CHAPTER XV.
NICK CARTER IS THE MAN.
“If you scream or call the others to your assistance,” she heard the pirate say into her ear, as he leaped from one vessel to the other with her in his arms, “you will only succeed in having them shot, so be silent.”
So she did not scream. Even in that instant of horror, when she felt that the pirate was stealing her away for some terrible fate, she knew not what, she possessed the courage to remain silent, and so, as she believed, to save her sister and the others who were with her from instant death.
A hoarse murmur went up from the crew of the yacht when they witnessed this high-handed proceeding on the part of the pirate, for they loved Bessie Harlan. But they were powerless to help her then; and besides, the rifles of the pirate crew were aimed at their hearts. There was nothing that they could do save to stand quietly by and witness the abduction of Bessie Harlan.
Again the men of the Shadow worked as if every act of their master’s had been foreseen before they boarded the yacht.
As they left the deck of the Goalong they also cast loose the grapplings, and even as the last one stepped upon the deck of the pirate cruiser, the chief, with Bessie in his arms, disappeared through the turret into the hold of the vessel, and as if that were a signal to the engineer, the Shadow at the same instant shot ahead like a thing of life, starting away at almost full speed. And so swiftly did she move that, in the gathering gloom—and it was now almost dark—she soon disappeared entirely from view.
For a moment after her departure the crew of the Goalong to a man remained where they were standing, as if the unheard-of proceeding of which they had just been witnesses had paralyzed their energies.
Then in a body they rushed aft toward the cabin.
But the practised ear and the trained intelligence of the skipper had already told him that the pirate vessel had taken her departure, and he was on the point of coming out on the deck, followed by Kane and his companions, when the crew called to him. At first the reality of the horror that had actually occurred did not impress itself upon any of them. Not one of them realized the truth of what was told to them—that is, that Bessie had actually been taken away.
But when Mrs. Harlan, the mother, did realize that her younger daughter was gone indeed, and was now at the mercy of the pirate chief, she promptly fainted.