CHAPTER XXXI
A DARING VENTURE
With an expression of baffled rage convulsing his features, Ditty turned and made for shelter. Once safely there, he hurled back the wildest threats and imprecations. So vile they were that Ruth shuddered and put her hands to her ears.
"I said I'd kill you all!" the mate shouted. "I'll take that back. I'll kill all but one!"
The threat was easily understood. Captain Hamilton's face went white, and he glanced hastily at Ruth. But he only said:
"Keep down out of sight, men. They know where we are, but we don't know where they are. They may try to rush us, but I don't think they will at first. Aim carefully and shoot at anything that offers a fair target, but don't waste the ammunition."
He had hardly finished speaking before there came a volley, and the bullets pattered against the rocks. They came from several directions. Ditty had arranged his men in the form of a semicircle. They had ample cover, and the only chance for the besieged lay in the chance that one of the enemy should protrude his head or shoulder too far from behind his tree.
Many times in the next hour the fusilade was repeated. It was plain that the mutineers were armed only with pistols.
"Probably Ditty laid in a stock before he left New York," the captain muttered to Tyke. "Automatics, too."
"His ammunition won't last long if he keeps wasting it this way," replied Tyke. "An' an automatic ain't always a sure shot."
Just then a cry from Olsen showed that the mutineers' cartridges had not been wholly wasted. A bullet had caught the Swede in the shoulder. He dropped, groaning.
Ruth was by his side in an instant. She bound up his wound as best she could, and, putting a coat beneath his head, made him as comfortable as possible.
"One knocked out," muttered the captain. "I wonder who'll be the—— Ah! Good boy, Allen!" he cried delightedly.
One of the enemy had thrown up his hands and, with a yell, had crashed heavily to the ground. He lay there without motion.
"Leaned his head out a little too far," remarked Drew composedly. "That was the cockney, Bingo."
"An' a dirty rat," Tyke said grimly. "That evens up the score."
"Not exactly," replied Drew. "We'll have to pot two of them to every one they get, to keep the score straight. And they'll be more careful now about exposing themselves."
He was right; for in the short moments of daylight that remained they lessened no further the number of their foes. Nor did any bullet find its billet in the body of any of the besieged. But one ball knocked a splinter from a rock and drove it against the knuckles of Binney's right hand, making it difficult for him to use his rifle.
Now darkness fell, and the enemy seemed to have withdrawn.
"The real fight will come to-morrow," prophesied Captain Hamilton. "This was only a skirmish to feel us out."
"Do you think they'll try to do anything to-night?" asked Drew thoughtfully.
"I don't believe so," was the reply; "but we'll post sentinels, and if they come they won't take us by surprise."
"As a matter of fact," the captain went on, "I wish they would adopt rushing tactics. Then they'd be out in the open and we could get a good crack at them. As it is, we're concentrated and they're scattered, and their bullets have a better chance than ours of finding a mark. These sniping methods are all in their favor, if Ditty has sense enough to stick to them."
"They've gained already by this afternoon's work," pondered Tyke. "When they started in we were seventeen to 'leven. Now, as far as we know, they're sixteen to our nine, for neither Olsen nor Binney's what you might call able-bodied. The odds are getting bigger against us."
"All the ammunition we have spent has accounted for only one man," added the captain. "Their cover has served 'em well. And our ammunition is short. I figure out that we haven't much more than thirty cartridges apiece left for the rifles. That won't last us long."
"Why not dash out and charge them?" suggested Drew.
"We will when our cartridges get low," agreed the captain. "But I'm hoping they'll charge us first in the morning. We could drop a bunch of 'em before they closed in on us, and then we'd have a better chance in hand-to-hand fighting."
After dark the captain posted three men some distance within the forest, with the promise that they should be relieved at midnight and with strict injunctions to keep a vigilant watch and report to him at once should anything seem suspicious.
Rogers was delegated to make his way down to the beach, where it was supposed the mutineers would encamp for the night, to see if he could gain any information as to their plan of attack on the morrow.
To Ruth this whole situation was a most terrifying one; but nobody displayed more bravery than she.
She had attended to the two wounded men skilfully. She had been obliged to arrange a tourniquet on Olsen's shoulder, or the man would have bled to death; and she had done this as well as a more practised nurse. The wound was a clean one, the bullet having bored right through the shoulder.
Binney's wound was merely painful, and he could not use his rifle effectively. But he could handle an automatic with his left hand.
The departure of the mutineers and the coming of night released their minds and hearts from anxiety to a certain degree. Night fowls in the forest shouted their raucous notes back and forth, and there were some squealings and gruntings at the edge of the jungle that betrayed the presence of certain small animals that might add to their bill of fare could they but capture them.
