The Filibusters, Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

nothing else, and when I tried to pin him to definite promises he promptly got vague. So I looked round to see if there wasn’t a more promising opening elsewhere and I found it. I was offered a fixed sum to upset him.”

“Then don’t you consider yourself,” I asked acidly, ” a bit of a cur for coming with us?”

He answered with perfect good humour. ” Not a bit. Isn’t it Briggs’s own maxim that all is fair in war? And haven’t I all my life been fighting one continuous desperate scrimmage against poverty? My good chap, it is a written thing that I must get rich, or at least comfortably off, and if anything or anybody gets in the way the course has got to be cleared somehow. Honour is a very fine thing, and friends are a luxurious possession; but a poor man who has made up his mind to be poor no longer has to tread on them both when they get in his way.”

“That’s all very well, but what will you do with wealth even if you get it now? Can’t you see that you’ve dirtied your ticket eternally?”

“In England?”

“All the world over.”

“Not in England, any way. What do they know about Sacaronduca at home? Two persons in twenty may remember that it is in Central America, and the balance have never heard of its existence. When I get back with my pile some fool will probably write to the papers saying how I raised it, and after that (as I shan’t call attention to the letter by contradicting it) the thing will die out for good. No, Birch, one dollar out of this delightful country is quite as good as any other dollar.”

“That remains to be seen. But I might remind you that you haven’t earned your loot yet, and you’re not at home to enjoy it. To begin with, you have still to get out of Dolores, and even if you do contrive to slip away, you’ll find a very tolerably warm hunt clamouring on your heels. And after that you’ve got to upset Briggs before you can earn your dividends. If you ask me, your outlook is pretty sick. You’ve no resources at the back of you.”

“Well,” he said, ” what of that? Didn’t I nearly upset your apple-cart twice before, and what resources had I then?”

“I’d like to hear that.”

Carew grinned. ” I daresay you would.” He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes past midnight. Well, as I don’t intend to shift out of this till after one, perhaps, it would be a charity to relieve some of your curiosity. So I’ll tell you how the job was done. I made dazzling big promises in actual figures, and showed needy men how they might become rich in one dash if they didn’t get killed in the process. Of course I used gumption in broaching the question to them; didn’t pick out the saintliest specimens, you understand; and I didn’t have one solitary refusal. I could have got six times what I asked for. The first go off was a fizzle, thanks to that confoundedly smart young woman Delicia. I’d have grabbed your utensils of war on the White Tortuga for an absolute certainty if she hadn’t put her spoke in; and as it was, I left most of my beauties behind.”

“Dead. Yes, we saw them.”

“They are quieter than wounded,” he said significantly, and then paused and stopped. ” It wouldn’t have done to leave behind anyone who could talk,” he added, and stopped again.

“So you cut their throats, did you?” I asked.

“My good Birch, don’t dwell on the gruesome side of things. Why shouldn’t all the wounded have been carried off in the naphtha launch?”

“We burnt a flare as she went by, and you didn’t seem to have a superabundant crew of either hale or halt. Moreover they appeared to have had enough fighting for the night. That was you steering, I suppose? We saw you try to run us aboard, and we saw them sit on you. Certainly you seemed furious enough at the time, but I suppose you understand now that they saved your life?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose I was in a tolerable passion at the time. Who wouldn’t have been, to see such a dainty scheme so completely split? Man, I wouldn’t have sold my chances when we first landed on that Key for �200,000. A kick-out of that description would shove an archbishop off his balance. But if those fellows had backed me up, instead of sitting on my chest, there’s no saying we wouldn’t have done the trick even then. Guns miss even with good men behind them instead of tarry old sailors; and when a handful of men are as fighting mad as we were then, they’re generally good to tackle and beat five times their own weight. Yes, looking back at the matter dispassionately from here, I should say the odds on that event if it had come off would have been very nearly even. But it didn’t, and so a good many men lived to fight another day.” He lifted his tumbler, looking at it against the light, and laughing at some remembrance. ” They fought another day, Birch, and, according to you, they fought devilish well.”

“Ho,” I said, ” some of our chaps, were they?”

“Ah, now,” said he, ” you’re wanting to know a little too much. I was annoved with those men at the time, but not sufficiently to wish them to get into hot water now. So we’ll say ‘ requiescat.’ I signed them off their articles when we got away from the White Tortuga, and went for my next bit of business single-handed.”

