Somewhere in the Caribbean/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
UNDER FIRE.
I think I had never before so fully grasped the meaning of the word “consternation” as I did when I looked over the rail and found that the whaleboat, the one thing which had given us our supremacy over a boatless enemy, had disappeared in the night. In whose watch, Dorgan's or mine, it had been taken we could not tell, but it was gone. Some member of Jeffreys' carousing crew had remained sober enough to swim off to the shoal and in spite of our vigilance had contrived to get away with the boat.
Immediately after breakfast, which in view of our loss was a silent and hurried meal, I drew Dorgan aside.
“You warned me to look out for Brill,” I began. “Did he have a hand in the theft of the whaleboat?”
Dorgan scowled. “I wouldn't put it a-past Isra'l—if he thought he could make anything by it. He's mighty sore over the loss o' the hooker and her cargo. What makes you think he's mixed up in this boat business?”
“Because yesterday I found a piece of chain and a padlock in the engine-room supply chest and last night before turning in I locked the boat to the yacht's rail. The lock and chain are both gone.”
“Put the key in your pocket?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Is it there now?”
“No.”
“Somebody frisked you in the night and I'm right much afeard it was Isra'l. If it was I don't get off none too easy, myself.”
“How is that?”
“Just a little while afore I went off watch and called you, Isra'l come paddin' round up for'ard in his bare feet, cussin' a few lines and sayin' he couldn't sleep for thinkin' over how much he'd lost in the schooner. Just as he was leavin' he asked whereabouts you'd bunked down and I didn't have no better sense than to tell him you was asleep up in the chart room.”
“I guess that explains it,” I said gloomily. “The loss of the boat probably means that we'll have a bloody fight on our hands, and if it comes to that I'll see to it that Brill is the first man on the yacht to stop a bullet!”
Just what Brill's part in the theft of the boat had been we never learned. Probably the man who had swum off to the yacht had convinced him that Jeffreys would make it worth his while to steal the key; and quite as probably the reason why Brill had not gone with the boat was that the ambassador thought a friend aboard the yacht would be more valuable to Jeffreys than another hand ashore.
Not to lose any more of the time which had now become precious, the job of bailing the fire hold was started at once. Under my directions José and Pedro rigged a snatch-block hoist on the small crane used normally to hoist ashes out of the firing pit. Under the beak of this crane an inclosed shaft ran down to the fire room, and the steel ash hopper was made to serve as a bailing bucket.
In the division of labor I sent the two sailors below to fill the bucket and gave Brill the hot end, making him man the crank of the crane-hoisting drum. At first he wasn't going to do it, exploding in an eruption of rabid profanity and swearing that, he'd die before he would tackle a roustabout's job for me or anybody. But when I pulled the old army pistol on him and told him shortly that he might have his choice at once, he grabbed the crank and proved conclusively that he was not yet ready to die.
I confess I got a good bit of malicious satisfaction out of the next hour and a half or so, during which time Brill toiled and sweated at the crank of the ash hoist. Since there was no room for two men on the crank I contributed my moderate share to the job by dumping the water-filled hopper as it came up, chinking in the intervals of hoistings and lowerings with haste-prompting tongue-lashings designed to make the crank winder sweat still more profusely.
In the course of time and much sooner than I expected José called up to say that the water was below the firing stands, and Brill staggered away from the windlass, cursing bitterly and saying he would kill me for this when his chance came. As he shuffled away Dorgan came aft to say that there were men on the beach and that they seemed to be trying to signal the yacht.
Shouting down to José to tell him to build fires under the boilers I went forward with Dorgan. We had scarcely shown ourselves in the bow of the yacht before a bullet whined overhead and smacked into the woodwork of the bridge some second or two before the report of the gun came to our ears.
“That answers our question about the Vesta's rifles,” I said, propping out of sight behind the bulwarks and dragging Dorgan down with me. “You remember what I told you about that fellow's shooting. He'll get the range in the next trial or so.”
“I reckon we ain't got no partic'lar business up for'ard, nohow7,” Dorgan remarked, beginning to crawl back on his knees and one hand. “Here's hopin' this play boat's bow platin' is thick enough to stop a rifle ball.”
