The Englishman took the only course, however risky, towards desperadoes who might not appreciate humanity. He rowed to the spot, reached the centre, and after nearly capsizing the boat, dragged the woman safe to the stern sheets. The heavy mass lay there, inert as a stranded porpoise.
Shrieks, and the disappearance of men in the water, of whom no further traces were yielded up but the ruddy bubbles which marked a shark's wake, incited the Burlonilla's crew to greater speed in their rescue. But they would have been swamped by the concourse of frightened men, whom not even the presentation of a cutlass or loaded pistol kept off; luckily the steamer had finished her going down, having attained the level which was her altered draught, while the compressed air buoyed her. The Mexicans, seeing her deck become almost level, climbed upon her in dread of the tintorera. Gladsden left these to count their missing, whilst he conveyed his cargo, as prisoners, to his vessel, where they were secured. He had the swivel trained for precaution on the unfortunate Casta Susana, smokeless, fireless, waterlogged, and retraced his course with a circuit to avoid the disabled foes, so as to bear the too long delayed succour to his young friends.
Benito had run the canoe up a little cleft in the rocks, shoaled her on a stretch of sand, taken out Dolores and placed her in a grotto. Before her he rolled a stone, as a breakwater, gave her his revolver, and stood on guard only with the pearl diver's knife, which, however, he well knew how to swing and thrust, as well as cast—a siring enabling this latter trick to be executed without the knife being lost.
Urged madly on by Matasiete, the noise on the other side of the islet on his ship puzzling him, and giving him an earnest desire to wipe out the present vexation and return to his post, the boat stove itself on the rock. The water was not deep, the men could leap from stone to stone or wade. The waders, two in number, trod on a stingray or an electric fish, for they were heard to groan and seen to fall palsied in their tracks.
The rest confronted Benito. He drew their fire, expressly to prevent a shot being directed at his wife, and then met their charge in a mass. As the mob enveloped him, Dolores fired the revolver twice, more at random than with careful aim. One shot told, for a seaman left the struggle to go on of itself, whilst he reeled aloof, and tumbled off the rock into the water. Two more Benito gave a quantum of steel to Ignacio and his commander were left alone to quell the dangerous young Mexican. So far they had not been able to use their firearms without the hazard of injuring their own. They drew off to fire with deliberation, when the young wife, whose head had cleared after her first shot, and who was made a heroine by seeing that the life of her beloved perhaps rested on the true flight of the little globes of lead in the revolver, let fly at Ignacio, whose backbone was broken by the two shots. As he fell in a heap, the salteador chief, aghast at being so quickly placed solitary before his foeman, wheeled round and fired at the smoke oozing out of the young woman's cave. She screamed, for a fragment of stone, cut off by the bullet, had fallen on her neck, and she believed she was killed, supporting the delusion by swooning away. Receiving no reply, therefore, to his heartrending call, Benito flew at the murderer with so awful a countenance and so menacing a flourish of the blood-smeared knife, that Matasiete did not pause to try to raise his name to Mata-ocho, "the slayer of eight." He backed, and then plunged into the bush.
"¡Hola, cobarde!" cried Benito, but the other made no reply.
There was a crashing of the bush wood, a splash, and all was silence. The young Mexican heard his name behind him in a faint voice, and renouncing vengeance at the appeal of love, went quickly to his wife. Dame Dolores required nothing but his presence as a proof of his safety to be recovered of her fright.
After making certain that the assailants were incapable of mischief, the two who had been stunned by the fish surrendering with as much alacrity as their confused senses permitted, the couple had the satisfaction of being hailed from the boat of Gladsden.
It is regrettable to say that the latter, in his concentration of thoughts upon the rescue of his friends, was deaf to his oarsmen beguiling the time as they shot by the wreck, by supplying the words to the notes of the key bugle in the hands of their shipkeeper. He was playing a song popular at the period of the outbreak of the Gold Fever in California, of which the chorus runs someway thus—applicably, the singers fancied, to the situation:
"Oh, oh, Susannah! don't you cry for me. I'm going to Califomy with my washbowl on my knee."