Part 29 (2/2)
”You leave boat there--anywhere,” he answered. ”Boat not wanted again--we go, soon as high water over bar. Hope you get young missie safe home.”
”Bless you!” I said under my breath. Then, remembering that I had some money in my pocket--three or four loose sovereigns as luck would have it, I thrust a hand therein, pulled them out, forced them into the man's claw-like fingers. I heard him chuckle softly--then his head disappeared behind the rail of the yawl, and I shoved the boat off, and for the next few minutes bent to those oars as I had certainly never bent to any previous labour, mental or physical, in my life.
And Miss Raven, seeing my earnestness, said nothing, but quietly took the tiller and steered us in a straight line for the spot which the Chinaman had indicated. Neither of us--strange as it may seem--spoke one single word until, at the end of half an hour's steady pull, the boat's nose ran on to the s.h.i.+ngly beach, beneath a fringe of dwarf oak that came right down to the edge of the sh.o.r.e. I sprang out, with a feeling of thankfulness that it would be hard to describe--and for a good reason found my tongue once more.
”Great Scott!” I exclaimed. ”I've left my boots in that cabin!”
Despite the strange situation in which we were still placed, Miss Raven's sense of humour a.s.serted itself; she laughed.
”Your boots!” she said. ”Whatever will you do? These stones!--and the long walk home?”
”There are things to be thought of before that,” said I. ”We're still in the middle of the night. But this boat--do you think you can help me to drag it up the beach?”
Between us, the boat being a light one, we managed to pull it across the pebbles and under the low cliff beneath the overhanging fringe of the wood. In the uncertain light--for there was no moon and since our setting out from the yawl ma.s.ses of cloud had come up from the south-east to obscure the stars--the wood looked impenetrably black.
”We shall have to wait here until the dawn comes,” I remarked. ”We can't find our way through the wood in this darkness--I can't even recollect the path, if there was one, by which they brought us down here from the ruins. You had better sit in the boat and make yourself comfortable with those rugs. Considerate of them, at any rate, to provide us with those!”
She got into the boat again and I wrapped one rug round her knees and placed another about her shoulders.
”And you?” she asked.
”I must do a bit of amateur boot-making,” I answered. ”I'm going to cut this third rug into strips and bind them about my feet--can't walk over stones and thorns and thistles, to say nothing of the moorland track, without some protection.”
I got out my pocket-knife and sitting on the side of the boat began my task; for a few minutes she watched me, in silence.
”What does all this mean!” she said at last, suddenly. ”Why have they let us go?”
”No idea,” I answered. ”But--things have happened since Baxter said good-night to us. Listen!” And I went on to tell her of all that had taken place on the yawl since the return of the Frenchman and his Chinese companion. ”What does it look like?” I concluded. ”Doesn't it seem as if the Chinese intend foul play to those two?”
”Do you mean--that they intend to--to murder them?” she asked in a half-frightened whisper. ”Surely not that?”
”I don't see that a man who has lived the life that Baxter has can expect anything but a violent end,” I replied callously. ”Yes, I suppose that's what I do mean. I think the Chinese mean to get rid of the two others and get away with the swag--cleverly enough, no doubt.”
”Horrible!” she murmured.
”Inevitable!” said I. ”To my mind, the whole atmosphere was one of--that sort of thing. We're most uncommonly lucky.”
She became silent again, and remained so for some time, while I went on at my task, binding the strips of rug about my feet and ankles, and fastening them, puttee fas.h.i.+on, around my legs.
”I don't understand it!” she exclaimed, after several minutes had gone by. ”Surely those men must know that we, once free of them, would be sure to give the alarm. We weren't under any promise to them, whatever we were to Baxter.”
”I don't understand anything,” I said. ”All I know is the surface of the situation. But that gentle villain who saw us off the yawl said that they were sailing at high water--only waiting until the tide was deep on the bar outside there. And they could get a long way, north or south or east, before we could set anybody on to them. Supposing they did get rid of Baxter and his Frenchman, what's to prevent them making off across the North Sea to, say, some port in the north of Russia?
They've got stuff on board that would be saleable anywhere--no doubt they'll have melted it all into shapeless lumps before many hours are out.”
Once more she was silent, and when she spoke again it was in a note of decision.
”No, I don't think that's it at all,” she said emphatically. ”They're dependent on wind and weather, and the seas aren't so wide, but that they'd be caught on our information. I'm sure that isn't it.”
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