CHAPTER XVI. THE END OF THE TRAIL
“Elliott! Thank heaven!—is that you at last?” exclaimed Henninger, hurrying up to the rail as the boat hooked on the dhow’s side. “Why in the name of everything didn’t you cable as I told you?”
Henninger’s voice had the same imperious ring, though he was dressed in a very dirty flannel shirt and a pair of duck trousers that had long ago been white, supported by a leather belt. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and arms and face were burned to a deep reddish brown. Hawke and Sullivan were dressed as unconventionally as the chief in costumes to which Sullivan’s gold eye-glasses and urban countenance lent the last touch of eccentricity. In the bow was a cluster of half-nude Arabs.
“I didn’t cable because I couldn’t,” Elliott replied. “I don’t know myself where the spot is.”
“What did you mean, then, by saying you had found it? How are you, Bennett?—glad to see you! What—who’s this?” as his eye fell upon Miss Margaret, who had just clambered over the rail. “We don’t want any women aboard here.”
“This is Miss Margaret Laurie, Henninger,” explained Elliott. “She knows where the place is. She has a map of it, and she’s going with us to show us.”
Henninger bowed in acknowledgment of the introduction.
“No, she’s not going with us,” he said, decisively. “This is no picnic—no place for women. I’ll have to ask you to give us that map, Miss Laurie, at once. We have to sail immediately. We’ve been waiting here, on the raw edge, for over a week.”
“I shall not give you the map,” Margaret returned, firmly. “I am going to sail with you.”
“Then I’m sorry, but I’ll have to take it,” said Henninger, and stepped quickly forward.
“None of that, Henninger,” exclaimed Elliott, but before he could interfere further, the girl had whipped a black, serviceable revolver from the dress, the same weapon which Elliott had seen her use in Lincoln.
“Stop,” she said, directing its muzzle at Henninger’s chest. “I’ll show you my map when we’re out of sight of land.”
Henninger stopped short, looked at her queerly, and finally broke into a small, amused chuckle.
“Put away your little gun, Miss Laurie,” he said. “I fancy I made a mistake. I reckon you can come with us if you want to, if the other boys don’t object. Oh, come, don’t break down, after that gun-play.”
“I’m not—not breaking down,” said Margaret, faintly, but still firmly. “But I think I’d like to sit down.”
Henninger handed her an empty keg, which seemed to be the nearest thing to a chair on board, and she collapsed. The twilight had deepened to almost total darkness.
“Bring a lantern aft, you!” shouted Henninger, and one of the men in the bow made a light and brought it to the stern. His brown Arab face shone in the circle of illumination, an aquiline, predatory profile, and his eyes flashed upon the group of white men around the girl.
Sullivan brought her a tin cup of tepid water into which he poured a little whiskey, and she drank it with a wry face. She glanced around at the circle of roughly dressed men, at the litter of miscellaneous articles that encumbered the deck of the rough native boat, and shuddered. A moist, unhealthy smell came off shore, there was a sound of loud and violent altercation in Dutch from the deck of a neighbouring barque, and a couple of pistol-shots cracked from somewhere along the wharves.
Elliott moved closer to her and laid his hand upon her arm.
“I didn’t know it would be like this,” she murmured.
“Don’t be frightened,” said Elliott. “There’s no one here to be afraid of. But don’t you think you had better go ashore, after all? The American consul will make you comfortable till we get back, you know.”
“No—anything rather than that city! I’m not afraid, only tired out. I’ve come all the way from China,” she said to Henninger, “almost without stopping, and here I thought I’d be among friends.”
“So you are,” the Englishman assured her. “Only just look at this boat. We’ve got no accommodation for ladies. You’ll just have to rough it like the rest of us. And there’s some danger; there may be a fight before we’re through. And our own crew would cut our throats if we didn’t keep them cowed. I still think you’d better go ashore and stay there. But if you are willing to take your chances, you’re welcome.”
