I observed Annabel also, and saw her puzzled uneasiness as I reminded the colony of the king’s injunction and the great danger of disregarding it; her furtive glances at her father; her amazement when I hinted at the plot for undermining Captain Mason’s authority, and spoke of its secret working toward the destruction of the colony; the blanching of her cheeks when I described the effort of the young men to slip out of the valley, their being beaten and bound, and the mercy that had spared them, whipped and wounded, to sneak back in darkness to camp; and the lie they told to cover their treachery and shame.
There was a tense pause when I had done, and then I called out the names of the guilty. So overwhelming had been the presentation, that, as Captain Mason must have foreseen, there was no time for immediate reaction toward mutiny. I called out the guard. A death-like stillness followed. Captain Mason was standing with the silence and firmness of stone. I stole a glance at Beelo and saw that he had slipped round through the trees to be nearer.
I rapped out an order for the guard to step forward. They looked round curiously at one another, some with a half-smile as they glanced at Captain Mason, to see if he approved. His face was expressionless. I repeated the order, more peremptorily, and in slowly rising they regarded me curiously and in some wonder, as they had never seen me with such a bearing. Whatever they saw and heard quickened their action. There was an impressive solemnity in the proceeding, and it strengthened them moment by moment. I did not hurry them, since it was clear that a sense of serious responsibility was rising in them.
“Lenardo, step forward and submit to arrest,” I sharply said to one of the recalcitrants, a decent young carpenter.
He paled, then flushed, and blunderingly turned to Mr. Vancouver. But that gentleman was gazing at me with all the hate of his soul. Annabel shrank under the significance of Lenardo’s silent appeal to her father. Receiving no guidance from Mr. Vancouver, the young culprit sent a fluttering, desperate look abroad, picking out his guilty associates. All the comfort he got from them was a frightened glance in return.
The impaled man wriggled awkwardly to his feet,—for I was giving him time,—and with a grin and shrug made a pitiful attempt to treat the arrest as a pleasantry.
“Stand facing that end of the guard-line,” I ordered, pointing.
“Come, Henry,” he said to one of the conspirators. The bravado was clearly sham.
“No talking!” I ripped out.
It jerked Lenardo straight, and he came forward and stood where I had directed.