CHAPTER XXIV.
CAUGHT IN A NET.
"I closed my lids and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky, Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet."
Captain Brand did not linger long over his frugal dinner, and when he had finished, as if he had not had enough exercise for the last three days, he began to walk with long nervous strides across the saloon.
"He called me coward, did he? and dared to lay his hands on me! By my right arm, my Creole doctor, I'll teach you not to call hard names again, and I'll paralyze your hands for all time to come."
The pirate's jaws grated like a rusty bolt as he hissed out these murderous threats; but as his eye caught the squirming green silk rope as he swung round on his heel in his walk, he paused and muttered,
"That bit of stuff may be of use. I'll take it by way of precaution."
Hereupon he rapidly unrove the cord and coiled it away in the bosom of his shirt. Then looking at his watch, he said, "Ho! the time approaches, and here comes Pedillo."
Lighting a cigar, he left his dwelling for the last time; and, after pausing to hear a report from Pedillo that his orders had been executed and the vessel all ready for sea, and whispering a few precise directions in return, Captain Brand mounted up the steep face of the crag again, and accosted the signal-man at the station.
"Any thing in sight?"
"Nothing to the eastward, _capitano_; but it has been a little hazy here away to the southward since meridian, and I can hardly see through it."
"_Bueno_, my man! give me the glass. You can go on board the brigantine. I'll take a last look myself."
While the signal-man scrambled down the crag, Captain Brand rested the spy-glass on the trunk of the single cocoa-nut-tree, whose skeleton-like fingers of leaves rattled above his head like a gibbeted pirate in chains, and then he searched steadily along the hazy horizon. As he was about, however, to withdraw his eye from the tube, something--a mere dim speck--arrested his attention. Quickly dropping the glass, and as rapidly rubbing the large lens and carefully adjusting the joints, he raised it again, as a backwoodsman does his rifle with an Indian for a mark. For full five minutes the pirate stood as motionless as the crag beneath him, intently glaring through the tube at the speck in the distance. At last he let the glass fall at his side, and pulling out his watch with a jerk, he muttered to himself,
"It is a large and lofty ship; but, should she be a cruiser after me, she will find the bird flown and the nest empty. Ho, now for action!"
Springing down the precipitous declivity as he spoke, he paused a moment at a loophole of the vault beneath his dwelling, and puffing his cigar into a bright coal, he carefully twitched the match-rope which led to the train, opened the loose strands, and placed the fire to it. Waiting an instant till he saw the nitre sparkle as it ignited, he moved away with long, swinging strides toward the sheds. There, glancing through the now deserted halls the crew had occupied, where quantities of fagots, and kindling-wood, and barrels of pitch were standing, he continued on till he came to the quarters of the doctor. The doctor was standing at the open door on the thatched piazza, looking quietly at the brigantine, whose sails were loosed, and the vessel hanging by a sternfast, with her head just abreast the Tiger's Trap.
"Ah! _Monsieur le Docteur_, I have merely called to bid you a final adieu before I go on board; and as I have a few moments left, and a few words to say, suppose you walk with me toward the chapel. _Allons!_ there is a suspicious sail off there," waving his glass in the direction, "and I wish to take a good look at her."
"Doctor," continued Captain Brand, as they reached the little esplanade facing the graves and church, "you will have no one left here on our island save our dumb Babette, and the chances are rather remote for your getting away, without, perhaps, some of the West India fleet should happen to drop in here, which I do not think probable. I rely, however, upon your keeping your oath, even if they do come, and not betraying the secrets you are acquainted with."
The pirate said this in an off-hand, friendly way, as he had his glass leveled toward the sail he saw in the offing.
"Captain Brand," replied the doctor, "I was deceived in coming here, as you well know; but I shall religiously keep my oath for the twenty years, as I swore to do. After that, if we both live so long, my tongue and arm shall speak and strike."
The pirate stepped back a little as he shut up the joints of the spy-glass with a crash, and, with a scowl of hate and vengeance combined, he said, in a loud voice, while his cold eyes gleamed like a ray of sunlight on an iceberg,
"And I, too, keep my oaths; and, without waiting twenty years, I strike now!"
Even while the treacherous villain spoke, two swarthy, sinewy scoundrels crept stealthily from within the chapel, and, with the soft, slimy movements of serpents, as their leader uttered the last word, they sprang at the back of the doctor, and wound their coils around him, twining strong strands of raw-hide rope about his arms, legs, and body. Bound as in a frame of elastic steel, their victim was thrown, face downward, upon the sand.
"Be quick, Pedillo! the time is flying! Gomez, bring the corpse trestle from the chapel."
In a moment a wooden frame with legs, and stretched across with a bed of light wire, which had been used to carry the mortal remains of the pirates--and the poor women, too, beside them--to their last resting-places, was brought out from the little church. Then the bound victim was laid on it, face upward; again the hide thongs were passed in numerous plaits until the body was lashed firmly to the trestle.
"Place it on the edge of that rock there, with his head toward the cocoa-nut-tree. Take this silk rope, Gomez, and clove-hitch it well up the trunk. There, that will do. I myself will perform the last act of politeness."
Saying this, the pirate widened the noose of the cord, and, slipping it over the doctor's head, he placed the knot carefully under his left ear. The victim gave no groan or sigh, and his dark, luminous eyes were fixed on the blue sky above him in heaven.
"_Monsieur le Docteur_," said Captain Brand, as he hurriedly looked at his watch and raised his hat, "I have but one word of caution to give you: if you struggle you will have your neck broken before you are stung to death! Talk as much as you like; but, as Babette is a long way off, and hard of hearing, I doubt if she comes to your assistance! Adieu!"
The retreating figures went leaping toward the inlet, and, as they rushed through the sheds, applied a torch to the combustible material deposited there, and then sprang on toward the Tiger's Trap. A few minutes afterward the doctor turned his eyes in that direction, and saw the sails of the brigantine sheeted home and run up like magic; and, taking the last breath of the sea-breeze on her quarter, the sternfast was cast off, and she slipped easily out of the gorge-like channel. Still, as those dark stern eyes watched the receding hull of the "Centipede," a sudden jar shook the island, a heavy column of white smoke rose from below the crag like a water-spout, and, spreading out like a palm-tree, came down in a deluge of timber, stones, and dust, while sheets of vivid flame leaped out from the gloom, and an awful peal, followed by a heavy, booming roar, that shook the crag to its base, announced the ruin of the pirate's den. At the same time the red fires gleamed in fitful flashes from the sheds, and, rapidly making headway, all at once burst forth in wild conflagration, till the whole nest was wrapped in flames. The shock of the explosion and the fires killed the wind, and a lurid pall of smoke and cinders hung like a gloomy canopy over the island.