Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader, Robert Michael Ballantyne [english novels to improve english .TXT] 📗

to be done with the prisoners. Some counselled instant death, others advised that they should be kept as hostages. The debate was so long and fierce, that the day had begun to break before it was concluded. It was at length arranged that they should be conveyed alive to their village, there to be disposed of according to the instructions of their chiefs.

Feeling that they had already delayed too long, they placed the prisoners on their shoulders and bore them swiftly away.

Poor Corrie and his sable friend were easily carried, coiled up like sacks, each on the shoulders of a stalwart savage; but Bumpus, who had required eight men to bind him, still remained unconvinced of his vincibility. He struggled so violently on the shoulders of the four men who bore him, that Keona, in a fit of passion, tinged no doubt with revenge, hit him such a blow on the head with the handle of an axe as caused his brains to sing, and a host of stars to dance before his eyes.

These stars were, however, purely imaginary, for at that time the dawn had extinguished the lesser lights. Ere long, the bright beams of the rising sun suffused the eastern sky with a golden glow. On passing the place where Alice had been left, a couple of the party were sent by Keona to fetch her. They took the unnecessary precaution of binding the poor child, and speedily rejoined their comrades with her in their arms.

The amazement of her friends on seeing Alice was only equalled by her surprise on beholding them. But they were not permitted to communicate with each other. Presently the whole party emerged from the wild mountain gorges, through which they had been passing for some time, and proceeded in single file along a narrow path that skirted the precipices of the coast. The cliffs here were nearly a hundred feet high. They descended sheer down into deep water; in some places even overhung the sea.

Here John Bumpus, having recovered from the stunning effects of the blow dealt him by Keona, renewed his struggles, and rendered the passage of the place not only difficult, but dangerous to himself as well as to his enemies. Just as they reached a somewhat open space on the top of the cliffs, Jo succeeded, by almost superhuman exertion, in bursting his bonds. Keona, foaming with rage, gave an angry order to his followers, who rushed upon Bumpus in a body as he was endeavouring to clear himself of the cords. Although John struck out manfully, the savages were too quick for him. They raised him suddenly aloft in their arms and hurled him headlong over the cliff!

The horror of his friends on witnessing this may easily be imagined, but every other feeling was swallowed up in terror when the savages, apparently rendered bloodthirsty by what they had done, ran towards Alice, and, raising her from the ground, hastened to the edge of the cliff, evidently with the intention of throwing her over also.

Before they accomplished their fiendish purpose, however, a sound like thunder burst upon their ears and arrested their steps. This was immediately followed by another crash, and then came a series of single reports in rapid succession which were multiplied by the echoes of the heights until the whole region seemed to tremble with the reverberation.

At first the natives seemed awe-stricken. Then, on becoming aware that the sounds which originated all this tumult came from the direction of their own village, they dropped Alice on the ground, fled precipitately down the rugged path that led from the heights to the valley and disappeared, leaving the three captives, bound and helpless, on the cliffs.


CHAPTER TWELVE.


DANGEROUS NAVIGATION AND DOUBTFUL PILOTAGE--MONTAGUE IS HOT, GASCOYNE SARCASTIC.

We turn now to the _Talisman_, which, it will be remembered, we left making her way slowly through the reefs towards the northern end of the island, under the pilotage of Gascoyne.

The storm, which had threatened to burst over the island at an earlier period of that evening, passed off far to the south. The light breeze which had tempted Captain Montague to weigh anchor soon died away, and before night a profound calm brooded over the deep.

When the breeze fell, Gascoyne went forward, and, seating himself on a forecastle carronade, appeared to fall into a deep reverie. Montague paced the quarter-deck impatiently, glancing from time to time down the skylight at the barometer which hung in the cabin, and at the vane which drooped motionless from the mast-head. He acted with the air of a man who was deeply dissatisfied with the existing state of things, and who felt inclined to take the laws of nature into his own hands. Fortunately for nature and himself, he was unable to do this.

Ole Thorwald exhibited a striking contrast to the active, impatient commander of the vessel. That portly individual, having just finished a cigar which the first lieutenant had presented to him on his arrival on board, threw the fag end of it into the sea, and proceeded leisurely to fill a large-headed German pipe, which was the constant companion of his waking hours, and the bowl of which seldom enjoyed a cool moment.

Ole having filled the pipe, lighted it; then, leaning over the taffrail, he gazed placidly into the dark waters, which were so perfectly calm that every star in the vault above could be compared with its reflection in the abyss below.

Ole Thorwald, excepting when engaged in actual battle, was phlegmatic, and constitutionally lazy and happy. When enjoying his German pipe he felt inexpressibly serene, and did not care to be disturbed. He therefore paid no attention to the angry manner of Montague, who brushed past him repeatedly in his hasty perambulations, but continued to gaze downwards and smoke calmly in a state of placid felicity.

