“Bissagos Reef! Ethel!” These were his only thoughts.
He leaped into some clothes, snatched his revolver, jerked open the cabin door, and ran out in his shirt-sleeves to the main saloon. It was already filled with grotesque, excited passengers. A babel swelled tumultuously, with high-pitched questions, curses, and screams.
“Steady!” he shouted. “Steady, now! No danger if you all keep cool!”
Hands clutched at him; he staved them off. “Lord!” thought he. “What cattle human beings in a panic are!”
He heard the purser’s voice that reinforced his own — heard other officers — knew that for a moment his presence might be spared.
“I must go!” he told himself; for in the thickening mob he caught no glimpse of Ethel or the invalid.
“I’ve got to find them anyway!”
He shoved by main force, along the up-tilted floor, toward their cabins. From behind him, on the aft staircase, Captain Lockhart’s mellow Scotch voice boomed out: “We’re good for fufteen mennets yet! No danger if ye’ll tak’ it easy — all han’s to th’ boats! Weemen fairrst!”
Suddenly he came on Ethel and her palsied uncle. The old man’s halting steps had held her back. A flash of potent admiration lightened through Willard’s soul at the vision of the girl, pale and afraid, yet not startled or hastened from her duty.
She came onward, helping the pitiful, twisted figure, step by step — a figure doubly grotesque now, in scant, disheveled clothing, with sweat of pain on the knit brow and terror staring from the widened eyes. She looked, the doctor thought, most dignified and noble in her long, loose dressing gown, over which the yellow braids hung to below her girdle. A sort of fine simplicity enshrouded her. And though he had witnessed bold, hard men in peril, he thought that never had he seen so brave a thing as that gently bred girl holding back her steps, timing her pace to the hobbling of the senile creature who now clung to her for safety.
“What is it — tell me! Are we going down?” she cried to him, her voice trembling a little, but quite clear above the uproar of the crowd or the grinding and tearing of the ship. Her look was full of confidence; even in her fear he found no trace of panic. “Are we lost? What’s happened, can you tell me?”
“We’re on Bissagos — probably no danger.” His body shielded her from the stampeding pack that weltered past them, herded by a dozen of the officers and crew. His nerves were ice. He felt nothing save joy and high elation at this chance to save her life, at this thought that Ethel now was looking up to him, trusting him for guidance and deliverance.
“We mayn’t break up — for some time yet!” he shouted, bending toward her. “No danger — lots of boats — the mainland near! Come on, though — there’s no time to lose!”
He stooped and gathered the cripple in his arms, then lurched ahead through the wild mob. Ethel followed; he felt the grasp of her hand upon his shoulder, and strange, mad thoughts seethed up in him.
Thus presently, jostling and buffeted, they won through the panic and the uproar of the open lower deck, which shelved off sickeningly to the very water’s edge.
The night still gloomed impenetrable round the wounded ship. The wind had risen and whipped furiously the wild, green flares which flung sick shadows over the features of the dead.
Momentarily the waves boiled in spume-vortices over the sunken reef, sweeping the bulwarks, drenching the mad throng. At every heave and slide of the impaled monster a ghastly discord rose — “She’s going! Breaking up!” It mingled with the liner’s sirens and exhaust, which were ripping the sky with diapasons of appeal.
A rocket screeched aloft, and by its glare the doctor saw a slashing, clawing frenzy at the rail — saw the davits rock and shudder as the boats were wrenched outboard and the horde swarmed them, bursting all constraint.
“No chance for us there — with your uncle.” Willard made her understand. “They’d crush him in a second. We’ll have to wait.”
He saw her nod. “Talk about women being cowards!” flashed the thought through his mind.
Drawing her back into the shelter of a bulk, he put the cripple gently down. The old man, stunned, said nothing, but crouched low, with blinking eyes. Willard and the girl leaned up against the wall, bracing their feet upon the deck, which every moment settled at a steeper pitch.
Now they could look down on the hideous fight. They saw the captain’s huge frame overtopping all, dominant as his voice that blared out in command. They caught a gleam of pistol steel in his hand — a spike of flame — and someone pitched across the rail.
