“Mac,” said the captain, “there’s twenty more of those boys. They’re going to be treated in the same way tomorrow morning. Mac, are you game to stop it?”
“You can’t stop it, George; not without you’ve a whole bonnie regiment like the Gordons to clean them devils out an’ set the dirty place on fire!” answered the chief.
“Mac,” said Captain Mellor, “I’ve seen the prisoners. I’ve been up in that dirty, stinking room with them. Yon Frenchman ashore knows the officer in charge, and they took me up. I went so that I could see how the coast lies; and all the time I told the little Frenchman and the officer that I reckoned such scum was better off the earth. They’ll never suspect me if I happen to let loose the whole bunch, Mac.
“I pretended I wasn’t much interested; but I saw everything there was to see. It’s the end house to the north, and the cliff’s no more than fifteen feet from the back of the house. But the windows are all barred. A good length of two-and-a-half manila, a block, a short spar and a file, and a couple of men to give me a hand, and I’ll engage to be at sea this time to-morrow with all that bunch of youngsters. I’ll land them down the coast in their own part of the world, and I’ll cover the ship’s name up. Are you game, Mac?”
“An’ what’ll happen if we’re caught, George?” asked the chief. “I’m thinkin’ they’ll be no very merciful!”
“Shoot us on sight, I s’pose,” replied his captain. “Are you game to try it?”
“A file’ll no do for them bars, George,” said the chief. “It’s a good thing, man, you’ve the sense to ask an engineer to come wi’ ye. I’ll bring a hack saw an’ some oil; an’ I’m no thinkin’ it’s the bars as will trouble us. I’ll speak to Alec. He was wi’ me ashore along wi’ the mate this mornin’ an’ he’ll be eager to bear a hand.”
“What did the mate say about the thing, Mac?” asked Captain Mellor.
“Not much! But ye know what Mr. Grey is. He just hooked his fist into my arm an’ said he thanked God he was English; which I said nothing to, for I’d sooner be English myself than one of that lot ashore! You ask him. I’m betting he’s spoiling to do something useful, George.”
“And you’ll get your crowd below, Mac, will you, and have steam up ready?” said Captain Mellor. “I’ll tell the second to heave her short so we can break the hook out and away the moment we get back.”
“Aye,” said the chief engineer grimly as he turned to leave the cabin. “The moment we get back, George. Maybe they’ll have to wait eternity for that same moment, I’m thinkin’!”
II
Four hours later when the night had come down deep and silent upon the Adriatic, Captain Mellor brought his boat near in to the end of the low point of rock where it sloped down and disappeared under the warm, still water.
“Shove the grapple over quiet,” he said. “Sound carries a mighty long way on a night like this. Pay out now. Right. Make her fast there. She’ll ride just clear of the rocks. Mac, jump ashore with Alec, and one of you hold the painter while I pass you out the gear.”
Ten minutes later the four men were climbing the long slope of the point, the captain and the mate carrying a thirty-foot spar, and the two engineers a coil of two-and-a-half-inch manila, a pulley block and a few of the tools of their profession. Behind them in the darkness the double-bowed boat was moored with her stern toward the grapple, and her bows toward the end of the low point, so that in a hurried retreat they would be able to haul her close in with the painter in a moment and jump aboard.
Half an hour’s walk brought them to the top of the cliff at the back of the prison.
“Quietly now,” muttered the captain. “Keep away from the edge while I go and have a look round.”
He lowered his end of the spar gently to the ground and went forward cautiously.
“Further along,” he told them when he came back.
When they reached the edge of the cliff, creeping, they found they were directly above the prison house, and Captain Mellor and the mate got to work at once to rig the spar out over the cliff.
Mac and Alec had been gone but a few minutes in their search for some large stones to hold down the heel of the spar when a woman’s scream was heard some sixty or seventy feet away.
“Hark, man! What’s that?” asked the captain.
A few moments and the second engineer came up breathless.
