The Wolf Patrol Part 22

'Old Clayson used to chuck a lot o' stuff at the back 'ere,' thought Chippy. 'I wish I durst strike a match, but that 'ud never do. They might see it.' So he groped and groped with his hands, and could hardly restrain a yell of delight when his fingers dropped on a smooth surface, broken by one sharp rib running down the centre.

'A sweep!' Chippy cried to himself joyously--'an old sweep! Now, if theer's on'y a bit o' handle to it, I'm right.'

With the utmost caution he drew the broken sweep from the pile of odds and ends where it lay. Yes, there was a piece of handle, and Chippy made at once for his boat, carrying his prize with him. An oar would have suited him much better, but beggars must not be choosers. The fragment of the sweep was heavy and clumsy, but in Chippy's skilled hands it could be made to do its work.

These preparations had taken some time, and Chippy was about to try his piece of sweep in the scull-notch in the stern when he paused and crouched perfectly still on the thwart. They were coming. He heard movements on the stone stairs which ran down to the river. The scout put his head over the side of the boat and listened. Water carries sound as nothing else does, and he heard them get into their boat very cautiously, slip oars into rowlocks, and paddle gently away. There was no dip or splash from the oars. 'm.u.f.fled 'em,' said Chippy to himself.

He gave them a couple of minutes to get clear out into the river from the side channel which washed the slip; then he prepared to follow. He untied the painter, pushed his boat clear of its companions, slipped his sweep over the stern, and began to scull down the channel without a sound, his practised hands working the boat on by the sweep as silently and smoothly as a fish glides forward by the strokes of its tail.

The little skiff slipped out on to the broad bosom of the river, and Chippy looked eagerly ahead. He saw his men at once. They were paddling gently down-stream close insh.o.r.e. At this point the river ran due west, ran towards the quarter of the sky now bright with stars.

Against this brightness Chippy saw the dark ma.s.s of boat and men. He glanced over his shoulder. The east remained black, its covering of cloud unbroken, and Chippy felt the joy of the scout who follows steadily, and knows that he himself is unseen.

The boat ahead went much faster than Chippy's little tub, but he let them go, and sculled easily forward; he knew where to find them. As they approached Elliotts' warehouse, a great cloud drew swiftly over the west, and the scout completely lost sight of the other boat. But the darkness was short. Within a few minutes the cloud pa.s.sed as swiftly as it had come, and the surface of the river was once more pallid in the starshine.

Chippy saw the great bulk of the warehouse emerge from the gloom; he saw the level plain of water, now smooth at this time of dead-slack, and he expected to see the boat, but he did not. He brought up his skiff with a sharp turn of the sweep, and rubbed his eyes, and looked, and looked again. He saw nothing. The boat had vanished. It was not lying off the warehouse; of that he was quite sure. He was so placed, fairly close insh.o.r.e, that his eye swept every inch of water along the front of the building. No boat was there.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE OLD WATER-GATE

This was very mysterious. Chippy could not make out what had happened.

The boat had not sunk. Had it done so, the men would never have gone down without a sound. The scout thought a moment, then seized his sweep, and drove his skiff square across the river. Had the men gone out towards the middle? But Chippy opened fresh sweeps of the starlit stream, and all empty. Save for himself, there did not seem to be a single floating thing in the neighbourhood.

Now, in working across, Chippy had also gone down with the stream, so that by the time he was well out he had gained a point directly in front of the warehouse. He glanced towards the dark ma.s.s at the water's edge, and started. A pin-point of light flashed out at its base far below window or doorway. The light burned steadily for a few seconds, then went out as suddenly as it appeared.

'Looks to me as if some'dy struck a match over theer,' reflected Chippy. 'But who? The water looked empty enough. I'll have a look.'

He worked his boat round, and drove it steadily towards the great building, shaping his course a little upstream, in order to bring himself above it once more. He watched closely as he sculled, and when he checked his way not ten yards from the bank he was quite certain of two things: he had not seen the light again, and he had not seen any boat leave the front of the warehouse.

