Chapter 22

HOLGATE'S LAST HAND

The first thought that passed through my mind was that we had lost our one hope of escape from Hurricane Island. Insensibly I had come to look on the _Sea Queen_ as the vehicle of our rescue, and there she was before my eyes adrift on a tide that was steadily drawing her seawards. There could be no doubt as to that, for, even as I gazed, she made perceptible way, and seemed to be footing it fast. I turned to Alix, who was by me, staring also.

"I will come back," I said rapidly. "I must go down."

"No, no," she said, detaining me.

"Dear, they will take no heed of me now. I am perfectly safe for the present. They are taken up with more important matters."

I squeezed her hands in both mine, turned and left her.

Holgate was some hundred yards in front of me, plunging heavily through the bushes. He called to mind some evil and monstrous beast of the forest that broke clumsily in wrath upon its enemy.

Down on the beach I could see that Pierce and some of the others, who had already arrived, were casting the boat from her moorings. I laboured after Holgate, and came out on the beach near him. He ran down to the water's edge and called aloud:

"Put back. Put back, damn you."

The boat was some fifty yards from land by now, and was awash in a broken current. Three men bent to the oars.

Holgate levelled his revolver and fired.

One of the men lay down grotesquely on his oar. He fired again, and one of the remaining two stood up, shook a fist towards the shore and, staggering backwards, capsized the boat in the surf. He must have sunk like lead with his wound, for he never rose to the surface; but the last man, who was Pierce, battled gallantly with the flood, and endeavoured to reach the boat, which was bottom upwards. In this, however, he failed, for the tide seemed to suck him away. The boat drifted outwards, and after a few ineffectual struggles, finding probably that his strength was failing him, Pierce struck out towards the shore. He landed a hundred yards or more away from Holgate. Between the two men were gathered in a bunch, irresolute and divided in counsels, the remaining mutineers.

For the moment I think I was so taken up with the situation that I did not consider my own case. No one had eyes for me in the fast-descending dusk, and behind the shelter of a bush I watched the course of that singular drama. Holgate had indifferently reloaded his revolver, and now stood holding it carelessly by his side.

"Gray, is that you? Come here," he called. But the knot of men did not move; and now Pierce was walking rapidly towards it. It opened to receive him, and swallowed him up again cautiously, as if there was safety in that circle against the arch-mutineer. Holgate strode leisurely towards them.

"I suppose you guess where we are?" he said, in his malevolent, fluent, wheezing tones. "You've dished us, Pierce, my man."

Pierce replied from the group with an oath, and there was an undercurrent of murmur, as if a consultation was in progress.

"Say, where's that damned little lawyer cuss?" asked a voice, that of an American, who was one of the hands. Holgate put one hand in his trousers' pocket.

"How should I know?" he said; "and what's that got to do with the situation?"

"It's your doing. You've put us in this hole. You've strung us up to-day in this blooming island," said Gray fiercely. "What did you shoot for? Haven't you any other use for your pop-gun?"

"Come out, Gray; come out, my man, and talk it over," said Holgate suavely. "You were always good at the gab. Step out in front, man," and he played with his revolver. But Gray did not budge.

I wondered why he was not shot there and then if they were in this temper, for it was plain that some of them were armed. But I suppose that they were overawed by the bearing of the man, and, lawless ruffians, as they were, were yet under the influence of some discipline. Holgate had known how to rule in his triumph, and the ghost of that authority was with him still in his defeat.

"Look here," called out Pierce after further consultation, "this is as good as a trial, this is. You're standing for your life, Mr. Holgate, and don't you forget it. What d'ye say, Bill? Speak up. Give 'im 'is counts."

"We accuse you of treachery and not behaving like a mate on ship about the treasure," sang out Gray in a loud, high monotone. "We accuse you, Mr. Holgate, of the murder of our two companions, Smith and Alabaster. We accuse you, furthermore, Mr. Holgate, of a conspiracy to cheat the company, us all being comrades."

"Now, Bill Gray, that's a very parsonical view of yours, isn't it?" said Holgate with a sneer. "By gum, you regularly hit me off, Gray. You're the man to see his way through a brick wall. I killed Smith and Alabaster, did I? Well, what's the odds? Here was this man, Pierce, who's frightened to face me in there with you, and his two pals, making for the _Sea Queen_ to rob you and me. Don't I know him and you, too? Where would we have been if I hadn't dropped 'em? Why, left, my good man, left."

"That's what we are now," said one of the mutineers, "regularly busted--busted and left. We're done."

"That's so," said Holgate suavely. "But at least Smith and Alabaster have paid their shot and lot too. And, by thunder, that skunk behind you shall do it too. Come out there, Pierce, sneak and dog, and take your gruel."

