Beyond the Rim/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
THE COUNTER CHECK
AN HOUR from midnight Chalmers heard the sound of oars and saw from his station on the lava ridge the blur of the whale-boat crossing the lagoon, its progress punctuated by the little spatters of phosphorescence where the oars dipped. The moon was down and it was hard to distinguish figures even through the night-glasses, but he counted four that landed the boat and went up the beach toward the house.
A light appeared in the window. In about fifteen minutes the two natives returned to the boat, lit a fire and disposed themselves to sleep.
Sayers and Tuan Yuck remained in the house. Evidently there was to be no recurrence of last night's debauch. Before long the window was darkened. The enemy was disposed of for the night.
Presently he heard the distant tinkle of the alarm-clock in Leila's cave and hastened down to meet her. He would gladly have eliminated her from the night watching, but he knew that she was happier in doing it, and his own chance to secure a fair measure of sleep increased the element of safety.
He saw the lantern dancing over the sand and between the rocks like a will-o'-the-wisp, though to himself he called it a love-light. She met him with her eyes wide open and sparkling with excitement.
“Twelve o'clock and all's well,” he chanted.
“Including your shoulder?” she asked.
“Nearly. It's just sore from hurrying up to heal. I can use my arm well enough. They are asleep, or at least they've turned in for the night. Take the glasses and watch our front door. No need to climb the cliff. Where's the clock?”
“In your cave entrance, set for four o'clock. You are not to be late, sir. I still have my beauty sleep coming to me.”
“I think you've had it,” he said involuntarily.
Leila applauded with softly clapping palms.
“You're improving,” she called after him in a low voice as he strode off, vexed with himself at having crossed the line of neutrality he had set.
The faithful clock awakened him and he sent her back to bed. The stars were still bright, but the mysterious stir of dawn, so prescient in even the loneliest of deserts, was in the air. Imperceptibly the constellations paled and the deep purple of the sky faded. He clambered to the lookout once again. This day, he felt sure, would see some crisis in their affairs, and he wanted to be forehanded.
A light shone in the house. About the dull embers of the fire he could make out the prostrate figures of the Kanakas. They stirred as the man who sleeps in the open always does with the coming of dawn, still half-conscious, then sat up, stretching and rubbing their eyes as a call sounded from the house.
It was Tuan Yuck's voice. He came out, followed by Sayers. In the still morning Chalmers could hear the latter grumbling. The horizon to the east was turning olive-green, with the suggestion of orange beginning to tinge it below the rim of the sea. The golden stars were now white points of light that trembled and disappeared in rapid succession.
The four men busied themselves about the boat and Chalmers picked up his rifle, alert for any advance. The orange turned to salmon color. Little clouds, high up, suddenly flamed to rose. Birds awoke, chirping in the hills. The sun was due.
Sayers was putting on the diving-suit and Chalmers, reassured, set down his rifle. They were going pearling before breakfast. Apparently they had determined to make a thorough prospect of the lagoon. That might mean that they were inclined to give up the attempt for the pearls that Leila held, if they found anything worth while in the fresh shell.
Chalmers had doubted whether Sayers's overtures had been made in good faith, inclined to suspect that it had been a ruse of Tuan Yuck's to get them away from their base. Now the pearling maneuvers puzzled him. It was not like Tuan Yuck to forego a speedy revenge, he thought, and yet the Oriental's infinite capacity for biding his time was hard to estimate.
The boat put off; Sayers, equipped for diving, astride the bows, Tuan Yuck steering, the natives rowing. They proceeded obliquely toward the outer reef, reaching it at a point nearly opposite the lagoon. Tuan Yuck appeared to be giving final directions for Sayers's guidance.
Tomi, at bow oar, handed the Australian an implement that Chalmers guessed was for the purpose of loosening the oysters from their bed. He took it and slipped into the water, hung for a moment by his hands, and disappeared just as the sun showed an arc of red gold above the sea-line and then shot up as if propelled, a dazzling disk of brightness. The bird-chorus swelled. Early gulls wheeled out to sea. It was day.
