The House Under the Sea: A Romance

by Max Pemberton

CHAPTER XXII

THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTY HOURS

It was near about midday on a Saturday that we saved the poor folks from the island, and not long after midnight on the Monday that our troubles came to a head. I like to call these the "sixty hours"; and as what I have to write of them is written, as it were, from watch to watch, so swiftly did things happen, I will try to make a diary of it that you may follow me more closely.

Saturday, May 27th. At midday.

There are nine people rescued from the ship, and one of these a girl, Isabel, the daughter of Captain Nepeen, of the American navy. Her father is with her, a tall, stately man, very quiet and orderly, and quite ready to take a man's duty in the house. Of the others, the most part are American seamen, for this was an ocean-going steamer, Silver Bell, trading from American ports to Yokohama. All are very astonished at the things they have seen and heard both in this house and upon Ken's Island; but they are too ill to take much part in them, and the young lady lies still in a dead trance. Doctor Gray says that he will save her; but another man, knowing less, might think that she was dead.

The same day. At four o'clock.

They waked me from sleep at this hour to tell me that the men in the caverns below were beating upon the iron doors of the corridor, and appeared likely to force their way up to our part of the house. Captain Nepeen brought the news himself, and had a long talk with me. I found him a cultured man, and one who got a grip of things sooner than I had expected.

"Mr. Begg," he said, "it is plain that we have fallen into the hands of a very great scoundrel. I cannot imagine what kind of intellect has made use of this extraordinary place, but I can very plainly divine the purpose. It is for you and me to answer to civilization and justice. We must begin at once, Captain Begg, without any loss of time," says he.

I answered him a little sharply, perhaps, being not over-pleased that he should make so light of my own part in the matter.

"Sir," said I, "what a seaman can do I have done already, or you would not be here to speak of it. Let that go by. The news that you bring won't wait for civilities. It must be plain to you that if we are to stand a siege in this house, we must hold every gate of it. There are men in the galleries below; Heaven knows how many of them. I would name that first and let the rest come after."

He was put about at this, and made haste to express a gratitude I had not looked for. His naval training prompted him to habits of authority. I could see that he was itching to be up and acting, and I knew that he needn't wait long for that.

"Indeed," says he, warmly, "we owe our lives to you, as many a good seaman will owe it in the days to come. I should have spoken of that first. The wonders of this place drive other thoughts from a man's head. We were half dead when we saw your signal, captain. What has become of my fellow-passengers and the rest of the crew, God alone knows. They put us ashore on the island after the ship was taken last night, and nine of us, as you see, are here to tell the story. I have heard the tradition of Ken's Island from the Japanese, but I never believed a word of it before yesterday. Now I know that it is true. My fellow-passengers are there, dead or dying, and at sundown I am certainly going ashore to do what I can for them."

"You are a brave man, Captain Nepeen," said I, "a very brave man. Where you go I follow. We cannot leave poor seamen to perish, cost us what it may. Yet I would not hide it from you that it is a big business, and that the man who goes to Ken's Island to-night may never return. We are now fourteen in this house, and our first duty is to leave it safe for those who trust us. With your help, Captain Nepeen, we'll answer the scum down below," said I.

He assented very heartily and began to speak of the arms that we had and of the manner of employing them. His fellows, I learned, were bivouacked in the great hall, and these he waked first while I was getting the sleep out of my eyes and asking myself, "What next?" The room in which I lay was Czerny's own room; and now in the daylight the sea played cool and green upon the arched windows and showed to me such sights on the rocks without as I had never dreamed of in the darker hours. What genius had pitched upon such a house under the waves? I asked. What spirit of evil breathed upon this dreadful place? What craving for solitude sent this master-mind here to the bed of the Pacific Ocean, where it could spy upon these uncanny secrets, watching the still green water, face to face with devilish shapes butting upon the glass, the friend of the horrid creatures which slimed upon the windows and crawled to their rocky haunts, or fought claw to claw in the sight of their enemy, man? Desperate as the plight was, I must stand a minute before the crystal panes and watch that changing spectacle of the sea's own wonders. The very water was so near that I thought I had but to stretch out a hand to touch it. The weird, wild things that crept over the rocks, surely they would enter this room presently! And Czerny could live here, cheek by jowl with these fearsome mysteries! Again I say that man knows little of his fellow-man, of his better nature or his worse.

