Chapter Nineteen.
Doomed to die.
The story told by little Lucille relative to the first appearance of the Malays was so graphic and accurate up to the point of Gaunt’s capture, that little or no addition is needed to complete it. The shell-gatherers had been most successful in their quest, and returning to Fay Island laden with their delicate and beautiful spoils, were about half-way across the stream—which, it will be remembered, was of considerable width at the point where they would have to cross—when the proa suddenly hove in sight round a bend of the channel. There was only one possible explanation of the reason why Gaunt had not seen her in ample time to avoid capture, and that was that whilst he had been busy with the children on the eastern beach, the proa must have been approaching from the westward, which would cause her to be hidden from view by the intervening high land. By what means, however, her crew had discovered the entrance to the harbour must remain a mystery; probably it was the result of pure accident, for—as has already been mentioned—it was so artfully concealed that even Gaunt himself, when voyaging to and fro in the raft during the earlier period of his sojourn upon the island, had upon more than one occasion been puzzled to find it.
Be this as it may, the moment of the proa’s arrival in the river was a most unfortunate one for the occupants of the punt, who were seen and chased by the Malays the moment that their vessel rounded the point. Gaunt at once saw that escape for himself as well as for the children was impossible; he was as near Fay Island as he was to the main, and in whichever direction he headed he must inevitably be overtaken before he could make good his retreat, and with his usual promptitude he at once decided to continue his course for the islet, hoping to be able to make a sufficiently long stand against the enemy to permit of the children gaining the safe refuge of the fort. He was hailed as soon as seen; but, of course, the only notice he took of this was to urge the clumsy, heavy punt with redoubled speed through the water. Finding him so contumacious, the Malays then fired upon him several times, and succeeded in slightly wounding him in the head. As the proa advanced further up the stream, and drew closer and closer still in under the lee of the high land, the wind grew light and shy with her, and then, perhaps fearing that after all their prey might escape them, the crew hastily launched a boat and gave chase in her. But for that unlucky wound in the head it is possible that Gaunt might have succeeded in his plucky effort; but though the bullet inflicted but little actual damage the blow stunned and dazed him, so that for a minute or two he scarcely knew where he was or what he was doing. Trifling as was the amount of time thus lost it was sufficient to ruin what little chance he originally had; for when the punt at length grounded with a shock on the sandy beach of the creek the Malays were scarcely a dozen yards astern of her, and Gaunt had only just time to lift the youngsters out on the sand, to give the hasty injunction, “Run away home, children, as fast as ever you can,” and to seize an oar in self-defence, when the enemy—nine of them—were upon him. Of course, armed as he was with no better weapon than a clumsy oar, he had no chance whatever against such overwhelming odds, and though he managed to fell three of his antagonists the fight had not lasted two minutes before his arms were pinioned from behind, his feet tripped from under him, and himself made a prisoner. He was quickly rolled over on his face and his arms securely lashed behind him, when, this being satisfactorily accomplished, his captors raised him to his feet, and, conducting him to a tree, firmly bound him to its trunk. The idea then seemed to occur to the Malays that possibly the children might not yet be beyond the reach of capture, for two of them set off at a run in pursuit along the path leading to the fort. Gaunt guessed only too surely at the object of this sudden and hurried departure, and his heart sank with dismal apprehension as he thought of the distance those little feet would have to traverse ere the refuge of the fort could be won, of their liability to become fagged and to lag upon the way, and of the fleetness of foot displayed by their cruel pursuers when starting upon their relentless errand. And when, from the prolonged absence of the pursuers, apprehension was beginning to yield to a hope that the children were safe, he was plunged into the bitterest distress by the reappearance of one of the miscreants, roughly and cruelly dragging along by the arm his darling and only son, Percy; the poor child crying bitterly with terror and the ruffianly usage to which he was being subjected. Upon seeing his father the little fellow managed, by a sudden and unexpected effort, to break away from his captor, and, running up to Gaunt, embraced him, crying:
“Oh, father, make that cruel man leave me alone; he has been whipping me and twisting my arm and hurting it so much that I can scarcely use it. Oh, don’t let him touch me again, father,” as he saw the Malay approaching him with a scowl of hideous malignity upon his already sufficiently ugly features.
