Part 12 (1/2)

”The boat is now but a hundred yards away, Miss s.h.i.+ela,” said Captain Blaise. ”Guy will take you there. Go you, too, Ubbo.” I took her hand and we raced to the bank, where I handed her to a place beside her father in the boat.

”And what are you going to do now?” she asked.

”I? Why, I must go back to help Captain Blaise.”

”Oh, of course. But hurry back. And be careful, won't you?”

I ran up the path and was soon at his elbow. The column was crowding down the path, and so soon after coming from the bright light, possibly they could not see clearly when he swung. However it was, one groaned and slid down. He cut again and the head of the column stopped dead.

”What's wrong?” came a voice, the Governor's. ”What are you stopping for?”

”Won't you step this way and find out?” jeered Captain Blaise.

”What! only one man?”

The hedge lining the path was waist high, trimmed flat and wide, but I never suspected what was coming until I saw the flash and felt the ting of the bullet on my cheek. ”Drop!” warned Captain Blaise, but I had no mind to drop. I held one of Mr. Cunningham's duelling pistols ready for the next shot. I saw it and fired, to the right of and just above the flash. I had half seen how he had rested his elbow on the hedge and carried his head to one side when he fired that first shot. There was the crash of a body through the hedge. And then a silence.

”You got him, I think,” said Captain Blaise.

I had been spun half around by the shock of something or other, and now I was once more facing the path squarely, and a thought of those red and blue and gold uniforms jammed in there gave me an idea. ”Ready, men!” I called out. ”Steady! Aim!--and be sure you fire low.” No more than that, when in the Governor's guard there was the wildest scrambling and trampling to get to the rear.

And we left them falling rearward over each other and ran for the landing. The men were waiting on their oars. We leaped in, and Captain Blaise took the tiller ropes. ”Give way!” he ordered.

Mr. Cunningham was lying on cus.h.i.+ons in the bottom of the boat. I was still laughing, and he rolled his head, I thought, to look at me.

”Where did that skunk get you, Guy?” asked Captain Blaise.

”Why, I didn't know that he got me at all.”

”Feel on your cheek.”

There was blood, not much, trickling down my right cheek.

”You'd better attend to it.”

”Yes, sir.”

Warm fingers met mine. It was her silk scarf which she was pressing into my hand. I thrust it in my left breast, then took my own handkerchief and held it to my cheek.

I was chuckling to myself as I fancied the Governor's guards tumbling over each other in their retreat, when Captain Blaise broke in on me.

”Aren't you laughing rather soon? You're not over your troubles yet.”

”Troubles, sir? Troubles?” It was not at all like him, and his voice, too, was unwontedly harsh. ”Troubles?” I almost laughed aloud again. He did not understand--I had only to lean forward to gaze into her eyes. I had only to reach out to clasp her hand. Troubles? Well, possibly so, but I smiled to myself in the dark.

IV

Ere we had fairly boarded the brig they were in chase of us. We could see lights flitting along the lagoon bank and hear the hallooing of native runners--the Governor's, we knew. And for every voice we heard and every light we saw, we knew that hidden back of the trees were a dozen or a score whom we could not hear or see. And on the black surface of the lagoon, paddling between us and the bank, as we worked the s.h.i.+p out, were noiseless men in canoes. We could not see them, but every few minutes a mysterious cry carried across the silent water, and the cry, we knew, was the word of our progress from the Governor's canoe-men to the messengers on the bank.

The lagoon emptied on the south into the Momba River, which twisted and turned like so many S's to the sea; on the north was the pa.s.sage by which we had come, that which led to the sea by way of the bar. But there was to be no crossing of the bar for us that night. Ten miles inland we had smelled that sea-breeze and knew what it meant; but Captain Blaise, nevertheless, held on with the _Bess_ toward the bar. We could hear their crews paddling off and shouting their messages of our progress until they were forced by the breakers to go ash.o.r.e. Their parting triumphant shouts was their word of our sure intent to attempt the pa.s.sage of the bar.

When all was quiet from their direction, we put back to the lagoon and headed for the river pa.s.sage. But one s.h.i.+p of any size had ventured this river pa.s.sage in a generation, and the planking of that one, the brig _Orion_, for years lay on the bank by way of a warning. ”But the _Orion_ was no _Dancing Bess_,” commented Captain Blaise. Surely not, nor was her master a Captain Blaise.