The Mystery of The Barranca Part 24

In the few minutes that pa.s.sed before she met Sebastien Francesca had regained self control. To his reproof, "This was foolish; why did you linger?" she calmly replied, "I wished to make sure that all the people were out."

He nodded approval. "Then no one is left?"

"No one."

"_Bueno!_ We have no more than time to make the hills. Pancho's beast is stronger than yours. Give him the child." She had begun to hope, but it died within her as he went on: "In my rooms are valuable papers. 'Twill take but a moment to get them. Ride on, you. My horse goes two paces to your one. I can catch you halfway to the hills."

She almost fainted when he rode off, for just as surely as though she had seen him questioning the fugitive women she knew now that he was aware of Seyd's presence. She reined her animal around to follow, then checked it sharply under a sudden inspiration.

"Why do you wait, Pancho?" she asked, sharply. "While you sleep the flood will be on us. Ride! Ride your hardest! I will follow."

The _mozo_, to tell the truth, was d.a.m.ning with inward tremblings the luck that had placed him in such jeopardy. Only the fear of Sebastien had kept him from bolting, and now, without even a backward glance, he laid on with quirt and spurs and galloped off with Roberta, leaving Francesca free to carry out her plan.

It was quite simple. In this, the rainy season, the shade trees were draped from crown to foot with green lace of morning glories, and on the outer edge of the nearest clump a banyan had been converted into a huge tent which would have stabled a hundred horses. Parting the lacework of leaves with one hand, after she had ridden under it, Francesca obtained, through the gateway, an oblique view of the guardhouse at the moment Sebastien closed the iron doors. The crash of the bars carried to her tree, and had he looked that way he might have seen the curtain of leaves swing under the forward move of her beast. But, controlling the impulse, she reined it back again. When Sebastien raced past a couple of minutes later she dropped her hand and shrank in sudden fear.

It was, however, impossible for him to see her. Moreover, the intervening clumps prevented him from discovering that she was not with Pancho until he came bursting out on his heels in open pasture half a mile ahead.

"_Tonto!_ where is thy mistress?"

The _mozo's_ look of frightened surprise proclaimed at once his ignorance and fear. Both had reined in, and under the other's deadly look Pancho cowered behind his bent arm. Sickly green patches stained his dull chocolate. When Sebastien pulled a pistol from his holster he bowed down to the saddle horn, his face in his hands. Leaning over, Sebastien placed the muzzle against the fellow's head. His finger even had tightened. Then, checking the impulse, came Roberta's whimper, "Senor! oh, senor!" Above it rose a distant thunderous roar, and, glancing northward, he saw in the far distance a writhing movement in the jungle beyond the pastures.

"Off, fool! Save the child!"

Striking the man's shoulders with the pistol, he wheeled his horse and shot away, heading back to the hacienda. Riding, he kept one eye on the green wave that was moving with the speed of the wind over the jungle.

As he pa.s.sed in among the shade trees it boiled over the far edge of the pastures, and from beneath the swaying trees emerged a muddy wall crowned with bristling black. Traveling more swiftly in the open, it came on at an acute angle which had its point in the flooded lands along the river, its base in the jungle close to the hills, and when Sebastien dashed out of the timber the point had pa.s.sed the hacienda.

Even then he must have known it for hopeless. The thunderous diapason had risen into a furious crescendo which was s.p.a.ced by the tear and crash of uprooted trees, and, higher than his head, the liquid wall was coming on under the pressure of the yellow frothing sea that stretched behind to the limit of sight. Yet, laying on quirt and spurs, he raced down its front in a desperate spurt for the gates.

While he was still a hundred yards away the wave struck the northern wall of the compound that fenced the buildings. Built solidly of stone, it melted, vanished without a premonitory shiver, and in its overthrow accomplished good. Catching root and branch in the debris, the grinding welter of fallen trees hesitated, then piled in a huge tangled bar upon the line of cottages and stables which intervened between the wall and house.

To Sebastien, however, this brought no respite. Shooting along the eastern wall, the wave outraced him and beat him to the gate by a long fifty yards.

While Francesca was still under the banyan she had heard the roaring diapason of the flood. Clothed in dripping lacery of leaves and flowers torn away by the beast's leap from the spur, she galloped into the patio, and when she dismounted the vines still twined around her limbs.

Without waiting to tear them off she threw all of her strength into a vain effort to swing the bars of the guardhouse doors, but, swollen by the rain, they were fast in the staples.

"Oh, _what_ shall I do?"

Her cry carried through to Seyd. After a fruitless attempt on the door he was just about to attack the window bars with an oaken club he had found in one corner. Now, tearing away the sacks of maize that blocked the one small square window on her side, he thrust it between the bars.

"Knock them up with this!"

But after the bars yielded the rusty doors defied her strength. "They will not budge! Oh, I cannot move them!"

Again his practical sense served. "Slip a stirrup over the staple, then start your horse gently. Fine!" He heard the groan of the moving door.

"Key gone! Never mind, I can shoot out the lock. Stand away--off to one side."