“My darling boy, I cannot help you,” groaned Gaunt. “Would to God that I could! but you see they have bound me to this tree so that I cannot move. Listen, Percy dear; we can do nothing at present but submit to these men, who have us in their power, so you must just let them do what they will with you, my precious one; go with the man very quietly, and then perhaps he will not ill-treat you any more.”
“Must I, father?” asked the little fellow tearfully, and looking at his father in vague surprise at so seemingly heartless a command.
“Yes, dear boy; yes. It is for your own good that I tell you to do this,” answered Gaunt brokenly, for he keenly felt the unspoken reproach which he saw in the child’s eyes as the little fellow forlornly turned away and with a piteous sob quietly surrendered himself to the brute, who now again with ruffianly violence seized upon his helpless victim.
“Oh, don’t! you hurt me so,” the poor little fellow suddenly screamed out; and the father’s heart swelled almost to bursting with impotent fury as he saw the cruel clutch with which the wretch was digging his long thin sinewy fingers into the tender flesh of the boy’s shoulder as he forced him toward an adjoining tree, to which he forthwith proceeded to lash him, drawing the cord so tightly round the slender wrists that the little fellow fairly screamed and writhed with the intolerable pain.
“Curse you!” yelled Gaunt, now fairly stung to madness and foaming at the mouth with fury; “curse you, fiend that you are!” And as he hurled forth words of rage and defiance he tugged and strained with such superhuman strength upon his bonds that the stout rope fairly cracked whilst it cut into the flesh of his wrists down to the bone. But the lashing was too strong to yield to even his frenzied efforts, apart from the fact that, with his arms lashed behind him, he had no opportunity to exert his strength effectively, and at length, completely exhausted, he was fain to desist, to the undisguised delight of a little knot of the Malays who had gathered round and were keenly enjoying the scene. So much pleasure, indeed, did they derive from it that they said something to little Percy’s tormentor which was evidently an incitement of him to continue his ill-treatment of the child, for the fellow, with an acquiescent grin, had no sooner finished his task of lashing the little fellow to the tree—a task which he performed with the utmost deliberation and gusto—than he retired a pace or two, contemplating the helplessness of his little victim with malignant satisfaction, and then, with a glance toward Gaunt and a few laughing words to his companions, he stepped forward and dealt the poor child a savage blow upon the mouth with his clenched fist—so cruel a blow that it extorted another piercing scream of pain and terror from the sufferer and caused his quivering lips to stream with blood. Gaunt said nothing this time, nor did he renew his worse than useless efforts to burst his bonds, but he directed toward the fellow a look of such deadly ferocity that the wretch actually quailed under it, and seemed glad enough to slink away into the background under cover of an order which another Malay, apparently one of the officers of the proa, now stepped forward and gave him. Possibly the order given may have been to desist from further ill-treatment of the child, for the new-comer next said something to the group of onlookers which caused them also to retire, with many a backward glance of animosity at Gaunt—which he returned with interest; and, these dismissed, the officer, if such he was, looked at the sobbing child’s bonds and, with a muttered word or two, proceeded to loosen them sufficiently to relieve the little fellow from the cruel suffering they had caused him—a proceeding which won for him a look of unspeakable gratitude from Gaunt which seemed to be not wholly unappreciated.
