Cursed be the treasure
with little result. I couldn't imagine what could have induced my
captors to kidnap me in this way and take me out to sea. Indeed, I
wondered now whether it was the officers after all who had caught me.
Was there another on my track? My father's secret enemy, it might be.
Perhaps now the persecution was to include me too. But who was that
other one who had been hidden under the archway? What was his part
in the drama? And then the memory of the paralysing fear I had felt
told me it must have been the witch, Bite-in-the-Dark. I shuddered
at the thought. Was it indeed she? I found no answer to all these
questionings, but tossed them vainly about in my muddled mind till all
was chaos and confusion. And after all, I told myself, it might be
a mistake. I preferred to accept that solution, for it was the most
consoling. And yet for the life of me I couldn't imagine any set of
circumstances to account for such an error. So telling myself it was
all a mistake which would soon be rectified, yet believing deep within
me that the shadow of fear which had darkened my father's life was now
closing about me too, I lay down and tried to sleep.
But the morning brought no comfort. I discovered that I was in some
part of the deck-house. I could hear the carpenter at work close
by, and the smell of sizzling pork told me that the galley wasn't
far distant. There were voices too, but in spite of my knocking and
shouting no one took the least heed of me. I peered out through the
window which gave on to a strip of deck, pressing my face to the pane,
waiting for some one to pass by. But no one came, and I fell back to my
pallet disheartened.
Eventually a great rough fellow, the one I suspect who had growled at
me outside the door, brought me a hunk of pork on a slab of bread and a
tin of vile coffee. But to all my questioning he wouldn't answer a word
except, "The skipper'll settle you all right; don't you fear."
Later in the day I demanded to see the skipper, and was told that the
longer it was before I saw him the healthier it would be for me.
So I gazed through the little window growing more and more
disconsolate, till even the swaying of the waves as they slid out from
beneath the vessel and tossed their manes and curved away to the open
waters failed to stir my ardour. The wonder became a grey monotony,
which brought with it even an accustomed sickness; for as a rule I
was a good sailor, and in other circumstances would have gloried in
the swelling monsters which pushed up from under the vessel to drop
her into a deep pool of overshadowing green. But now I felt strangely
dizzy, and for a while lay rolling on the floor vomiting miserably; and
it didn't seem to matter in the least whether the vessel and all within
it should sink to the bottom of the sea.
So another night came, and another day, without change, except that I
wasn't sick again, though the ship lurched more heavily and staggered
uneasily forward as though a gale were rising. But with my captivity
a dull and unusual brooding settled upon my spirit. I began to ask
why fate had marked me out beyond all others for such unaccountable
trials and reverses. I seemed to be the plaything of some brutal and
implacable tyrant whose sport it was to dance me from adversity
to adversity, tantalizing me by glimpses of desirable havens, but
whisking me off and away again before I had time to fix my moorings.
But mercifully I was still too young for such ideas to take deep root.
The problems of evil and the destiny of man were beyond my scope of
meditation.
However, during the days that passed so slowly and so wearily I thought
much of my father and Worthing and Jenny. I had leisure to set many
things in their right places in my mind, and arrange them in some sort
of proportion and perspective. For instance, the picture of Worthing's
sacrifice of honour for the sake of friendship grew like a visible
thing before my eyes, till I bowed myself down and cried for the hurt
my folly had done him. Then, too, I could see quite plainly now that I
was deceiving Jenny inexcusably. She had sent me forth, having buckled
on my armour as it were, to track down her father's foe. Believing in
me as her champion she had hidden me and tended me all that day. She
had put me in her own bed; she had bound up my wounds, and brought me
food. And I had accepted her care as my due reward. I was masquerading,
playing the hero, when all I wished was to escape from her and find my
father. The thought didn't please me, but in compensation I told myself
I would keep my word to her somehow, and put an end to that evil that
was darkening her father's life.
But how? What clue had I? What clue did she think I had? Poor little
Jenny! In her simplicity I supposed all she thought I had to do was
to enquire of the first stranger and receive an answer to the riddle.
Indeed the task seemed hopeless. I knew just nothing of the affair.
Well, at least I would find my father. He might help me. At any rate he
could teach me something of the technique of the sleuth. And meanwhile
I wouldn't return to Jenny till I had accomplished something worthy of
her trust in me.
So I watched and waited, settling my plans as though I were free and
not a prisoner in the power of an unknown foe. I counted the days,
in an agony lest the first of May should come and pass, and the ship
not touch land, nor any prospect show itself of release from this
unaccountable captivity.
The last day of April came, and with it a buffeting wind. Slowly the
grey sky darkened towards evening. I made a frantic appeal to my jailer
to take me to the captain, but the surly fellow glanced darkly at me
without a word. I clutched him as he left the cabin, but he put out a
great foot and sent me staggering across the floor to jolt against the
partition and collapse half-winded.