“Bairns and th’ weemen fairrst!” his brave old sea cry rang. Then, like lightning, a sudden something smote the captain’s head, and he was seen no more. Hell burst its bounds; panic reaped its certain due.
III.
“DON’T LOOK! You mustn’t!” Willard cried, shielding from her the tragedy of the long-boat as a tackle jammed and spilled two-score clutching, yelling creatures in the swirl. The boat flailed — a giant pendulum — and shaking loose the few that clung to thwarts or gunwales, splintered to fragments on the liner’s iron skin.
An instant, black, fighting things were sown broadcast upon the roaring sea — things that shrieked, went down bubbling, rose, then, with crisped fingers, disappeared forever.
“There’s been an accident — don’t look!”
“I’m not afraid,” he heard her answer, but the hand that grasped his arm trembled. He loved her for the very fear she knew so well to hold in leash.
A shudder ran through the wreck — a roar that boomed above the sirens’ bellowing — then, where the bows had been, gaped a vast black emptiness, with death-screams choked by upswirling brine. A third of the whole ship had broken free and, with its fearful toll, had foundered like a plummet.
The Sutherland, eased by this loss, ground back upon the reef more firmly than before, and settled at a safer pitch, but her survivors deemed their end was now upon them, and fought each other starkly at the boats. All but one of the green flares had burned away, and by this ghastly dim virescence Willard saw men trampled and women hurled aside.
“Safer aboard than anywhere with madmen!” he cried in the girl’s ear. “Don’t move! Stay where you are!”
He drove down into the wolf-pack — his duty called him there — and smote with hard fists that came back reddened from his blows, striving to scatter the crazed brutes. But in the dark and tumult he could compass nothing. A blow clipped his temple; he felt the blood run hot, but he only dashed it from his eyes and struck the harder, striving to wedge through and split the mob.
He saw foul knife-play, heard the first mate grunt and double up, got sights of hands that strangled and glimpsed blind primitive anarchy as a second boat was launched.
It foundered straightway, from gross overcrowding. Amid the drowning wretches, breaking off their hand-grasps, a third boat was got away with only five oars, her gunwales shipping water at each sea. Then went the life-raft. He helped fling it overboard, aided some to jump in safety, and vainly tried to hold back others who leaped out at random — who missed and sank, with never a human hand held out to them for salvage.
“Better stay here! Safer on the ship!” he shouted to the lessening fugitives, but no one heeded him. When at last they all were gone — some to death, some to uncertain struggles with the night and the sea — when all had disappeared save a few limp figures rolling in the scuppers, he climbed back, bleeding, up the slippery deck to Ethel.
He found her in the bulkhead corner, kneeling in the gloom over a prostrate something that neither stirred nor spoke.
“What! Can I help?” he cried.
She shook her head, raising her hand silently, and he forbore. He understood. The old man’s heart had lashed itself to bursting with the panic and the stress. Now, out of all the throng, only one woman and one man were left.
The doctor’s wisdom kept his lips from platitudes. He turned, and left Ethel to herself a moment, gazing off landward. The ship was utterly
dark now, for the last flare had burned to ash, the dynamos had stopped, and all the lights were dead. The steam-pipes’ roar had dwindled to a sibilant murmur, drowned by the lash and crumble of the surges on the reef. Under the great passionless stars the wreck lay spent and weary, crushed to death, unmoved by even the heaviest seas.
Quite suddenly the doctor noticed a little speck of light far in the gloom, then another — many specks, that lay where he half guessed the shore must be. Puzzled, he knit his brows.
“It can’t be that any have reached land yet. Those can’t be fires. Never knew campfires to crawl that way.”
Dully he watched the sparks creep, come together, then separate. They almost seemed to be advancing toward the ship.
Then the truth hit him, and he stumbled back.
“Merciful Heaven! the Guinea blacks — the wreckers of Bissagos!”
IV.