“I’ll take the risks, of course, and I don’t want any favours because I’m a girl. I’ll just be one of your party. When can we get started?”
“The tide’s on the ebb now, and everything is shipped,” Hawke remarked.
“Yes, no use waiting,” said Henninger. “I’ll speak to the reis. Halloo, Abdullah! Come aft a moment.”
“Who’s the reis?” Bennett inquired.
“He’s the captain, that is, the sailing-master under our orders,” Sullivan explained. “You see, none of us knew anything about navigation. He’s a fine old fellow, on the dead square, and hand and glove with us. We’re paying him a small fortune for the run, and he’s the only man aboard, except ourselves, who knows anything of what we’re after.”
The reis came aft deliberately, a finely athletic Arab past middle age, with an aristocratic coffee-coloured face and a short grizzled beard. He was dressed in spotless white, and wore a short sword and dagger in his sash. Henninger conferred aside with him for a few minutes.
“All right,” said the Englishman, returning. “The anchor will be up directly and we’ll be off. High time, too. Meanwhile, I’d like to hear what you’ve been doing, Elliott. I got your letter from Hongkong.”
Elliott thereupon briefly narrated the surprising developments of the past month.
“I see. You were a bold woman to try to hold us up, Miss Laurie,” said Henninger, grimly. “Other people have tried it, but not often twice.”
“There’s a good chance that we’ll be in time, after all,” said Sullivan.
“Of course we will!” Margaret cried. “What’s that?”
It was the rattle as the crew manned the windlass. The chain cable came in grating harshly, and the dhow glided forward and swung round as she was hove short. A couple of Arabs hauled around the big lateen mainsail, and then came aft to perform the same office for the smaller mizzen-sail, while the reis himself took the helm, which was a heavy beam projecting fully ten feet inboard over the stern. The anchor was broken out and came up ponderously against the bows.
“We’re off!” exclaimed Hawke, boyishly.
The dhow began to move slowly down the river under the ebb-tide, and gradually gathered way in the slight breeze from the land,—the dark land of Africa that gloomed behind them. The treasure hunt was really begun.
Upon the dhow’s after-deck no one spoke for several minutes. Every one of the adventurers was doubtless busy with his own reflection, and there was an impressive touch about this silent putting forth into the darkness—a darkness not so deep as their own ignorance of the end of that voyage. And every one felt instinctively that much would be lost as well as won before that cargo should be raised that had cost the lives of so many men already.
A sudden recollection shook the spell of silence from Elliott.
“That other party at Zanzibar—what about them?” he asked.
“They got there over two weeks ago, just before I left,” Henninger answered. “There were two men. They must have been your friends Sevier and Carlton, by your description, and they were trying to hire some sort of craft and crew. Ships happened luckily to be scarce at Zanzibar just then, and they hadn’t made any headway when I came here to superintend things. Sullivan had chartered this boat already, and I picked up Hawke at Mozambique as I came down. They can’t have much the start of us at the most.”
“And what then?” demanded Bennett.
“Why, we outfitted this dhow, and no joke it was. We were lucky in picking up a full diving outfit. It’s badly battered, but we got it cheap, and it’ll serve. We hired a Berber Arab with it, who used to work on the sponge boats in the Levant and understands it. Then we had to rig a rough derrick apparatus to hoist heavy weights aboard by man-power. We had to get a crew, and provisions and arms—no end of things. It was like stocking a shop. We finished the job five days ago, and we’ve been waiting ever since for a message from you.”
“We’d have murdered you if we could have caught you. We were about ready to go off our heads,” Hawke supplemented.
The dhow was clearing the river mouth, and the Arab skipper hauled her course to the northward. The breeze was fresher outside, and she rapidly increased her speed, rolling heavily under the seas, for she was in light ballast.