The boat came back to the beach and landed Tuan Yuck, then returned to the lagoon and drifted, as the Kanakas began to eat. Tuan Yuck walked up the beach to the house. They were breakfasting after all. Sayers, Chalmers reasoned, had probably taken his usual morning's meal out of a glass and bottle. There would be no attack on Safety Haven that morning.
Chalmers went noiselessly up to the caves, intent upon lighting the fire and preparing breakfast while the girl slept. He went to the waterfall and let the cool water cascade upon his head, then filled the kettle.
Fearing that the crackle of the burning twigs might disturb Leila, he made the fire away from the usual place, choosing a spot close to the cliff wall between some fallen boulders. Above him the precipice lifted sheer. Seaward the lagoon was hidden by rocks, but with Sayers exploring the bottom for oysters and Tuan Yuck doubtless busy emulating his own example of getting breakfast, he had no present fear of interruption. He piled the twigs, struck a match and soon the preliminary smoke of his fire went streaming up the face of the cliff.
If he had followed its ascent he might have marked a yellow face with eyes cruelly intent upon him shining in it like candles through the eyeholes of a mask. Tuan Yuck was lying prone upon a slope that edged the cliff, sprawling at the peril of his life, his feet hooked into a crevice of the rock, his hands taloned about some scrubby growths, straining his neck like a venomous snake about to strike.
Chalmers opened a jar of sliced bacon that he had commandeered from the schooner on their raid, humming a tune below his breath.
Turtle eggs and bacon, coffee and ship's biscuit, a jar of marmalade to follow! He smiled as he thought of Leila's delight at the unexpected tribute to her frankly keen appetite.
ON THE cliff, Tuan Yuck edged back from the verge and looked at his rifle regretfully. The angle of fire made it useless unless Chalmers ventured away from the face of the precipice. Tuan Yuck's clothing was torn. The climb had been a hard one.
Sayers would not have attempted it, but the Chinaman had believed it feasible and chose it as his part of the attack which was to raise the siege. The excitement of trying the lagoon bed for pearls had put off his attempting it so far, though he had carefully sized up the possibilities of the climb from the deck of the schooner through bin oculars.
Now he was here, and for the present, impotent. His eye caught a boulder lying almost loose in its bed near the beginning of the slope. He tested it with his arms, then his shoulders, cautiously. It resisted. Using the butt of his rifle he pried at it again. It shifted a trifle and he smiled evilly. Then his eyes roved seaward. Something was disturbing the water in the narrow lagoon of Safety Haven.
Tuan Yuck squatted on his haunches complacently, as a yellow toad watching for flies. Some one else, as usual, was going to play his game.
The still surface of the lagoon broke silently as a gleaming object appeared, the diving helmet of Sayers. The Australian's shoulders showed, then his body as he advanced, bent from the waist, wading out of the water. In one hand he held the implement which Chalmers had noticed.
He had walked unseen along the bed of the lagoon from the point where he had slid from the boat near the outer reef, perhaps a quarter of a mile of submarine progress, safely hidden beneath an average of eight fathoms. Now he was masked by the maze of boulders from any casual gaze of Chalmers or the girl.
Sayers sat on a low ledge by the water's edge and took off his rubber gauntlets, then his helmet, taking deep breaths. His face was scarlet. It was slow work over the uneven bottom and he had nearly exhausted his supply of air in his endeavor to get as far up the lagoon as possible. He looked cliffward and saw Tuan Yuck, who waved his arms and motioned downward to where the unconscious Chalmers tended his fire.
Sayers wagged one hand in reply and divested himself of the rest of his suit and his heavy shoes. Then he severed the tightly bound cords that wrapped an oilskin coat about the object he had brought ashore and disclosed a rifle. He worked the lever, opening the slide gently to make sure of a cartridge ready for action.
Barefooted and bareheaded, clad in a singlet and trousers, he sprawled full length on the sand and writhed up between the rocks like the reptile he was, carrying the rifle clear of the sand, lifting his head cautiously now and then to take his directions from Tuan Yuck, who stood far enough back to avoid any risk of Chalmers catching sight of him, semaphoring a signal for murder to the Australian.