The same day. At five o'clock.

We open the lower doors and go down into the galleries. Seven men are with me and each carries a musket. The quest is not so much for those shut down in the pit as for the life which they may send up to us. Doctor Gray has put it in a word, and it is true. The great engine, which draws the air from the sea's brink and drives it out in life-giving currents through the corridors of Czerny's house, that engine alone stands between us and eternity this day. If those below have kept that engine going until this time, it is for their own safety's sake. Rob them of food and drink, and what security have we that they will continue at the task? And yet, the deed be my witness, it was a perilous journey. No man in our company could say surely how many of Czerny's crew he would find in the black labyrinth we must face. No man could speak of the hidden mysteries lurking in passage or cavern, far from the sea-gate and the sun's light. We were going into the unknown; and we went with timorous steps, each asking himself, "Shall I live to see the day again?" each saying to the other, "Stand close!"

Now, the knocking had ceased when we opened the gates, and we stood for a little while peering down into that corridor, which I have named already as the backbone of the lower house. Lighted it was, the lamps still burning, its barred doors shut, its branching passages suggesting a hive of rocky nests which might harbour an army of desperadoes. No sound came up to us from below save the sound of the engine throbbing, throbbing, as it fanned a breath of life and drove it upwards to us fresh and sweet upon our faces. Whoever lurked in that abyss feared to show himself or to cry a truce. We were hedged about by black mystery, and, rifle in hand, we set out to learn the truth.

There were lamps in the corridor, but in the passages branching from it no light save that which streamed down, green and silvery, from the windows which shut the still sea out. Oftentimes the seven with me would draw all close together, awed by the fantastic spectacle these glimpses of the sea's heart showed to them. At other times the nearer alarm would set them quaking, and crying "Hist!" they would listen for steps in the silence or other sounds than that of the engine's pulse and the whirring fans. The very stillness, I think, made them afraid. The horrors of the windows—above all, that horror of the nameless fish—could frighten a man as no spectre of God's earth above. If I had accustomed myself in part to these new sensations, if Czerny's house seemed to me rather a refuge than a terror, none the less there were moments when my step halted and my eyes were glued upon the sights I saw. For here it would be a monstrous shark lying still in a glassy pool; or there a very army of ferocious crabs, their eyes outstanding, their claws crushing prey, their great shells shaped like fungi of the deep; or going on a little way again I stopped before a giant porthole and discovered a devil-fish and his nest in the deep and said that nothing like to it had been heard or told of. Here lies a great basin scooped out of the coral rock, and the green water is focused in it until it looks like a prism, and everywhere, in nook and crevice, the deadly tentacles, the frightful eyes of these unnameable creatures seem to twist and stare, and threaten us. Such fish we counted, hundreds of them, at the windows of the second cavern we entered; and, drawing back from it affrighted, we went on like men who fear to speak of that which they have seen.

"A madman's house; it could not be anything else," says Captain Nepeen, as pale as any ghost; "unless I had seen it with my own eyes, Mr. Begg, no story that ever was written would make me believe it. And yet it is true, as Heaven is above us, it is true."

"No doubt of that," said I, "a madman's house, captain, and madmen to people it. But of that we'll speak by-and-bye; for the shadows may listen. Keep your gun ready; there will be others about besides ourselves. Here's the first of them—stone-dead, by the Lord!"

They all came to a stand at my words, and saw that which my eyes discovered for them—the figure of a dead man, lying full and plain to be seen in the lamp's glare, and so fallen that no one might ask you how he had died.

"One," said I, "and that which killed him left behind! He's been struck down as he ran. There's the knife that did it, lads!"

A young seaman among us shuddered when he saw the knife still sticking in the dead man's side. The rest of us drew the body out of the light and went on again with wary steps. We were near the great dormitory at this time, the door of which I myself had locked; but it was open now and the lock broken. Lamps still burned in that vast room; food lay still upon its tables; but the story of it was to be read at every step. Chests overturned, chairs smashed, a litter of clothes upon the floor, broken bottles, an empty pistol, great marks upon the door where iron had indented it, bore witness to the struggle for light and freedom. The prisoners had fled, but life was the price of liberty. I took one swift glance round this broken prison, and then led my comrades out of it.

