of my journey would be fulfilled. And why not? I said; they will leave this place and go to their leader some time--if not now, at least to-morrow; and why should I lose touch with them? So far it was certain that my presence was undiscovered. The hag had suspicion of me, but not in their way; the men were too busy, I thought, talking of their own affairs to meddle even with their neighbours. Dan knew on what business I had left the ship, and would quieten Roderick's alarm for me. It was plain that fortune had turned kindly eyes on me.

I sat sipping the beer and smoking an old clay pipe, which I found in the breast-pocket of Dan's garment, doing these things to escape the remarks which the neglect of them would have occasioned, when there was some change in the bibulous entertainment as yet provided for us in the drink-hole. The hag raised her voice, worn to a croak with long scolding, and shrieked--

"Jack's a-going to dance for ye! Silence, pretty boys. Ho! ho! Jack the Fire-Devil, will ye listen, then? And it's help me move the tables ye will, Master d.i.c.k, or ye're no minister that I took ye for. Back, my pretty gentlemen, lest I throw me vitriol on ye. Ha! but they love me like their own mother!"

She poked round with her stick at the seamen's feet, compelling them to fall back, and to make a ring for the dancer in the centre; and I saw with no satisfaction that the foul-mouthed villain who was called the "Ranter" came to give her his help to the work.

"Hoots, mither," he cried in his broadest Scots, "did ye mistake that I was a gentleman frae the Hielands o' bonnie Scotland? And I'll be verra glad to throttle some for a wee cup o' yer pretty poison. So ho! ye lubbers, it's an ower-fine discoors for a summer Sawbath that my boot will teach you. Mak' way, mak' way!"

Thus, with unctuous mockery and rough menace, the fellow followed the fury round the room, and forced the drunken crew to the wall. He came to my seat; but I buried my head in my hands, lest he should have carried the memory of my face from Paris; and he pa.s.sed, having taken no notice of me as I hoped. Soon he had made a great ring for the dancing; and one of the long mirrors opened, showing a door, whose existence I had not suspected; and a great negro with a flaming firepot entered the room. His entry brought applause; but he was a common quack of a performer at the beginning, for he made pretence to eat the fire, and to bring it up again from his vitals. Then, to some wild music from a fiddler, he bound coils of the flaming stuff about his head; and, the lamps being lowered, he gave us a weird picture of a man dancing, all circled with flame; working himself up until I recalled pictures of the dervishes I had seen in the old quarter of Cairo. It was an extraordinary exhibition, and it pleased the men about so that they roared with delight. I was watching it at last as intent as they were; but my attention was suddenly diverted by the sense that something under the marble table at which I was sitting was pulling at my leg. I looked down quickly, and saw a strange sight: it was the black face of the lad Splinters, who had been treated so brutally in Paris. He, crouching under the table, was making signs to me, earnest, meaning signs, so that without any betrayal I leant my head down as though upon my hands, and spoke to him--

"What is it, lad?" I asked in a whisper. "What do you want to say?"

"Don't stop here, sir!" he answered in a state of great agitation.

"They know you, and are going to kill you!"

He said no more, crawling away at once; but he left me hot with fear.

The mad dance was still going on, and the room was quite dark save for the glow cast by the spirit flames about the huge negro. It occurred to me at once that the darkness might save me if only I could reach the door un.o.bserved; and I left my seat, and pushed amongst the men, pa.s.sing nearer and nearer to the street, until at last I was at the very portal itself. Then I saw that a change had been made while I had been sitting. The doors of gla.s.s were wide open, but the way to the street without was no longer clear--an iron curtain had been drawn across the entrance, and a hundred men could not have forced it.

This was a terrible discovery. It seemed to me that the iron door had been closed for an especial purpose. I knew, however, that when the dance was over some of the audience would wish to go out, and so I waited by the curtain until the lamps were turned up, and the negro had disappeared. The men were then about to push their tables to the centre again, but the hag raised her voice and cried--

"As you are, my pretty gentleman; it's only the first part ye've been treated to. No, no; ye don't have the door drawn till ye've seen yer mother dance awhile. Good boys, all of ye, there's work to do; ho! ho!

work to do, and Mother Catch will do it!"