Of course the hull plating was armor plate to rifle bullets at long range but the bulwarks were not. The next shot came through less than three feet above the deck level, struck the iron capstan, glancing off to bite a piece out of the ladder leading to the bridge. As the yacht was lying head on to the island and with her bow lifted by her position on the shoal, only the bridge and some portion of the forward deck were exposed to a direct fire from the low shore; and as Dorgan said, we had no particular business in that part of the ship at present.
Hastening aft I warned Alison to keep under cover, explaining that the guns we had hoped were burned in the Vesta had evidently been salvaged.
“What is Wickham trying to do—murder us all?” she asked.
“He would probably be glad to murder everybody but you and Hedda. But we are safe enough so long as he shoots from the beach. Keep your woman under cover and stay there yourself.”
“But you and your men?” she protested.
“Our job is below for the present. Dorgan will keep watch for us and nothing can happen unless they use the whaleboat and try to board us. And they'll hardly venture that in daylight.”
By this time José and Pedro had their fires started and the black smoke was pouring from the yacht's tall funnel. Descending to the fire room I found that there was water enough in the boilers to make them safe until we could get steam to pump with. Beyond this there was a trying interval of waiting for the steam pressure to rise. Starting upon cold water it seemed as though the roaring fires in the furnaces would never take hold.
Knowing Jeffreys fairly well, and the lengths to which he had already gone, I did not underrate his shrewdness or the measure of his desperation. He was in the situation of a man who had burned all his bridges; and the smoke pouring from our funnel was serving notice upon him that what he did he must do quickly. Time and again as I came up from anxiously watching the steam gauges I cautioned Dorgan, keeping a lookout from a safe shelter on the hurricane deck, not to let any movement on shore escape him.
Beginning with the shot that had told us he was armed Jeffreys had fired a few rounds in rapid succession and after that he kept up a desultory fire, perhaps one shot every five or ten minutes; just often enough to let us know that any one of us showing himself would get his quietus. But as yet there had been no move made to bring the whaleboat around from wherever they had it hidden.
Since even a watched pot will boil if it be watched long enough the gauges finally showed sufficient pressure to enable us to blow the fires; and after that it was only a short time until I was able to start the bilge pumps. Half an hour, with both of the big pumps delivering full streams outboard, sufficed to drain the after hold and engine-room sump, and then I turned the pumping battery on the compartments forward of the fire room and coal bunkers.
At noon, while Jeffreys still kept up his irregular popping at us from the distant beach, Hedda, calm-eyed and apparently altogether undisturbed by the battle conditions, fed us on the job, carrying food and hot coffee not only to the sailors in the fire room but also to Dorgan on watch on the hurricane deck. Alison brought my dinner down to me in the engine room and her own with it, so we ate together to a thumping accompaniment from the laboring pumps. Like Hedda, my dear girl was perfectly cool and collected; she even wanted to know if I wouldn't let her relieve Dorgan at his watch, saying that we mustn't forget that the big man was still suffering from the broken arm.
“Dorgan wouldn't hear to it,” I replied; then I told her about the wife he had left behind in Jacksonville and how he had made me his executor when we thought the Vesta was going to be lost in the storm.
“That shows just how much good there may be in the worst of us,” she said. “He looks like an ogre and talks like one, but I'd trust him. The other man is the one I'm most afraid of.”
“Brill? He is bad—with the hopeless badness of a complete coward. I'd throw him overboard and make him swim ashore if we were not going to need what he knows about navigating a ship.”
“If we get off, will you trust him to navigate the Waikiki?”
“Not without somebody to hold a gun on him, you may be sure. He picked my pocket last night when I was asleep in the chart room and stole the key of the whale boat for whoever it was that got it. I'm not certain that it wouldn't have been a good riddance if he had gone ashore with the thief.”
Silence through the eating of another of Hedda's deliciously browned biscuits, and then: “Are you going to be able to float the Waikiki, Dick?”
“That is still on the knees of the high gods. So far as I can tell the hull is sound and the pumping will take an enormous weight out of her. But, after all, we may not be able to move her with the engines.”
“How soon will you know?”
