Part 16

But when we came up there were five more to shoot, and instant and utter demoralization fell upon the attacking force. Shrieks of surrender in half a dozen different languages rent the still night air, and in a mad endeavor to turn the boat an oar was lost overboard.

If our situation had not been so critically desperate, there was enough of the comic-opera element in the frantic attempt to retreat to have brought down the house. As it was, Van Dyck stopped the firing and shouted to the mutineers to come ashore and surrender. Some of the men were evidently sick of their bargain and wanted to quit, but the squeaky cries of the chief robber dominated the tumult, and under a renewal of our bombardment the launch was got around and headed back to the yacht with much splashing and hard swearing. Also, when the goal of safety was reached, we could make out dimly that the accommodation ladder was let down, and that two or three members of the boat's crew had to be helped aboard.

A few minutes after this, we had audible proof of the correctness of Van Dyck's guess about the long-boat and the ingenious ruse to draw us off. The gasoline craft was coming back, as we could determine by the increasing loudness of its exhaust. Following its return to the yacht we were given another little breathing spell, and John Grey's quality of professional curiosity had an opportunity to show itself again.

"I can't understand for the life of me why these fellows should come back here and fight us so desperately for a chance to get ashore," he protested. "You can't make me believe that they're doing it on the strength of a silly yarn that is three hundred years old."

"What do you think about it, Captain 'Lige?" said Bonteck, ungenerously handing the tangle over to Goff.

"I wouldn't put it a mite apast 'em," was the skipper's guarded reply. "There was a good deal o' talk among the men about buried gold-mines and such on the way down from New Orleans. I ain't no gre't hand at the foreign lingoes, myself, but I picked up a word or two here and there."

"I don't more than half believe it, just the same," Grey persisted. "I tell you, these fellows are not fighting for the bare chance of proving or disproving that old story about the _Santa Lucia's_ buried treasure. They've got inside information of some sort, and I'll bet on it."

"Maybe they have," said Goff, in a tone which said plainly that the matter was one not worth worrying about.

Grey got upon his feet.

"We have six of these pirates back here in the woods: why can't we make them talk and tell us what they are trying to do?"

At this, Van Dyck took a hand.

"They would lie about it, as a matter of course," he interjected. "Besides, their particular object doesn't make any vital difference to us. They are here, and our present business is to see to it that they don't get away again--with the yacht."

Grey sat down again, grumbling.

"I don't see that we are getting ahead very fast," he complained. "What in Sam Hill do you suppose they're waiting for now?"

The answer to Grey's impatient query was at that moment coming around the _Andromeda's_ stern. It was the disabled electric launch again this time with only one man in it, and he was sculling it with an oar over the stern, slowly working his way toward the gap in the reef. When it came a bit nearer we could see that the loom of a broken oar had been rigged as a mast in the bow, with a white flag of some sort dangling from it.

"A parley," I said; and Goff grunted acquiescence. But Jerry Dupuyster worked the lever of his rifle to reload.

"Don't shoot, Jerry," Bonteck cautioned in low tones; whereat the emancipated idler chuckled.

"Couldn't if I wanted to, by Jove; the bally cartridges are all gone, what?"

The huge lump of a man in the stern of the launch stopped sculling when he was within easy calling distance of the shore, and the boat lost way.

"Ahoy ze island!" he hailed, in a voice ridiculously out of proportion to his barrel-girthed bigness.

"Get to work with that oar and come ashore!" was Van Dyck's brusque command, to which he added: "We've got you covered."

"_Non, non!_ it ees ze flag of ze truce!" shrilled the voice. And then the fat cook handed out an argument that was much more binding: "Ve haf ze enchineers in ze hold shut up, and eef you shoot wiz ze gon, zey will be keel!"

"Talk it out, then," said Van Dyck. "What do you want?"

"Ve make ze proposal--w'at you call ze proposition. It ees zat you vill all go to ze ozzer end of zis island, _immédiatement_. W'en you do zat, ve leave you ze long-boat to go 'way, w'erever you like to go. W'at you do wiz Lequat and hees mens?"