“We’ve arranged to take turns standing watches,” said Henninger. “One of us must always be on guard till we get back. I’ll take the first watch, from nine o’clock till midnight, and then Hawke and then Sullivan, three hours apiece. Elliott and Bennett will take their turns the next night, and this arrangement gives two men a full sleep every night.”
“I’ll take my turn,” interposed Margaret.
“No,” said Henninger, in a tone that closed the question. “The rest of us sleep on blankets spread on the deck because it’s so hot, Miss Laurie, but you can have the cabin, or we’ll swing you a hammock amidships. But you’d suffocate in the cabin, I’m afraid. You said you didn’t want any favours, and we can’t give you any.”
Margaret chose the hammock, which an Arab seaman was ordered to sling for her. But no one turned in for two more hours; there was too much excitement in the actual, long-delayed start. But the cool sea-wind brought quiet, and excitement gave place at last to intense weariness.
Elliott spread his blanket beside the rail only a couple of yards from Margaret’s hammock.
“If anything should frighten you in the night, just speak to me and I’ll hear you instantly,” he remarked, as he lay down.
“All right,” she replied; but he felt more than certain that whatever the alarm, she would sooner have bitten off the end of her tongue than have appealed to him for help.
Elliott awoke several times during the night. The dhow was rushing forward at, it seemed to him, tremendous speed, and he was spattered occasionally by smart splashes of foam from over-side. Margaret’s hammock was swaying heavily in the roll, but she appeared to be asleep, and all was quiet on deck. At the stern he could see the white figure of the steersman leaning hard against the tiller, and there was a dark form beside the rail, undoubtedly one of his friends on the watch.
At last he awoke again with a start, to find it broad day. The dhow’s decks were wet; there was a cloudy sky, and a fresh wet wind blowing from the southeast. No land was anywhere in sight; the sea, gray as iron, was covered with racing whitecaps. Looking at his watch, he found that it was half-past five, and he arose and walked aft, feeling a trifle cramped and stiff, to where Sullivan was lounging out the last hour of his duty. Margaret still slept profoundly in her hammock.
“What do you think of our clipper? I picked her out,” said Sullivan, walking forward to meet him.
Elliott was now able for the first time to get a clear view of the craft upon which he had embarked. The dhow was about ninety feet long and rather broad in the beam, with two masts stepped with an extravagant rake forward, each bearing a great lateen sail. There was a long, knifelike sheer to her cutwater, and a great overhang to her stern, and she was decked completely over, with forward and aft companion ladders leading below.
“She seems to be able to sail,” replied Elliott, glancing at the racing water alongside.
“That’s no lie. The skipper says she can do fourteen knots with the right kind of a wind. Her name’s the Omeyyah, or words to that effect. She’d make a sensation in the New York Yacht Club, wouldn’t she?”
“What’s your crew like? Are they really the tough gang that Henninger said?”
“Oh, I fancy he was piling it on to frighten that girl. She’s dead game, isn’t she? No, the men are all coast Arabs—pretty peaceable lot, I reckon. You see, they’re all of the same tribe as the reis, and he’s guaranteed good behaviour from them. Besides, we’re well armed. There’s a big revolver apiece and a dozen Mauser rifles down below, with a thousand cartridges. Second-hand military rifles can be bought at bargain prices in Lorenzo Marques just now.”
Henninger came aft at that moment, looked earnestly at sea and sky, and drew a bucket of water from over the side for his ablutions. Elliott and Sullivan followed his example; and when Margaret appeared a few minutes later from behind the mizzen-sail, she, too, was served with a bucket of salt water and a towel.
“I’m going to braid my hair as I used when I was at school,” she exclaimed, laughing, after an unsuccessful attempt to reduce the curls to order. Her eyes shone; her cheeks glowed after the salt water, and her voice had a gay ring. For the first time an unwilling conviction began to invade Elliott that perhaps after all this expedition was better for her than to remain in America, brooding and waiting.