He did not raise his voice perceptibly, but it seemed to wither the mutineers, who stood about ten paces from him. He waddled towards them.

"Out of the way, men, and let me see him. Blind me, I'd sooner have taken a bug into my confidence than Pierce. He gets ahead of us with his long thin legs, and without so much as 'By your leave' swims out to sea to cop what belongs to you and me and all of us."

There was a murmur at this, and it was quite impossible to tell how the sympathies of the gang were going. But one called out again:

"Where's that damn Pye? Where's your spy?"

"So," says Holgate, "you are thinking of the doctor's story, are you? You fool, he was only playing for his life and the life of his best girl. Haven't you got the sense of a louse between you? Find Pye then, and screw it out of him. Thumbscrew him till he tells, and see how much he has to tell. It'll be worth your while, Garratt. Why, you fool, he's just a little clerk that was useful, and was going to get a tip for his pains. He wasn't standing in on our level. We came in on bed-rock."

There was a hoarse, discordant laugh.

"With the yacht gone, and us on a Godforsaken tea-tray in mid-ocean!" said a voice.

Upon that in the dwindling light a shot came from the group, and Holgate lifted his barrel deliberately.

"So, that's Pierce, by thunder, is it? Well, Johnny Pierce, you're a brave man, and I'd take off my hat to you if my hands were free. Stand aside there, men, and let's see Johnny Pierce's ugly mug. Now, then, divide, d'ye hear, divide!"

I never could determine whether Holgate in that moment realized that all was up, and the end was come, and had carried things through with a swagger, or whether he had a hope of escape. Nothing showed in his voice or in his manner save extreme resolution and contemptuous indifference. These men he had misled and cheated were to him no more than brutes of the field, to be despised and ridiculed and browbeaten. At his words, indeed, the old habit of obedience asserted itself and the knot fell apart; as it did I saw Pierce with his revolver up, but Holgate did not move. He fired carefully and Pierce uttered a curse. Then another weapon barked, and Holgate moved a pace forwards. He fired again, and a man dropped. Two or more shots rang out, and the arch-mutineer lifted his left hand slowly to his breast.

"Bully for you, Pierce," he said, and fired yet once more.

The knot now had dissolved, and Gray ran in the gathering gloom a little way up the beach. He halted, and raising his weapon, fired. It was abominable. It may have been execution, but it was horribly like murder. As Gray fired, Holgate turned and put his hand to his shoulder. Immediately he let his last barrel go.

"Ha! That's done you, Pierce," he wheezed out. "By heavens, I thought I'd do for you!"

Crack! went Gray's pistol again from his rear, and he swung round; his weapon dropped, and he began to walk up the beach steadily towards me. In the blue gloom I could see his eyes stolidly black and furtive, and I could hear him puffing. He came within ten paces of me, and then stood still, and coughed in a sickening, inhuman way. Then he dropped and rolled heavily upon his back.

I had witnessed enough. Heaven knows we had no reason to show mercy to that criminal, but that last hopeless struggle against odds had enlisted some sympathy, and I had a feeling of nausea at the sight of that collapse. He must have fallen riddled with bullets. He had played for high stakes, had sacrificed many innocent lives, and had died the death of a dog. And there he would rest and rot in that remote and desert island.

I stole from my bush and crept upwards through the darkness. I had not gone a hundred yards before my ears were caught by a rustling on my left. Had I put up some animal? I came to a pause, and then there was a swift rush, and a man's figure broke through the undergrowth and disappeared across the slope of the hill. It was near dark, but I thought in that instant I recognised it as the figure of the little lawyer's clerk.

When I reached the cavern I found no sign of any one, and I was wondering what could have become of my companions when I heard a voice calling low through the gloaming:

"Dr. Phillimore!"

It was Alix. I sprang to her side and took her hands. Then I learnt that Legrand had decided, as a counsel of prudence, to occupy the second cavern on the northern slope, which he considered more private than that which we had found first.

"And you came back to warn me?" I asked in a low voice.

"No; I waited," said she as low. "I was afraid, although you told me.... Ah, but you have never told me wrong yet! I believe you implicitly."

"Princess," I said with emotion.

"No, no," she whispered. "Not any more ... never any more."

"Alix," I whispered low, and I held her closer. She gave a little cry.

"What is it?" I asked anxiously.

For answer her head lay quiet on my shoulder, and the stars looked down upon a pale sweet face. She had fainted. Now the hand which clasped her arm felt warm and wet, and I shifted it hastily and bent down to her. It was blood. She was wounded. Tenderly I bound my handkerchief about the arm and waited in distress for her to revive. If we had only some of the mutineers' brandy! But presently she opened her eyes.

