The Stowaway Girl Part 19

"Hi, mister, d'ye 'ear that?" said c.o.ke to De Sylva. "There's horse sense in it. The whole bally place will be buzzin' like a nest of wasps till they find out wot the shots meant."

"I think it is a good suggestion," came the calm answer, "provided, that is, the launch is in the harbor."

"She's just as likely to be there now as later. If she isn't, we must hark back to the first plan. Now, you swabs, all aboard! See to them buckles afore you quit."

A bell began to toll in the convict settlement. Lights appeared in many houses scattered over the seaward slope. In truth, Fernando Noronha had not been so badly scared since its garrison mutinied three years earlier because arrears of pay were not forthcoming. It was impossible to determine as yet whether or not the island steamer was at her berth, so they could only push on boldly and trust to luck.

Hozier, never for an instant forgetting Iris, saw that Marcel still remained with his leader. Under these new circ.u.mstances, it certainly would be a piece of folly to send back until they were sure of the launch. So he hurried after them, struggling the while into a coat far too small, though fortunate in the fact that his captive's head was big in proportion to the rest of his body.

Some few men were met, running from the town to the main road where they had located the shooting. Each breathlessly demanded news, and was forthwith given most disconcerting information by a savage blow.

The _Andromeda_ had received no quarter, and her crew retaliated now.

They did not deliberately murder anyone, but they took good care that none of those whom they encountered would be in a condition to work mischief until the night was ended.

It was a peculiar and exasperating fact that although they were descending a steep incline to the harbor the presence of trees and houses rendered it impossible to see the actual landing-place. Hence, there was no course open but to race on at the utmost speed, though De Sylva was careful to keep his small force compact, and its pace was necessarily that of its slowest members. Among these was c.o.ke, who had never walked so far since he was granted a captain's certificate. He swore copiously as he lumbered along, and, what between shortness of breath and his tight boots and clothing, the latter disability being added to by a ridiculously inadequate Brazilian tunic, he was barely able to reach the water's edge.

Happily, the launch was there, moored alongside a small quay. From the nearest building it was necessary to cross a low wharf some fifty yards in width, and De Sylva's whispered commands could not restrain the eager men when escape appeared no longer problematical but a.s.sured.

They broke, and ran, an almost fatal thing, as it happened, since the soldiers whom Philip had seen from the rock were still on board. One of them noticed the inexplicable disorder among a body of men some of whom resembled his own comrades. He had heard the firing, and was discussing it with others when this strange thing happened.

He challenged. San Benavides answered, but his voice was shrill and unofficer-like.

The engines were started. A man leaped to the wharf. He was in the act of casting a mooring rope off a fixed capstan when De Sylva shot him between the shoulder-blades.

"On board, all of you!" shrieked the ex-President in a frenzy.

"At 'em, boys!" gasped c.o.ke, though scarce able to stagger another foot.

The men needed no bidding. Sheets of flame leaped from the vessel's deck as the soldiers seized their rifles and fired point-blank at these mysterious a.s.sailants who spoke in a foreign language. But flame alone could not stop that desperate attack. Some fell, but the survivors sprang at the Brazilians like famished wolves on their prey. There was no more shooting. Men grappled and fell, some into the water, others on deck, or they sprawled over the hatch and wrought in frantic struggle in the narrow cabin. The fight did not last many seconds. An engineer, finding a lever and throttle valve, roared to a sailor to take the wheel, and already the launch was curving seaward when Hozier shouted:

"Where is Marcel?"

"Lyin' dead on the wharf," said Watts.

"Are you certain?"

"He was alongside me, an' 'e threw is 'ands up, an' dropped like a shot rabbit."

"Then who has gone for Miss Yorke?"

"No one. D'ye think that this d--d President cares for anybody but hisself?"

Philip felt the deck throbbing with the pulsations of the screw. The lights on sh.o.r.e were gliding by. The launch was leaving Fernando Noronha, and Iris was waiting in that wretched hut beyond the hill, waiting for the summons that would not reach her, for Marcel was dead, and Domingo, the one other man who could have gone to her, was lying in the cabin with three ribs broken and a collar-bone fractured.