HE STOOPED to Ethel tenderly. “Listen,” said he. “We must get away from here. It’s death to stay!”
She clung to him. He drew her up — away. She was only a blur in the night, but intuition told him that her face was wet with tears.
“Death?” she asked. “The wreck won’t last till morning?”
“It’s not that. There’s something — something else. You’d better know at once. See there — off there to shoreward?”
“Those lights, you mean?”
“Lights, yes. They’re torches — in canoes. They’re coming. They mustn’t find us here, or —”
“I understand. But can we go, and leave the — the —”
“Nobody must be left. There couldn’t be a finer burial than the sea! I’ll take you into the saloon, then come back here and do what must be done.”
She understood, and yielded nobly. He led her off along the steep deck, after a silent moment by her uncle’s body. He brought her safely to the main saloon, struck a match and found his bearings.
“All you need do is sit quite still in here. I won’t be gone five minutes.” Then he left her.
The work was harder than he had expected, for there was a lantern to be found and lighted, and — there were other difficulties. After a while the task was done.
When he came back to her, his pockets crammed with provisions and cartridges, a bandolier of canvas supporting revolvers and two magazine-rifles, she greeted him with a pale, thin smile. By the lantern light that glimmered sickly through the mocking splendor of the place, he saw her eyes brimming with tears, but she was calm and full of courage.
“We’ve got to find and launch a boat, or something, right away.”
“Come, then, let’s be about it,” she replied. “There can’t be many boats left, can there?”
“Hardly two or three. The port-side’s stripped. We’ll soon find out.”
He helped her up across the saloon floor, which slanted like a house roof, and they issued out upon the larboard side. The wind could not strike here; and the waves, too, thirty-odd feet below, broke with less furious lashings.
Willard held the lantern high with his right hand. His left clutched the rail. Ethel steadied herself on him. Thus they worked their way slowly aft, stumbling over twisted cordage, litter, flotsam and jetsam of the tragedy.
As they neared the first boat Willard’s heart died within him. What he might have guessed was true — the careening of the ship had swung the boats far inboard against their davits, so that nothing short of half a dozen men could now have got them over the rail, even had not the falls been twisted into knots and tangles.
He knew at once the prime futility of an attempt. Even to have got a life-raft over they must have rigged tackles, and time was now so short. A real fear shuddered through his veins. Too well he knew what manner of men the Guinea wreckers were. His hand slid, as by instinct, to the butt of his revolver. Before a single black should come nigh her he knew a better way.
“Impossible?” asked Ethel almost coolly. “Perhaps there’s something better at the stern.”
They forced a way, sliding, slipping, and clinging to whatever handholds offered. Under the counter they heard the waves run hissing. The wind whipped them as they worked out from the shelter of the after-cabin; it blew the lantern out. And as they stopped, breathing heavily in the dark, they saw once more the dancing fire sparks, heaving and tossing with the waves, and drawing very nigh. They could even see that the sparks were torches, harried by the wind; and once, in a lull, they heard a wild-pitched, minor chant that wailed and mourned across the vacant reaches of the night, with throbbings of many cadent drums.
The woman trembled at this sound, and Willard drew her close to him.
“Don’t be afraid,” he soothed her. “They shall never get you.”
“Swear to that.”
“I needn’t. You know how true it is.”
“No time, now?”
“No time. We’ll have to hold the fort. They probably don’t know we’re here, so it’ll be a fine surprise party. Lots of arms on board. You can shoot?”
“Try me.”
Thus, on the instant, their campaign took form.
V.
“THEY’LL BOARD US midships on the port side,” Willard planned. “They’re after loot, and — and — and — well — edibles. Now we, I take it —”
“Can barricade the stern here?”
“Yes — rake ’em down by dozens. Except for knives and assegais, they’re probably not armed.”
“How many do you make them?”
“A good thousand. See, there must be more than fifty of those big sea-going barracas. But what are a thousand naked blacks against magazine rifles? They can’t rush us all at once. Come, though,” he added hastily, “this won’t do. We’ve to get things ready for ’em — quick, at that.”
