by Frank Savile
CHAPTER XXV
FATE'S FINAL WORD
Storm, darkness, despair--these had been the sole comrades for the twowho lay bound in their old quarters in the _Santa Margarita's_ lazaret.Within a few minutes of the moment in which Padre Sigismondi hadsuccumbed to the islander's treacherous hospitality, those who hadsought his protection had been prisoners once more, and the felucca'smast had been stepped anew. For three hours it had bent before thestrength of the northern wind--the hot, oppressive breath which seemedto blow no longer from Nature's lips but in her very face. For it was anunnatural wind--in temperature, in the quarter from which it came, indampness. The rigging slackened in the humid gusts, but the great sailbellied out magnificently. They had torn across the broad waste ofwaters at racing speed. Captain Luigi announced with legitimate pridethat they had come a matter of five and fifty kilometres. The landloomed up before them mountainously a short five miles away.
Landon peered into the darkness. Lights shone far to the left of theirposition--lights in rows, lights white, lights dusky orange, and farbeyond the main mass of the illumination one red star which winked insolemn intervals.
"Messina," explained Luigi, tersely. "The red beam? That is the Faro."
"And we land where?" asked Landon.
"Here, if the Holy Mother gives us her protection," said the skipper,and pointed straight ahead. "In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred thereis no difficulty about it. The port police--there are three of them--arecousins of my own and, it is needless to say, controlled by the Society.In fifteen minutes you will see."
"The hundredth chance?" said Landon. "That is--?"
"The Carbineers, Signor. Or rather one Carbineer--Sergeant Pinale, whohas been at the bottom of many an honest contrabandist's misfortune._Brutta bestia!_ He will not keep to any ordered sequence in his goingsand comings. But the men of the Society will know. If they answer oursignals, all is well."
Landon looked at him debatingly.
"Who is to answer signals at this hour of the night, my good Luigi? Yourcolleagues will be in their more or less virtuous beds."
The smuggler smiled a superior smile.
"The Society never sleeps, Signor, and it has trained the men in itsranks to remember as much. High on the blank wall of hill above the portis a watch-tower, though only a private dwelling-house to all seeming.There is a need for the sons of the Mafia to have an open door intoSicily at any moment of the day or night."
He called one of the hands to the tiller as he finished speaking andwent forward. He came back, holding a ship's lantern. There were wingsof glass on hinges on either side of it--one red, one green.
He knelt and busied himself in lighting it in the shelter of thecompanion. The breeze had driven them right in under the shadow of theland by now. The steep above the shore seemed almost to overhang them.Here and there a faint oil lamp flickered along the Marina; a larger,nearer, and brighter gleam was evidence of a tiny jetty which was washedby waves which were dwindling under the protection of the land.
Luigi lifted his lamp and held it clear of the companion. Rapidly heshut the green shield over the untinted glass, as rapidly opened itagain, shut the red wing twice in quick succession, and finally left thegreen signal closed.
Landon's eyes probed the darkness. His companion stood silent, his faceraised towards the hill. There was no apprehension in his attitude, onlyexpectancy.
Quite suddenly it seemed that the wind had dropped. The shelter of theshore might account for this in part, Landon mused, but surely notaltogether. It was weird, in a sense, this abrupt alternation to perfectstillness after the uproars of the outer seas, but it was notunpleasant. It gave one a sense of relaxation; but the heat, untemperedby the faintest breath of air, was incredibly oppressive. December wasaping the temperatures of August.
Luigi sighed contentedly and spoke.
"All is well, Signor. It remains to get our merchandise ashore."
Landon became aware of a blue speck of light in the darkness--a speckwhich wavered, grew to a suddenly unexpected point of brightness anddisappeared. So quickly did it come and go, so evanescent was itseffect, that none but those who searched for it would have been likelyto give its appearance a second thought. It might have been caused bythe passing of a candle behind one of the many panes of frosted glasswhich disfigure Italian villas in _villeggiatura_.
Luigi gave an order. The two deck hands clutched the halliards. The sailwas lowered. A moment later the anchor set the ripples herding towardsthe shore as it plunged into the calm below the jetty. Landon and hiscompanion descended to the cabin.
Stretched on a bunk was Miller, sleeping the sleep of the justly tired.He roused himself at their touch and sat up. He looked about himmeditatively.
"The wind has dropped, absolutely?" he said. "Since when?"