CHAPTER IX

WHEREIN CERTAIN PEOPLE MEET UNEXPECTEDLY

Iris came back from the void to find herself lying on a truckle bed in a dimly-lighted hovel. A cotton wick flickered in a small lamp of the old Roman type. It was consuming a crude variety of castor oil, and its gamboge-colored flame clothed the smoke-darkened rafters and mud walls in somber yet vivid tints that would have gladdened the heart of a Rubens. This scenic effect, admirable to an artist, was lost on a girl waking in affright and startled by unfamiliar surroundings. She gazed up with uncomprehending eyes at two brown-skinned women bending over her.

One, the elder, was chafing her hands; the other, a tall, graceful girl, was stirring something in an earthenware vessel. She heard the girl murmur joyfully:

"Gracas a Deus, elh' abria lhes olhas!"

Iris was still wandering in that strange borderland guarded by unknown forces that lies between conscious life and the sleep that is so close of kin to death. If in full possession of her senses, she might not have caught the drift of the sentence, since it was spoken in a guttural patois. But now she understood beyond cavil that because she had opened her eyes, the girl was giving thanks to the Deity. The first definite though bewildering notion that perplexed her faculties, at once clouded and unnaturally clear, was an astonished acceptance of the fact that she knew what the strange girl had said, though the phrase only remotely resembled its Spanish equivalent. She gathered its exact meaning, word for word, and it was all the more surprising that both women should smile and say something quite incomprehensible as soon as Iris lifted herself on an elbow and asked in English:

"Where am I? How did I come here?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "How did I come here?"]

Then she remembered, and memory brought a feeling of helplessness not wholly devoid of self-reproach. It was bad enough that her presence should add so greatly to the dangers besetting her friends; it was far worse that she should have fainted at the very moment when such weakness might well prove fatal to them.

Why did she faint? Ah! A lively blush chased the pallor from her cheeks, and a few strenuous heartbeats restored animation to her limbs.

Of course, in thinking that she had yielded solely to the stress of surcharged emotions, Iris was mistaken. What she really needed was food. A young woman of perfect physique, and dowered with the best of health, does not collapse into unconsciousness because a young man embraces her, and each at the same moment makes the blissful discovery that the wide world contains no other individual of supreme importance.

Iris's great-grandmother might have "swooned" under such circ.u.mstances--not so Iris, who fainted simply because of the strain imposed by failure to eat the queer fare provided by De Sylva and his a.s.sociates. She hardly realized how hungry she was until the girl handed her the bowl, which contained a couple of eggs beaten up in milk, while small quant.i.ties of rum and sugar-cane juice made the compound palatable.

"Bom!" said the girl, "bebida, senhora!"

It certainly was good, and the senhora drank it with avidity, the mixture being excellent diet for one who had eaten nothing except an over-ripe banana during thirty hours. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to extend that period considerably. Iris had left practically untouched the meals brought her by the steward during the gale, and the early morning cup of coffee, which would have proved most grateful after a storm-tossed night, was an impossible achievement owing to the lack of water.

So Iris tackled the contents of the bowl with a vigorous appet.i.te oddly at variance with the seeming weakness that ended in a prolonged fainting fit, and the hospitable Brazilians, to whom this fair English girl was a revelation in feature and clothing, bestirred themselves to provide further dainties. But, excepting some fruit, Iris had the wisdom to refuse other food just then. Her thoughts were rapidly becoming coherent, and she realized that a heavy meal might be absolutely disastrous. If the men made good their project she would be called on within an hour to cross the island. It seemed reasonable that, hungry though she was, she would be better fitted to climb the island hills at a fast pace if she ate sparingly. Still, she longed for a drink of water, and taxed her small stock of Spanish to make known her desire.

"Agua, senhora," she said with a smile, and the delight of mother and daughter was great, since they thought she could speak their language.

Therein, of course, they were disappointed, but not more so than Iris when she tasted the brackish fluid alone procurable on the south coast of Fernando Noronha. That was a fortunate thing in itself. Only those who have endured real thirst can tell how hard it is to refrain from drinking deeply when water is ultimately obtained; but the mixture of milk and eggs had already soothed her parched mouth and palate, and she quickly detected an unpleasantly salt flavor in the beverage they gave her.

