"Miss Connie will be quite safe with me," I said quickly, "and I shall put you in charge of Charles Thumbwood. You remember him? He'll look after you all right, Wilson."
It acted like a charm. I had remembered Charles's attention to the pretty maid in the train.
"Ow!" said Wilson. "Is Mr. Thumbwood here, then, Sir John?"
"Very much so. You will be his especial charge, and the journey won't take more than three-quarters of an hour."
The girl picked up the dressing-bag, which she had dropped upon the floor. "Then that will be all right," she said with a flush, and I wondered if she thought Charles was going to pilot the ship himself. How true it is that Faith can move mountains! No doubt Constance felt just the same about me as Mary Wilson did about Charles.
... We had come out into the cave, and had walked a few yards towards the looming bulk of the ship, when the telephone bell on the cave-side ahead of us rang furiously. It kept on like an alarm-clock, and telling the girls to remain still for a moment, I ran up and unhooked the receiver.
A voice was bawling at the other end, so loud that the words rang and buzzed one into the other, and I could only distinguish one or two. I heard enough to know what had happened, though.
"Chief ... coastguard police ... rifles ... all round the house on the moor were coming down ... two of us stay ... hold till last moment...."
So that was it! Billy Pengelly, the coastguard, had made good. The wires had been at work while we had been about our mole-like warfare underground. The avengers were among the gorse and heather, and the remainder of the pirates were doomed....
"Come on," I shouted to Connie, realizing that there was literally not a moment to lose, and, alarmed by the excitement in my voice, they started to run.