"Dearest ... dearest," she murmured faintly.

"You are wounded, darling," I said. "Oh, why did you not tell me?"

"It was the first shot," she said in a drowsy voice. "When--when I had my arm about you."

I kissed that fair white arm, and then for the first time I kissed her lips.

We reached Legrand's cave after Alix had rested, and I related the tragedy that had passed under my eyes on the beach below. Legrand listened silently, and then:

"He was a black scoundrel. He died as he should," he said shortly, and said no more.

Wearied with our exertions, and exhausted by the anxieties of the day, we gradually sank to sleep, and as I passed off Alix's hand lay in mine. She slept sweetly, for all the profound miseries of those past days.

I awoke to the sound of a bird that twittered in the bushes, and, emerging from the cavern, looked around. The sun was bright on the water, the foam sparkled, and the blue tossed and danced as if Nature were revisiting happily the scene of pleasant memories. It seemed as if those deeds of the previous night, that long fight against fate, those dismal forebodings, the tragedy of the Prince, were all separated from us by a gulf of years. It was almost impossible to conceive of them as belonging to our immediate precedent past and as colouring our present and our future. And as my gaze swept the horizon for the orient towards the west it landed upon nothing less than the _Sea Queen_!

I could have rubbed my eyes, and I started in amazement. My heart beat heavily. But it was true. There rode the yacht in the offing, idly swinging and plunging on the tide and clearly under no man's control. She must have drifted in upon Hurricane Island again through the stress of some backward tide, and here she bobbed on the broken water safe from the eyes of the mutineers. As soon as I had recovered from the shock of surprise, I reentered the cavern and woke Legrand, and in less than five minutes all of us were outside our shelter and gazing at the welcome sight.

"We have the boat hidden," said Legrand. "We must work our way back to it, and the sooner the better."

"Too much risk," said I. "I know a better way. At the tail of the island we may be seen and pursued. There are boats aboard, and she's not more than three hundred yards out."

"What, swim?" he asked, and looked rueful. He was one of the many sailors I have known who had not that useful art.

I nodded. "It won't take me long."

As I passed, Alix caught my hand. She said nothing, but her eyes devoured me and her bosom heaved. I smiled.

"My Princess!" I whispered, and her soul was in her look.

"I can't see a sign of any one on board," said Legrand, with his hand over his eyes.

"Mademoiselle would not be awake yet. It can't be later than five," said Lane, who was much better to-day.

"I make it 5:30," said Legrand. "We have some time to ourselves if we have luck. After last night those fiends will sleep well and with easy consciences." He spoke grimly.

"Have everything ready," I called as I left. "We must not lose a chance or hazard anything."

"What do _you_ think?" said Lane, in his old cheerful manner.

I quickly descended to the beach, threw off my coat, waistcoat, and boots, and tightened my belt. Then I waded into the sea. It was cold, and, when I first entered, struck a chill into me. But presently, as I walked out into the deepening waters, with the sparkling reflection of the sun in my eyes from a thousand facets of ripples, I began to grow warm. I reached water waist-high, and next moment I was swimming.

The tide sucked at me in a strong current, and soon, I perceived, would carry me across the _Sea Queen's_ bows unless I made a struggle. The water was racing under me, and I felt that my strength was as nothing compared with it. I was thrown this way and that as the flood moved. My passage had been taken incredibly quick, and now I was conscious that I was past the level of the yacht, and I turned and battled back. So far as I could see, I made no impression on the space that separated me from her, and I began to despair of reaching the yacht. In my mind I revolved the possibility of going with the flood and trusting to work ashore at the tail of the island. If that were not practicable, I was lost, for I should be blown out to the open sea.

Just as these desperate reflections crossed my mind, the _Sea Queen's_ stern, off which I was struggling, backed. She came round to the wind and jammed, so that the flutter of canvas which she still carried cracked above the voice of the seas. Then her nose swung right round upon me, with the bubble under her cutwater. It was almost as if she had sighted a doomed wretch and was come to his assistance. Her broadside now broke the tide for me, and I began to see that I was creeping up to her, and, thus encouraged, step by step made my way until at last I reached her, and by the aid of a trailing sheet got aboard. It had been half an hour since I left the island.