"Half an hour ago. We are in port," said Landon. "We are ready to land,when you will."
The gray man smoothed the creases in his gray coat.
"When _I_ will?" he repeated. "I am a prisoner--the captive of your bowand spear." He smiled with sombre sarcasm.
"That position is to be maintained?" asked Landon.
"Naturally. Your cousin may make my continued residence in Gibraltarwell-nigh impossible, otherwise."
"My cousin?" Landon repeated the words with a certain doubtfulness. "Heis my cousin," he said slowly, "and we sha'n't break one of his bloodexcept in one way. It's the girl, remember, that is our strong suit.There's to be no bleating about that. To win, the trick has to be takenwith her alone."
Miller nodded woodenly.
"If I had the inclination to interfere, I have not the power," he said."Do you forget that I am a prisoner, like herself?"
"Yes," said Landon, and there was more than doubt in his expressionthis time, there was suspicion. "I forget it all the time. I want yourassurance that _you_ won't!"
Miller made a gesture of assent.
"Let's get on," he said. "I understand that it's within a couple ofhours of dawn."
For an instant Landon hesitated. Then, with Luigi at his heels, heentered the lazaret. Neither of them spoke. They bent and lifted Aylmermethodically, holding him by his shoulders and his lashed ankles. Theybore him on deck. They gagged him with the cork float of a fishing-netand left him, stark and motionless as a log. They turned back to thecabin, and a minute later placed Claire Van Arlen beside him, ashelpless as himself.
The dingy--a new one, picked up in the island--was lowered. Theprisoners were thrust beneath the seats. A deck hand and Muhammed tooktheir places at the oars. Luigi steered; the child, half asleep andwrapped in a blanket, drowsed at his feet. Miller and Landon sat on thethwarts.
The two rowers dipped their oars without splashing in long, slowstrokes. The thole-pins were muffled with rags. The boat stole along inthe shadow of the jetty into the darkness which hid the port. It wasnoiseless, ghost-like, this entry into the little haven. To the two dumbprisoners who lay along the bottom of the boat it was ominous of hopeentirely lost.
They stifled under the cloaks which hid them; the perspiration drippedfrom the rowers, despite the unhurried nature of their work. The weightof a dozen atmospheres seemed to have replaced the exhilarating breathwhich Sicily flings seaward from her sun-brimmed shores. Luigi, at thehelm, gasped and passed his hand across his eyes.
"Thunder in December! Not natural, Signor, but that is what we mustexpect. I suffocate. _Per Dio!_ The bay is an oven."
He let the prow nose in towards the jetty. Moored boats began to appeardimly, right and left of them. The lamplight from the Marina showed anempty quay. Luigi steered for the shadow cast by a shed, and took theground silently on a strand of mud and garbage.
The deck hand drew in his oar and skipped nimbly ashore. Muhammedfollowed him. They both laid their hands upon the painter. They benttheir backs to haul.
Two shadows appeared right and left of them, shadows which seemed tohave detached themselves from the framework of the shed. Somethingclicked. A yellow beam flared out,
full on Luigi's face.
He gasped, he yelled.
"God's Mother--the Carbineers!"
Landon leaped to his feet with a curse. He seized an oar; he thrust withall his strength at the mud. And at the same moment the two on theshore, struggling in their captor's hands, let fall the painter. Theboat shot out stern foremost into deep water.
From the shore came the sound of a struggle and then Muhammed's voice,shrill in explanation.
"_Signori! Signori!_ I am not a contrabandist! I am a tourist; I canprove it; I wish to offer no resistance; I place myself in your hands,freely."
There was a grim laugh, and then the yellow beam of light which had beenwithdrawn while the struggle proceeded, flung out its level rays againand illuminated the boat.
"Surrender, Luigi!" shouted a stern voice. There was another click."Surrender, _stupido_! I have you covered; I give you five secondsbefore I fire!"
The shrill voice of the captured sailor reinforced the argument.
"It is over--finished," he shouted pessimistically. "It is _Pinale_;there is nothing more to be done!"
Luigi groaned and then flung up his hands.
"I give in!" he cried, and burst into a storm of hysterical sobs. "Itmeans Procida--this," he wept. "It means years in chains; it means halfthe rest of my life snatched from me." He turned and smote at Landon inthe darkness. "I owe it to you, tempter!" he yelled. "Accursed of God,you led me into this!"
