The Rescue (21 page)

Carter went up the steps and without pausing informed him of what had
happened.

"Mrs. Travers told me to go to you at once. She's very upset as you may
guess," he drawled, looking Lingard hard in the face. Lingard knitted
his eyebrows. "The hands, too, are scared," Carter went on. "They fancy
the savages, or whatever they may be who stole the owner, are going to
board the yacht every minute. I don't think so myself but—"

"Quite right—most unlikely," muttered Lingard.

"Aye, I daresay you know all about it," continued Carter, coolly, "the
men are startled and no mistake, but I can't blame them very much. There
isn't enough even of carving knives aboard to go round. One old signal
gun! A poor show for better men than they."

"There's no mistake I suppose about this affair?" asked Lingard.

"Well, unless the gentlemen are having a lark with us at hide and seek.
The man says he waited ten minutes at the point, then pulled slowly
along the bank looking out, expecting to see them walking back. He
made the trunk of a tree apparently stranded on the sand and as he was
sculling past he says a man jumped up from behind that log, flung a
stick at him and went off running. He backed water at once and began to
shout, 'Are you there, sir?' No one answered. He could hear the bushes
rustle and some strange noises like whisperings. It was very dark. After
calling out several times, and waiting on his oars, he got frightened
and pulled back to the yacht. That is clear enough. The only doubt in
my mind is if they are alive or not. I didn't let on to Mrs. Travers.
That's a kind of thing you keep to yourself, of course."

"I don't think they are dead," said Lingard, slowly, and as if thinking
of something else.

"Oh! If you say so it's all right," said Carter with deliberation.

"What?" asked Lingard, absently; "fling a stick, did they? Fling a
spear!"

"That's it!" assented Carter, "but I didn't say anything. I only
wondered if the same kind of stick hadn't been flung at the owner,
that's all. But I suppose you know your business best, Captain."

Lingard, grasping his whole beard, reflected profoundly, erect and with
bowed head in the glare of the flares.

"I suppose you think it's my doing?" he asked, sharply, without looking
up.

Carter surveyed him with a candidly curious gaze. "Well, Captain, Mrs.
Travers did let on a bit to me about our chief-officer's boat. You've
stopped it, haven't you? How she got to know God only knows. She
was sorry she spoke, too, but it wasn't so much of news to me as she
thought. I can put two and two together, sometimes. Those rockets, last
night, eh? I wished I had bitten my tongue out before I told you about
our first gig. But I was taken unawares. Wasn't I? I put it to you:
wasn't I? And so I told her when she asked me what passed between
you and me on board this brig, not twenty-four hours ago. Things look
different now, all of a sudden. Enough to scare a woman, but she is
the best man of them all on board. The others are fairly off the chump
because it's a bit dark and something has happened they ain't used to.
But she has something on her mind. I can't make her out!" He paused,
wriggled his shoulders slightly—"No more than I can make you out," he
added.

"That's your trouble, is it?" said Lingard, slowly.

"Aye, Captain. Is it all clear to you? Stopping boats, kidnapping
gentlemen. That's fun in a way, only—I am a youngster to you—but is it
all clear to you? Old Robinson wasn't particular, you know, and he—"

"Clearer than daylight," cried Lingard, hotly. "I can't give up—"

He checked himself. Carter waited. The flare bearers stood rigid,
turning their faces away from the flame, and in the play of gleams at
its foot the mast near by, like a lofty column, ascended in the great
darkness. A lot of ropes ran up slanting into a dark void and were
lost to sight, but high aloft a brace block gleamed white, the end of a
yard-arm could be seen suspended in the air and as if glowing with its
own light. The sky had clouded over the brig without a breath of wind.

"Give up," repeated Carter with an uneasy shuffle of feet.

"Nobody," finished Lingard. "I can't. It's as clear as daylight. I
can't! No! Nothing!"

He stared straight out afar, and after looking at him Carter felt moved
by a bit of youthful intuition to murmur, "That's bad," in a tone
that almost in spite of himself hinted at the dawning of a befogged
compassion.