"Lequat and his men are where you won't find them in a hurry," was Bonteck's answer. "As to your demand that we go away and let you steal the yacht again, there's nothing doing."

"_Sacré bleu!_ It ees ze--w'at you call heem?--ze ooltimatum. W'en ees come daylight, ve put ze leetle cannon on ze long boat and keel all--_oui_!"

At this savage pronouncement we held a whispered consultation, the fat pirate sitting back in the stern sheets of the launch and calmly lighting a cigarette. Could we, dare we, take the risk of a daylight bombardment, even though the single piece of artillery were only the yacht's little brass muzzle-loading signal piece, with such iron scraps as the mutineers might be able to find or manufacture for the missiles? It was a dubious question. Though our island was nearly if not quite a mile in length, its greatest width did not exceed four or five hundred yards, and the little gun would easily put it under a cross-fire from either side.

"Have they powder?" I asked of Goff.

"Tain't likely they haven't--with them a-handlin' all that war stuff from the Isle o' Pines."

"But nothing that would answer for grape-shot?"

"Pots and kittles in the galley, and a hammer to smash 'em with," said the old Gloucesterman. "That's good enough, I cal'late."

"Speak up, all of you," said Van Dyck. "Shall I try to drive a bargain with him for the long-boat? If he gives us enough gasoline, we might be able to make Willemstadt, on the island of Curaçao--with fair weather and a smooth sea. That is the nearest inhabited land, but it is something over a hundred-and-fifty-mile run."

Grey was the first to "speak up."

"I have more at stake than any of you," he said, thereby showing that the married lover may be stone blind to all things extraneous to his own particular and private little Eden. "Just the same, I say, fight it out."

"Here, too," echoed Billy Grisdale; and Jerry Dupuyster also came up promptly in his carefully acquired accent: "Ow, I say! we cawn't knuckle down to a lot of bally cooks and sailormen, what?"

"And you, Preble?" queried Van Dyck, turning to me.

I refused to vote, merely saying: "You know I'm with you, either way."

It was Goff's turn, but instead of taking it, he leaned over to whisper hoarsely: "Make him talk some, Mr. Van Dyck; tell him to work his proposition off ag'in, and say it slow. That boat's a-driftin' in, and if it comes a leetle mite nearer----"

Van Dyck stood up and called to the maker of ultimatums.

"State your proposal again, and let us have it in detail. Will you leave a supply of gasoline in the long-boat? Will you give us provisions, and a compass and sextant?"

The fat _chef_ flung his cigarette away and we heard the little hiss of the spark as the water quenched it.

"Ze proposal ees zis: zat you take your fran's and go back to ze ladees. Again I h-ask you w'at you done wiz Monsieur Lequat and hees men?"

"They are here."

"_Bien!_ You vill all go back to ze camp and ze ladees. You vill leave ze prisonaire; _aussi_, you will leave ze Captain Goff wiz ze rope tie on hees hand and on hees feets. To-morrow you come back on zis place, and you vill find ze longboat wiz ze gasoline, ze provisionments, _et_ ze compass _et_ ze sextant, to make ze voyage to La Guaira, to Curaçao, to anyw'ere you like to gone. _Voila!_ dat ees all."

Again we took hasty counsel among ourselves, and whatever design Goff had been nursing in asking Van Dyck to prolong the parley was frustrated by another turn of the launch's drift. The boat was now edging farther out from the beach. One and all we were for refusing the detailed terms point blank, if for no other reason than that we were required to leave one of our number bound and at the mercy of the mutineers; one and all, I say, but Goff himself said nothing.

"We can't consider the proposal in its entirety for a minute," said John Grey, voicing the sentiments of at least five of us. But now Goff cut in.

"You're my owner, Mr. Van Dyck: if I could have a little over-haulin' of things with you----"

Van Dyck promptly went aside with the skipper. They didn't go so far but what we could hear their voices--though not the words--and Goff seemed to be doing all the talking, and to be doing it very earnestly. But when they came back, as they did very shortly, it was Bonteck who told us the outcome.

