Part 52 (2/2)

He gasped, he yelled.

”G.o.d's Mother--the Carbineers!”

Landon leaped to his feet with a curse. He seized an oar; he thrust with all his strength at the mud. And at the same moment the two on the sh.o.r.e, struggling in their captor's hands, let fall the painter. The boat shot out stern foremost into deep water.

From the sh.o.r.e 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 can prove 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There was a grim laugh, and then the yellow beam of light which had been withdrawn while the struggle proceeded, flung out its level rays again and illuminated the boat.

”Surrender, Luigi!” shouted a stern voice. There was another click.

”Surrender, _stupido_! I have you covered; I give you five seconds before 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. ”It means Procida--this,” he wept. ”It means years in chains; it means half the rest of my life s.n.a.t.c.hed from me.” He turned and smote at Landon in the darkness. ”I owe it to you, tempter!” he yelled. ”Accursed of G.o.d, you led me into this!”

Landon stumbled in his surprise and then leaped at him like a cat. There was a shrill scream from the child as the swaying pair rolled down upon the stern sheets, gripping, each of them, for the other's throat. The boat rocked violently.

Again the stern command from the sh.o.r.e rang into the night. They gave it no heed. Animal rage possessed them; they were no longer men but beasts, fighting with hand and foot and knee, clawing, tearing, even biting as the chance of conflict brought Luigi's lips within reach of his a.s.sailant'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, crus.h.i.+ngly, played it with a vindictive completeness such as even she has never used since her grip fell 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, br.i.m.m.i.n.g the heavy air, rolling out across the still waters of the bay, thundered into the silence of the sh.o.r.e. The dim lamps upon the Marina shook; crash upon crash echoed from buildings which could not be seen, but which terror could picture in all the crude pigments of imagination and despair! Beside the boat a huge crack rent the jetty in twain. Stones, dashed from the crumbling buildings in the darkness, flung huge gouts of spray over the two who wrenched themselves apart in her stern, over their prisoners, over the child, who cried aloud in all the agony of childish fear.

And then human voices joined the chorus--voices which expressed every intonation of panic, of the horror which is built upon amazement, of the unleashed emotions of men awaking to meet blindly the common hazards of life and confronting chaos, illimitable ruin, a sudden unbarring of the gates of h.e.l.l.

The struggle in the boat ceased. Wild curses became, on Luigi's lips, a string of piteous appeals to the very saints whose names he had used a moment before to point his blasphemies. Miller and Landon grasped the oars.

But even the terrors of earthquake do not wreck the discipline of Italy's Carbineers. The sergeant's warning was repeated thunderously.

Miller screamed an a.s.sent, a surrender. Landon answered with an oath.

The one endeavored to propel the boat sh.o.r.ewards, the other towards the sea. 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 G.o.d whose mercy was surely turned away.

For a moaning sound _tingled_ along the strand, and then silently, but with the speed of a cataract, the sea sank back from the sh.o.r.e.

It plucked half a hundred boats from their anchorages; it gripped them down into its trough. For full thirty seconds they fled upon this monstrous tide of a tideless sea, hull cras.h.i.+ng against hull, mast beating against mast, a wrecked wilderness of spars and rigging, tangled, coiled, the froth, the sc.u.m, as it were, upon that mighty crest. And behind them went the _Santa Margarita's_ dingy, with bound and free in equal helplessness.

Then, as if the sluice of some Cyclopean lock had been shut, the mighty mill-race halted and a mountain grew upon the face of the deep. Huge, black, awesome, it swung itself up, swelled higher and higher, hung through an aeon-long moment of horror, and then rolled back whence it had come. And the menace of its coming left no tiniest coign of foothold for hope in its path. Irresistible and relentless it moved along to destroy every barrier of nature, every man-built obstacle with its might. Its foam-plumed crest roared over the quayside and the Marina five fathoms deep.

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