Italian almost as quick as any ofus. To what gate of the sea the staircase was carrying me I knew nomore than the others. The time was gone by when anything in Czerny'shouse could surprise me; and when at the stairs' head we found thatwhich looked for all the world like a great port-hole with a swing doorof steel to shut it, I climbed through it without hesitation, and sostood in God's fresh air for the first time for nearly three days.
That this was the main gate to the sea I had all along surmised, andnow proved surely. No sooner was I through the door than all the worldseemed to spread out again before my eyes--the distant island, theshimmering sea, the blue sky shut to us through such long hours. Therock itself, where we gained foothold, lifted itself clear and dryabove the breakers at my feet. There were steps leading down to thewater's edge, a still pool wherein boats were warped, other crags ofthe reef defying the tides; these and the silence of the nighteverywhere; but of men I saw nothing. The bloody fight we hadanticipated, blow for blow, and ringing alarm, the struggle forfoothold on the rock, the challenge to Czerny's men--such things didnot befall. We stood unchallenged on the plateau, and we stood alone.
I said that it was a miracle, and yet the Lord knows it was no miracleat all.
Let me try and describe this place for you that you may understand oursituation more clearly, and how it befell that such a simplecircumstance brought about such a strange turn of fortune. We had comeup from the heart of the reef, as you know, and the staircase led outto a gate of steel opening in the face of a rocky crag, which stoodwell above the level even of the storm-seas. A lower plateau (unwashedby the sea) stood below the gate, and other crags jutted out of the seaand showed windows to the western sun. I made a bit of a map of theland and water thereby to keep it in my memory: and such as it is itwill enable any one easily to get the position truly. If one placeshimself at the main gate of this house of wonders and puts Czerny'screw by the sword-fish reef, all will be plain to him.
The island lay perhaps a mile to the southward; and nearer to us, at acable's length as I reckoned it, a group of rocky pinnacles in the opensea marked the door we had shut and the ladder by which Czerny's menwent in to shelter. But the oddest thing of all was this, that the maingate to this house of wonders should be left unguarded at an hour socritical. Dark as it was, with only the soft grey light of a summer'snight shimmering on sea and land, nevertheless the mere fact that wehad passed unchallenged told me that we were alone. For why should twomen let three pass up and raise no alarm when alarm might mean so much?
Could they not have struck us down as we came out, one by one, firingtheir guns to call comrades from the sea, and bringing a hundred moreatop of us to end our chances there and then? Of course they could; andyet it was not done. No man hailed us; we had the breaking seas at ourfeet, the fresh air in our lungs, the spindrift wet upon our faces. Andwho was the more surprised, I at finding the gate unguarded or mycomrades to discover that there was such a gate at all, the Lord onlyknows. Like three who stumbled upon a precipice we halted there at thesea's edge, and looked at one another to ask if such great good fortunecould, indeed, be ours.
I have told you before that the Italian was at our heels when we gainedthe rock, and it was to him now that I addressed my question.
"You said there were two at the gate, Regnarte. Where are they, then,and what keeps them?"
He cracked his bony fingers many times, and began to gabble awayvociferously in his own language--a tongue I like the sound of, butwhich no right-minded man should talk. When he came to some calmnessand to a sane man's speech, he pointed to the pinnacles of the lessergate and began to make the truth clear to me.
"You come lucky, sir, you come lucky, true! Hafmitz gone yonder; he andmate, too; he go to see why other men cry out!"
I saw it like a flash. The alarm had been given at the other end of thereef, and the two that should have guarded this, had put out in theirboat to see what the matter was. If a man had wished to believe thatProvidence guided him that night, he could not have found acircumstance to help him farther on the road. I make no pretence to bewhat folks call a religious man, doing my duty without the hymn-books;but I believe, and always shall believe, that there was something morethan mere chance on our way in all that venture, and so I set it downhere once and for all. The fingers of the white man's God pointed theroad for us; and we took it, fair or crooked let it prove to be.