"Captain Goff has explained to me that the mutineers are obliged to make the terms include his surrender. Lequat is only a rule-of-thumb navigator, and if they don't have Goff they are likely to make a mess of themselves and of the yacht. For the sake of those whom we must consider first of all--the women--he is willing to take his chance again as a prisoner. If I thought there was any doubt about this fat devil carrying out his threat to bombard the island, I'd say 'No,' and fight for it. But we must remember that he can hardly fail to get some of us with the gun, or, if he shouldn't do that, he can keep us away from our water supply until we all die of thirst."

Grey raised the only question that seemed to be worth considering.

"We shall have only this scoundrel's word for it that the long-boat and provisions will be left for us," he objected.

Van Dyck put the suggestion aside hastily; rather too hastily, I fancied.

"We are obliged to take some chances, of course. Goff, here, will insist upon the fulfilment of the treaty terms. If they are not fulfilled to the letter, he will put the _Andromeda_ on the reef and take the consequences." Then he called once more to the man in the boat: "One word with you before we close this deal. This is piracy on the high seas. I suppose you know what that means when you are caught--as you will be, sooner or later?"

We could see a big arm waving in airy bravado.

"Eet is not'ing, Monsieur Van Dyck. I blow it away--_pouf!_ In Santa Cruz you vill h-ask ze gr-r-eat liberador w'at he shall tell you about 'Gustave Le Gros.' W'en you shall h-ask heem zat, you shall know it ees not'ing."

"All right," Bonteck returned. "We'll fall back and leave the prisoners. Captain Goff will be with them, and he will surrender when you come ashore. But he will not be bound, and he will be armed, so you can govern yourself accordingly."

The fat man waved an arm again and took up his sculling oar, raising no objection to the single modification of the ultimatum--that relating to the way Goff should be left. We waited until we saw the disabled launch creep out through the gash in the reef. Then we fell back upon the professor, who was still reading quietly by the miserable light of the ship's lantern.

In a few words we explained the new situation, and the mild-eyed rider of an engrossing hobby got up and carefully dusted his trousers.

"You gentlemen were on the ground, and you doubtless knew what was best to be done," he said in gentle resignation. "Shall we go back to the ladies?"

We left Elijah Goff to watch over the trussed-up figures in the little open glade and set out upon our retreat, taking the northern beach for our route. Just before we came opposite the camp at the farther end of the island, we heard the renewed sputterings and poppings of the gasoline engine in the long-boat. The amateur pirates were landing, this time without let or hindrance.

XVII

CAPTAIN ELIJAH SCORES

REACHING the camp under the palms we found a "state of affairs," as Conetta phrased it. The small fire had been kindled--not for any needed warmth, to be sure, but solely for the heartening effect of it, I imagined--and the women were huddled about it in various attitudes of more or less hysterical suspense, for which there was undeniably sufficient excuse, heaven knows.

There were sobs and gaspings of relief when we came in with our original number undiminished; and I let the others answer the inevitable outburst of eager and anxious questions and drew Conetta out of the fire circle to tell her briefly what had transpired, and what we had failed to do.

"And those horrid men are actually on the island with us now--at this very moment?" she breathed, the slate-blue eyes dilating. "What are they here for? What are they doing?"

"They have come to get the boat-load that we captured; the six that Goff brought ashore," I evaded, still trying to keep Bonteck's foolish secret intact.

"Then they will go away again?"

"That is one comfort; and very soon, I should say."

"But I don't understand. If they are not going to take us in the _Andromeda_, why have they come back to the island?"

I hated to go on prevaricating to her, but until Bonteck should give me leave, I was not at liberty to tell her the whole truth.

"Suppose we give them the credit of being at least partly human," I suggested. "Possibly they couldn't find it in their hearts to let us stay here and famish slowly. You mustn't forget that they've promised to leave us the long-boat and some eatables."

I could see well enough that she wasn't satisfied with that answer. She was far too clear-headed to take any such niggardly part for the whole.

"You're not making it very plausible," she said. "How far is it to where we're going in the long-boat?"

"Oh, it's quite some little distance," I replied, as easily as I could. "But with the sea as calm as it is now----"

"It may not stay calm," she broke in; and then: "You say Captain Elijah was with you. Where is he now?"