He had a sense of confusion within him, the sense of mystery without.
He had never experienced anything like it all the time when serving with
old Robinson in the Ly-e-moon. And yet he had seen and taken part in
some queer doings that were not clear to him at the time. They were
secret but they suggested something comprehensible. This affair did not.
It had somehow a subtlety that affected him. He was uneasy as if there
had been a breath of magic on events and men giving to this complication
of a yachting voyage a significance impossible to perceive, but felt
in the words, in the gestures, in the events, which made them all
strangely, obscurely startling.

He was not one who could keep track of his sensations, and besides he
had not the leisure. He had to answer Lingard's questions about the
people of the yacht. No, he couldn't say Mrs. Travers was what you may
call frightened. She seemed to have something in her mind. Oh, yes! The
chaps were in a funk. Would they fight? Anybody would fight when driven
to it, funk or no funk. That was his experience. Naturally one liked
to have something better than a handspike to do it with. Still—In the
pause Carter seemed to weigh with composure the chances of men with
handspikes.

"What do you want to fight us for?" he asked, suddenly.

Lingard started.

"I don't," he said; "I wouldn't be asking you."

"There's no saying what you would do, Captain," replied Carter; "it
isn't twenty-four hours since you wanted to shoot me."

"I only said I would, rather than let you go raising trouble for me,"
explained Lingard.

"One night isn't like another," mumbled Carter, "but how am I to know?
It seems to me you are making trouble for yourself as fast as you can."

"Well, supposing I am," said Lingard with sudden gloominess. "Would your
men fight if I armed them properly?"

"What—for you or for themselves?" asked Carter.

"For the woman," burst out Lingard. "You forget there's a woman on
board. I don't care
that
for their carcases."

Carter pondered conscientiously.

"Not to-night," he said at last. "There's one or two good men amongst
them, but the rest are struck all of a heap. Not to-night. Give them
time to get steady a bit if you want them to fight."

He gave facts and opinions with a mixture of loyalty and mistrust. His
own state puzzled him exceedingly. He couldn't make out anything, he did
not know what to believe and yet he had an impulsive desire, an inspired
desire to help the man. At times it appeared a necessity—at others
policy; between whiles a great folly, which perhaps did not matter
because he suspected himself of being helpless anyway. Then he had
moments of anger. In those moments he would feel in his pocket the
butt of a loaded pistol. He had provided himself with the weapon, when
directed by Mrs. Travers to go on board the brig.

"If he wants to interfere with me, I'll let drive at him and take my
chance of getting away," he had explained hurriedly.

He remembered how startled Mrs. Travers looked. Of course, a woman like
that—not used to hear such talk. Therefore it was no use listening to
her, except for good manners' sake. Once bit twice shy. He had no mind
to be kidnapped, not he, nor bullied either.

"I can't let him nab me, too. You will want me now, Mrs. Travers," he
had said; "and I promise you not to fire off the old thing unless he
jolly well forces me to."

He was youthfully wise in his resolution not to give way to her
entreaties, though her extraordinary agitation did stagger him for a
moment. When the boat was already on its way to the brig, he remembered
her calling out after him:

"You must not! You don't understand."

Her voice coming faintly in the darkness moved him, it resembled so much
a cry of distress.

"Give way, boys, give way," he urged his men.

He was wise, resolute, and he was also youthful enough to almost wish
it should "come to it." And with foresight he even instructed the boat's
crew to keep the gig just abaft the main rigging of the brig.

"When you see me drop into her all of a sudden, shove off and pull for
dear life."

Somehow just then he was not so anxious for a shot, but he held on with
a determined mental grasp to his fine resolution, lest it should slip
away from him and perish in a sea of doubts.

"Hadn't I better get back to the yacht?" he asked, gently.

Getting no answer he went on with deliberation:

"Mrs. Travers ordered me to say that no matter how this came about
she is ready to trust you. She is waiting for some kind of answer, I
suppose."

"Ready to trust me," repeated Lingard. His eyes lit up fiercely.

Every sway of flares tossed slightly to and fro the massy shadows of
the main deck, where here and there the figure of a man could be seen
standing very still with a dusky face and glittering eyeballs.

