Chapter Twenty Five.
Doubtless, the reader will be anxious to hear by what wonderful event Colonel Gauntlett and his man, Mitchell, had escaped from the death they were supposed to have suffered, and whether poor Bowse, and any of the survivors of his crew, had been equally fortunate; but, as I have matter of still more importance to communicate in this chapter, I must entreat him to have patience till I can return to that part of my history. We left the old pirate, Vlacco, on his way, by Nina’s directions, to give his assistance to any who might have survived the wreck of the Greek mistico. He had no particular wish to turn philanthropist in his old age, so he went rather in a sulky humour, as he would very much rather have knocked them on the head than have had, not only to save their lives, but to refrain from touching any of their property. The orders of his chief’s lady were, however, not to be disobeyed; so he and his companions hurried on as fast as they could go with the rope and spars they had with them.
“Ah! there she drives,” he muttered. “She might just as well have come on shore here, and saved me the trouble of going so far. The boat is well handled though, and her crew don’t seem inclined to give it up to the last. They don’t know what they are coming to, or they would be throwing up their arms in despair. Well, it’s some people’s fate to be hung, and some to be drowned, so they must have made up their minds to go out of the world in the last way.”
He walked on for some distance further, by which time the little mistico was close in with the rocks.
“I don’t know though,” he continued. “She has got past Point Ausa, and I’m not quite so certain that she won’t run right up into Ziyra Bay. So, by the saints, she has; and if she had tried to get there, she could not have done it better. Now, on my sons, or the sea will be too quick for us, and will have carried those strangers away before we get there.”
A few minutes more brought him and his party to the edge of a lofty cliff, from whence they looked down into a small sandy bay, where, already almost high and dry, lay the mistico they had seen approaching the shore. The entrance to the bay was through a very narrow passage between two rocks, which could only just have allowed her to scrape through; but once inside, the force of the sea was so much broken by them that she had received little or no damage. The waves were, however, sufficiently high to break over her, and almost to fill her, so that the crew were compelled to land as fast as they could. This they accomplished by dropping down from the little stump of a bowsprit as the water receded, and running up on to the dry sand before it returned.
“You are lucky fellows to get on shore so easily,” muttered old Vlacco. “But now you are there, you are very like mice in a trap, you cannot get out without my assistance.”
From the appearance of the bay, there seemed to be much truth in his observation, for so perpendicular were the cliffs, that no one could by any possibility, have scaled them.
He counted the people as they landed, and saw that there were four men and a boy; and he was now watching to learn what they would do. There was, as he was well aware, a narrow pathway cut up the side of the cliff; but the lower part was concealed, by leading into a small cavern, so that no strangers were likely to find it. It had been formed, probably, in the days when the island was a regular fortress, and had been thus arranged, that no enemy should land there, and take them unawares.