Above the roar of the flood Sebastien heard the shots. A few seconds later he saw Seyd look out of the gateway, then rush back in. Behind the gates an iron ladder led up to a lookout post on top of the guardhouse, and, racing down the front of the wave, Sebastien saw Seyd rise above the low parapet and lift Francesca to his side.

At the same moment they saw him. In Francesca's outstretched hands Sebastien saw her impulse to save. In the sudden covering of her eyes he read his fate. The fifty yards that lay between him and the gates might just as well have been a thousand, for, less than half the distance away, the great yellow comber rose high over his head.

Before it broke, however, he did two things--reined his horse to face it, then, just before he went under the grinding welter, with the same easy courtesy which he would have shown to a kinsman or a friend, he turned in the saddle and waved his hand.

CHAPTER XXIV

From the time Seyd rode into the hacienda up to that moment less than twenty minutes had pa.s.sed, but events had leaped to a conclusion.

The barrier of debris across the outer buildings had diminished the force of the blow upon the house, and had the water gained instant access to the interior and equalized the pressure it might have stood.

As the wave raced past, level with the high wall, the patio presented for an instant a curious resemblance to a square vessel pressed down till its edges just rose above the water. The next, its stout walls fell inward, and over them a yellow wave leaped at the house. Reinforced by its part.i.tion walls, it withstood for a few seconds the enormous pressure. Then above the cracking and grinding of debris and the mingled roar of the flood rose the boom of doors and windows blown out of their frames.

Because of its length the guardhouse went first. Feeling it tremble under his feet, Seyd lifted Francesca and held her face in against his breast. Not that he was in the least resigned. Never in all his life had he felt a keener desire to live. His glance darted hither and thither, and when, freed by the fall of the stone lintels, a patio gate sprang out of the yellow cauldron almost at his feet he s.n.a.t.c.hed up Francesca, leaped, and landed in its very center. Falling under her, he was, for an instant, breathless. But in the few seconds that he lay there gasping circ.u.mstances worked in their favor. Thrust by the impact into the recoil of the wave from the house wall, the gate was heaved out of the patio, and pa.s.sed the guardhouse just before the heavy tiled roof collapsed with the walls.

Almost in an instant the house crumbled and melted with scarcely a splash. Sitting up a few seconds later, Seyd looked back on all that was left of El Quiss, the barrier of debris rising, a black reef, out of a yellow sea. A mile ahead the wave roared on, its furious crescendo again reduced to a booming diapason. While the gate was being carried with incredible swiftness across the El Quiss pastures the roar sank to a distant hum, and presently died altogether, leaving only the quiet lapping of the waters in the falling dusk.

So quickly had it all pa.s.sed that Seyd found it hard to believe they were floating in comparative safety. The gate, which was ten feet by twelve in size and four inches thick, floated evenly, and if an occasional wave ran across it the tepid rain water of the tropics caused no discomfort. Neither were they in danger from the debris, logs, and uprooted trees which floated at equal speed on currents that were setting back to the river. With a pole that he picked up Seyd was able to keep out of the way of the few that rolled and tumbled when their branches caught on the bottom, and when at last they drifted on the deeper, slower currents of the river he turned to Francesca, who had remained a huddled, sobbing heap just where she fell.

She looked up when he touched her shoulder. "Oh, I feel wicked!" she cried, remorsefully. "If I had only waited for a few more days, given you time to explain, he would still be alive."

"It was perfectly natural," Seyd comforted her. "He would absolve you from all blame were he here, for with all his faults he was big and brave."

"You really think that he would?" She looked up with tearful anxiety.

"I'm sure of it. How could he do otherwise?"

"But he was--my husband. And I left him--for you."

"Yet I do not think that he held you in blame."

Kneeling beside her, with one arm around her shoulders, he gave his reason--Sebastien's last salute. Even if this started her tears anew she, nevertheless, felt comforted. When a black shape forged out of the dusk alongside, and he had to return to his pole, her natural spirit rea.s.serted itself.

"Here am I, crying like a child instead of helping. What can I do?"

There was really nothing. But to keep her from brooding he placed her on watch. "If you'll keep a lookout I'll take a shove at everything that floats in reach. The current is setting across the river, and we have nearly twenty miles to work in. With any old luck we ought to be able to land at Santa Gertrudis."

Thick dusk presently merged into night, but they were helped by a full moon which shed a dew of light through the falling rain. Not that they voyaged without hazard. Twice they were almost swamped by trees which rolled over under the thrust of Seyd's pole. Farther down they narrowly escaped shipwreck on wooded islands. Yet, thrusting and hauling, he worked steadily with the favoring current, and they had gained almost across when, rounding a bend, they sighted a distant light.

"Caliban's, for sure! Only another hour to food and fire!" Seyd cheered her.

He had, however, his own misgivings. As they drew into the shadow of the Barranca wall the moonlight grew fainter, and, drifting later over the submerged jungle, they were hard put to avoid the treetops which upreared like huge mushrooms above the flood. More than once they were almost swept off the raft by bejucos, vegetable cables, which stretched from top to top, and as these grew thicker Seyd saw that disaster was merely a question of time. He was hoping desperately that their capsizing would not entail too long a swim, when out of the obscurity rose a huge black shape.

With a shock that threw them both down, the raft grounded in shallow water.