Carter stole his hand warily into his breast pocket:

"Well, Captain," he said. He was not going to be bullied, let the
owner's wife trust whom she liked.

"Have you got anything in writing for me there?" asked Lingard,
advancing a pace, exultingly.

Carter, alert, stepped back to keep his distance. Shaw stared from the
side; his rubicund cheeks quivered, his round eyes seemed starting out
of his head, and his mouth was open as though he had been ready to choke
with pent-up curiosity, amazement, and indignation.

"No! Not in writing," said Carter, steadily and low.

Lingard had the air of being awakened by a shout. A heavy and darkening
frown seemed to fall out of the night upon his forehead and swiftly
passed into the night again, and when it departed it left him so calm,
his glance so lucid, his mien so composed that it was difficult to
believe the man's heart had undergone within the last second the trial
of humiliation and of danger. He smiled sadly:

"Well, young man," he asked with a kind of good-humoured resignation,
"what is it you have there? A knife or a pistol?"

"A pistol," said Carter. "Are you surprised, Captain?" He spoke with
heat because a sense of regret was stealing slowly within him, as
stealthily, as irresistibly as the flowing tide. "Who began these
tricks?" He withdrew his hand, empty, and raised his voice. "You are up
to something I can't make out. You—you are not straight."

The flares held on high streamed right up without swaying, and in that
instant of profound calm the shadows on the brig's deck became as still
as the men.

"You think not?" said Lingard, thoughtfully.

Carter nodded. He resented the turn of the incident and the growing
impulse to surrender to that man.

"Mrs. Travers trusts me though," went on Lingard with gentle triumph as
if advancing an unanswerable argument.

"So she says," grunted Carter; "I warned her. She's a baby. They're all
as innocent as babies there. And you know it. And I know it. I've heard
of your kind. You would dump the lot of us overboard if it served your
turn. That's what I think."

"And that's all."

Carter nodded slightly and looked away. There was a silence. Lingard's
eyes travelled over the brig. The lighted part of the vessel appeared in
bright and wavering detail walled and canopied by the night. He felt a
light breath on his face. The air was stirring, but the Shallows, silent
and lost in the darkness, gave no sound of life.

This stillness oppressed Lingard. The world of his endeavours and his
hopes seemed dead, seemed gone. His desire existed homeless in the
obscurity that had devoured his corner of the sea, this stretch of the
coast, his certitude of success. And here in the midst of what was the
domain of his adventurous soul there was a lost youngster ready to shoot
him on suspicion of some extravagant treachery. Came ready to shoot!
That's good, too! He was too weary to laugh—and perhaps too sad. Also
the danger of the pistol-shot, which he believed real—the young are
rash—irritated him. The night and the spot were full of contradictions.
It was impossible to say who in this shadowy warfare was to be an enemy,
and who were the allies. So close were the contacts issuing from this
complication of a yachting voyage, that he seemed to have them all
within his breast.

"Shoot me! He is quite up to that trick—damn him. Yet I would trust him
sooner than any man in that yacht."

Such were his thoughts while he looked at Carter, who was biting his
lips, in the vexation of the long silence. When they spoke again to each
other they talked soberly, with a sense of relief, as if they had come
into cool air from an overheated room and when Carter, dismissed, went
into his boat, he had practically agreed to the line of action traced
by Lingard for the crew of the yacht. He had agreed as if in implicit
confidence. It was one of the absurdities of the situation which had to
be accepted and could never be understood.

"Do I talk straight now?" had asked Lingard.

"It seems straight enough," assented Carter with an air of reserve; "I
will work with you so far anyhow."

"Mrs. Travers trusts me," remarked Lingard again.

"By the Lord Harry!" cried Carter, giving way suddenly to some latent
conviction. "I was warning her against you. Say, Captain, you are a
devil of a man. How did you manage it?"

"I trusted her," said Lingard.

"Did you?" cried the amazed Carter. "When? How? Where—"

"You know too much already," retorted Lingard, quietly. "Waste no time.
I will be after you."