He let himself drift slowly down, staring and staring, and full of wonder. His eyes were now so used to the starshine on the river that he could see the water in front of the building like a smooth, pale plain, and it was empty--it was perfectly empty. Who had struck that light about the water-level? It was all very strange and mysterious.

Chippy let his craft drift. It moved slowly on the slow-running stream, but presently it was under the shadow of the lofty wall, and as it slid along, Chippy looked out more sharply than ever for the source of that strange light.

He stood in the stern of the boat drifting down in complete silence, with not even the gurgle of the sweep to betray his presence. And to this complete silence Chippy owed the discovery which he made about midway of the river-front.

He was staring straight at the blackness of the wall, when suddenly a light appeared in it. To his immense surprise, he found himself looking up a kind of long, arched tunnel, at whose farther end a man stood in a boat, a light in his hand. Only for an instant did Chippy behold this strange vision. His skiff drifted on, and he was faced once more by the darkness of the solid wall.

Chippy drew a deep breath, dug his sweep into the water, and sculled rather more than half a circle. This brought him opposite the mouth of the tunnel, but well out from the wall.

'That's wheer they'd slipped in,' reflected Chippy. 'Theer's the light again. Wot does it all mean? I never heerd o' that hole afore.'

Chippy was puzzled because he did not know the history of Elliotts'

warehouse. It was a fairly old building, having been erected about the middle of the eighteenth century. Its bas.e.m.e.nt had been pierced by a water-gate, which gave small barges direct entrance to the building, their contents being raised to the floor above through a large trap-door. But in the course of time, and under the influence of great floods, the river scoured out its bed in such fashion as to alter its depth against the wall of the warehouse, and largely to block the water-gate with mud. Sooner than undertake the expense of dredging in order to keep the water-gate open, the owners abandoned its use, and knocked a doorway in the front, and hauled up from the barges as they lay outside.

But on a very low tide it was possible yet to pole a small boat up the old water-gate, and gain the trap-door, which still existed, though unused, and almost unknown to the present generation of workers in the warehouse.

It took the scout a very short time to make up his mind. He was soon sculling for the mouth of the archway, which, now he knew where to look for it, could be made out as a darker patch in the dusk of the wall.

With the utmost care Chippy laid the blunt nose of his craft square in the middle of the archway, and sculled very gently up. The air was thick and close and damp, but a slight current set towards him. He felt it blowing on his face, and knew that there was some opening at the top of this strange pa.s.sage. He only went a short distance up, then checked his way, and his boat floated quite still on the quiet water of this hidden entrance.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and then Chippy heard a voice. 'That's as much as we can shift to-night,' it said; and a second voice said: 'All right; drop a glim on the boat.'

At the next moment a strong shaft of light darted downwards into the darkness, and lighted up an empty boat floating within five yards of Chippy. Luckily for the latter, the light came from a dark lantern, whose slide had been turned, and was only a brilliant circle which did not discover the daring scout.

Chippy held his breath, and watched. He saw that aloft the light was pouring through an oblong opening; the latter was formed by the raising of one of the two doors of the big trap. He had need to hold his breath; the smallest turn of the lantern would throw the light along the tunnel, and he would spring into full view of the thieves. His position would then be desperate, for escape was out of the question.

They had only to drop into their boat and pursue, when his clumsy old broken sweep would prove no match for a pair of oars. So Chippy held himself dead still, and watched with fascinated eyes the strong shaft of light pouring on the boat before him.

Presently a strongly corded bale slid into the light, and was lowered by a thin rope. The rope was tossed after it, and the same thing happened with three more bales; and then a pair of legs came into sight, and a man slid swiftly down a heavy rope which dangled above the boat.