There seemed no hope. In the evening an angry sun broke from the clouds
and set full ahead. Languidly I told myself we were steering west. Then
I threw myself across the floor, and with my face in my hands gave way
to a fit of inconsolable weeping.
CHAPTER XX
AT THE DAWN OF A SUMMER'S DAY
It was still dark when I awoke to feel rough hands about me, and the
tightening grip of ropes around my arms and legs. I shouted, and a
huge hand was promptly clapped across my mouth, and a moment later a
suffocating gag, knotted mercilessly at the back of my neck, stifled
the least groan. A bandage, too, was fastened over my eyes. I made
one convulsive effort to burst the bonds which were rapidly netting
me about, but with the only result that they were twisted the more
cruelly, crushing me in as though by the embrace of some enormous bear,
till I thought my ribs would crack beneath the strain.
The agony was almost unendurable, and was made still worse by the gag
over my mouth; for it would have been some relief to have been able to
rage and curse and scream. But not a sound could I utter. It seemed
as though a terrible explosive force were being compressed within me,
unable to burst free. And then a sacking of some kind was drawn over
my head, and the mouldy reek of it made me want to vomit; and though
suffocating for lack of air it was even worse agony to breathe the
foul fumes that came through the filthy stuff about my face. A spasm
convulsed my whole body from within, but the cords around me were too
tight to allow so much as a tremble to shake my limbs; and then I felt
suddenly limp and made no struggle, but yielded to the inevitable
without a question or a hope. Something was about to happen at last.
Perhaps I was to be thrown into the sea. Well, life's whole treatment
of me had been so unjust, so spiteful, and during the last two weeks so
cruel and intolerable, that any sort of end would be a relief.
So I gave no heed to the bumpings and shakings I had to undergo. I
didn't ask myself what was happening to me. And lying calmly so I was
probably happier than questioning and struggling. It was impossible for
me to stir a finger to help myself. I simply didn't care what became of
me. I think I even fell into swooning sleep, so indifferent was I to my
fate. For I was tired out with my captivity, first at Rancey Bridge and
then in this vessel, and my spirit was broken.
But if I swooned or slept I was roused to consciousness again by the
feel of cold water about my legs. I thought I had passed beyond all
self-concern, but at the touch of the sea my love of life revived, and
I became acutely aware of all that was happening to me. My feet were
being fixed to something, and I was being held upright, for I couldn't
support myself; not only was I too securely bound to have any control
of my limbs, but there was a swaying and lurching beneath me which
would have made standing difficult in any case. I began to wonder
where I was; but all I could surmise was that I was on an open raft
being tossed up and down at sea. Presently the worst of the tossing
stopped, and I assumed we had come into quieter water. But why were my
feet being fixed to the raft? Why was I being held upright? Then with
a deeper dip of the raft I felt a sharp upward jerk beneath my arms;
there was a rope fixed about me from somewhere above. But what did it
mean? Then the hands that had been supporting me were withdrawn, and
I began to sway dizzily; but the rope clutched at me viciously as I
fell. For a while I lurched backwards and forwards, my feet fixed to
the raft, if raft it were, as it rose and sank with the waves, and the
rope catching me with malicious jerks as I toppled and swung.
Then suddenly the terrible significance of it all was borne in upon
me with a cruel clearness. I seemed to hear my father telling over
again that story of dreadful vengeance, the most appalling that the
brutal minds of smugglers and pirates could devise; and at the thought
of it an agonized cry gushed up from my soul, though not a murmur
could pass my lips. For I knew I was hanging between earth and sea,
and my fate was to be slowly drawn asunder between them; for as the
tide ebbed the raft beneath me would sink and the rope above me would
tighten, till gradually my body would be stretched and strained to an
agonizing death. The realization came to me with a shock of horror,
the more so as my father's vivid story had impressed me with the
lingering torment I might expect to suffer. I ceased even to cry out
in my heart, "Why, why, why?" as I had done on board ship, exclaiming
against the malignant destiny that ever pursued me. For with the fear
of such a death upon me I had no place in my mind for anything except
the frenzied anticipation of it in all its horror. And still the raft
rolled beneath me. I lurched and toppled, while the rope gripped me
like a relentless hand which would soon be tightening to drag me limb
from limb.
Then I felt the sacking over my face being removed, and I caught
my first keen whiff of the beautiful sea air. It came like a cruel
reminder of all I was about to lose, and once again a spasm of surgent
rebellion against my fate convulsed me. The pain of it was dreadful,
for still it was as though that violent explosive power were struggling
to burst free from within me, but was restrained by an aching pressure
at every pore.
Then fingers were tearing at the bandage over my eyes, and it was
wrenched roughly away; and I could see, but not distinctly. For it
was still in the dusk of the early morning, and I seemed to be in a
cave of some kind, for before my eyes the air grew into a darkness of
retreating gloom. But I couldn't turn my head to see what lay on either
side of me, though the swaying of the raft gave me passing glimpses of
a dark rock wall dripping with damp and spray.