Part 25 (1/2)
He was a sorry sight enough, dirty, blood-stained and horrible, as his pale, wicked face stared up at me. He said nothing, and I shuddered as I looked at him--shuddered as I had never done at Helzephron.
”Where's Mr. Danjuro?” I asked.
”Up at the mouth of the cave, Sir John. I was to send you to him directly you came.”
I nodded, turned, and began to walk up the great cave. The Pirate Airs.h.i.+p lay there, gleaming and wonderful. There was a light steel ladder at her side as I pa.s.sed, leading up into the fuselage, and it was only by a strong effort of will that I could keep myself from mounting it and exploring the mechanical marvels that I knew she contained.
However, I resisted the temptation and hurried on. The lights depending from the roof grew dimmer each moment as I drew near the curving entrance. ”It must be full day outside,” I thought, as the fresh sea-air came to meet me, and then, as I turned round the bend, I saw the squat, black figure of the j.a.panese silhouetted against the rosy fires of sunrise.
Danjuro was standing motionless. He was looking down at some humped objects upon the ground. The rope, like a wisp of spider's web, swung gently to and fro. There was not a sound save the soft murmur of the sea far down below.
”I'm all right now,” I said, and he turned to me without a start, though he could not have heard me coming.
His face was calm, but wrinkled up in every direction. He looked like a man of immense age, and his narrow eyes were full of brooding, sombre light. Almost at his feet lay the body of Helzephron. It had been decently disposed with the hands upon the breast, and the morning light played over the hawk-like, bronzed face and open eyes in which there was now no cruelty.
The dead man was august as he lay there. There was a certain n.o.bility about the features. He did not look like a scoundrel, and all resentment and hate pa.s.sed away from me for ever as I looked at him.
The two huge dogs, one with a bullet through its brain, the other shot in the chest and through the heart as it was in the act of leaping, were hideous objects....
When I looked up again the wrinkles had gone from Danjuro's face, the sombre expression from his eyes. It was a magical change, but I was long past wonder at anything in connection with him.
”We will have those dogs skinned,” he remarked in his ordinary voice.
”They will make a fine rug for your house, Sir John.”
”No doubt; but we've got to get out of this first. Remember that there are a dozen desperate scoundrels not far away. And I don't see either Miss Shepherd or myself returning to the world up that rope! By the way, I haven't heard how you managed to get here in time.”
He told me the story shortly enough. There was not an unnecessary detail and no comment whatever. Thumbwood supplied the lacking picturesqueness some days later. But even as Danjuro told it, I realized the marvellous sagacity and contempt of danger that had saved us.
It seemed that when he had arrived at Zerran, the idea of a cave, either natural or enlarged by pretended mining operations, was already in his mind. As soon as I had left the inn on my expedition, Danjuro and Thumbwood had taken one of Trewh.e.l.la's boats and set out eastwards along the coast. The j.a.panese had already taken his bearings, and knew that Tregeraint House would be a little to the left of the jagged peak of Carne Zerran. They cruised along into the moonlight until they picked up their mark, and not two hundred yards further on struck the entrance to the S-shaped cove. Then Danjuro had no longer any doubts. No boat could live in that cauldron of the waves, but it seemed a man could, for our rescuers proved it!
He stripped and went in--I learnt afterwards that he was as much at home in the water as a seal, and, of course, like so many of his countrymen, he was simply a ma.s.s of steel muscles. In twenty minutes the secret was a secret no longer.
Danjuro's next move was to row back to Zerran Cove at top speed, and hasten up the cliff path to the inn. Here he disinterred the coastguard from the pigsty and roused him to immediate action.
Ropes and crowbars were procured, the fenced-off ”dangerous” area on the cliff-top invaded, and Danjuro, with Charles, descended in the nick of time. But there was more than this. The coastguard had his orders.
Directly the two men disappeared over the brink he was instructed to make all haste to the watch-house, some two miles away in the direction of St. Ives. From there the Chief Boatswain was to telephone all along the coast to the various stations, and also to the police at St. Ives, Camborne and Penzance.
”In three or four hours, perhaps sooner,” Danjuro concluded, ”an armed force should be concentrating on the moors upon the house above. The pirates will be desperate, and will put up a fight--at least, I think so, but the end is certain.”
”And meantime, all we can do is to wait here until something happens?”
”That is as you please, Sir John,” he answered, looking at me curiously.
For a minute I did not see what he meant, but then a great idea dawned upon me.
”The Pirate s.h.i.+p!” I burst out.
”I have always heard that Sir John Custance is a skilled pilot,” he said with a bow.
I saw it all clearly. There was a gorgeous, dramatic end to it all well within my grasp! It would be something to make the whole world gasp! The Pirate s.h.i.+p was, I knew, already loaded with the proceeds of the pirates' robberies. It was not only full of loot, but prepared in every way for a long cruise. Helzephron and his ruffians had planned an almost immediate escape from the cave to some new refuge of which I had heard them speak. Doubtless, if things had gone right with them, they would have been off by now, with my mangled body tossed in the whirlpools below and Constance still a prisoner. Helzephron would have mounted to a great height, and trusted to his immense superiority in speed over all the airs.h.i.+ps in existence for escape. I have little doubt that, had things fallen out as he planned, he would have been able to carry out his scheme. But G.o.d disposes....