"The birds have flown and one of them is winged," said I. "There are five more to take, and the shadows hide them! Come on, my lads, or they'll say that eight were scared by five, and that's no tale to tell of honest seamen!"

I spoke up to encourage them, for, truth to tell, the dark and the mystery were playing strange tricks with my nerves. As we penetrated deeper into that labyrinth I could start at every shadow and see a figure in every cranny. The men that the dark patches harboured, where were they? Their eyes might be watching every step we took, their pistols covering our bodies as we hurried on to the depths. And yet no sound was heard, the great engine throbbed always; the cool, sweet air blew fresh upon our faces.

Now, the first voice spoke at the head of the engine-room stairs, from an open cavern which no lamp illumined. I had just called out to Captain Nepeen to follow me to the engine-room, and was bidding the others wait at the stairs-head, when a shot came flashing out of the darkness, and in the flame of the gun's light I saw a great hulking figure, and recognised it instantly. It was that of Kess Denton, the yellow man, whom I had left senseless at the door of Ruth Bellenden's bungalow more than twenty days ago. A giant figure, the head bandaged, the arms and chest naked, a rifle gripped in both hands, this phantom of the darkness showed itself for an instant and then vanished with an echoing laugh which mocked and angered us. At the same moment the young seaman who had shuddered before the dead, fell headlong in the passage, and with one loud cry gave up his life.

And this was the first man who died for little Ruth Bellenden's sake.

We swung about on our heels as the report rang out and fired a blazing volley into the darkness of the cavern. What other men lingered there, how many of the driven ghouls who haunted the labyrinth received that hail of lead, I shall never know nor care to ask. Groans answered our shots; there were cries of pain, the curses of the wounded, the derisive laughter of those that escaped. But little by little the sounds died away, echoing in other and distant galleries, or coming to us as whispered voices, speaking from places remote, and leaving to us at last a silence utter and profound.

We were masters of the bout and the engine was ours.

"Captain Nepeen," said I, "do you and three others go back to the stairs-head and hold it until I come. If they are afraid to face us here, they'll never face us at all. Why, look at it. Seven men out in the light, as fair a target as a woman might ask for, and they show us their heels. Go back and hold the gate, and I and those with me will answer for the engine. Time afterwards to hunt the vermin out."

He took my order unwillingly, I could see. A greater devil for a fight than that smooth-faced American sailor I shall never meet in all my days. Keen as a hound after quarry, he would have hunted out the vermin, I do believe, if the path had led down to the mouth of Hades itself.

"You will not go alone, captain," cried he, "that's plain madness."

"I take two to my call," said I, "and leave you the rest."

"But what—aren't you afraid, man?"

"Afraid! Of whom?" said I. "Of an old man—but that's too far ahead. I'll speak of it when I come up, captain. Perhaps it's only my own idea. But it's good enough to go on with."

He had still something to say, and, looking first into the black cavern, which we had filled with shot, and then down the stairs towards the engine-room, he went on presently:

"You take a big risk and I hope you'll get out of it. How many do you expect to find below?

"One," said I, quickly, "and he a friend. It's a strange story, captain, and wonderful, too. But it will wait."

I was at the door of the engine-room before he could answer me, and pulling back the leather curtain I put my own idea to the proof. Just as forty hours ago, so now that gloomy cavern shimmered with the crimson light which the giant furnaces cast upon its rocky roof. Now, as then, leather-clad figures moved before its molten fires. There were the mighty boilers, the pumping engine, the throbbing cylinders, the shining cranks; but the man who staggered towards me in the white light, the man who uttered a glad cry of recognition, the man who fell at last at my feet, imploring me for the love of mercy to bring him food and drink, that man was no enemy.

He was Clair-de-Lune, the old Frenchman, and I had but to look at him twice to see that he was the neighbour of death.

"Clair-de-Lune, old comrade!" I cried, "you! We owe our lives to you, then! By thunder, you shame us all!"

