I lay back upon the rock and thought of it. This old man, surety, was right. Let the fog drift from Ken's Island, the woods awake, life stir again, and how stood we—where was our benefit?
"It is a fearful position," said I, "and Heaven alone knows what the end of it will be. That something has happened to Mister Jacob and my ship I can no longer doubt, Clair-de-Lune. The Southern Cross is on the rocks, be sure of it, and good men with her. Take it that they are picked up and set on the American coast. What then? Who finds the money for another steamer? It is not to be thought of: we must dismiss it from our minds. You say that we have food for three weeks, and the condensers down below will give us water. But it won't be three weeks before we are in or out of it, my friend. If we are starving, others are starving—those out yonder by Czerny's yacht. He'll give them food to-day; but how long will they drift like cattle for the rain to beat on? Your sense will tell you that they won't drift long, but will be asking questions and wanting their answers. Aye, Clair-de-Lune, we'll listen with all our ears when that begins!"
He had a glass with him and he began to scan the yacht very closely and the ship's boats about it. I had not noticed that there was an unusual stir in the anchorage, but he remarked it now and drew his own conclusions.
"They give rogue man arms and cutlass, captain; he go overboard too. I see them pass from boat to boat. Ah, there he is, the bread and the biscuit. They get breakfast and then come here, captain. What else you look for? They not lie there all the days. They too much devil for that. We few and little; they big and strong. Why shall they not take the house? Some die, but other mans remain. Czerny he say to them, 'Great much price if you kill the English captain.' He know that all his money is locked up down here. Why shall he not come, captain?"
I could not tell him why. My own glasses showed me the things he made mention of and others beside. Arms, I saw, were being passed down from the yacht to the small boats clustered about it. There was no sunlight to glisten upon the bright barrels of the rifles, but I could distinguish them nevertheless; and cutlasses were handed from boat to boat—a good fifty of them I counted, and there were more to come. What the meaning of it was a child might have told you. Truce prevailed between master and man in their common desire of possession. The last great attack was to be made upon us—the rock to be rushed. Even a woman would have divined as much.
"Clair-de-Lune," said I, "the end is coming at last; and it won't be very long. We're dealing with a remarkable man, and it is not to be supposed that he'll sail away and leave us here without one good blow for it. Aye, it's a great mind altogether, and there's the plain truth. Who else but the cleverest would have thought of this place, and come here like a human vulture to feed upon ships and men? There have been many Edmond Czernys in the world; but this man I name chief among them, and others will name him also. We set ourselves against a hand in a million; stiff backs we need to wrestle with that; but we'll do it, old comrade, we'll see it through yet!"
It was a wild boast, yet, God knows, a well meant one. Perhaps, if he had pushed me to the confession, I would have told him that I was far from believing my own prophecies, and that, in truth, I realized, as he did, the perilous hazard of our position and all that defeat might mean to us. Just as he knew, so did I know that before the night came down dead men might lie on the rocks about me and be engulfed in that sea which beat so gently upon the lonely shore; that living men from the boats yonder would swarm in the galleries below, and women's cries be heard, and something follow which even I dare not contemplate. The dreadful truth, perhaps, kept our tongues away from it; we talked of other things, of Czerny and his house, and of what we would do if the best should befall.
"He wonderful man," old Clair-de-Lune went on, standing, like some old Neptune of the sea, bolt upright on the pinnacle of rock; "wonderful man, and none like him! Thirteen year ago he first find this place, and thirteen year he wreck the ships. I know, for there was a day when he tell me much and I listen. He say, 'Make great fortune and no trouble to earn him. If sailor man drown, more fool he.' All the years back, hundreds of years, ships perish on Ken's Island. Czerny he hear the story in Japan, and he come to see the place for himself. They say he once sleep through the fog and mad afterwards. He no longer have right or wrong or care about the world. He come to Ken's Island and grow rich. Then his engineers find this rock. Once, long time ago, it have been part of the island, captain. The—what you say?—volocano, he shoot fire into the sea; but that was before the peoples. Czerny, he go down into the rock and he discover great cavern and little cavern, and he say, 'I live here in the sleep-time.' Plenty of money make fine house. He shut out the sea wherever he would come in; he build great windows in the rock; his mécanicien, he put up engine and draw air from the skies. Long year Czerny live here alone. Then one day come madame—ah, captain, I was sorry when I saw madame come! 'She will suffer here,' I said; she have suffered much already. Czerny is not as other men. If madame say to him, 'You good man; you and I live here always,' then she have everything, she go where she will, she become the master. But I say when I see her, 'No, never she will not say that. She good woman.' And then I fear for her, captain; I fear greatly. I did not know she have the English friend who will save her."
He turned to me wistfully, and I read in his eyes of that deep affection which little Ruth Bellenden has never failed to win from all who know and learn to love her.
Monday. At three o'clock.