The loosening of his bonds afforded the poor child so much relief that he now felt almost comfortable, comparatively speaking; and, exhausted with the pain and terror he had already endured, he soon sank into a kind of stupor, which, if it did not amount to actual insensibility, approached it so nearly as to afford the poor little fellow at least a temporary forgetfulness of his situation and surroundings. Gaunt, speaking quietly once or twice to him without obtaining a reply, at once saw with intense satisfaction the state his child had fallen into; and to such a state of despair had he now been brought that he would have been positively happy could he have been assured that his darling boy was dead and beyond the reach of further suffering. For as he now had leisure to reflect, the future, so far as they two were concerned, was without a single ray of hope to brighten it. He knew, of course, that those staunch comrades of his at the fort would not abandon him and his child to the mercy of the Malays without making some attempt at a rescue; but there were only three of them, and what could three men, however brave, do against such overwhelming odds unless acting upon the defensive and behind stone walls? There, indeed, but not in the open field, he had some hopes for them, and there he fully expected they would all very shortly have their hands full, for he momentarily expected to see the whole body of the Malays—except, of course, a man or two to guard himself and his boy—move off to the attack of the fort. And if the attack failed, as he hoped and believed it would, the Malay loss would doubtless be very heavy; and he had heard quite enough of their vindictive nature to feel assured they would take their revenge upon him and Percy. Yes, the more he thought about it the more convinced did he become that it was their doom to die. “Well,” he murmured, “God’s will be done!” It was best, perhaps, that his child should die now, young and innocent as he was; and as for himself, if he could but be satisfied that the little fellow’s death was quick and easy, he cared not how soon he followed him.
But if this was to be the end of the matter so far as they two were concerned, there was a task before him to which he must at once give his best attention—the task of preparing his little son for the awful ordeal before him. To paint Death in colours so attractive as that they should rob the grim king of his terrors and make him welcome, was, he felt, a task of no ordinary difficulty; and coupled with this was the fact that the poor child had been dreadfully terrified already. How was this task to be accomplished—how even begun?
As he cogitated painfully over this problem he saw a party of twelve Malays detach themselves from the rest and move off in the direction of the fort. Then after a considerable interval came the sounds of firing, followed some twenty minutes later by the return of four only out of the twelve. A sickening fear came over him at first that those in the fort had succumbed to the attack, and that the eight absentees were remaining behind in charge of the prisoners. But a little reflection led him to believe that, had such been the case, the prisoners would have been brought in triumph to the Malay camp. Could it be possible, then, he asked himself, that the missing eight had fallen in the attack? It might be so. The bearing of the four who had returned was anything but triumphant; and then there was a great deal of excited talk and gesticulation on their part, seemingly in the nature of an explanation, and more excited talk among the others, followed, after a long and stormy debate, by the preparation and despatch of the letter, the delivery of which we witnessed in the preceding chapter. This last act of the Malays completely reassured Gaunt as to the safety of the fort and its inmates, but it also confirmed him in his belief that his own fate and that of his child was sealed.
The messenger soon returned, a few questions were put to them and answered; a couple of sentries were posted with loaded muskets at the entrance to the bush-path leading to the fort; a man was detailed to keep watch upon the two prisoners; the watch-fire was bountifully replenished with brushwood; and then the camp sank gradually into a state of repose.
Then again the question arose in Gaunt’s mind. In what manner could he best set about the task of preparing his child to meet death unflinchingly? Whilst he was painfully grappling with the problem Percy himself afforded his father an opening of which the latter at once gladly availed himself. Stirring uneasily, and with a sobbing sigh seeming to recover his recollection of where he was and what had happened to him, the little fellow looked up and asked shudderingly:
“What will the Malays do to us, father?—will they kill us?”
“That is as God wills, dear boy,” answered Gaunt with an affected cheerfulness which he was very far from feeling.
“They may or they may not, I cannot tell. But if they do you will not be sorry to die with father, will you?”
“I—I—don’t know,” answered the little fellow, looking terrified. “Will it hurt us?”
“Oh, no,” answered Gaunt, “not at all—nothing, that is, worth thinking or troubling about. It will very soon be over; and then—then, dear boy, when we come to ourselves again, we shall find that, hand in hand, you know, we are going up, and up, and up, higher and higher, toward heaven. And very soon we shall see the glorious light shining upon the jewelled walls of the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. And as we draw near we shall see the pearly gates unfold to admit us, and God’s holy angels coming to meet us, clad in their white robes. And we shall hear the first sweet sounds of the celestial music. And as we enter in at the gates we shall meet all those dear ones who have gone before us. Dear grandpa, whom you never saw, my precious one, but about whom, you know, I have told you so many pretty stories—he will be there to welcome us; and—”
“Oh, that will be nice!” exclaimed the child with kindling eyes. He meditated for a moment, and then, looking up, he asked eagerly: “When are we going, father?”