He was pale as death; the sweat ran in streams down upon his naked breast; his words came like a torrent when he tried to tell me all.

"Three days in prison, and no man come to me," he said, pathetically; "then I hear your voice. I say it is Captain Begg. I am glad, monsieur, because it is a friend. I break the door of my prison and would come up to you; but no, there is no one in the house; all gone. I say that my friends die if I do not serve them. There are lads with me; but they are honest. Ah, Captain Begg, food and drink, for the love of Christ!"

He fainted in thy arms, and I carried him from the place. Again, in all providence, I and those dear to me had been saved by the fidelity of one of the oddest of God's creatures.

The same day. At eight o'clock.

I have begun to believe that the Italian is right, and that Czerny left no more than eight men in the lower house. No attack has been made upon the Americans we put in charge of the engine, nor is there any news of those mutineers who fled from us this morning, save that which comes from two of them, very pitiful creatures, broken-down and starving, who have surrendered their arms and begged for food. The others, they say, will come in presently, when the big man, whom they call Kess Denton, will let them. They protest that their comrades are but four, and two of them wounded grievously. I no longer feel any anxiety about that which is below, and I have told Miss Ruth as much. She has now been two hours with Captain Nepeen. Her way of life draws her sympathetically towards that brave and gentle man. It must be so. The world has put a great gulf between the simple seaman and those whom fortune shelters at her heart. A plain sailor has his duty to do; the world would laugh at him if he forgot it because the years have taught him to worship a woman's step and to seek that goal of life to which her hand may lead him.

An hour later.

We are to go ashore with the dark to see if we can save any of the refugees marooned on the island. It is a desperate chance and may cost good men's lives. I do not forbid it, for I have lived and suffered on Ken's Island myself. If there are living men there now—it may be women, too—held in that trance of death from which they must awake to madness or never wake again, the commonest instinct of pity says to me, "Go." I have consulted Doctor Gray, and he is doubtful of the venture. "Mind what you are doing, I beg of you," he says. "Are there not women to save in this house?" Miss Ruth overhears him and draws me aside, and, putting her hand upon my arm winningly, she lifts her pretty face to mine and says, "Jasper, you will save them!"

I am going ashore, and Captain Nepeen goes with me.

At ten o'clock.

We put off a boat at ten o'clock and rowed straight for the open beach. It was a gloriously clear night, with a heaven of blazing stars and a sea like flowing silver. The ship's boats made so many black shapes, like ocean drift in the pools of light; and Czerny's yacht, speaking of that dread Presence, lay as an evil omen in the anchorage to the northward. Ken's Island itself was uplifted like some mountain of the sea, snowcapped in its dazzling peaks, harbouring its wayward forests and lovely glens and fresh meadows which the moon's light frosted. And over all was that thin veil of the fog, a steaming blue vapour flecked with the richest hues; now drifting in clouds of changing tints, now spreading into fantastic creations and phantom cities, pillars of translucent yellow flame, banks of darker cloud as though a storm were gathering. Sounds of the night came to us from that dismal island; we heard the lowing of the kine, the sea-bird's hoot, ever and anon the terrible human cry which spoke of a soul in agony. And with these were mingled grimmer sounds, like very music of the storm: the echo of distant gunshots fired by Czerny's men at the anchored yacht which refused them harbourage.

There were four with me in the boat, and Captain Nepeen was one of them. I had set Peter Bligh at the tiller, and Seth Barker and an American seaman to pull the oars. We spoke rare words, for even a whisper would carry across that night-bound sea. There were rifles in our hands; good hope at our hearts. Perchance, even yet, we should awake some fellow-creature from the nameless sleep in the woods whose beauty veiled the living death.

Now, I say that Czerny's men were firing rifle-shots at the anchored schooner, and that sound was a true chantey for our ears. What eyes would they have for us when their salvation lay aboard the yacht? We were nothing to them; the ship was all. And, be sure, we did not go unwatched or helpless. Behind us, at the gate we had left, our gun showed its barrel like the fang of a slipped hound. Cunning hands were there, brave fellows who followed us in their hearts, while we crossed the basin swiftly and drew near the terrible shore. If we had seen the sun for the last time, then so be it, we said. It is not a seaman's way to cry at danger. His word is "must," and in a sure purpose lies his salvation.