“We’ll have the cabin fixed up a little for you, with a wash-stand and a bit of a mirror,” said Henninger. “You can sleep in that hammock, if you like, but you’ll want some corner of your own. No one else will want to go into the cabin; it’s too hot. We live on deck.”
“What else do we live on?” demanded Elliott “Isn’t it nearly time for breakfast?”
“Not for half an hour. And while we’re waiting, perhaps Miss Laurie will—”
Margaret understood, and she silently produced from inside her blouse the folded paper which Elliott had seen at San Francisco.
“This is the map my father made,” she said, opening it and handing it to the chief.
Every one crowded round to look. It was a carefully drawn sketch map of a portion of the Mozambique Channel and the Zanzibar coast, and there was a small island marked with a cross and with its latitude and longitude—S. 13, 25, 8, and E. 33, 39, 18.
Henninger produced a large chart of the East Coast and compared the two. “The place must be just a little south of Mohilla Island,” he said. “It’s two or three hundred miles from Ibo Island, where they’ll look first.”
“How far from here?” asked Hawke, who had come aft while they were talking.
“I don’t know exactly where we are now, but I should think it must be a good eight or nine hundred miles.”
“Good heavens!” Bennett cried in dismay.
“But then it’s five hundred miles or so from Zanzibar, and we may have got started before them. We can run the distance in five or six days, or maybe in less, if this wind holds,” looking up at the gray-streaked southern sky.
“It’ll hold,” said Hawke. “The reis told me last night that the southeast wind blows all the time at this season. It’s a trade-wind, I fancy.”
“And I think,” remarked Henninger, “that there’s a strong current setting north through the channel that will help us two or three knots an hour.”
This important bit of oceanography was indeed corroborated by the chart, and it put the whole party in excellent spirits, not even to be spoiled by the execrable breakfast that was presently brought on deck. Ice, milk, or butter were impossibilities on the Omeyyah, and the provisioning consisted chiefly of American canned goods which did not require cooking, and of mutton and rice which the Moslem in the galley did his usually successful best to spoil. Only in one thing was he an artist; the superb coffee made amends for all the rest.
All that day the log-line was kept running, and showed an average speed of nearly eleven knots, with an increase toward evening as the wind freshened. The adventurers lounged about the decks, with no books to read, with nothing to do, but feeling an exhilaration from the rapid movement of the small craft which a steamer could never give at double the speed. Away to port the coast of Africa showed occasionally as a bluish darkening of the sea-line, and faded again. Two or three dhows like their own passed them beating down the channel, and once a long smear of smoke on the sky indicated a steamer hull down under the eastward horizon.
The second day passed much like the first, but the sun set cloudily, and it rained during the night. At daybreak the wind was much fresher, and it strengthened during the forenoon, veering more to the east. At noon the dhow was heeling over heavily, and an hour later the skipper ordered a reef taken in the mainsail. The good wind continued to smarten until by the middle of the afternoon it was difficult to maintain footing on the sloping and slippery deck. The sky was a flat, windy gray; the sea had not a tinge of blue, and was covered with sweeping white-crested rollers, through which the Omeyyah ploughed nobly. Occasionally she took one over the bows with a bursting smash, sending a drenching cascade over the decks clear to the stern. It took two men to hold the kicking tiller-head, and the adventurers clung to the rigging upon the windward side, disregarding a ducking that could not be avoided, for it seemed that oilskins was the one item of equipment that had been forgotten.
“How fast are we going?” Margaret cried to Elliott, trying to keep her wet hair out of her eyes. The rattle and creak of the straining rigging and blocks almost drowned her voice.
“Thirteen knots, last time the log was taken,” Elliott shouted back.
She made a gesture of triumph; at that rate they would surely win. Henninger came up unsteadily, holding to the rail, with his wet linen clothes clinging to him like a bathing-suit.
“The reis wants to run for shelter somewhere on the coast,” he shouted. “He’s afraid we’re running right into a monsoon or something.”