“Oh, very soon now, dear,” answered Gaunt, “very soon—perhaps in two or three hours’ time. We can wait patiently until then, can we not?”
“Yes,” answered Percy in a perfectly contented tone of voice. And the father was inwardly congratulating himself upon the ease with which his difficult task had been accomplished—though he of course felt that it would be absolutely necessary to keep the child in that frame of mind by constant conversation until the arrival of the supreme moment—when the little fellow looked up and with sudden anxiety asked:
“And will mother be there too?”
How little the poor child knew what poignant anguish he inflicted upon his father by asking this innocent and perfectly natural question! Gaunt would have given worlds, had he possessed them, for the priceless privilege of saying farewell to his idolised wife; but he knew it could not be—it was impossible. And the child had still to be thought of, still to be cheered and encouraged and strengthened to meet death with a smiling face—nothing must be allowed to interfere with that; so, choking back his anguish as best he could, the father answered:
“Well—no, dear boy; I scarcely think she will be there quite so early as ourselves. But she will not be long in following us. When she finds that we are gone she will be anxious to come, too; and she will not delay for one unnecessary moment, you may depend upon it.”
“Oh, father!” exclaimed the poor little fellow in sudden distress, “let us not go without mother; it will be so lonely for her to be down here all by herself. Let us wait for her and all go together; it will be ever so much nicer. I don’t want to go without her, father. I would rather not go without mother, if you please.” And the poor little fellow began to cry piteously.
Here was a catastrophe! The fabric of joyous anticipation which the father had been painfully building up within his child’s breast had collapsed completely, and in a moment, when he found that they were “going without mother!” Gaunt argued and reasoned with the little fellow for a full half-hour, taxing his ingenuity to its utmost extent to recover the advantage he had lost, but it was all unavailing; to this poor child it seemed that heaven itself could not be heaven “without mother.” His father was fast giving way to despair when a brilliant idea shot through the childish brain.
“Father,” he exclaimed suddenly, looking up with renewed hope, “cannot God make the Malays not kill us?”
“Certainly He can, if He chooses,” was the ready answer.
“Then let us ask Him,” was the triumphant rejoinder. “I am quite sure He will let us wait and go all together if we tell Him we would rather.”
What could the father do but acquiesce in a request founded upon such perfect trust in the love and mercy of the Almighty? Indeed, it was no sooner made than he wondered how it was that he had been so utterly faithless as never to have thought of it himself. So he forthwith offered up, audibly, just such a petition as the child had suggested, taking care to clothe it in language which the little fellow could fully comprehend; and, though it must be admitted that the prayer was begun more to satisfy the child than from any feeling or belief that it would be answered, yet, as Gaunt proceeded, with all the earnestness of which he was capable, hope revived in his heart, and his conscience began to rebuke him for his practical infidelity.
The prayer concluded, Percy expressed himself as perfectly happy and satisfied; but it distressed his father not a little to find that the child’s thoughts now persistently turned in a direction precisely opposite to that in which he wished them to incline; over and over and over again did Gaunt strive to rekindle the little fellow’s enthusiasm about heaven, but it would not do; life, not death, was what the child was now looking forward to; and all his father’s most earnest exhortations failed to elicit from him anything beyond the question:
“When do you think they will come and set us free, father?”
“I do not know that they will set us free, dear boy; it may not be God’s will,” was the substance of Gaunt’s reply to this oft-repeated question; at which the little fellow would look at his father in surprise and retort:
“But, father, you used to tell me that God is always pleased to hear and answer the prayers of little children!”
In short, the child at length got the better of the man in this curious theological discussion, and Gaunt was finally obliged to give in.
“He is right,” the father at length admitted to himself, “and I am wrong. After striving with all my might during the whole of his brief little life to inculcate in him an absolute belief in the unalterable truth of God’s promises, why should I now allow the weakness of my own faith to undermine his? My child is in the hands of a merciful God; there will I leave him.”