We made the island at the westward end that we might have a clear sheet of water between Czerny's boats and our own; and we so set our course that our gun could sweep the intervening seas if any eye detected us. The land was low-lying towards the west and marshy; yet, strange to be told, the fog lay light upon it. It had been planned between us that Captain Nepeen and I should go ashore while the others held the boat. We carried revolvers in our hands, but no other arms. The death-fog was our true defence; and against that each man wore the respirator that Duncan Gray had made for him. Sleep might be our lot, but it would come upon us slowly.

"It will be straight for the woods, captain," said I, "and all our heart go with us. Your friends, who were put ashore last night, will never stray far from the beach, believe me. We'll search the foreshore and leave the rest to chance. As for going under, we sha'n't think of that. It would never do to begin by being afraid of it."

He answered readily enough that he had never thought of such a thing.

"Where you lead, there I follow, Captain Begg," said he. "I shall not be far behind you, rely upon it."

"And me not far from the shore when it's 'bout ship and home again," chimes in Peter Bligh. "God go with you, captain, for you are a brave man entirely!"

I laughed at their notion of it, and went a little way up the beach. The respirator about my mouth, charged with some chemical substance I did not know the use of, permitted me to breathe at first with some ease. And what was more extraordinary was this, that while in the woods the fog had seemed to suffocate me, here it was exhilarating; bracing a man's steps so that he seemed to walk on air; exalting him so that his mind was on fire and his head full of the wildest notions. No coward that ever lived would have known a moment's fear under the stimulation of that clear blue vapour. I bear witness, and there are others to bear witness with me, that a whole world of strange figures and wonderful places opened up to our eyes when we began to push ashore and to leave the sandy beach behind us. And that was but the beginning of it, for more fearful things were to follow after.

I will try to describe for you both the place and the scene, that you may realize my sensation, and follow me truly in this, my third journey to Ken's Island. Imagine, if you can, an undulating stretch of lush grass and pasture-land, a glorious meadow flooded with the clear, cold light; arched over with a heaven of stars; bordered about by heavy woods; dipping to the sea on two sides and extending shimmering sands to the breaking swell on the third. Say that a hot blue fog quivers in the air above this meadow-land, and is breathed in at every breath you take. Conceive a mind so played upon by this vapour that the meadows and the woods beyond the meadows are gradually lost to view, and a wonder-world quickly takes their place. Do this, and you may follow me more surely to a phantom city of majestic temples hewn out of a golden rock and lifting upward until they seem to touch the very skies; you may peer with me into abysses so profound that no eye can fathom their jewelled depths; you may pass up before walls built wholly of gems most precious; you may sleep in woods beneath trees silvered over with light; search countless valleys rich in unknown flowers. And the city is peopled with an unnumbered multitude of moving figures, the sensuous figures of young girls all glittering in gold and jewels; the shapes of an army of giants in blackest armour; and there are animals that no eye has seen before, and beasts more terrible than the brain can conceive.

Say, too, that this deadly vapour of the island so stimulates the faculties that earth no longer binds a man nor heaven imprisons him. Say that he can rise above the spheres to unknown worlds, can, span the seas, and bridge the mountains. Depict him, as it were, throwing off his human shape and seeing the abodes of men so far below him, so puny, so infinitely small that he begins to realize eternity. Cast him down from these visions suddenly and in their place set up black woods and the utter darkness of nature impenetrable. Let the exaltation leave him, the sights fade utterly, the dismal abyss of the nether world close him in. Awake him from these again and let him reel up and stagger on and believe that he is sinking down to the eternal sleep. Such sensations Ken's Island will give him until at last he shall fall; and lying trance-bound for the rain to beat upon his face, or the sun to scorch him, or the moon to look down upon his dreams, he shall lie and know that the world is there, and that nevermore may he have part or lot in it.