“You mean blowing up Davis’s steamer?” “Exactly. I knew when she was expected at Santa Clara, and I was there the day before with my naphtha launch. There was no time to get a scientific weapon. But I contrived to rig a spartorpedo ‘alaRusse,’ and then went out and slapped at your steamer in the roads. I hadn’t another body with me. I didn’t want a second hand, because the launch was absolutely simple to handle, and in the after-scramble (because, you see, I reckoned upon her getting smashed up) the fewer men there were squalling about in the water the more chance I had of getting clear.”

“By Jove,” I said, with a flash of admiration for the scoundrel which I could not help, ” you are a reckless beggar. Did you deliberately go to smash your naphtha launch up with the steamer, and leave yourself adrift to swim ashore through all those sharks?”

“Oh, no, not so bad as that,” he said with a laugh. ” I had a dinghy in tow, and I slipped her painter a score of yards from the steamer so that I might have something to swim to. But either I lost her bearings during the attack and I tell you the excitement was pretty brisk or else she was swamped or got in a quick drift of current; which, I don’t know; but I swam after her for an hour and never caught so much as her loom. It was pretty miserable work; the launch had lifted under me like a live volcano, and when I squelched down again into the sea I’d three splinter-wounds and a disabled left .arm; and all the time I’d the horror of sharks nibbling at my kneecaps. I’m sure I don’t know how I got ashore; worried along somehow, I suppose; and perhaps the sea didn’t want me; but anyhow I was bound to get there. I had done too well at the start to get bowled over at the finish.”

“You don’t suffer from lack of confidence,” I said.

“If I did,” he retorted, ” I shouldn’t be here now. You can bet on that. You try and swim five hours in a heavy sea with wounds smarting all over you, and one fin out of action, and see how you’ll like it. If I hadn’t been so cocksure of getting through, I should have chucked up my hands after the first twenty minutes. But, as it was, the sea spewed me up on the beach; and a fisherman Johnnie overhauled me to see what plunder hid in my pockets; and under his mauling I came to my wits again. I contrived to knock him on the head before he did the same for me, and got into Santa Clara.”

“Well,” said I, ” it doesn’t appear you did much good to yourself there.”

He frowned. “You’re right. I didn’t. And it, was all through my not pushing up my first advantage. I ought to have got a crew of men together from somewhere and taken that cathedral, where the fellows were fastened up, and shot every soul in it. Then the whole thing would have been safe, and I should have earned my money. But I liked wee Hugh, and I liked that queer bounder Davis, and I was squeamish about personally conducting them into the next world. Besides, I fancied the Sacaronducan troops would do the job for me, and so I waited on. And then up came Delicia,and forced the game so suddenly that I couldn’t upset her.

“First and last, I’ve split with that clever young woman, Birch, and I’m beginning to have a very big admiration for her skill. She’s the strategy of two generals and the pluck of the devil on top of it. By gad, if only I could have collared her at the commencement of the whole business and tied her up somewhere where she couldn’t meddle, or, better still, have made her back me, I’d have settled all Briggs’s hash here in Sacaronduca in a dozen hours.”

“And, as it is, Briggs has settled you,” I re* peated.

“You can say that when you’ve been to my funeral, Mr. Secretary Birch, not before. I think Maxillo is my best card now, and so I’m going to try him next.”

“He’s not likely to deal with you.”

“Why not? When he was President I grant you he might have been too big to tackle. But he’s in retreat now, and he’ll be correspondingly humble. I shall be like the Assyrian, Birch, and comedown some night like a wolf on Briggs’s fold when I’m least expected, and upset him and Hoisteins, and earn my own dividends from Holsteins’ opponents.”

“By the way,” I asked, ” who are these opponents of Holsteins?”

“My employers,” he said drily; ” Israelites of the city of London, and very good paymasters.”

“Whom I suppose you’d betray for a consideration.”

“Any way, your pocket isn’t deep enough to buy me off, nor is Briggs’s. Don’t get nasty, Birch.”

“Oh,” I said, ” you can’t expect me to be civil now. I’m not squeamish, but you go too far. You aren’t fit for any decent man to touch except with an execution axe.”

“You seem to carry your resentment pretty far.”

“I’m ashamed of ever having liked you. It makes me ill to feel that I’m sitting this moment in the same room with you.”

Sir William Carew leaned across the table, and gave me a queer look. ” That’ll do, Birch,” he said. ” I’ve taken more words from you already than I’ve ever accepted from any man alive, but now you’ve gone a bit too far. Do you feel inclined to apologise?”

“Not I. I’ll stick to all I’ve said, and say more if you want it.”

“Then we’ll just have to see which can shoot best.”

“That’s as good as murdering me. You’re a crack shot; I’m a duffer.”

“You should have thought of that before you allowed yourself the luxury of insulting me.”

“Oh, don’t make any mistake. I wasn’t trying to back out of it. A