CHAPTER XXXVII.
"AND DEATH THE END OF ALL."
It was a particularly dark night and all was very calm. The moon did not top the eastern bank of the river until long past midnight, and the stars gave but little light. Also, the silence was extreme. Sometimes, it is true, he could hear the rustling of birds and small animals in the luxuriant vegetation on either bank, or catch the whisper of the soft night breezes among the gros-gros, the moriches, and the great leaves of the green bananas; but that was all. And sparkling all around him, as they whirled in their evolutions, were the myriads of fireflies that make every tropical acre of ground look like an illuminated garden; but, beyond these and the dim stars above the opening between the two banks, there was nothing else to be seen. Even the great trunks of the trees were shrouded in gloom, and seemed nothing but dense patches on the sombre background.
Reginald sat on in his cabin, his pipe in his mouth, his tumbler by his side, the portholes and the door open for coolness and also for precaution's sake. And on the table upon which he leant his elbows there lay the revolver. He had promised, voluntarily promised Barbara, he would not use the weapon upon her brother, who had none; yet he did not know but that, should a crisis come, he might have occasion to do so. If Alderly were the scheming scoundrel the unhappy girl believed him to be, then it was by no means unlikely that he, too, might possess, secretly, a similar pistol which he had carefully kept her in ignorance of. Or, since he was so big and powerful, if by any chance he could board the Pompeia--as he might do by swimming from one of the banks--it might come to a hand-to-hand fight, in which Alderly would possibly be armed with other weapons, and thereby force Reginald to use his own. But he was resolved there should be no use of it unless absolutely necessary.
"How quiet it all is," he meditated, as he sat there, "how undisturbed. Surely Barbara had no need for fear on my account! Why, Nicholas could hardly have been more secure when he had the island all to himself after Simon Alderly's death, than I am now."
And this thought set his mind off into another train, a reflection of the similarity there was between him and his kinsman, and between their actions in this spot--in spite of two hundred years having rolled away.
"Nicholas had his galliot anchored here," he thought; "perhaps in the very spot where I am now. He, too, used the path up to the hut--not far away from here the Snow was sunk--and--and--and----" He gave a start and shook himself. He had nearly fallen asleep! He was very tired, for the day had been a long one, what with sailing back from Tortola--to which he had gone, as Barbara surmised, to purchase provisions--and his having been now awake and on the stretch for more than eighteen hours. Therefore, to try and arouse himself, he went on to the deck of the Pompeia, and inhaled the fresh night air as he peered all around. But there was nothing to be seen, nothing. Nor, had there been anything out of the ordinary, could he have seen it. The darkness was intense.
He sat down again on the locker which ran round the cabin and formed a seat, sitting bolt upright this time to prevent sleep coming upon him, though all the while he kept telling himself that such precaution was unnecessary. Alderly was safe asleep in his own house, he felt sure, or was sitting up drinking and carousing by himself, as, so Barbara told him, was always his habit. He would sit and drink, she had said, and smoke, and as often as not play a game of cards by himself with an imaginary opponent, and go on doing so far into the night. Then, when at last he was exhausted and could drink no more, he would roll off his chair on to the floor, and so lie there and sleep off his nightly debauch. He was doubtless doing that now.
As Reginald pondered thus, he again let his elbows rest on the table and put his head in his hands.
"The air is so hot!" he murmured, unloosing his flannel shirt-collar as he did so, "so hot! And--there--is--no--danger. Yet I promised her," again rousing himself, "yet--yet--Alderly stabbed the diver--if he had had a revolver--in the casket--Barbara----"
He was asleep. Asleep peacefully, though wearily, worn out with his long day; and presently there was no noise in all the tranquil night but the sound of his regular breathing, and the ripple of the little river against the bows of the Pompeia, as it flowed down to the sea.
Yet once he started from his slumbers, hearing in them, as he thought, a distant shriek, and hastily went on deck, wondering if aught could have befallen the girl up at the hut, but only to find that it was some night bird that had alarmed him. For in the woods, away up towards where the Alderlys dwelt, he could hear the macaws chattering--the birds which occasionally passed from one island to another--and an owl hooting.
"It is nothing," he said wearily, "nothing. My nerves are overstrung--I have heard such sounds often at night since I have been here. It is nothing. They are fast asleep enough up there. And--and--I need watch no longer."
So, utterly overcome now by the desire for slumber that had seized upon him, and not more than half awakened even by the visit to the deck, he stretched himself out at full length on the locker to get an hour or so of rest. Yet he was careful to place the revolver near to his hand.
It wanted still an hour to the time when the moon would be above the fronds of the tallest palms on the eastern bank--a time at which even all the insect life of the island seemed at last to be hushed to rest--when, to the ripple of the river and its soft lap against the yacht's forefoot, was added another sound--the sound, subdued, it is true, yet still one that would have been perceptible to anyone who was awake in that yacht--of something disturbing, something passing through the waters; but, had the sleeper awakened to hear it, he could have seen nothing. All was still too dark, too profound.
But he himself was seen--seen by a pair of gleaming eyes staring at him through the cabin window, the blinds of which had not been drawn, nor the latchwork closed; a pair of eyes that glistened from out a face over which the hair, all dank and matted with water, curled in masses. The face of Joseph Alderly!