I have set down this account of my own experiences on the island that you may compare it with the books of others who have since visited this wonderful place; but I would not have you think that I, and the brave man who stood at my side, forgot that human errand which put us ashore in those dismal swamps; or hung back to speak of our own sensations while others might need us so sorely. If we passed from delirium to sanity, from the height of hysterical imagination to the depths of despair and gloom, none the less the faculty of action remained, the impulse which cried, "Straight on," and left us willing still to dare the worst if thereby a fellow-creature might be saved. Burning as our brains were, heavy the limbs, we could still push on across the meadows, search with our eyes for those poor people we had come out to save. How long this power of action would remain to us, what supreme misfortune would end our journey at last, throwing us, it might be, to the grass, there to sleep and end it all, we would not so much as consider. Good men were perishing on Ken's Island, and every instinct said, "You, Jasper Begg, and you, James Nepeen, hold out a hand to them."

"Do you see anything, captain?" I asked my companion again and again; "we should be near them now. Do you hear any sound?"

He answered me, gasping for his breath:

"Not a whisper."

"Yonder," I would go on, "yonder by the little wood; they landed there. Can you get as far, captain?"

"I'll try, by Heaven!" said he, between his teeth.

"They'll not be far from the wood," said I, "that's common sense. Shut your eyes to all the things you see and don't think about it. It's an awful place, captain. No living man can picture its fellow."

I waited for him to come up to me, and so placed myself that his eyes, I hoped, might turn seaward and not up towards the woods where such weird sights were to be seen. For this place, the angle of the great pasture-land where it met the forest, was occupied by sleeping cattle, white, and still, and frigid, so that all the scene, glimmering in the moonlight, might have been cut out of some great block of marble; and cows and sheep, and trees and hills, all chiselled by the hand of Death. That a living thing should be speaking and moving there seemed almost an outrage upon the marvellous beauty of that field of sleep. The imagination reeled before this all-conquering trance, this glory of nature spellbound. It were as though a man must throw himself to the earth, do what he would, and surrender to the spell of it. And that, perchance, we had done, and the end had been there and then, but for a woman's cry, rising so dolefully in the woods that every impulse was awakened by it and all our resolutions retaken.

"Did you hear that?" I cried to him, wildly; "a woman's voice, and near by, too! You'll not turn back now, Captain Nepeen!"

"Not for a fortune!" said he, bravely; "it would be Gertrude Dolling, the purser's sister; we cannot leave her!"

The desire was like a draught of wine to him. He had been near falling, I make sure, but now, steadying himself for an instant upon my arm, he set off running at all his speed, and I at his heels, we crossed the intervening grass and were in the wood. There we found the purser's sister, stumbling blindly to and fro, like a woman robbed of sight, while children were clinging to her dress and crying pitifully because she did not heed them.

It was an odd scene, and many must come and go before I forget it. Dark as the wood might be by day, the moonlight seemed to fill every glade of it, showing us the gnarled trunks and the flowering bushes, the silent pools and the grassy dells. And in the midst of this sylvan rest, remote from men, a lonely thicket of the great Pacific Ocean, was this figure of civilization, a young girl decked out in white, with a pretty hat that Paris might have sent her, and little children, in their sailors' clothes, clinging trustingly, as children will in confidence to a woman's protecting hand. No surprise was it to me then, nor is it a surprise now, that the girl neither saw nor heard us. The trance had gripped her surely; the first delirium of exaltation had robbed her of sight and sense and even knowledge of the children. That doleful wailing song of hers was the first chant of madness. Her steps were undirected, now carrying her to the wood's heart, now away from it a little way towards the sea's beach. My order, twice given, that she should stand and wait for us was never answered; I do not even think that she felt my hand upon her shoulder. But she fell at last, limp and shuddering, into my arms, and I picked her up and turned towards the sea.

"The children to you, and straight ahead," said I to the captain; "run for your life, and for the lives of these little ones. It will be something to save them, captain."

He answered me with a word that was almost a groan; but stooped to his task, nevertheless. He knew that it was a race for their lives and ours.

I had the burden in my arms, I say, and no feather's weight was less to me in the hope of my salvation and of those we strove for. The way lay straight down, through a ravine of the low cliffs to the beach we had left and the good boat awaiting us there. Nothing, it seemed, but a craven will could stand henceforth between us and God's fresh air that night. And yet how wrong that reckoning was! There were a dozen of Czerny's men halloaing wildly on the cliff-side when we came out of the wood; and almost before we had marked them, they were after us headlong like devils mad in wine.