The man swung himself down, and dropped among the bales. Chippy could not see his face, but the scout's eye saw the man's hand outstretched as he balanced himself with a sailor's skill in the swaying boat, and marked that the little finger was missing.

'I'll stow these, and then give ye a hand wi' the flap,' said the man in the boat. 'It'll never do to let it down wi' a bang, because of our friend outside.' And both of them chuckled.

Now was Chippy's chance, while the men were busy with the task of closing the heavy flap with as little noise as possible. He had been standing with the sweep in his hand. He began, with the tiniest, the softest of strokes, to turn his boat round. But his discovery would have been certain had not the men been so busy with the task of reclosing the heavy trap. It fell into place with a soft thud, which echoed along the water-gate, and as it did so Chippy glided into the open, and turned the nose of his craft down-stream. He now put out all his strength, sculled a dozen hard, swift strokes, then held his hand, and floated close beside the wall in the deep shadow.

From this cover he saw the boat glide out and the men give way as they gained the open stream. They pulled out some distance, and so skilfully did they use the m.u.f.fled oars that Chippy scarce caught a sound.

'Rullocks m.u.f.fled, too,' thought the scout; and very likely the thieves had m.u.f.fled the rowlocks also.

CHAPTER XXIV

ON BOARD THE 'THREE SPIRES'

When the boat was well out from the sh.o.r.e its nose was turned, and it began to drop at an easy pace down the river. In cover of the bank Chippy was sculling his best. He had seen how the warehouse was robbed; he meant to see where the plunder was taken.

Beyond Elliotts' warehouse there were only two or three scattered buildings, and then the river-sh.o.r.e stretched away empty and deserted.

For nearly a mile the men pulled steadily down, and left Chippy a long way behind. But the night was brightening fast; the moon was coming up, and he could see the dark spot upon the water which meant the gliding boat laden with plunder.

Then the boat turned and came towards the sh.o.r.e on the scout's side.

It crossed his line of sight, and disappeared as if into the bank.

'Gone up Fuller's Creek,' said Chippy to himself, and sculled harder than ever. Fuller's Creek was a wide, deep backwater, never used nowadays for any active purpose, though occasionally an old hulk was towed there, and left to rot. Chippy supposed that his men had pulled up to the very top of the creek, where there was a deserted landing-stage, and he put all the strength of his wiry frame into driving his boat down to the creek and up it as hard as he could go.

He entered the broad, dark water-mouth, for the moon was not yet shining into the creek, and sculled into its shadow. Half-way up, a dark bulk loomed high in his path, and he swung the nose of his craft to port, to pa.s.s round the _Three Spires_, an old barquentine left to rot in Fuller's Creek out of the way of the river traffic.

The _Three Spires_, named from the three chief churches of the town, whose steeples rose high above the roofs of Bardon, was a broad, roomy old craft, and had carried many a good cargo in her time. But she was now past her work, and, her spars, rigging, and raffle all torn away, her hulk lay abandoned in Fuller's Creek, for the breakers-up did not want her.

It was mere luck that Chippy threw his skiff's nose over to port, for he was bearing straight for the Three Spires as she lay end on, and port or starboard was all one in point of distance as regarded sculling round her. But he threw his bow over to port, and thereby made a striking discovery. For beside the great bulk lay a small bulk, and the latter was a boat swinging to the shattered taffrail of the _Three Spires_ by her painter. Chippy checked his way, and the two boats floated side by side on the quiet, dark backwater, with the hull of the deserted barquentine towering above them against the sky.

Chippy threw out a long breath of immense surprise. 'They ain't gone on to the stage,' he thought. 'They're here. They're on this old un.

This is their boat.' He heard movements on board the barquentine, and he sculled a few swift strokes which sent him forward under the thick shadow of her broad stern, where he checked her way again.

The sounds were those of men who scrambled up her forward companion, and at the next moment Chippy's cars told him that they had approached the side of the Teasel, and one was swinging himself into the boat.