Once aboard, I waved across the intervening stretch of sea to my friends, and looked about me. There was no sign or sound of life anywhere on the yacht. She swung noisily, with creaks and groans, to the pulse of the tide, but there was no witness to human presence there. Mademoiselle immediately was in my thoughts, and I found my way to the state-rooms to reassure her, if she should be awake. They were as we had left them, save that every cabin had been ransacked and every box turned inside out. The cabins were empty, and so was the _boudoir_. Clearly, Mademoiselle Trebizond was not there. I went down into the saloon, but nothing rewarded me there; and afterwards I turned along the passage that led to the officers' quarters, and farther on, the steward's room. Here, too, was my own surgery, and instinctively I stopped when I reached it. The door stood ajar. No doubt, I thought, like every other place, it had suffered the ravages of the mutineers. I opened it wide, and started back, for there on the floor, a bottle in her hand, and her features still and tragic, lay Yvonne Trebizond!

I stooped to her, but I knew it was useless even without glancing at the bottle she held. She had sought death in the despair of her loneliness. The _Sea Queen_ had carried out upon the face of the dark waters the previous evening an unhappy woman to a fate which she could not face. She had chosen Death to that terrible solitude on the wilderness of the ocean. I lifted her gently, and carried her to one of the cabins, disposing the body on a bunk. Then I returned to the deck, for I had work to do that pressed. I experienced no difficulty in loosing one of the remaining boats, and, dropping into her, I began to row towards the island.

Legrand had the party at the water's edge, and they were in the boat in a very brief space of time. We shoved off, and now Legrand and Ellison had oars in addition to myself, so that, what with that and the tide, we made good progress. We had not, however, got more than halfway to the yacht when Legrand paused on his oars and I saw his face directed along the beach. I followed his glance, and saw, to my astonishment, a boat bobbing off the spit of the island.

"It's our boat!" said I.

"Yes," he said, "the ruffians are up and about. Give way, give way!"

We bent to the oars, but as we did so a number of figures appeared round the bend of the land where we had passed our first night. Shouts reached us. The figure in the boat was working his oars with frantic haste, and now Legrand called out suddenly,

"Pye!"

Pye it was, and it was also apparent now that he was aiming for us, and that he was striving to get away from the mutineers. He stood out to sea, and pulled obliquely towards the yacht. Obviously, he was better content to trust himself to our mercies than to the ruffians with whom he had consorted. He was a coward, I knew, and I remembered then his white face and his terror at the time of the first onslaught. I remembered, too, how vaguely, how timidly and how ineffectually he had endeavoured to warn me of the coming massacre. He was a miserable cur; he had been largely responsible for the bloody voyage; but I could not help feeling some pity for him. I hung on my oars.

"Shall we pick him up?" I asked.

Legrand's only answer was an oath. He had forgotten the presence of Alix, I think. His eyes blazed above his red cheeks.

"Let him drown," he said.

By the time we reached the _Sea Queen_, some of the mutineers, who had started running when they saw us, had got to the water's edge opposite to us, and one or two of them plunged in. In the distance, the others were pursuing Pye and his boat.

Legrand, meanwhile, had taken the wheel, and Ellison set about the sails. I did what I could to help, and it was not many minutes ere we had the topsails going. Under that pressure the yacht began to walk slowly. Seeing this, the mutineers on the shore raised a howl, and two more jumped in to join the swimmers, who were now halfway to us. Legrand cried out an order, and Ellison had the jib-sail set, and the _Sea Queen_ quickened her pace under the brisk breeze. The swimming mutineers dropped behind. There must have been half a dozen of them in the water, and now we saw that they had given up the attempt to reach us in that way and had fallen back on a new idea. They turned aside to intercept Pye.

The little lawyer's clerk was paddling for life, and knew it, but he made no way. The yacht moved faster, and he sent up to heaven a dreadful scream that tingled in my ears. I made a step towards Legrand, but he merely gave one glance backward towards the boat and then fixed his gaze on the wide horizon of interminable sea, as though he thus turned his back forever on Hurricane Island and all there. He pulled the spokes of the wheel, and the _Sea Queen_, breasting the foam-heads, began to leap. We were moving at a brisk pace.

I looked back to the unhappy man. He had fallen away now, but still laboured at his oars. The swimmers could not have been more than twenty yards from him. Just then Alix's voice was low with agitation in my ears.

"Yvonne? Where is Yvonne?"

I turned to her and took her hand. "She will need no further care of yours, sweetheart," I said. "She has played her last tragedy--a tragedy she thought destined for a comedy."

Alix, looking at me, sighed, and ere she could say more Lane intervened in huge excitement.

"Good heavens, Phillimore! the treasure's all in my safes again. By crikey, is it all a dream?"

"Yes," I answered, looking at Alix, "all a bad nightmare."

I looked away across the sea, for somehow I could not help it.

"What are you looking at?" she asked. "They cannot catch us, can they?"