He dragged up cordage, with her help; piled sail-cloth, debris, chains, anything that fell to hand in the port and starboard gangways. And thus they built a strong, entrenched position, whence they could sweep unmercifully the narrow approaches. By the vague light of the stars they toiled, and saw their work was good.
“We’ll lie low now,” panted the doctor. “If they don’t see us, well and good. Otherwise a finish fight. In case they drive us, there’s the aft companion to the upper deck. We can make a mighty fine killing from up there before they ever get us.”
Without another word he drew from his pockets box on box of cartridges, broke the seals, and poured them out upon the deck. He set to loading all his arsenal, then laid part at the starboard barricade, the rest to port. Then, where some sailcloth touched the wooden cabin, he drenched the place with lantern oil.
“Now, let the guests arrive,” said he. “Refreshment’s ready.”
“They’re almost here,” she whispered presently. “See there?”
Cautiously they peeked over the solid iron bulwark, and started with surprise. The Guinea men had loomed up almost in a moment from the night. The bulks of their long canoes were adumbrated by the guttering torches at each prow, surging upward, dipping, sliding over the hungry, lapping tongues of sea. Swarming they came. Everywhere flicked a swash of paddle-blades, everywhere swung innumerable black bodies in rhythm with the crooning plunder-song. The drums were silent, all save one that pulsed incessantly.
With a flesh-tingling wail of dissonance, the Guinea blacks teemed up about the Sutherland. A hum and murmur of barbaric voices filled the night. The acrid smoke from the torches stung the watchers’ nostrils as they crouched, gripping their rifles.
“See,” whispered Willard. “They’re boarding now.”
A sullen glow blurred up behind the port-rail midships. Then a blotch of flame wounded the shadows, and by this raw, wind-lashed beacon they saw the wreckers scramble in herds across the rail, their black, muscular bodies gleaming with sweat. Lights glinted from steel blades and spearheads.
“Armed for bloody work!” thought Willard, but he held his peace.
They clotted in a shifting mass, with cries like beasts; cracked, wild laughter; gibberish. A
nd still they came, and came, and came.
“Heavens, what an onslaught!” Willard groaned. “It seems a shame to wait.”
“Maybe they’ll never think of coming aft?” breathed the girl.
“Heaven knows! They’re in the saloon now. Hark! They’re plundering — looking for the dead!”
Lights gleamed from the windows; noises rose within. The ship swarmed like a gigantic anthill, with this fetid crew. And now the watchers saw numberless black fellows crowding to the rail with loot, tossing it to waiting canoe-men. The whole scene blent and ran together like a nightmare. Ethel shut her eyes to it, bowed her head and waited.
“Ready!”
The doctor’s hissed command aroused her. With sudden paralyzing dread she looked. A mob of the cursed ghouls were scouting toward them up the gangway.
Blear-faced and hideous they came, peering with brandished torches for what they might find. Ethel saw their little evil eyes; their red-dyed teeth as they grinned, jabbering; their shovel-headed spears.
“Now!” yelled the doctor. Night split wide-open with the fire from their rifles; crackling echoes smashed back from the cabin. Ethel looked.
She saw a struggling, screaming ruck that fled, a tangled heap jammed in the gangway — a heap that quivered.
There was no time for looking. Into her hands the doctor thrust another rifle.
“At the thick of ’em!” he shouted, and again death spouted from the barricade. Up to the sky shrilled a chorus of mad fear, so poignant, so unspeakable that they knew the rout was utter.
The wreckers made no stand. They lunged off in ripe clusters from the rail, swam for their dear black lives, and lost full many. Some reached their fellows in the boats; cries, howls, demoniac execrations dwindled as the barracas foamed away.
The doctor wiped his face with a torn sleeve and stood erect.
“They’ll be back soon,” said he. “Stay here; I’m going to investigate. If I whistle, look alive for orders.”
He pressed a revolver into her hand, clambered the barricade and was gone. The darkness swallowed him.
THE SUPREME GETAWAY AND OTHER TALES FROM THE PULPS Page 16