And so, when, from time to time, after that, the little fellow repeated his question of “When do you think they will come and set us free, father?” Gaunt would reply hopefully:
“Oh, very soon now, I should think, dear boy; very soon.”
The long, weary, trying night was wearing to its close. The moon hung low in the western sky; the horizon to the eastward was paling from violet-black to pearly-grey; and the stars in that quarter were beginning to lose their lustre. The air, which during the earlier hours of the night had been oppressively sultry, now came cool and refreshing to the fevered brows of the anxious watchers; the insects had subdued their irritating din, as is their wont toward the dawn; the watch-fire had smouldered down to a heap of grey, feathery, faintly-glowing ashes; the two sentinels at the entrance of the bush-path had ceased their alert pacing to and fro, and, having grounded their muskets, were now drooping wearily upon them with their hands crossed over the top of the barrels; whilst the Malay who had been detailed to watch the prisoners, having some half a dozen times during the earlier hours of the night tested their bonds and satisfied himself of their perfect security, was now seated on the ground before his charges, with his ringers interlocked across his knees and his head bowed forward, manifestly napping. The weariness of the long night had told upon both the prisoners; their conversation had first languished and then ceased altogether; but now the cool, fresh, sweet-smelling breeze had aroused them both, Gaunt first, and the poor, tired-out, suffering child soon afterwards; and whilst the first was looking abroad over the tree-tops at the brightening sky to the eastward and thinking that now, surely, their fate must be drawing very nigh, the little fellow by his side stirred uneasily, roused himself, and once more put the stereotyped question:
“Now, father, when do you think they will come and set us free?”
Gaunt, with their probable fate now apparently so near at hand, was debating within himself what answer to return, when his attention was arrested by a curious vibrating movement of his bonds, as though they were being tampered with from behind the tree to which he was bound; and ere he could collect his faculties sufficiently to even ask himself what it meant, a low whisper from behind him caught his ear:
“Hush! it is I—Henderson!”
And at the same instant the ropes which bound him suddenly slackened about his limbs and disappeared behind him. Then an arm appeared round the bole of the tree, and Gaunt felt the cold barrel of a rifle being thrust into his hand, whilst the voice again whispered:
“Your own repeater fully loaded. Now to loose poor little Percy.”
Then Gaunt turned to his child—how white and haggard the dear little fellow looked in the pallid light of the dawn—and, with a heart brimful of gratitude to God for His priceless gift of restored freedom, said, in reply to his question:
“Very soon, now, my precious darling—now, at once, in fact. But Percy, dear boy, take care that you do not move or cry out when you feel the rope loosening; stand perfectly still and quiet, my son, until I tell you what to do.”
The little fellow looked eagerly up into his father’s face, and whispered, “Yes, father.” And then Gaunt saw his look of surprise as he felt Henderson’s hand releasing him. The bonds fell away; the child was free; and presently Gaunt saw a shadowy figure bend forward and whisper in the little fellow’s ear. There was a start, a faint cry of rapture, the little arms were flung lovingly round the neck of the bending figure, and Gaunt caught the murmured words:
“Thank you, dear doctor, oh, thank you!” followed by the soft sound of a kiss.
But that childish involuntary cry of delight, faint as it was, had caught the quick ear of the dozing guard; the fellow raised his head, and, seeing that something was wrong—though he was still too drowsy to distinguish what it was—scrambled to his feet and advanced toward Gaunt. Up to that moment the engineer had not moved; he was waiting for the blood to circulate once more in his cramped limbs, and also for Henderson to give him the cue for their next movement. He remained perfectly still until the Malay had approached within arm’s-length of him, and then, with a single lightning-like blow of his fist fair between the eyes, he dropped the fellow senseless upon the grass at his feet.
Then, swift as light, he glided behind the tree, where Henderson stood with Percy in his arms, and, convulsively gripping the other’s outstretched hand, he murmured:
“A thousand thanks, old fellow! Now, which way are we to go?”