“Tell him to go to the deuce!” cried Elliott. “This is just what we want, and more of the same sort.”
“That’s what I think,” said Henninger, and he retraced his difficult way to the stern, where the Arab skipper himself stood beside the helmsmen. Abdullah seemed to object to the recklessness of his employer, and apparently a violent altercation ensued, but drowned at a distance of ten feet by wind and water. It must have ended in the submission of the reis, for the dhow continued to drive ahead, half under water and half above it.
Meals were only a pretence that day. The hatches had been battened down, and no one left the deck, but Elliott brought a quantity of biscuits and canned salmon from the galley, which every one ate where he stood. It rained furiously that night, and with the rain the wind seemed to moderate, in spite of the fears of the skipper. During the next forenoon it remained intermittently fresh, but remained powerful enough to drive the dhow at an average speed of ten knots all day. By sunset, Henninger calculated that they must have run nearly nine hundred miles, and should sight Mohilla Island the next day, supposing they were neither too far east nor west. It had been impossible to take an observation for the last two days, so that his estimate could not be verified.
It rained again early the next morning, but cleared brilliantly in an hour or two, and the decks steamed. Sullivan, who had learned to take an observation, brought up a second-hand sextant and a chronometer of doubtful accuracy, and these instruments indicated at noon that the expedition was about forty miles south-southwest of the desired point. Allowing for errors, they should sight the wreck before sunset.
The breeze had been gradually failing all day, but it had served its purpose, and it would certainly last till dark. The course was hauled more to the northwest, and Henninger himself ascended into the main-rigging with a good glass, while the rest of the party clustered at the bows. As the dhow glided easily over the shimmering sea, every eye was strained, not so much in search of the island as for sail or steam that would tell them that they had been anticipated at the wreck. About three o’clock Sullivan disappeared from the deck, and Elliott, who had occasion to go below, found him unpacking the rifles and putting clips of cartridges into the magazines.
“It’s time we were getting these things ready,” he remarked, with a grimmer expression than Elliott had ever seen his imperturbable countenance assume.
“Do you think we’ll be in time?” Margaret asked him very anxiously, when he returned to the deck.
“I’m sure I don’t know any more than you do,” replied Elliott.
“If we’re too late, or if the wreck isn’t there—I’ll never forgive myself!” she breathed, desperately.
“You begin to appreciate what you’ve done?” said Elliott, trying to look at her sternly, but his glance softened; he wanted to comfort her, to tell her that it didn’t matter after all whether they found the treasure or not, since there was something better in life than gold. For a moment it seemed to him that she almost expected it, but before the moment was passed Henninger hailed the deck.
“I think I’ve sighted it. There’s something, anyway.”
Hawke burst out into a joyous whoop of excitement. “What direction?” called Bennett. “Any other ship in sight?”
“A little more to port.”
The course was hauled a little more. “No sign of any other vessel anywhere,” Henninger added, after carefully sweeping the horizon with his binoculars.
“Hurrah!” cried Margaret. “I knew we would win!”
“We haven’t won yet. They may have come and gone,” Hawke interposed; and at this reminder every one became nervously silent, gazing ahead. After twenty minutes a whiter spot began to appear upon the blue sea-line.
As the island was gradually lifted, it appeared, as Bennett had described it, to be a good-sized and absolutely barren patch of sand and shingle. It seemed about half a mile long, and a couple of hundred yards wide at the widest point, with a single eminence rising to a height of perhaps a hundred feet near the eastward end. All around it to windward a line of foam and spray marked the dangerous reefs, and a cloud of sea-birds wheeled flashing in the sun overhead. But the gaze of the adventurers was not fixed upon the island, but upon a great heterogeneous mass that stood up among the breakers, white with the droppings of the birds, but still showing the red of rusty iron, a battered skeleton, having no longer any resemblance to a ship, but nevertheless all that was left of the unlucky Clara McClay.