Presently an arm came through the cabin window, an arm long, bare, and muscular, the hand stretched to its fullest length, the fingers sinuous as all powerful fingers are, and striving to reach the pistol on the table, across the body of the sleeping man. Yet soon they desisted; they were half a foot off where the weapon lay; any effort to project more of that arm into the cabin would almost certainly awake the sleeper. So arm and hand were withdrawn, and again the evil face of Alderly gazed down upon Reginald Crafer. Once, too, the hand that had failed in its endeavour sought its owner's breast pocket, and drew forth a long glittering knife; once through the open window it raised that knife over the other's throat--all open and bare as it was!--and then the hand was drawn back, the face and arm were withdrawn; the villain had disappeared.
And still Reginald slept on, unknowing how near to death he had been, how near to having the shining weapon driven through his throat. Slept on and heard nothing. Slept on while the lamp hanging in the cabin burnt itself out--he had not fed and trimmed it overnight--and until, above, through the fan-like leaves of palm, bamboo, and cyclanthus, there stole a ray of moonlight that shone down directly on the sleeping man's features.
Half an hour later he began to turn restlessly, to mutter to himself--perhaps it was the flooding of the rays of the now fully uprisen moon upon his face that was awaking him--and, gradually, to return to the knowledge of where he was. Yet still he could not for a moment understand matters--the lamp was burning brightly when he went to sleep, and all was dark as pitch outside; now the cabin was illuminated by the moon, and all outside was light. Then he recognised he had been asleep, and also that he was in his yacht.
He turned round to get up and go on deck to see if day was breaking, and, as he did so and put his feet to the cabin floor, he started. It was covered with water--water a foot deep--half up to his knees. Looking down, he perceived it shining in the rays of the moon as a large body of water always shines beneath those rays.
"Heavens!" he exclaimed, "she is filling, sinking! She will not float another ten minutes; the water is almost flush with her deck already." And he rushed to the cabin door.
He had left that door open ere he slept, he felt positive. Now it was shut.
"She has listed a bit, perhaps," was the first thought that came to his mind. Yet in another moment that idea was dispelled. The Pompeia was sinking on as even a keel as did ever any water-logged boat; there was no list in her. Then, almost feeling sure of what he would discover a moment later, he tried to open the door.
It was fast.
"I knew it," he muttered through his teeth, as he shook and banged at the door--there was no time to be wasted; even now the water was on a level with the top of the locker on which he had lately slept; a few more minutes and the yacht must sink--"I knew it. It is the whole history over again. Phips was locked in his cabin--damn the door and he who closed it!--and I am locked in here to sink with the boat and be drowned like a rat. There's no chance--a child could scarcely escape through those windows! Oh! Joseph Alderly, if I ever----"
He stopped. Across the stream, from down by the mouth of it, there came the most awful, blood-curdling cry he had ever heard, the death cry of one who knew he was uttering his last shriek, knew that his doom was fixed. A horrid shriek, followed by the words, "Help! help!"--and then silence--dense as before.
"Ay! call for help," muttered Reginald. "Whoever you are, you do not want it more than I. Another five minutes and the end will have come."
He looked round the cabin in hope of some means of escape presenting themselves, and his eyes lighted on the revolver. Then he knew that, if he were but accorded time, only a few moments, he might get free. But more than two or three such moments would not be his; the water was nearly to his waist now. Once, twice, thrice, the report of the pistol rang out from that doomed yacht, each shot shattering the lock and panels; and then one sturdy push was sufficient to force the door open against the water, and for him to be standing half in the river, half out; and at that instant he felt a heaving beneath his feet, he felt he was sinking to his shoulders, that he was swimming with nothing beneath him any longer. The yacht was gone; he had not been a minute too soon!
The current was strong--the river being swollen with the recent rains--and it bore him downwards to the mouth, he not struggling against it, as he knew very well that he could easily land on the sea-beach outside. So he went with the tide until gradually he reached the outlet, and there he saw a sight that might well affright him, even after what he had gone through. He saw the face of Alderly on the waters, an awful look of fear in the wide-open eyes, and the jaws tightly clenched, but with the lips drawn back from the white teeth on which the moon's rays glistened. And he saw that he was dead.
"My God!" he exclaimed. "How has he died?" And as he so pondered he swam towards the villain, whose head bobbed about on the water as though there were no limbs, nor even trunk, beneath. But all the time as it turned round and round the eyes gleamed with a horrible light under the moon, and the great strong teeth glistened behind the drawn lips.
Another moment, and he knew how Alderly had died. The water in which he swam towards him tasted salter than sea-water as it touched his lips, and its clearness was discoloured--crimson! And even as Reginald seized the head of the now limbless trunk and towed it to the bank, striking out with all his power for fear of a similar dreadful fate befalling him--which was probable enough, since the shark is, like the tiger, eager for more when once its taste is whetted--he thought to himself:
"Out of the depths, out of the depths the past rises again and again."
Then, sweating with fear, he gave one last masterful side-stroke and landed safely on the shingle, dragging his gory burden after him.