“José says the water is going down pretty fast in the forehold. We ought to be able to try our luck by the middle of the afternoon.”
“Will it take long, after you begin?”
“That too is on the knees of the gods.”
“What will you do if you fail?”
“Try again and keep on trying.”
“But when it comes night”
“I know. Jeffreys will fill the boat with his ruffians and try to board us—at least that is what I'd do if I were in his place. In that case we fight.”
“But they are armed.”
“So are we,” I said; but I didn't tell her that all the arms we had were the two revolvers I had taken from Brill in the capture of the schooner and that all the ammunition we had were the six cartridges in each of the big pistols.
“Bloodshed!” she said, with a little shiver.
“If they will have it, yes. And that brings us to something else. If we are lucky enough to float the yacht and get away in her I shall have no scruples whatever about leaving Jeffreys and the men of his outfit on the island until we can send somebody to take them off. But the women—the Waikiki belongs to your father and you are his representative. Whatever you say is what we shall try to do.”
“I don't owe that miserable lot anything at all—not even Peggy Sefton,” she said. “Of course if we could take them without running any additional risk—but I hardly see how that can be done.”
“Nor I,” I agreed. “But we'll see when the time comes.”
As I had predicted it was mid-afternoon before the bilge pumps sucked dry to tell us that the yacht was free of water. Waiting only long enough to let the two Minorcans clean their fires and get a good head of steam on I started the yacht's engines in the reverse motion, letting them turn over slowly until they were thoroughly warmed up. Then I opened the throttles to full speed astern and held my breath. For five minutes, ten, fifteen, the twin screws thrashed and turned and churned, but there was no movement of the ship. The sand still held us in its grapple.
Shutting off the power at last and telling José to bank his fires, I went on deck. Dorgan met me at the ladder hatch, shaking his bandaged head.
“She never budged an inch,” he said. “What's next?”
“The next thing is to shift every movable pound of weight aft. Where's Brill?”
“Search me. I ain't seen him since you turned him loose fr'm windin' that winch crank this mornin'.”
Calling José and Pedro up from the fire room I set them at work carrying every weighty thing they could lay hands on to the after part of the ship. Then I went in search of Brill and found him snoring peacefully in one of the bunks in the sailors' quarters. A hearty kick brought him up standing with a yell and an oath but before he could mouth the second oath I was running him out at the point of the pistol and shoving him into line with the two Minorcans. Then I got in myself.
It would say itself that in a well-ordered pleasure yacht there wouldn't be many movables apart from the pig-iron ballast in the hold, and while we were shifting the pigs I was cudgeling my brain to think of some expedient to loosen the grip of the shoal. In the mad haste of the moment—haste made madder when Dorgan came stumping down to tell us that the shore people had brought the whaleboat around and were piling into it—I thought of the water-jet device used by bridge builders in sinking piles or a caisson in sand. There was a small fire pump in the engine room and with time in which to connect lines of piping—and immunity from the nagging rifle fire while we were about it—it seemed that such a contrivance might be made to loosen the sand around the hull. But as it now appeared, time was going to be denied us.
It was not until Dorgan came a second time to tell us that the whaleboat, filled with men, had shoved off from the beach that I gave the order to stop the ballast shifting.
“On deck—you and Pedro!” I shouted to José and followed them up the ladder, driving Brill ahead of me.
When we got out to where we could see, Dorgan's report was confirmed. The loaded boat had left the beach but it was not coming directly toward us; it was steering to the right and the men manning the oars were not hurrying. With the glass we could count the occupants. There were six of them; four at the oars, one steering and the sixth man appeared to be kneeling in the bow of the boat. While we looked a faint puff of gray smoke broke out from the whaleboat's bow and the only whole pane of glass left in the Waikiki's chart room fell out in a tinkling shower of fragments.
At this Jeffreys' purpose became disquietingly obvious. He meant to circumnavigate us at a safe distance, pecking at us with his rifle fire from many different angles. He doubtless guessed by this time that we had no guns with which to answer him; knew also that if he could get astern of the yacht in a position where the seaward inclination of the hull would favor instead of baffling him he could drive us all below and hold us there while his oarsmen made the boarding dash.
