Read The Shoes of Fortune Page 12


  CHAPTER XII

  MAKES PLAIN THE DEEPEST VILLAINY OF RISK AND SETS ME ON A FRENCHMAN

  When I come to write these affairs down after the lapse of years, I findmy memory but poorly retains the details of that terrific period betweenthe cry of Risk and the moment when Horn and I, abandoned on the doomedvessel, watched the evening fall upon the long Kirkcaldy boat, her maststepped, but her sails down, hovering near us for the guarantee of oureternal silence regarding the crime the men on her were there and thencommitting. There is a space--it must have been brief, but I lived alifetime in it--whose impressions rest with me, blurred, but with thegeneral hue of agony. I can see the sun again sailing overhead in thearching sky of blue; the enormous ocean, cruel, cold, spread out to theline of the horizon; the flapping sails and drumming reef-points, thestreaming halliards and clew-garnets, the spray buffeting upon our hulland spitting in our faces like an enemy; I hear the tumult of the seamenhurrying vulgarly to save their wretched lives, the gluck of watersin the bowels of the ship, the thud of cargo loose and drifting underdecks.

  But I see and hear it all as in a dream or play, and myself somewaystanding only a spectator.

  It seemed that Risk and his men put all their dependence on thelong-boat out of Kirkcaldy. She was partly decked at the bows like aBallantrae herring-skiff, beamy and commodious. They clustered round herlike ants; swung her out, and over she went, and the whole hellishplot lay revealed in the fact that she was all found with equipment andprovisions.

  Horn and I made an effort to assist at her preparation; we were shovedaside with frantic curses; we were beaten back by her oars when wesought to enter her, and when she pushed off from the side of the _SevenSisters_, Dan Risk was so much the monster that he could jeer at ourperplexity. He sat at the tiller of her without a hat, his long hair,that was turning lyart, blown by the wind about his black and mockingeyes.

  "Head her for Halifax, Horn," said he, "and ye'll get there by-and-by."

  "Did I ever do ye any harm, skipper?" cried the poor seaman, standing onthe gunwale, hanging to the shrouds, and his aspect hungry for life.

  "Ye never got the chance, Port Glesca," cried back Risk, hugging thetiller of the Kirkcaldy boat under his arm. "I'll gie ye a guess--

  Come-a-riddle, come-a-riddle, come-a-rote-tote-tote--

  Oh to bleezes! I canna put a rhyme till't, but this is the sense o't--adarkie's never deaf and dumb till he's deid. Eh! Antonio, ye rascal!"

  He looked forward as he spoke and exchanged a villainous laugh with thecook, his instrument, who had overheard us and betrayed.

  "Ye would mak' me swing for it, would ye, John Horn, when ye get ashore?That's what I would expect frae a keelie oot o' Clyde."

  It is hard to credit that man could be so vile as this, but of suchstuff was Daniel Risk. He was a fiend in the glory of his revenge uponthe seaman who had threatened him with the gallows; uplifted like amadman's, his face, that was naturally sallow, burned lamp-red at hishigh cheek-bones, his hale eye gloated, his free hand flourished asin an exultation. His mate sat silent beside him on the stern-thwart,clearing the sheets: the crew, who had out the sweeps to keep the boat'sbows in the wind, made an effort to laugh at his jocosities, but clearlylonged to be away from this tragedy. And all the time, I think, I stoodbeside the weather bulwark, surrendered to the certainty of a speedydeath, with the lines of a ballad coming back again and again to mymind:

  An' he shall lie in fathoms deep, The star-fish ower his een shall creep. An' an auld grey wife shall sit an' weep In the hall o' Monaltrie.

  I thrust that ungodly rhyme from me each time that it arose, but inspite of me at last it kept time to the lap of a wave of encroaching seathat beat about my feet.

  My silence--my seeming indifference--would seem to have touched theheart that could not be affected by the entreaties of the seaman Horn.At least Risk ceased his taunts at last, and cast a more friendly eye onme.

  "I'm saying, Greig," he cried, "noo that I think o't, your Uncle Andywas no bad hand at makin' a story. Ye've an ill tongue, but I'll tholethat--astern, lads, and tak' the purser aboard."

  The seamen set the boat about willingly enough, and she crept in to pickme off the doomed ship.