Then she set herself to discover her whereabouts. The women were eager to impart information, but, alas, Iris's brain had regained its every-day limitations, and she could make no sense of their words. At last, seeing that the door was barred and the hut was innocent of any other opening, she stood upright, and signified by a gesture that she wished to go out. There could be no mistaking the distress, even the positive alarm, created by this demand. The girl clasped her hands in entreaty, and the older woman evidently tried most earnestly to dissuade her visitor from a proceeding fraught with utmost danger.

Being quite certain that they meant to be friendly, Iris sat down again. She knew, of course, that Marcel would come for her, if possible, and the relief displayed by her unknown entertainers was so marked that she resolved to await his appearance quietly. She would not abandon hope till daylight crept through the c.h.i.n.ks of the hut.

How soon that might be she could not tell. It seemed but a few seconds since she felt Hozier's arms around her, since her lips met his in a pa.s.sionate kiss. But, meanwhile, someone had brought her here. Her dress, though damp, was not sopping wet. Even the slight token of the beaten eggs showed how time must have sped while she was lying there oblivious of everything. She tried again to question the women, and fancied that they understood her partly, as she caught the words "meia noite," but it was beyond her powers to ascertain whether they meant that she had come there at midnight, or were actually telling her the hour.

At any rate, they were most anxious for her well-being. The island housewife produced another dish, smiled rea.s.suringly, and said, "Manioc--bom," repeating the phrase several times. The compound looked appetizing, and Iris ate a little. She discovered at once that it was tapioca, but her new acquaintance suggested "ca.s.sava" as an alternative. The girl, however, nodded cheerfully. She had heard the gentry at Fort San Antonio call it tapioca, and her convict father cultivated some of the finer variety of manioc for the officers' mess.

"Ah," sighed Iris, smiling wistfully, "I am making progress in your language, slow but sure. But please don't give me any mangroves."

The girl apparently was quite fascinated by the sound of English. She began to chatter to her mother at an amazing rate, trying repeatedly to imitate the hissing sound which the Latin races always perceive in Anglo-Saxon speech. Her mother reproved her instantly. To make amends, the girl offered Iris a fine pomegranate. Iris, of course, lost nothing of this bit of by-play. It was almost the first touch of nature that she had discovered among the amazing inhabitants of Fernando Noronha.

These small amenities helped to pa.s.s the time, but Iris soon noted an air of suspense in the older woman's att.i.tude. Though mindful of her guest's comfort, Luisa Gomez had ever a keen ear for external sounds.

In all probability, she was disturbed by the distant reports of fire-arms, and it was a rare instance of innate good-breeding that she did not alarm her guest by calling attention to them. Iris, amid such novel surroundings, could not distinguish one noise from another.

Night-birds screamed hideously in the trees without; a host of crickets kept up an incessant chorus in the undergrowth; the intermittent roaring of breakers on the rocks invaded the narrow creek. The medley puzzled Iris, but the island woman well knew that stirring events were being enacted on the other side of the hill. Her husband was there--he had, indeed, prepared a careful alibi since Marcel visited him--and wives are apt to feel worried if husbands are abroad when bullets are flying.

So, while the girl, Manoela, was furtively appraising the clothing worn by Iris, and wondering how it came to pa.s.s that in some parts of the world there existed grand ladies who wore real cloth dresses, and lace embroidered under-skirts, and silk stockings, and s.h.i.+ning leather boots--wore them, too, with as much careless ease as one draped one's self in coa.r.s.e hempen skirt and shawl in Fernando Noronha--her mother was listening ever for hasty footsteps among the trailing vines.

At last, with a muttered prayer, she went to the door, and unfastened the stout wooden staple that prevented intruders from entering unbidden.

It was dark without. Dense black clouds veiled the moon, and a gust of wind moaned up the creek in presage of a tropical storm. Someone approached.

"Is that you, Manoel?" asked Luisa Gomez in a hushed voice.