“For all sakes come, captain,” he gasped. “The chief’s got a woman back there in the bushes and he can’t quiet her. He doesn’t understand a bit what she’s talking.”
Quickly the three men ran through the bushes to where the woman was hysterically shouting at the engineer.
“What is it? Who are you?” asked Captain Mellor in the patois common in the north of the island of Euboe.
The woman gave a cry and, whirling round on him in the darkness, sank to her knees.
“Aie,” she called out. “They killed my son this morning. My youngest they kill to-morrow—”
“Whist ye! Whist ye now,” muttered the chief. “Ye’ll have us all hanged.”
The woman caught the captain round the knees and poured out mad entreaties. He loosed her arms and, taking her by the shoulders, shook her with a quiet violence that seemed to bring her suddenly to her senses, for she became instantly silent.
Then the captain explained to her why they were there. He showed her how she was robbing her boy of his one chance of life by making any sort of outcry up there on the top of that lonely cliff on a quiet night when sound would travel far.
“I am no more than a she-dog that you may beat or strangle if I make one sound,” was what she replied.
“They killed her eldest boy this morning,” explained the captain to the others. “To-morrow the youngest one is to die.”
“God help her!” said Mac. “Well, maybe we’ll save the other for her.”
“Aye,” answered the captain. “We’ll save the other boy for her, God willing. Now get going, all of us. Mr. Grey, back to the spar!”
He turned and spoke gently to the woman, telling her to hunt round for pieces of rock and bring them to the cliff edge. The two engineers cast about them again for bowlders while Captain Mellor followed the first mate to where the spar lay.
Fifteen minutes later it was rigged out some fourteen feet over the side of the cliff. The two-inch manila rope had been rove through the sheave in the outer end, and the inner end of the long spar had been covered with a mass of heavy pieces of rock so as to withstand the weight of a man upon the tackle at the outer end.
It was Captain Mellor who went down first, for he had to get into communication with the boys to prevent any of them making an outcry in their surprise at seeing someone at work on the bars of their prison.
He was lowered slowly down and got his feet on to the sill of the window, then, while he gripped a bar with one hand he reached between with the other, and began very gently to knock steadily on the glass.
Fear had made the boys abnormally sharp-witted. In a moment the panes vibrated slightly as if the catch were being slid up. Then slowly and cautiously the window was pulled open.
“S-sh!” whispered the captain, beginning to explain matters. Before he had finished every lad in the room had crowded round the window.
“Now, not a sound,” he warned them. “When does the guard come round?”
The guard, they told him, had just been round, and telling them to go back and lie upon the floor as if asleep, he gave the signal to be hauled up again.
“All sereneMac,” he told the chief. “You can lower me down now, and I’ll stand on the sill and send the bowline up for you. You come along down and cut those bars out. Now, then, down with me, smart.”
Five seconds later Mac was beside him with his feet thrust in between the bars on the sill, and his weight taken by the bowline in which he sat so as to be able to use both hands at his work.
“Now, George,” he said, “you stand by me with the oil can an’ I’ll have two o’ these bars out in
side o’ fifteen minutes. I know this dirty Spanish iron! It’s like bad butter with the sunstroke. Ye could almost cut it with the back of your finger!”
Yet in spite of the chief’s contempt for what he termed “Spanish” iron, the bars proved reasonably healthy metal, though the tempered hack saw ate into them with marvelous ease.
But there was one thing which could not be achieved, and that was silence. The “bite” of the small saw seemed to fill the room and to go echoing with a minute, diabolicalshrillness down the “well” formed by the back of the house and the side of the cliff.
Oil proved ineffectual to bring silence, and so did soap, a cake of which the chief had brought in the hope of making the saw work quietly. Yet the bars must be cut, and as speedily as possible, and so the risk of being heard must be taken along with all the other mad risks they were running.