"He--er--he had to let himself be taken again, you know. The pirates insisted upon that. They have no real navigator in their outfit. That is probably the reason why they didn't put him ashore with us in the beginning."

"Then Bonteck was right? Captain Elijah wasn't one of them?"

"No, indeed. I'm frank to say I did him an injustice. He was overpowered and made a prisoner, along with Haskell and Quinby and the other Americans."

"But why did that first six that you had the fight with bring the captain ashore with them?"

Again I had to evade. "Goff didn't tell us that."

She was silent for a moment. Then I got it hot and heavy.

"Dick Preble, do you mean to stand there with a face like a Hindoo idol and tell me that six of you made a bargain with that wretched French cook to give old Uncle Elijah up?"

"It was Goff's own proposal," I hastened to say, "and he insisted upon it--wouldn't have it any other way. Let us hope that he knew what he was doing--that he has some plan that may turn out better for us than a voyage in the long-boat." Then I switched forcibly, endeavoring to drag the talk away from the vicinity of Bonteck's secret. Thus far it had been kept hidden through all the various vicissitudes, and I didn't intend to be the first to betray it. "Goff's play was heroic, and all that, but not a bit more so than Jerry Dupuyster's swim out to the yacht. I'm taking back all the insulting things I've been saying about that young man, Conetta, dear. In spite of the frills and the idleness and the English apings, he is a man, a grown man, and altogether worthy of a good woman's love and respect. Now I've said it and I feel better."

She looked up quickly, with that pert little cocking of her head that I had always loved.

"Worthy of _my_ love and respect, do you mean?"

I bowed. "Yes; that is what I mean."

"And you want me to marry him?" It was a dreadful thing for her to ask at such a time and in such a place, with the others almost within arm's-reach. But they were all talking at once, and nobody was paying much attention to anybody else.

"You are promised," I reminded her; "and if you can forgive him for chasing around after another woman----"

"Hush!" she commanded, with a sudden retreat into the arms of discreetness. "They will hear you and say things about you--behind your back. What are we to do now--just lie down and go calmly to sleep, forgetting all about these horrid pirates at the other end of our island? I can't quite see us doing that. Can you?"

It was just here that Bonteck cut in, saving me the necessity of answering.

"When you are quite through making Dick jump the hurdles for you," he said to Conetta; and then he explained. We were not to take the mutineers wholly at their word regarding the implied promise not to molest us. The six of us who had been on the firing front were to do picket duty while the others tried to get a little sleep. The professor and Billy were to take the north beach, Jerry Dupuyster and Grey the south, and Bonteck and I were to vibrate between the two beaches, keeping in touch with the shoreward couples on either hand, thus maintaining a guard line all across the island.

It was not until after this rather elaborate picketing plan had been put in train, and Van Dyck and I were cautiously feeling our way toward the agreed-upon frontier half-way down the island, that I ventured to find fault.

"I don't know why you should make six of us unhappy when one or two would be enough," I complained. "You know well enough that our fat cook is asking nothing but to be let alone until he can make off with the loot. He's not going to trouble us any more."

His reply was a cryptic generality.

"I am hoping we are not entirely through with the fat cook, yet, Dick; in fact, I'm almost certain we're not."

"What's gnawing at you now?" I asked sourly.

"Just a suggestion," he answered half-absently, I thought. "We have something at our end of the island that is much more valuable--and desirable--than anything the pirates will find where they are digging now."

The way in which he said it, as much as the thing itself, made my blood run cold.

"The women, you mean?"

"It's only a suggestion," he hastened to say; "a suggestion based upon a name. Let's forget it, if we can."

We had groped our way for another hundred yards before I said: "It's a beautiful muddle! They won't find _your_ gold--the whereabouts of which seems to be a lot more mythical than any of the old Spanish sea tales--and they _will_ find the tidy little fortune we turned up for Madeleine."

"Of course; they'll be sure to find that," he agreed, still speaking half-absently.

"You talk as if you didn't care," I snapped. "Is Madeleine's dilemma any less sharp pointed now than it was when you cooked up this romantic scheme of yours for helping her?"