At the words "work to do" a strange silence, which I did not then understand, fell on the company. Somehow, all the men immediately around me slunk away, and I found myself standing quite alone, with many staring at me. The four men whom most I feared had turned their backs, and were busy with their mugs; but the rest of the a.s.sembly had eyes only for the terrible woman and for myself. Presently the discordant music began again. The hag, who had been bent double, reared herself up with a "Ho!" after the fashion of a Scottish sword-dancer, and began to make a wretched shuffle with her feet. Then she moved with a hobble and a jig to the far end of the room; and she called out, beginning to come straight down to the door whereby I stood. I know not what presentiment forewarned me to beware as the creature drew near; but yet I felt the danger, and the throbbing of my heart. That I could hope for help amongst such a crew was out of the question. I had my revolver in my pocket, but had I shown it twenty barrels would have answered the folly. There was nothing to do but to face the screeching woman; and this I did as the unearthly music became louder, and the stillness of the men was speaking in its depth.

At the last, the old witch, who had danced for some moments at a distance of ten paces from the spot where I stood, became as one possessed. She made a few dreadful antics, uttered a piercing shriek, and hurled herself almost on me. In that instant I remember seeing the three men with Paolo suddenly rise to their feet, while the others in the room called out in their excitement. But the hag herself drew from her breast something that she had concealed there; and, as she stood within a yard of me, she brought it crash upon my head, and all my senses left me.

CHAPTER XIII.

ASTERN OF THE "LABRADOR."

Complete unconsciousness is a blessing, I think, which comes rarely to us. Sleep, they say, is akin to death; yet I have often questioned if there be an absolute void of existence in sleep; and I am sure that in few cases where a blow robs us of sense does the brain cease to be active or to bring dreams in its working. I have been struck down unconscious twice in my life; but in each instance I have suffered much during the after-days from that trouble of mind which is akin to the feverish dream of an exhausted system. Horrid sights does the brain then bear to us; terrible situations; weird phantoms known to the opium-eater; wild struggles with unnatural enemies; wrestlings even for existence itself. All these I knew during the days that followed my rash visit to the drinking den. How long I lay, or where, I know not to this hour; but my dreams were very terrible, and there was a fever at my head which the ice of a great lake scarce could have cooled. Often I would know that I had consciousness, and yet I could not move hand or foot, so that the terror moved me to frenzies of agony, though my lips were sealed, and I felt myself pa.s.sing to death. Or I would live again through the night when Martin Hall died, and from the boat where I watched the holocaust, I climbed to the shrouds of the cutter, and stood with my poor friend in the very shelter of the spreading flames.

Or I struggled with Black, having hunted him to his own quarter-deck, and there with great force of men I sought to lay hands on him; but he escaped me with a mocking laugh, and when I looked again the deck was empty.

For short moments the delirium must have left me. Once I opened my eyes, and knew that the sun shone upon me, and that the breeze which cooled my forehead blew from the sea; but my fatigue was so great that I fell asleep in the next instant, and enjoyed pure rest during many hours. When I regained consciousness for the second time, it was because rain beat upon my face, a drizzling warm rain of late summer, and there was spray from a fresh sea. For some minutes I set myself to ask where I was; but I knew that I was bound at the left hand and at my feet, and, to my unutterable astonishment, when I raised my head, I saw that I lay in an open boat which was moving very slowly, but my feet were towards the stern of it, and, as my head lay below the level of the gunwale, I could see nothing of the power which moved the boat or of the scene about us.