“I arranged for Manners and Nicholls to join us in the bush-path yonder; never dreaming that those two men would be posted there,” whispered Henderson in return.
“Well, come along, then,” cheerily observed Gaunt. “Never trouble about the Malays; it is their misfortune that they happen to be in our way. We must shoot them down if they offer to oppose our passage—ha! we shall be compelled to fight whether we will or not; that fellow whom I knocked down is reviving, and he will raise the alarm before we have gone a dozen feet. Give me the child, my arms are still benumbed and scarcely fit to hold a rifle, but I can carry him. So, that is it”—as Henderson handed over little Percy—“now let us make a run for it.”
Therewith the two friends started at top speed for the entrance of the bush-path, running straight toward the two Malay sentinels. No sooner, however, did they appear in the open than a cry was raised, and in an instant the whole camp was on the alert, some of the Malays running to intercept the fugitives whilst others hurriedly sprang for their muskets and opened a wild fusillade upon them. The two sentinels faced about, and seeing the white men running at once raised their weapons to their shoulders.
“Halt!” cried Gaunt, setting Percy down on the ground and facing about toward their pursuers. “Drop those two sentries, Henderson, for Heaven’s sake! I will deal with the others!”
No sooner said than done. Henderson pulled up at once and, coolly receiving the fire of the two Malays—which, however, owing to their being hurried, proved harmless—deliberately covered and dropped them, one after the other.
“Are they down?” demanded Gaunt, as he also knocked over the leader of the pursuing party.
“Yes, both down!” was the response.
“Then, on again!” exclaimed the engineer, snatching up his frightened child and regaining Henderson’s side. As they ran, Henderson placed a whistle between his lips and blew a single short piercing call upon it. “That will soon bring the other two to our help,” he gasped.
They were by this time within a hundred feet of the bush-path; but the light-heeled Malays were close behind them. The time for decisive action had arrived. Seeing this, Gaunt once more placed his child on the ground and said:
“Now run home as fast as you can, dear boy, and tell mother that the doctor and I hope to be with her in a quarter of an hour.”
Then, as the little fellow made off at top speed, the father added: “Thank God, his retreat is secured if we can hold out for ten minutes. Now, Henderson, true and trusty comrade, let us make a stand here and, shoulder to shoulder, show these rascals how Englishmen can fight.”
So, without another word, the two friends turned and stood at bay, finding time to bring down two more of their foes by a couple of lucky snap-shots before they were closed with.
And then began a battle, fierce and grim—sixteen Malays to two Englishmen! Luckily for the smaller party the Malays had, at the outset of the disturbance, emptied their pieces ineffectually, and had found no time to reload them, whilst Henderson had provided himself, in addition to the two repeating rifles, with a brace of loaded six-chambered revolvers, one of which he now handed to Gaunt. With these and their clubbed rifles the two men fought so desperately, that not only were the Malays effectually checked in their attempt at an outflanking movement, but actually foiled in their intention to bear down the two men by sheer force of numbers and brute strength. Swinging their rifles club-wise with one hand and firing their revolvers with the other whenever they saw a chance of making a shot tell, the Englishmen wrought such terrible execution that at length the Malays drew back confounded. At this moment a cheer was heard close at hand, and in another instant up dashed Manners and Nicholls, breathless with hard running, and placed themselves one on each side of their two countrymen.
“Now let us give them a volley!” cried Gaunt—who, his blood fairly boiling at the recollection of the past night, had been fighting like a demon—and, at the word, up went the four rifles to the “present.”
“Choose each his man!” ordered the inexorable engineer: and then out rang the four pieces, leaving three foes the less to deal with. Hark! what was that? Not an echo of the rifle-shots, surely; no, it was the boom of a distant gun, unless the ears of all strangely deceived them. Whatever it was, the Malays also heard the sound, and, looking for an instant in consternation at each other, wavered, turned, and fled.
“Hurrah!” cried Gaunt exultantly, “rescue is at hand. After the rascals, and give them a lesson they will never forget!”