  At that my senses cleared like hill-well water. It was for but asecond--praise God! my instincts joyed in my reprieve; my hand neverreleased the cleat by which I steadied myself. I looked at Horn stillupon the lower shrouds and saw hope upon his countenance.

  "Of course this man comes with me, Captain Risk?" said I.

  "Not if he offered a thousand pounds," cried Risk, "in ye come!" andMurchison clawed at the shrouds with a boat-hook. Horn made to jumpamong them and, with an oath, the mate thrust at him with the hook aswith a spear, striking him under the chin. He fell back upon the deck,bleeding profusely and half insensible.

  "You are a foul dog!" I cried to his assailant. "And I'll settle withyou for that!"

  "Jump, ye fool, ye, jump!" cried Risk impatient.

  "Let us look oot for oorselves, that's whit I say," cried Murchisonangry at my threat, and prepared cheerfully to see me perish. "Whatfor should we risk oor necks with either o' them?" and he pushed offslightly with his boat-hook.

  The skipper turned, struck down the hook, and snarled upon him. "Shutup, Murchison!" he cried. "I'm still the captain, if ye please, and Iken as much about the clerk here as will keep his gab shut on any triflewe hae dune."

  I looked upon the clean sea, and then at that huddle of scoundrels inthe Kirkcaldy boat, and then upon the seaman Horn coming back again tothe full consciousness of his impending fate. He gazed upon me with eyesalarmed and pitiful, and at that I formed my resolution.

  "I stick by Horn," said I. "If he gets too, I'll go; if not I'll bideand be drowned with an honest man."

  "Bide and be damned then! Ye've had your chance," shouted Risk, lettinghis boat fall off. "It's time we werena here." And the halliards of hismain-sail were running in the blocks as soon as he said it. The boatswept away rapidly, but not before I gave him a final touch of my irony.From my pocket I took out my purse and threw it upon his lap.

  "There's the ither twa, Risk," I cried; "it's no' like the thing at allto murder a harmless lad for less than what ye bargained for."

  He bawled back some reply I could not hear, and I turned about, to seeHorn making for the small boat on the starboard chocks. I followed witha hope again wakened, only to share his lamentation when he foundthat two of her planks had been wantonly sprung from their clinkers,rendering her utterly useless. The two other boats were in a similarcondition; Risk and his confederates had been determined that no chanceshould be left of our escape from the _Seven Sisters_.

  It was late in the afternoon. The wind had softened somewhat; in thewest there were rising billowy clouds of silver and red, and half a mileaway the Kirkcaldy boat, impatient doubtless for the end of us, thatfinal assurance of safety, plied to windward with only her foresail set.We had gone below in a despairing mind on the chance that the leakagemight be checked, but the holes were under water in the after peak, andin other parts we could not come near. An inch-and-a-half auger, and alarge bung-borer, a gouge and chisel in the captain's private locker,told us how the crime had been committed whereof we were the victims.

  We had come on deck again, the pair of us, without the vaguest notionof what was next to do, and--speaking for myself--convinced that nothingcould avert our hurrying fate. Horn told me later that he proposed fullhalf a score of plans for at least a prolongation of our time, but thatI paid no heed to them. That may be, for I know the ballad stanza wentin my head like a dirge, as I sat on a hatch with the last few days ofmy history rolling out before my eyes. The dusk began to fall like aveil, the wind declined still further. Horn feverishly hammered andcaulked at the largest of the boats, now and then throwing the toolsfrom him as in momentary realisations of the hopelessness of his toilthat finally left him in despair.

  "It's no use, Mr. Greig," he cried then, "they did the job ower w
eel,"and he shook his fist at the Kirkcaldy boat. He checked the gesturesuddenly and gave an astonished cry.

  "They're gone, Greig," said he, now frantic. "They're gone. O God!they're gone! I was sure they couldna hae the heart to leave us at thelast," and as he spoke I chanced to look astern, and behold! a ship withall her canvas full was swiftly bearing down the wind upon us. We hadbeen so intent upon our fate that we had never seen her!

  I clambered up the shrouds of the main-mast, and cried upon the comingvessel with some mad notion that she might fancy the _Seven Sisters_derelict. But indeed that was not necessary. In a little she went roundinto the wind, a long-boat filled with men came towards us, and twentyminutes later we were on the deck of the _Roi Rouge_.