"We'll forage for grub to-morrow," said Captain Hamilton. "It's too dark to-night to tell what you were catching, even if you went after those creatures. Ruth says she doesn't want agouti because they're too much like rats; but maybe there are creatures like polecats here—and they'd be a whole lot worse."
A daring idea came into Drew's mind, but he did not mention it to Tyke or the captain because he felt sure that they would not approve. He acknowledged to himself that it was a forlorn hope, but he knew, too, that forlorn hopes often won by their very audacity.
He knew that the moon rose late that night, and as darkness was essential to the execution of his plan, he rose shortly and said:
"Think I'll go out and do a little scouting on my own account."
The captain looked at him in some surprise.
"Well," he said slowly, "we can't get any too much information; but we're fearfully short of men, and you're the best shot we have. Better be careful."
"Yes, do be careful, Allen!" exclaimed Ruth. "For my sake," she added in a whisper.
"Do you care very much?" he responded, in the same tone.
"Care!" she repeated softly. It was only one word, but it was eloquent and her eyes were suspiciously moist.
He pressed her hand and she did not try to withdraw it.
"I'll be careful," he promised, releasing it at last. Another moment and he had surmounted the barrier and was swallowed up in the gloom of the forest.
From his repeated trips over the trail, Drew had a pretty good idea of the locality, and had it not been for the fallen trees that had been torn up by the cataclysm of the morning, he would have had little difficulty in gaining the beach. But again and again he had to make long detours, and as the darkness was intense he had to rely entirely on his sense of touch; so his progress was slow.
Nearly two hours elapsed before he caught sight of a light beyond the trees that he thought must come from the campfire of the mutineers. He crept forward with exceeding care, for at any moment he might stumble over some sentinel. But, with the lack of discipline that usually accompanies such lawless ventures and relying upon their preponderance in numbers, the mutineers had neglected such a precaution.
With the stealth of an Indian on a foray, Drew approached the beach until he was not more than a hundred yards from the fire. There he sheltered himself behind a massive tree trunk and surveyed the scene.
He saw Rogers nowhere about. The mutineers had made a great fire of driftwood, more for its cheerful effect than for any other reason, for the night was oppressively warm. At some distance from it the men were sitting or lying in sprawling attitudes. Some were sleeping, some singing, while one tall man, whom Drew recognized as Ditty, was engaged in earnest conversation with two others, probably his lieutenants.
Drew counted them twice to make sure there was no mistake. There were sixteen in all. Only one, then, had been accounted for that afternoon. And there were but nine able-bodied men in the fort, counting Binney as able-bodied.
Sixteen to nine! Nearly two to one! And men who would fight desperately because in joining this mutiny they knew that they stood in peril of the hangman's noose or the electric chair.
Drew's resolution hardened. The fire cast a wide zone of light on the beach and the surrounding water. But over the eastern end of the lagoon darkness hung heavily. Keeping in the shelter of the palms, he went northward, following the contour of the lagoon until he reached the point where vegetation ceased and the reef began.
Although this reef was volcanic (indeed the whole island had undoubtedly been thrown up from the floor of the sea by some subterranean convulsion in ages past), the coral insects had been at work adding to the strength of the lagoon's barriers. The recent quake that had lifted the reef had ground much of this coral-work to dust. Drew found himself wading ankle deep in it as he approached the water.
The little waves lapped at his feet. There was a shimmering glow on the surface of the lagoon, as there always is upon moving water. Outside, the surf sighed, retreated, advanced, and again sighed, in unchanging and ceaseless rotation.
Drew disrobed slowly. He could not see the schooner, but he knew about where she lay. Indeed, he could hear the water slapping against her sides and the creaking of her blocks and stays. She was not far off the shore.
And yet he hesitated before wading in. He was a good swimmer, and the water was warm; the actual getting to the schooner did not trouble his mind in the least. But, as he scanned the surface of the lagoon, there was a phosphorescent flash several fathoms out. Was it a leaping fish, or——
His eyes had become accustomed to the semi-darkness. Drifting in was some object—a small, three-cornered, sail-like thing. Another flash of phosphorescence, and the triangular fin disappeared. Drew shuddered as he stood naked at the water's edge. He could not fail to identify the creature. Something besides the Bertha Hamilton had been shut in the lagoon by the rising reef.
"And I venture to say that that shark is mighty hungry, too—unless he found poor Sanders," muttered the shivering Drew.
He then waded into the water.