The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

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СКАЧАТЬ no one heeded him. When at last they all were gone—some to death, some to uncertain struggles with the night and the sea—when all had disappeared save a few limp figures rolling in the scuppers, he climbed back, bleeding, up the slippery deck to Ethel.

      He found her in the bulkhead corner, kneeling in the gloom over a prostrate something that neither stirred nor spoke.

      “What! Can I help?” he cried.

      She shook her head, raising her hand silently, and he forbore. He understood. The old man’s heart had lashed itself to bursting with the panic and the stress. Now, out of all the throng, only one woman and one man were left.

      The doctor’s wisdom kept his lips from platitudes. He turned, and left Ethel to herself a moment, gazing off landward. The ship was utterly dark now, for the last flare had burned to ash, the dynamos had stopped, and all the lights were dead. The steam-pipes’ roar had dwindled to a sibilant murmur, drowned by the lash and crumble of the surges on the reef. Under the great passionless stars the wreck lay spent and weary, crushed to death, unmoved by even the heaviest seas.

      Quite suddenly the doctor noticed a little speck of light far in the gloom, then another—many specks, that lay where he half guessed the shore must be. Puzzled, he knit his brows.

      “It can’t be that any have reached land yet. Those can’t be fires. Never knew campfires to crawl that way.”

      Dully he watched the sparks creep, come together, then separate. They almost seemed to be advancing toward the ship.

      Then the truth hit him, and he stumbled back.

      “Merciful Heaven! the Guinea blacks—the wreckers of Bis­sa­gos!”

      IV.

      He stooped to Ethel tenderly. “Listen,” said he. “We must get away from here. It’s death to stay!”

      She clung to him. He drew her up—away. She was only a blur in the night, but intuition told him that her face was wet with tears.

      “Death?” she asked. “The wreck won’t last till morning?”

      “It’s not that. There’s something—something else. You’d better know at once. See there—off there to shoreward?”

      “Those lights, you mean?”

      “Lights, yes. They’re torches—in canoes. They’re coming. They mustn’t find us here, or—”

      “I understand. But can we go, and leave the—the—”

      “Nobody must be left. There couldn’t be a finer burial than the sea! I’ll take you into the saloon, then come back here and do what must be done.”

      She understood, and yielded nobly. He led her off along the steep deck, after a silent moment by her uncle’s body. He brought her safely to the main saloon, struck a match and found his bearings.

      “All you need do is sit quite still in here. I won’t be gone five minutes.” Then he left her.

      The work was harder than he had expected, for there was a lantern to be found and lighted, and—there were other difficulties. After a while the task was done.

      When he came back to her, his pockets crammed with provisions and cartridges, a bandolier of canvas supporting revolvers and two magazine-rifles, she greeted him with a pale, thin smile. By the lantern light that glimmered sickly through the mocking splendor of the place, he saw her eyes brimming with tears, but she was calm and full of courage.

      “We’ve got to find and launch a boat, or something, right away.”

      “Come, then, let’s be about it,” she replied. “There can’t be many boats left, can there?”

      “Hardly two or three. The port-side’s stripped. We’ll soon find out.”

      He helped her up across the saloon floor, which slanted like a house roof, and they issued out upon the larboard side. The wind could not strike here; and the waves, too, thirty-odd feet below, broke with less furious lashings.

      Willard held the lantern high with his right hand. His left clutched the rail. Ethel steadied herself on him. Thus they worked their way slowly aft, stumbling over twisted cordage, litter, flotsam and jetsam of the tragedy.

      As they neared the first boat Willard’s heart died within him. What he might have guessed was true—the careening of the ship had swung the boats far inboard against their davits, so that nothing short of half a dozen men could now have got them over the rail, even had not the falls been twisted into knots and tangles.

      He knew at once the prime futility of an attempt. Even to have got a life-raft over they must have rigged tackles, and time was now so short. A real fear shuddered through his veins. Too well he knew what manner of men the Guinea wreckers were. His hand slid, as by instinct, to the butt of his revolver. Before a single black should come nigh her he knew a better way.

      “Impossible?” asked Ethel almost coolly. “Perhaps there’s some­thing better at the stern.”

      They forced a way, sliding, slipping, and clinging to whatever handholds offered. Under the counter they heard the waves run hissing. The wind whipped them as they worked out from the shelter of the after-cabin; it blew the lantern out. And as they stopped, breathing heavily in the dark, they saw once more the dancing fire sparks, heaving and tossing with the waves, and drawing very nigh. They could even see that the sparks were torches, harried by the wind; and once, in a lull, they heard a wild-pitched, minor chant that wailed and mourned across the vacant reaches of the night, with throbbings of many cadent drums.

      The woman trembled at this sound, and Willard drew her close to him.

      “Don’t be afraid,” he soothed her. “They shall never get you.”

      “Swear to that.”

      “I needn’t. You know how true it is.”

      “No time, now?”

      “No time. We’ll have to hold the fort. They probably don’t know we’re here, so it’ll be a fine surprise party. Lots of arms on board. You can shoot?”

      “Try me.”

      Thus, on the instant, their campaign took form.

      V.

      “They’ll board us midships on the port side,” Willard planned. “They’re after loot, and—and—and—well—edibles. Now we, I take it—”

      “Can barricade the stern here?”

      “Yes—rake ’em down by dozens. Except for knives and assegais, they’re probably not armed.”

      “How many do you make them?”

      “A good thousand. See, there must be more than fifty of those big sea-going barracas. But what are a thousand naked blacks against magazine rifles? They can’t rush us all at once. Come, though,” he added hastily, “this won’t do. We’ve to get things ready for ’em—quick, at that.”

      He dragged up cordage, with her help; СКАЧАТЬ