Landon stumbled in his surprise and then leaped at him like a cat. Therewas a shrill scream from the child as the swaying pair rolled down uponthe stern sheets, gripping, each of them, for the other's throat. Theboat rocked violently.
Again the stern command from the shore rang into the night. They gave itno heed. Animal rage possessed them; they were no longer men but beasts,fighting with hand and foot and knee, clawing, tearing, even biting asthe chance of conflict brought Luigi's lips within reach of hisassailant's cheek. They were lost to all human warning or control.
It was no human interference which separated them.
Fate played her hand--played it irresistibly, crushingly, played it witha vindictive completeness such as even she has never used since her gripfell upon her plaything--that toy of hers among a million million toys,and which we call our world.
A roar, terrific, growing, menacing, filling the echoes, brimming theheavy air, rolling out across the still waters of the bay, thunderedinto the silence of the shore. The dim lamps upon the Marina shook;crash upon crash echoed from buildings which could not be seen, butwhich terror could picture in all the crude pigments of imagination anddespair! Beside the boat a huge crack rent the jetty in twain. Stones,dashed from the crumbling buildings in the darkness, flung huge gouts ofspray over the two who wrenched themselves apart in her stern, overtheir prisoners, over the child, who cried aloud in all the agony ofchildish fear.
And then human voices joined the chorus--voices which expressed everyintonation of panic, of the horror which is built upon amazement, of theunleashed emotions of men awaking to meet blindly the common hazards oflife and confronting chaos, illimitable ruin, a sudden unbarring of thegates of Hell.
The struggle in the boat ceased. Wild curses became, on Luigi's lips, astring of piteous appeals to the very saints whose names he had used amoment before to point his blasphemies. Miller and Landon grasped theoars.
But even the terrors of earthquake do not wreck the discipline ofItaly's Carbineers. The sergeant's warning was repeated thunderously.
Miller screamed an assent, a surrender. Landon answered with an oath.The one endeavored to propel the boat shorewards, the other towards thesea. It spun between their efforts; they yelled and gesticulated madly.
And again the sergeant's voice was heard, with a hundred other voices,appealing to a God whose mercy was surely turned away.
For a moaning sound _tingled_ along the strand, and then silently, butwith the speed of a cataract, the sea sank back from the shore.
It plucked half a hundred boats from their anchorages; it gripped themdown into its trough. For full thirty seconds they fled upon thismonstrous tide of a tideless sea, hull crashing against hull, mastbeating against mast, a wrecked wilderness of spars and rigging,tangled, coiled, the froth, the scum, as it were, upon that mightycrest. And behind them went the _Santa Margarita's_ dingy, with boundand free in equal helplessness.
Then, as if the sluice of some Cyclopean lock had been shut, the mightymill-race halted and a mountain grew upon the face of the deep. Huge,black, awesome, it swung itself up, swelled higher and higher, hungthrough an aeon-long moment of horror, and then rolled back whence it hadcome. And the menace of its coming left no tiniest coign of foothold forhope in its path. Irresistible and relentless it moved along to destroyevery barrier of nature, every man-built obstacle with its might. Itsfoam-plumed crest roared over the quayside and the Marina five fathomsdeep.
Like a chip upon the surface of a torrent which suddenly hastens to thebrink of the cascade, the boat and its burden of lives was snatchedalong. The three who stood and gripped its gunwale saw the broad expanseof the Marina before them, saw it seem to sink as they themselves roseupon the flood, saw how they raced across it twenty feet above the levelof its flags. And they saw more--saw it with eyes which seemed to seartheir brains with anticipation, with despair.
This!
A long, irregular, deep-fronted row of dwellings, square to the sea,square to the reeling ridge of ocean which was sweeping upon them as thegust sweeps down upon the far-flung autumn leaves.
They called aloud in chorus; they challenged Fate with their despair.And Fate replied.
The waters reached the walls; the huge sheet of spray shot high into thenight. But the dingy passed on uncrushed.
An alley opened before them--an alley through which they shot on theroaring tide into the square beyond, sank down as the dwindling waterssank and with their last effort of destruction reached, and were borneinto an arched opening girt about with trees. And then that, in itsturn, became a ruin of plaster and planks and stone. The wave completedwhat the earthquake had all too thoroughly begun. The roof and wallscrashed down into a grim monument upon a living grave.