The foremost mutineers had reached the boat and were climbing aboard. The little clerk, white and gasping, raised his oar and struck at them with screams of terror, striking and screaming again.

"Hush! don't look, darling," said I, and I put my hands before her eyes. "It is the judgment of God."

She shuddered. Pye's shrieks rang in my ear; I glanced off the taffrail and saw that the mutineers had possession of the boat. They were busy with the oars. I could see no one else. The boat was headed towards us.

Legrand cast a glance of indifference backwards.

"If you care to hold the wheel, Phillimore, we can rig that other sail," he said.

I took the wheel. Alix was by my side, and the breeze sang in the sheets.

"We're going home, dear heart," I whispered.

She moved closer to me, shuddered and sighed, and I think the sigh was a sigh of contentment.

The _Sea Queen_ dipped her nose and broke into a sharper pace. She was going home!

THE END

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The one book of this gifted author which is best remembered, and which will be read with pleasure for many years to come, is "Captain Brand," who, as the author states on his title page, was a "pirate of eminence in the West Indies." As a sea story pure and simple, "Captain Brand" has never been excelled, and as a story of piratical life, told without the usual embellishments of blood and thunder, it has no equal.

NICK OF THE WOODS. A story of the Early Settlers of Kentucky. By Robert Montgomery Bird. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.

This most popular novel and thrilling story of early frontier life in Kentucky was originally published in the year 1837. The novel, long out of print, had in its day a phenomenal sale, for its realistic presentation of Indian and frontier life in the early days of settlement in the South, narrated in the tale with all the art of a practiced writer. A very charming love romance runs through the story. This new and tasteful edition of "Nick of the Woods" will be certain to make many new admirers for this enchanting story from Dr. Bird's clever and versatile pen.

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For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers, A. L. BURT COMPANY, 52-58 Duane St., New York.

Good Fiction Worth Reading.

A series of romances containing several of the old favorites in the field of historical fiction, replete with powerful romances of love and diplomacy that excel in thrilling and absorbing interest.

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GUY FAWKES. A Romance of the Gunpowder Treason. By Wm. Harrison Ainsworth. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by George Cruikshank. Price, $1.00.

The "Gunpowder Plot" was a modest attempt to blow up Parliament, the King and his Counsellors. James of Scotland, then King of England, was weak-minded and extravagant. He hit upon the efficient scheme of extorting money from the people by imposing taxes on the Catholics. In their natural resentment to this extortion, a handful of bold spirits concluded to overthrow the government. Finally the plotters were arrested, and the King put to torture Guy Fawkes and the other prisoners with royal vigor. A very intense love story runs through the entire romance. THE SPIRIT OF THE BORDER. A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley. By Zane Grey. Cloth. 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.

A book rather out of the ordinary is this "Spirit of the Border." The main thread of the story has to do with the work of the Moravian missionaries in the Ohio Valley. Incidentally the reader is given details of the frontier life of those hardy pioneers who broke the wilderness for the planting of this great nation. Chief among these, as a matter of course, is Lewis Wetzel, one of the most peculiar, and at the same time the most admirable of all the brave men who spent their lives battling with the savage foe, that others might dwell in comparative security.

Details of the establishment and destruction of the Moravian "Village of Peace" are given at some length, and with minute description. The efforts to Christianize the Indians are described as they never have been before, and the author has depicted the characters of the leaders of the several Indian tribes with great care, which of itself will be of interest to the student.

By no means least among the charms of the story are the vivid word-pictures of the thrilling adventures, and the intense paintings of the beauties of nature, as seen in the almost unbroken forests.

It is the spirit of the frontier which is described, and one can by it, perhaps, the better understand why men, and women, too, willingly braved every privation and danger that the westward progress of the star of empire might be the more certain and rapid. A love story, simple and tender, runs through the book.

RICHELIEU. A tale of France in the reign of King Louis XIII. By G. P. R. James. Cloth, 12mo. with four illustrations by J. Watson Davis. Price, $1.00.

In 1829 Mr. James published his first romance, "Richelieu," and was recognized at once as one of the masters of the craft.

In this book he laid the story during those later days of the great cardinal's life, when his power was beginning to wane, but while it was yet sufficiently strong to permit now and then of volcanic outbursts which overwhelmed foes and carried friends to the topmost wave of prosperity. One of the most striking portions of the story is that of Cinq Mar's conspiracy; the method of conducting criminal cases, and the political trickery resorted to by royal favorites, affording a better insight into the statecraft of that day than can be had even by an exhaustive study of history. It is a powerful romance of love and diplomacy, and in point of thrilling and absorbing interest has never been excelled.

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For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publishers, A. L. BURT COMPANY, 52-58 Duane St., New York.