Now these men, as we learned afterwards, driven by hunger and thirst to the point of raving, had come ashore that very evening; it may be to rifle the stores on the island; it may be in that spirit of sheer madness which sometimes drives a seaman on. Twenty in all when they landed, there were eight asleep already when we encountered them; and lying on the cliff's side, some with arms and heads overhanging, some shuddering in the fearful sleep, one at least bolt upright against the rock with his arms outstretched as though he were crucified, they dotted that dell like figures upon a battle-field. The rest of them, a sturdy twelve, fired by the dancing madness, brandishing their knives, uttering the most awful imprecations, ran on the cliff's head above us, and seemed to be making straight for the cove where our boat lay. And that is why we said that the race was for life or death.

There are moments in his life when a man must decide "aye" or "nay" without checking his step to do so. As things stood, the outlook could not have been blacker while we ran through the ravine to the water's edge. Behind, in the wood, lay the dancing death; before us these madmen with their gleaming knives, their unearthly yells, their reeling gait and fearful gesticulations. We had to choose between them, the sleep in the lonely glen, or the race downward to the shore; and we chose the latter, believing, I think, that the end must be the same, turn where we would.

"Keep your course, keep your course!" I cried to the captain as we ran on. "Hold to it, for your life—it's our only chance!"

He set one of the children on the sand, and, bidding the little one run on ahead, he drew his revolver and stood shoulder to shoulder with me.

"A straight barrel and mark your men," cried he, very quietly; "it's a cool head that wins this game. We have ten shots and the butts will do for two. You will make that twelve if you add it up, captain."

His coolness surprised me, but it was not to be wondered at. Never from the first had I heard this man utter one word which complained of our situation or of its difficulty. To Captain James Nepeen a tight corner was a pleasure-ground; and now with these yelling devils all round him, and the vapour steaming in the woods behind, and the sea shimmering like a haven that would beckon us to salvation, he could yet wear that cynical smile of his, and go with lighter step, and bear himself like the true seaman that he was. Of all that I have ever sailed with I would name him first as a true comrade in peril or adversity. To his skill I owed my life that night.

"One," said he, suddenly, when a great head showed itself on the cliff above us and was instantly drawn back. So quick had he been, so wild did the aim appear, that when a body rolled presently down the grassy bank and lay stark before us I could not believe that a bullet had done its work.

"One," cried he again, triumphantly—"and one from twelve leaves eleven. Ha, that's your bird, captain, and a big one!"

Another man fell with a loud cry.

I had pulled my trigger, prompted by his example, and another man from the cliff above lifted his arms and fell with a loud cry. And this was the astonishing thing, that though we two were caged in a ravine like rats in a trap, and had shot two of the devils stone-dead, no answering shot was fired from above, no rifle levelled at us.

"No arms," cries the captain, presently; "and most of them half drunk. We're going through this, Mister Begg, right through, I assure you!"

Well, I began to believe it; nevertheless, there were men on the shore before us, halloaing madmen, with clasp-knives in their hands and murder in their faces. Clear in the moonlight you could see them; the still air sent up their horrid imprecations. Those men we must pass, I said, if we would reach the boat. And we passed them. It seems a miracle even when I write of it.

Now, we had halted at the foot of the ravine and were just prepared to go headlong for the six, believing, it may be, that one at least of us must fall, when they fired a shot, not from the gun at the watch-tower gate, but from Czerny's own yacht away in the offing; and coming plump down upon the sand, not a cable's length from our own boat, a shell burst with a thunderous explosion, and scattering in fragments of steel, it scared the mutineers as no rifle could have done. Roaring out like stricken bulls, cursing their master in all tongues, they began to storm the cliff-side nimbly and to run for the shelter of the woods; but some fell and rolled backward to the sand, some turned on their own knives and lay dead at the gully's foot; while those who gained the summit stood all together, and wailing their doleful song they yelled defiance at Czerny's ship.

But we—we made the boat; and falling half-dead in it, we thrust it from the beach and heard our comrades' voices again.