"You appear to take things coolly, Mister Thorwald," said Montague, half in jest, yet with a touch of asperity in his manner.

"I always do" (puff) "when the weather's not warm." (Puff puff.)

"Humph!" ejaculated Montague, "but the weather _is_ warm just now; at least it seems so to me--so warm that I should not be surprised if a thunder squall were to burst upon us ere long."

"Not a pleasant place to be caught in a squall," returned the other, gazing through the voluminous clouds of smoke which he emitted at several coral reefs, whose ragged edges just rose to the level of the calm sea without breaking its mirror-like surface; "I've seen one or two fine vessels caught that way, just hereabouts, and go right down in the middle of the breakers."

Montague smiled, and the commander-in-chief of the Sandy Cove army fired innumerable broadsides from his mouth with redoubled energy.

"That is not a cheering piece of information," said he, "especially when one has reason to believe that a false man stands at the helm."

Montague uttered the latter part of his speech in a subdued earnest voice, and the matter-of-fact Ole turned his eyes slowly towards the man at the wheel; but observing that he who presided there was a short, fat, commonplace, and uncommonly jolly-looking seaman, he merely uttered a grunt and looked at Montague inquiringly.

"Nay, I mean not the man who actually holds the spokes of the wheel, but he who guides the ship."

Thorwald glanced at Gascoyne, whose figure was dimly visible in the fore part of the ship, and then looking at Montague in surprise shook his head gravely, as if to say--

"I'm still in the dark--go on."

"Can Mr Thorwald put out his pipe for a few minutes and accompany me to the cabin? I would have a little converse on this matter in private."

Ole hesitated.

"Well, then," said the other, smiling, "you may take the pipe with you, although it is against rules to smoke in my cabin--but I'll make an exception in your case."

Ole smiled, bowed, and, thanking the captain for his courtesy, descended to the cabin along with him and sat down on a sofa in the darkest corner of it. Here he smoked vehemently, while his companion, assuming a rather mysterious air, said in an under tone--

"You have heard, of course, that the pirate Durward has been seen, or heard of, in those seas?"

Ole nodded.

"Has it ever struck you that this Gascoyne, as he calls himself, knows more about the pirate than he chooses to tell?"

"Never," replied Ole. Indeed nothing ever did _strike_ the stout commander-in-chief of the forces. All new ideas came to him by slow degrees, and did not readily find admission to his perceptive faculties. But when they did gain an entrance into his thick head, nothing was ever known to drive them out again. As he did not seem inclined to comment on the hint thrown out by his companion, Montague continued, in a still more impressive tone--

"What would you say if this Gascoyne himself turned out to be the pirate?"

The idea being a simple one, and the proper course to follow being rather obvious, Ole replied with unwonted promptitude--"Put him in irons, of course, and hang him as soon as possible."

Montague laughed. "Truly that would be a vigorous way of proceeding; but as I have no proof of the truth of my suspicions, and as the man is my guest at present, as well as my pilot, it behoves me to act more cautiously."

"Not at all; by no means; you're quite wrong, captain; (which is the natural result of being young--all young people go more or less;) it is clearly your duty to catch a pirate anyhow you can, as fast as you can, and kill him without delay."

Here the sanguinary Thorwald paused to draw and puff into vitality the pipe which was beginning to die down, and Montague asked--

"But how d'you know he is the pirate?"

"Because you said so," replied his friend.

"Nay, I said that I _suspected_ him to be Durward--nothing more."

"And what more would you have?" cried Ole, whose calm spirit was ruffled with unusual violence at the thought of the hated Durward being actually within his reach. "For my part I conceive that you are justified in taking him up on suspicion, trying him in a formal way (just to save appearances) on suspicion, and hanging him at once on suspicion. Quite time enough to inquire into the matter after the villain is comfortably sewed up in a hammock with a thirty-pound shot at his heels, and sent to the bottom of the sea for the sharks and crabs to devour. Suspicion is nine points of the law in these regions, Captain Montague, and we never allow the tenth point to interfere with the course of justice one way or another. Hang him, or shoot him if you prefer it, at once; _that_ is what I recommend."

Just as Thorwald concluded this amiable piece of advice, the deep strong tones of Gascoyne's voice were heard addressing the first lieutenant.

"You had better hoist your royals and skyscrapers, Mr Mulroy; we shall have a light air off the land presently, and it will require all your canvas to carry the ship round the north point, so as to bring her guns to bear on the village of the savages."

"The distance seems to me very short," replied the lieutenant, "and the _Talisman_