It was, perhaps, an imprudent thing to do, but away after the flying foe went the four men, popping away with their revolvers, and so severely galling the Malays that sauve qui peut quickly became the word with the latter, who now evidently thought of nothing but how to reach their boats alive. One in his frantic haste stumbled and fell, revealing his features to Gaunt as he did so. It was the wretch who had so cruelly ill-treated little Percy on the night before. With a couple of bounds the engineer was upon him. Wresting the creese from the fellow’s hand, Gaunt seized him by the collar and dragged him along the ground, writhing, to a clump of canes growing close at hand. With his foot on the man’s neck to keep him down, the engineer then cut with the creese a stout, pliant cane, lifted the wretch to his feet by main strength, and, dropping his weapons to the ground and still retaining his grip upon the fellow’s collar, deliberately thrashed him until the cane was split to ribbons and the clothes literally cut from his back, finally dismissing him with a kick which—apart from the thrashing—it is safe to say, that Malay will never forget so long as his life shall last. The unfortunate wretch hobbled off with quite remarkable celerity—considering that every bone in his body must have been aching—eager to overtake his comrades, whose “way” had been very materially “freshened” not only by the heat with which they were pursued but also by the booming of the guns in the offing. But he was too late. When he reached the beach the boats had shoved off; so, rather than remain where he was, the fellow unhesitatingly plunged into the stream and swam off to the proa, reaching her just in time to be hauled up over the side as, with slipped cable and hastily-hoisted sail, the craft paid off and gathered way on her road out to sea.
Gaunt followed more leisurely, for, in common with his three friends, he had suffered somewhat in the mêlée—though, fortunately, none of them were seriously hurt—and he reached the cove just in time to witness the hasty departure of the proa. He seized this, the first opportunity which had presented itself, to heartily thank his companions for their gallant rescue of himself and his child, inquired anxiously after the safety and welfare of the little Lucille, and then said:
“I have been wondering what can be the meaning of that firing in the offing. I cannot help thinking it is intended as a signal of some kind to us, and, assuming that to be the case, I can only account for it upon the pleasant supposition that Captain Blyth, instead of perishing in the hurricane as we feared, must have in some miraculous manner escaped; and that it is he who is now outside, on board a rescue ship, come to take us all off the island. I think it would be well if you, Manners, were to take the punt, and, with Nicholls, go out as far as the harbour’s mouth to reconnoitre, taking care not to show yourselves until you are quite certain that the craft is a friendly one.”
The two men named eagerly adopted the suggestion, and a minute later were afloat and pulling rapidly down stream. As soon as they were fairly off Gaunt turned to Henderson and said:
“And now, my dear fellow, I think I will walk as far as the fort to exchange a word or two with Ida, and assure them all of our safety; and then I will rejoin you here to await the tidings from outside.”
Meanwhile Manners and Nicholls, pushing off into the strength of the current, sped rapidly toward the two headlands which guarded the harbour’s mouth; arriving at which they landed, hauled the punt up on the beach, and made their way through the bushes to a point from which, themselves unseen, they could get a clear view of the open sea outside.
And then what an exhilarating sight met their delighted eyes. A large full-rigged ship lay in the offing, about a mile distant, hove-to under her three topsails, spanker, and jib. At first they took her for a corvette, her gear being all fitted in regular man-o’-war fashion; but this mistake was instantly corrected upon their noticing that she flew the red ensign from her gaff, in addition to which she showed a burgee with a long name on it at her main-royal mast-head, and the pilot-jack at the fore. By the greatest good luck Manners happened to have in his pocket a small telescope which he had a trick of always carrying about with him, and this he quickly brought to bear upon the stranger. Watching him eagerly, Nicholls observed him change colour; a perplexed expression passed over his face, his hand trembled. For two long minutes he remained steadfastly peering through the telescope; then he suddenly closed it with a snap, and exclaimed excitedly:
“Away to the punt and pull out to sea for your life, Nicholls. It is the dear old Cloud, as I am a living sinner! and Miss Stanhope is on the poop watching the island through the ship’s glass. There goes another gun!”