"Luck! Luck's no word for it, my lads," said I. "If a man told such athing ashore, who'd believe him? And yet it's true--true, as your owneyes tell you."
They had not found their tongues yet and none of them uttered asyllable. The wonders they had seen: that house of mystery lying like apalace of the story-books far down below the rolling Pacific; thesurprise of it all; the picture of lights and rooms and of a woman'sface; and now this plateau of rock with breakers at their feet and theisland mists for their horizon; and, in the far distance, away upon thesword-fish reef, sights and sounds which quickened every pulse--whoshall blame them if they could answer me never a word? They simplyhalted there and gazed spellbound across the shimmering water. I aloneknew how far we stood from the end where safety lay.
Now, Peter Bligh was the first to give up his star-gazing; and, shakinghimself like a great dog, he turned to me with a word of that commonsense which he can speak sometimes.
"'Tis a miracle, truly, and a couple of doors to it," cried he, likeone thinking keenly. "Nevertheless, I make bold to say that if theyhave a key to yonder hatch we are undone entirely, captain."
I sat upon a crag of the rock and tried to think of it all. Czerny'smen would return in an hour, or two at the most, and the truth would beout. They would come--the seamen to the lesser gate, the others to thisdoor of steel by which we sat--and, finding that knocking did not open,they would take such measures as they thought fit to blast the doors. Agun well fired might do as much if gun could be trained upon the reef.Once let them inside and it needed no clever tongue to say how it wouldfare with us or with those we sought to protect. No man, I said, wouldlive to tell that story, or to carry the history of Edmond Czerny'slife to a distant city. All that lay between us and life was this doorof steel shutting like a port-hole in the solid rock. And could we holdit against, it might be one, it might be three hundred men? That was aquestion the night must answer.
"Regnarte," I said, upon an impulse, "you have guns in this house?"
He held up his fingers and opened them many times to express a greatnumber.
"One, two, three hundred guns," said he. "Excellency has them all; buthere one gun much bigger than that. You seamen, you shall know how tofire him, captain. Excellency say that no man take the gate while thatgun there. Ah! the leg on the other boot now!"
Now he cracked his fingers all the time he said this, and shook hiskeys and danced about the plateau like a madman. For a while I couldmake neither head nor tail of what he meant; but presently he turned asthough he would go down to the cabins again, and, standing upon thevery threshold of the staircase, he showed me what I had never seen orshould have looked for in twenty years--the barrel of a quick-firinggun and the steel turret which defended it.
"'Tis a pom-pom, or I'm a heathen nigger!" cries Peter Bligh, half madat the sight of it. "A pom-pom, and a shield about it. The glory toSaint Patrick that shows me the wonder!"
And Dolly Venn, catching hold of my hand in like excitement, he says:
"Oh, Mr. Begg, oh, what luck, what luck at last!"
I crossed the plateau and saw the thing with my own eyes. It was amodern Krupp quick-firing gun, well kept, well fitted, well placedbehind a shield of steel which might defend those who worked it againsta hundred. Those who set it upon the rock so set it that not only thenear sea but the second gate could be covered by its fire. It wouldsweep the water with a hail of lead, and leave unseen those that didthe work. And the irony of it was chiefly this, that Edmond Czerny,seeking to defend the door of his house against all the world, now shutit upon himself.
"Yes," said I, at last, and I spoke a
lmost like a man drunk withexcitement; "give me shell for that, and we'll hold the gate againstfive hundred!"
The hope of it set every nerve in my body twitching; sweat, I say,began to roll down my face like rain.
"You have a magazine in this place," I continued, turning upon theItalian in a way that surprised him; "you have arms in this house andshot for that gun. Where are they, man, where are they?"
He stood stock-still with fright, and stammered out a broken reply.
"Excellency has the key, captain--I show you! Don't be angry, captain!"
He turned to enter the house again, and I followed him, as eager a manas ever hunted for that which might take a fellow-creature's life.
"Do you, Peter and Dolly, keep a watch here," said I, indicating