"You shouldn't hit a man when he's down, Dick," he replied soberly. "You know how I was planning to play the god-in-the-car to this little bunch of people, and what a chaotic, heart-breaking mess I've made of it. With all sorts of horrors staring us in the face, you can't blame me if I go batty now and then. You'd do it yourself if you were staggering under my load. I'm to blame for all this, Dick; I, and nobody else."

It doesn't do any particular good to rub salt into a wound--even a foolish wound. So I contented myself with asking a sort of routine question:

"Does Madeleine know how she is being robbed?"

"She does. I was obliged to tell her that much."

"How did she take it?"

"Like the angel that she is, Dick. She says the gold doesn't belong to her, any more than it does to anybody else who might dig it up; and that, anyway, it doesn't matter when there are so many more important things at stake."

"She is quite right about that," I agreed. "With a chancy voyage in an open boat ahead of us----"

"We'll never make that voyage, Dick," he said solemnly. "I think you know that as well as I do."

"Why won't we?"

"Because we are never going to be given the chance. You are not confiding enough to believe that this fat devil is going to keep his promise, to us, are you?"

"But, good heavens--you're keeping our promise to him, aren't you?" I burst out.

"To the letter--exactly and precisely to the letter," was his calm reply. "You heard what the Frenchman asked, and what I agreed to. He made three conditions; we were to go back to our camp; he was to be permitted to land in peace; and Goff was to be given up. We have kept faith in all three particulars. But he isn't meaning to keep faith with us at all."

"You mean that he won't leave us the boat?" I gasped.

"Not on your life. Goff told me we couldn't put the slightest dependence in anything he might say; and if I had been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt over Goff's warning, his own boasting would have turned the scale against him. Did you remark what he said, just as he was leaving?--about Santa Cruz and the liberator?"

I don't know why the fat man's boast hadn't made the proper impression upon me when he shrilled it out at us, or why I had failed to recall the name he had given as that of a Nicaraguan bandit whose cruelty and rapacity had long been a byword in the Central American republics. There must have been a blind spot in my memory at the moment, for the name and ill fame of Gustave the Fat were known even in distant Venezuela.

"That fiend!" I choked. And then: "You never shipped Gustave Le Gros in New York as cook on the _Andromeda_!"

"Oh, no. We shipped the real Bassinette, doubtless. Where and how the change was made--unless our repair stop at Gracias á Dios gave them their chance--I don't know."

"Wait a minute," said I. "Isn't it occurring to you now that the Gracias á Dios stop might have been prearranged? Haskell couldn't account for that propeller shaft running dry, and neither could I, after I had examined it. It had every appearance of having been tampered with; sand or some other abrasive put into it. If such a thing were done, and timed so that we'd have to put in at Gracias----"

"Sure!" he replied. "And the gold--my gold--was probably the main-spring of the whole plot. The secret of it must have leaked out some way in New York, and it was handed on to this bandit bunch; with Lequat to trail us, first to Havana, and afterwards to New Orleans. But that's all ancient history now. Our original job is still before us, and that is not to let them get away with the yacht and leave us as we were."

We had reached the appointed picket line, and short detours to right and left put us in touch with Dupuyster and Grey on the south beach and Sanford and Billy Grisdale on the north. Grey had scouted ahead a little way, and he told us that the long-boat and the disabled electric launch were lying at the beach at the place which had been our late battle-ground, with two men guarding them. And Grisdale and the professor had a similar report to make concerning the mutineers' vigilance. Billy had also made a forward reconnaissance, and he had seen two sentries pacing back and forth on the sands in the little indentation which we had named "Spaniards' Bay."

Van Dyck made no comment until after we had gone back to our mid-island post in the wood. Then he said abruptly: "How long do you think it will take them to dig up those gold bars and carry them down to the boat, Dick?"

"Why, I don't know; with the number of men they've probably got on the job it oughtn't to take more than half an hour or so," I returned.

"Thirty minutes; it's short--frightfully short," he said, as if he were thinking aloud. Then; "It's this suspense that takes the heart out of a man."

It seemed a little odd that he should lament the shortness of the time in one breath, and in the next give the impression that he wished it were shorter.

"What difference does their speed or slowness make to us?" I asked.