It was a long time before my throbbing head let me put together a chain of thought to account for my position. The scene at the drinking den would not at first come back to me, think as I would; but when it did, the clue which was lacking came with it. There could be no doubt that I had walked into a trap, and that the hag who had struck me had been in the pay of Paolo and his crew. These men must have taken me as I lay, and so brought me to this boat; but what time had intervened, or where I was, I knew no better than the dead. Only this was sure, that I was in the hands of one of the greatest scoundrels living, and that, if his past were any precedent, my hours of life would be few.

I cannot tell you why it was, but, strange to say, this reflection did not give me very great alarm at the moment. Perhaps I suffered too much from bodily weakness, and would have welcomed any release, even death; perhaps I was buoyed up with that eternal hope which bears its most generous blossom in the springtime of life. In either case, I put away the thought of danger, and set to the task of conning my position a little more closely. The boat in which I lay was painted white, and was of elegant build. She had all the fine lines of a yacht's jolly-boat; and when I raised my head I could see that her fittings had been put in only at great expense. She was not a large boat, but the centre seat had been removed from her to let me lie on a tarpaulin which covered her keel, and the stern seat had been used to bind my feet. A second tarpaulin, folded twice, had been propped under my head, but my left hand was bound close to the boat thwart, and there was a rope doubled round my right forearm so that I could not raise myself an inch, though my right hand was free. The meaning of this apparent neglect I soon learnt. There was a flask on the edge of the tarpaulin which supported my head, and by it half a dozen rather fine captain's biscuits. I had a prodigious thirst on me, and I drank from the flask; but found it to contain weak brandy, and would willingly have exchanged thrice its contents for a long draught of pure water. But the biscuits I could not touch; and I began to be chilled with the rain which fell copiously, and with the sea which sent spray in fountains upon my body.

Up to this time, I had heard no sound of human voices, but the silence was broken at last by a shout, and the boat ceased to move.

"All hands, make sail!" cried someone, apparently above me; and after that I heard the "yo-heave" of the men hauling, as I judged, at a main-sail. The second order, "Sheets home!" proved to me that I was behind a sailing ship, perhaps a yacht which these men had secured, as they got _La France_--and burnt her. I shuddered at the second thought, and my head began to burn again despite the wet. Did they mean to leave me there until the end of it, when the cold and my wound should do their work? Had they forgotten me? Had they any reason for keeping me alive? My questions were in part answered by a sudden shout from the deck of the ship.

"Ho, Bill, is the young un gone?"

"No, my hearty, he's gone about!"

"Getting his spirits damped, I reckon."

"Some, you bet."

And then I heard a voice I knew, the voice of the Irishman, "Four-Eyes."

"Is it the boi ye're mindin', bedad?"

"Ay, sir, he's moved a point."

"The poor divil. Throw him a sheet, one av yer; it's meself that's not bringing the guv'ner a dead body when he wants a live one, be Saint Pathrick!"

They tried to throw me a sheet as the man had ordered, but we had begun to move rapidly again, and I heard it fall in the water by my head.

Though there was more hailing, the thud of the choppy sea against the boat forbade any more hearing, and the sheet never reached me. Yet the men had told me something with their words, and I pondered long on the remark of the Irishman, that the "guv'ner" wanted me alive. It explained much; and it put beyond doubt the reason why I had not been killed in the drinking den. It was quite clear that my life was safe from these men until they reached their chief; but where he was I had no notion, except he were on the nameless ship; and, if that were so, to the nameless ship I was going--that ship of horror and of mystery.

Nor could I remember anything in what I knew of Captain Black to lead me to the hope that such a voyage was other than one to death, and perhaps to that which might be worse than death itself.