It was a shrewd maneuver, holding, every promise of success. As the laden whaleboat swung slowly in its circling course the crack and smoke puff came at regular intervals from her bow and our exposed after-deck lounge speedily became uninhabitable. To put them beyond any possible danger from the flying bullets I sent Alison and Hedda down to the engine room, which was below the water line, and the five of us who remained took refuge in the cabin, Brill groveling on the floor in a ridiculous and contemptible agony of terror as the bullets came tearing through the upper body of the cabin. As the fusillade gave us leave Dorgan and I kept the movements of the whaleboat in view, expecting momently to see its bow turn toward us and the four slowly swinging oars dig for the attacking dash.
But the dash did not come. It was my guess that Jeffreys could not screw the nerve of his hired ruffians to the sticking point. I was quite ready to absolve him from any particular charge of bloodthirstiness in his persistent rifle practice. He had two perfectly defensible objects in view—defensible from his standpoint; one was to reclaim his hostage in the person of Alison. Carter and the other to regain possession of the yacht now that our firing of the boilers had made it evident that she was whole and might be floated. Doubtless he fancied he could wear us out by keeping us under the incessant strain and that eventually we would give up and signal him to come aboard. Be this as it may the circling course was held until the circle was completed; and when the long and nerve-wracking bombardment paused our damage proved to be strictly material. The bulwarks and top works of the yacht were punctured and bored in every direction but nobody had been hit, even by flying splinters.
Dorgan was growling sourly as we emerged from the riddled cabin.
“I sure reckoned they was goin' to give us a chance at 'em that time,” he complained. “This everlastin' popgun business is gettin' on my sore nerve!”
“It is clouding up,” I pointed out. “It will soon be too dark to let him see his gun sights.” Then as untechnically as possible I outlined my plan of trying to free the yacht by the use of high-pressure water jets directed into the sand around the bow.
“Water pipes?” he said. “How you goin' to work 'em? You got to have light to do it by and if there's light enough for us there'll be light enough for that skunk on the beach to see to shoot by.”
There was much truth in that but it was a case of nothing venture, nothing have. In the matter of light we had all we wanted below decks, and could have had it above if we had dared use the searchlight on the bridge. During the bilge pumping I had taken time to overhaul the electric plant and put it in order, and now as the clouds thickened to darken the heavens I started the dynamo and by the light thus furnished we began to whip things into shape for the force-pump experiment.
Considering it afterward I was surprised and humiliated to remember that I clung so desperately to the water-jet expedient when a much simpler and more promising one lay ready to our hands. But obsessions are curious things, amounting at times to a mild species of insanity. With the feverish persistence of a single-track mind I ransacked the yacht for material with which to construct the necessary line of piping and was forced finally to eke it out with splicings of fire hose.
And when the thing was done—which was not until long after the cloud-thickening darkness of an approaching storm had been made Stygian by the coming of night—and the force pump was started, the experiment was a sorry failure. In the first place the small force pump would not supply enough water to fill the various nozzles and in the second, When we sought to substitute pressure for quantity the various patched-up couplings wouldn't hold it. And while we were still working and sweating over the botch job, the Minorcans and I, with Dorgan standing by to do our swearing for us, Alison came running to tell us that trouble of some sort was brewing again; that the men on the beach had built a small fire and by the light of it they seemed to be manning the whaleboat.
Now a night attack, when the attackers might hope to get within grappling distance of us without being seen, was what I had been expecting—and dreading. If Jeffreys could whip all the men members of his party, guests and sailors, into line and crowd them into the whaleboat they would outnumber us two to one; or rather vastly more; since Dorgan had only one arm and there was no reason to suppose that Brill could be made to fight, even with Dorgan's pistol or mine to put the fear of death into him.
Menaced by the double danger of an attack from the island and the still more terrifying threat of the coming storm which would surely complete the wreck of the stranded yacht, swift escape seemed to be the only hope for us; and it was then, at the eleventh hour so to speak, when there was no time to put it into effect, that the simple expedient I have spoken of, or the conception of it, came crashing into my brain like the bolt from a crossbow.
“Dorgan!” I cried. “We ought both to be bored for the hollow horn! The anchors!”