Chalmers poured the superfluous grease from the frying-pan and set the bacon on some hot ashes. Breakfast was ready.
He stood up to call Leila, looking toward the mouth of her cave, and found her already standing in the entrance, her face frozen into an expression of fear and horror, the rising sun full in her eyes that stared through the blinding rays at something behind Chalmers—a cruel face, blotched with debauchery, the cheek cuddling to a gunstock, an arm stretched across the top of a rock to steady the aim, the rest of the body hidden behind the lava barrier.
“Toss up your hands, you! Up with 'em. Don't you stir out of that cave, missy, or I'll spatter his brains against the cliff.”
Chalmers turned his head, raising his arms. The tone of the Australian's voice warned him that the threat was not an empty one. Raging inwardly, but impotent, he faced Sayers's taunting face.
“I told you you wouldn't see me when I came,” sneered Sayers with a derisive chuckle. “I suppose you thought you had all the brains, as well as all the virtue, eh! Well, now I've got you where I want you. Too good to associate with me, are you, you and your innocent-faced charmer? Keep your eyes up, too!” he snarled as Chalmers's glance shifted to the rifle slanted against the cliff. “So! Well, I'm going to send you where, if you're as holy as you pretend, you'll be twanging a harp inside of the next minute. Say your prayers, you hypocrite, for I've got the drop on you. Don't you move, missy—ah!”
The girl had raised her arm. She held a hand-mirror and the level sun-rays concentrated in its field. The quicksilver flung them back into the bloodshot eyes of Sayers. Dazzled, he flung a hand up in protection.
“Quick, Bruce, the rifle!” shrilled the girl.
Chalmers stooped swiftly. Above, Tuan Yuck, hearing the outcry, pried at the boulder with his riflestock. It left its bed sluggishly, slid down the first slope, braked by the crumbling tufa, and fell, striking Chalmers high upon the shoulders. He crumbled beneath the blow, dropped, the earth whirling, a fiery rush of comets before his eyes, and lay prone, the boulder beside his senseless, prostrate form.
CHALMERS came slowly to his senses, his mind, groping through a fog of pain, slowly connecting with the sluggish nerve-centers. He was lying in the sand, his lips gritty with it, salty with his own blood.
Memory asserted itself and he strove to rise. His body from the waist up seemed rigid. His neck when he tried to raise his head burned with agony. But Leila's last cry communicated itself to his rousing faculties, and he persisted, lifting himself on his forearms and looking about him with eyes that gradually regained their function.
The long shadows of the rocks had retreated half their length as he grasped at the rough surface of the lava and dragged himself to his feet. The realization of what had happened came back in a rush while he stood swaying, his dull glance searching for the girl and then for his enemy.
Somewhere in his brain-cells lurked the registration of a shot. He looked for his rifle. It was gone, and his fumbling glance could not find the handle of his automatic in his belt. His wound had reopened and his shirt was drenched with blood. He tried to call to Leila, but his parched throat failed him and there was an intolerable pain where his neck set into his spine.
With his teeth set into his lower lip to prevent his jaw from sagging, he tottered like a drunken man among the rocks, supporting himself by their friendly sides, pistol in hand.
The beach was vacant. A huddled heap of white lay at the water's edge, a burnished mass spread out beside it like seaweed—or hair. With an inarticulate cry he staggered toward it and fell on his knees beside the unconscious form of Leila.
There were dull marks about her neck, upcurved between the dimpled chin and the huddled bundle of her body. There was a crimson ring about it where the neck ribbon that had held the bag of pearls had been rudely torn away.
With a hoarse cry of rage strangely blended with tenderness Chalmers gathered her up in his arms, strong for the moment in his fury at the brute who had mishandled her.
Her head fell back, the eyes closed, the long masses of golden-brown hair trailing to the sand. With the last remnants of his strength he bore her to the caves, stumbling at every step, and set her down upon the sand, falling over her on his hands and knees. He chafed her wrists and beat upon her palms, hoarsely calling her name. Then the sky descended upon him like a pall and he fainted.