When this strange procession had lasted about an hour, the rain ceased and the sun shone again with renewed power, drying my clothes upon me and giving me prodigious thirst. I struggled to reach the flask, and in doing so I found that the ropes binding my right arm were tied with common hitches, such as any sailor could force; and my experience as a yachtsman let me get free of them with very little trouble. I did not sit up at once, for I feared to be seen from the decks; but I turned my head to look at the boat which towed me, and saw that she was a barque-rigged yacht after the American fashion; her name _Labrador_ being conspicuous across her stern. My boat, which was no larger than I had thought, was towed by a double hawser; but no man watched me from the p.o.o.p, and I lay down again rea.s.sured. The hope of escape was already in my head, for I judged that we could not be far out from New York, although no land was visible on the horizon. It occurred to me that if they would only let me be until night I could get my left hand and my feet free; and, as the hawser was pa.s.sed through a ring at the bow, I needed but a knife to complete the business. But I had no knife, for a search in my pockets proved that I had been relieved of all my valuables and trifles; and I knew that another way must be found, and that ingenuity alone would help me. So I sat thinking; and all the long afternoon--I knew it was afternoon, as I saw the sun sinking in the horizon and heard the bells, moreover--I examined such devices as came to me, only to reject them and to seek for others.

Towards the second bell in the second "dog" there was a change in the monotony of the scene. I heard an order to heave the barque to, and presently I made haste to put the ropes back in their places and to await the happening. I felt all motion cease, and then someone hauling at the hawser, so that the jolly-boat was pulled against the side of the bigger ship; and, looking up, I saw half-a-dozen of Black's gang watching me from the quarter-deck. Then a ladder was put over the bulwark, and Four-Eyes himself cried out not in an unkindly tone--

"Gi-me the soop, bhoys, and let's get it in him; begorra, the divil 'll have him afore the skipper if it's no mate you're givin' him!"

He came down the ladder with a great can of steaming stuff; and the sea having fallen away with the sun to a dead calm, he stepped off the ladder to the stern seat, and then bent over me. But I saw this only, that he had a knife in his belt; and I made up my mind in a moment to get it from him.

"The young 'un from Paris," he cried, as he took a long look at me, "and near to axin' for a priest, by the houly saints; but I was tellin'

ye to stop where ye was, and it's no thanks ye were giving me. Bedad, and a pretty place ye're going to, sorr, at your own wish--the divil knows what's the end av it--but sup a bit, for it's fastin' ye are by the luk av ye, and long gone at that!"

Kindly words he gave me; and he held to the rope with one hand while he put the can of hot stuff to my lips with the other. I drank half of it with great gulps, feeling the warmth spread through my body to my very toes as the broth went down; and a great hope consoled me, for I had his knife, having s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him when first he stooped, and it lay in the tarpaulin beneath me. The good luck of the theft made me quick to empty the pot of gravy; and when I had returned the can, Four-Eyes went over the side again, and the yacht moved onward lazily in the softest of breezes from the west. But my boat lay behind her again; and I did not stir from my restful position until it was full dark; though the going down of the sun had left a clear night and a zenith richly set with a shimmer of stars, which did not give any great promise to my thoughts of coming freedom.

When I deemed that I had waited long enough, and had a.s.sured myself that the later night would not be more auspicious for the attempt, I cut away the remaining ropes at my feet, and crouched unbound in the boat. There was good watch upon the ship, I knew, for I could hear the "All's well!" as the bells were struck, and the pa.s.sing of the orders from the p.o.o.p to the fo'castle. This did not deter me; and, being determined to stake all rather than face the terrors of the nameless ship, I crawled to the bow, and began to cut the strands of the hawser one by one. The rope was very thick and hard, and the knife which I had stolen was blunt, so that the work was prodigiously slow and difficult; and when I had been at it for half an hour or more, I was interrupted in a way that sent my heart almost into my mouth. There was a man standing on the p.o.o.p of the _Labrador_, and he seemed to be watching my occupation. I threw myself flat instantly, and listened to his hail.

"Ahoy, there, young 'un, are you getting a chill?" cried a bluff voice, which I did not recognise; but presently the man Four-Eyes hailed also, and I heard him say--

"If it's dead ye are, will ye be sending word up to us?" and, seeing the mood, I bawled with all my strength--

"I'm all right; but I'll call out for some more of that soup of yours just now."

They gave a great shout, and one of them said--