A three-foot length of the first bar had been cut clean away and the chief had started on the second when the thing Captain Mellor had feared happened. There was a sudden sound of feet on the stairs leading up to the prison, and the lad nearest the window whispered shrilly:
“They come. They come.”
Mac had heard the sound at the same moment. He stopped his saw and swung away silently to the same side of the window as Captain Mellor.
The steps came steadily up the stairs, and light showed all round the edges of the door.
“Quick!” cried the captain in patois to the youth at the window. “Take this!”
He thrust the cut-out portion of the bar at him. “Shut the window quick, and lie down. Pretend to sleep. If he sees anything you must hit him with the iron. If you fail you die.”
He swung away from the window as the lad pushed it shut, and caught the bowline in which Mac sat. He heard the key turn in the lock as the lad closed the window. A moment of intense suspense, then a burst of light and the noise of a door as it crashed open against the right-hand wall.
The two men outside heard someone enter the room and shuffle about among the boys. There came dull thuds and cries. The captain thrust his body entirely out of line with the window, and his weight was supported partly by the bowline and partly by the toe of his right boot, which he kept on the extreme corner of the ledge.
Leaning to the right somewhat he saw, by looking into the room, the cause of the sounds. The guard, with drawn sword in one hand and a lantern in the other, was kicking the youths lustily as he walked round among them.
“What devil’s work are you up to now?” he growled. “I heard your noise. Tomorrow you’ll have no chance of speaking. Better talk now, you pigs!”
But as he got no reply, only groans, as he stepped brutally on the bodies lying about the floor, he appeared satisfied there was no cause for alarm, and again telling them that to-morrow would rid him of them forever, he concluded his inspection and made for the door.
At this moment a cruel thing happened. A sudden gust of wind blowing round the lofty house, pushed one of the French windows open. The lamp in the guard’s hand flickered, and he whirled round.
With a suspicious cry he crossed the room to the window, held up his lamp and discovered the sawed iron bar.
“Arre!” he exclaimed, whirling round and flashing his lamp upon the floor where lay the lad who had stood at the window. Once, twice, three times he kicked him, then the lad jumped at him, the solid bar between his hands.
Before the bayonet could be raised the heavy bar came down and the guard with it, He lay there very quiet on the floor.
“Shut the door and lock it, one of you,” commanded Captain Mellor through the bars. “Put out the lamp, and make no noise.” Then to chief he said: “Get savage with that bar, Mac. We’ve got to be out of this inside ten minutes.”
Without a word the chief swung back into place and fitted the blade of his hack saw into the nick he had already been sawing. Then grimly disregarding all precautions he drove the little tempered saw back and forth in one long skirr of sound which seemed to set the whole “well” singing with the shrill echo.
“Through!” he cried, and, reaching up for a second cut, the shirr of sound again filled the black depth below them, echoing to right and left among the absolute silence of the cliff face.
Suddenly there was a sharp snap. Mac swore softly under his breath and fumbled in his pocket for a spare blade.
“Swing to the side, Mac,” cried Captain Mellor, sensing what had happened. “I’m going to give a heave on the bar.”
“It’s scarce half through, George. Ye couldna budge it, strong as ye are,” replied the chief.
Nevertheless, he swung away a foot, for Captain Mellor had a reputation for strength which he could never hope to justify to a better end.
As the captain stooped, bending his great knees and gripping the lower end of the bar with his right hand, a voice from somewhere below in the building called out:
“Peldra! Peldral! Peldra!”
“They’re shouting for yon man the lad clouted!” muttered Mac. “I’m thinkin’ we’re done this trup, George. I canna see to fix this blade an’ me hands all on the go wi’ excitement! Whist, they’re comin’!”
Steps were on the stairs—heavy steps running up. Inside the dark room hopeless fear took the lads as they huddled together. The captain put all on the hazard of his strength. He bent his knees again, gripped the bar with one enormous hand and the bar went upward with a curious dull bang.
Diving into the room, the bar still in his hand, Captain Mellor sprang for the door. A hand was fumbling for the knob. In that instant the captain turned the key, letting the lock come back quietly.
The handle shook, and a voice called out twice: “Peldra, Peldra!” And another voice from below called out loud and clear:
“Open the door, Marx; open the door!”
It was the voice of the sergeant who had stubbed out his cigarette on the leg of one of the youths that morning.
“It’s locked, sergeant,” replied the half-drunken guard outside the door. Then he called out a contradiction as the door gave way before his push.
“Peldra!” he said, drunkenly, stumbling into the room. “Where’s the lamp?”
From his place behind the door the captain heard the sergeant coming up at a run. In the threshold the man butted heavily into the guard, sending him spinning. A moment later the sergeant struck a match and, holding it high above his head, stepped into the room, his saber ready in his right hand.
“Peldra!” he called sharply. “Where are you?”
Then, as if sensing danger, he whirled round just as Captain Mellor sprang from behind the door. As the man cut at him Captain Mellor caught the blow on the iron bar he held. Striking with his weapon sidewise he knocked the saber out of the sergeant’s hand, and, dropping the bar, he used his fists.
The match had gone out, but he could see the man dimly outlined against the window. As he shouted an alarm, the captain’s right fist caught his jaw violently and he fell with a thud to the floor.
“Mac,” called the captain, “start getting these boys slung aloft smart!”
With a few brief directions to the youths he struck a light and began to feel round for the guard, who, with drunken cunning, was creeping out of the door in search of help.
Captain Mellor sprang for the man, whose howl was stopped by the captain’s forceful way of snapping his jaws together. Then before he could recover breath a handful of dirty straw was forced into his mouth, and his elbows strapped behind him with his own belt. His trouser legs were skewered together with his own bayonet.
The insensible sergeant was strapped up much as was the drunken relief guard. The third man, Peldra, was beyond the need of such treatment.
Captain Mellor shut the door gently and locked it. Outside the window the chief was silently sending the lads up through the darkness, one after another.
“Thank God!” muttered the big captain. “Get aloft, now, and send the bowline down for me,” he whispered to Mac.
The moment he reached th
e cliff top he took command.
“Unship the spar. Handy now. You lads, stand back there. Mr. Grey, and you, Alec, carry the spar. We’ll leave nothing for a clew. I’ll hump the rope. Mac, you take the block. Get on ahead, all of you.”
Presently he had them all on the march, going silently through the dark that lay heavy upon everything. He took the rear. In front of him the Greek woman was carrying her son in her arms, easily and lightly crooning a murmur of patois over him as though he were a baby.
Two hours afterward, with his “merciful plunder” aboard, Captain Mellor was leaning over the after-rail of his bridge, staring at a far-off blur of lights on the horizon—the lights of the little town where, in the public square stood that brutally incongruous scaffold which would greet no youthful victims on the morrow!
Captain Mellor still trades along the Adriatic coast. And to this day, such is the irony of life’s rewards, the little Frenchman never meets him without a resentful memory of his grimly brutal harshness of heart.
Often he refers to the miraculous escape of the doomed boys. And always the captain grunts unsympathetically. Then the little Frenchman mutters as he crosses himself devoutly:
“But the good God was kinder than you.”
The Haunting of the Lady Shannon
Captain teller had his men aft for a few brief words as the Lady Shannon wallowed down-channel in the wake of the tug. He explained very clearly that when he gave an order he expected that order to be obeyed with considerable haste or there would be “consequences”.
Captain Teller’s vocabulary was limited and vulgar, and his choice of words therefore unpleasing; but there was no mistaking his meaning; and the crew went forward again, shaking their heads soberly.
“Just wot I said,” remarked one of them, “he’s a ’oly terror!”
In this there seemed to be a moody acquiescence on the part of the others; all except one, a young fellow, who muttered an audible threat that he would stick his knife into anyone who hazed him.
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places Page 55