The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California
enough to be calmly accepted without an inquisition.
"The strangers!" cried the captain, prudently backing towards the wall
at the point furthest from the ladder's end. "Have they come in among
us?"
"Stuff! What man in his lightness of heart would leap thus into the
wolf's throat?"
"That's all very well put, Ricardo," rejoined the leader. "But they may
have preceded you, and not known that this is our lair. Just climb up
and see if, by any chance, we are receiving uninvited guests."
Ricardo, who was singled out, was a burly rogue, but he did not accept
this order. On the contrary he made a wry face and thrust his cheek
out with his tongue, which signified "go and do it yourself." This
incipient mutiny was clearly contagious, for all the bandits returned
their commander's interrogative look with another, defiant, stupid, or
complacent, pursuant to their natures.
Any child could have drawn the inference that the quarter whence
cartridges were showered might logically be expected to furnish a gun
or two. The figurative language of the western man ranking a packet of
lead and ball, or arrows, as the case varies of its being a white or
a red man who sends the message, as an equivalent for a challenge to
mortal combat--each bandit so interpreted the accident.
"Poltroons!" cried Matasiete. "Is there room, save on the platform
itself, for a troop of men? And would one man stand amid the lightning
on this rocking tower top! I tell you, if there is a man there it will
be in the nook where the ladder is suspended. One man! Well, where are
my brave fighting cocks now?"
One man, armed with such a gun as that cartridge of unusual calibre
promised, could very easily defend even that despicable nook against a
whole coop of gamecocks. So the hesitation to climb the ladder rather
augmented than diminished.
"Poltroons, eh?" observed Ignacio, to whom the incident perhaps came in
harmony with some project of his own. "If it is nothing uncommon to go
and see what owl has alighted in the tower top--an owl whose eggs are
cartridges, by the way--why don't you show your superior courage? Show
your hardly-too-often-distinguished daring, Captain, by going up and
wringing the neck of the fowl of evil omen yourself."
"G--go myself?" repeated Matasiete, whilst the robbers grinned more or
less audibly.
"Yes, go yourself," returned the impudent lieutenant, "the more
particularly as now that you have no impediment to seize the property
of don José de Miranda, you are going to marry richly and settle
down as a farming gentleman, and will have no more opportunities of
exhibiting your gallantry. Yes, go yourself! And, moreover, be quick
about it, or the strangers, whoever they may be, may come down in
impatience at your neglect of your duty of host and demand an account
of your reluctant hospitality, face to beard, themselves."
Matasiete did not number that defect among his of the sanguine dog
who perpetually lets go the substance to snap at the shadow. Whatever
the brilliancy of the prospect of obtaining the estate of Miranda, at
present that of losing the command of the salteadores was more at hand.
Besides, best knowing what valuables were sewn up in the hem of his
dress, or contained in his money belt, in case, by robbers' law, judged
a coward, and kicked out from their punctilious midst, stripped to the
skin, this property would be lost to him, the captain made an effort.
"Then I will show you that I never set a command which I would not have
executed myself!" spoken with a tremor, but loudly, to daunt the object
aimed at above. "I will mount, and not a cartridge, but the corpse
of anyone who has ventured to pry into our secrets, will shortly come
hustling down among ye!"
He made one bound to the ladder, put his knife between his teeth,
to prevent them chattering as much as to have the blade handy, and
ascended briskly with his long legs at the start.
It would be unjust to say that Gladsden, who had heard all this scene,
without caring to lean over and witness it lest the gleam of his eyes,
reflecting the fire rays, should betray him and draw a pistol shot, was
daunted by either the words of the redoubtable robber or his approach.
Any one man, or two or three, come to that, caused him no apprehension,
for he had all the advantages of position. But, after repulsing them,
how could he hope to hold out a long time without food or drink?
An idea of subterfuge had struck him, which was only feasible to a
seaman.
We observed that Matasiete had mounted the ladder briskly "at the
start." It is true. But, when he had some twenty feet yet of the ascent
to make, his action grew less commendable. He even framed an address,
in appeal, to be uttered in a whisper only loud enough for the unknown
occupant of the turret niche, full of promises or threats if he would
only keep quiet, and allow the investigator to return uninjured and
state there was an absence of ground for the alarm he had himself
unfortunately originated.
In the meantime the Englishman, attributing the slowness of this
upcomer's movement to his cowardice, believed he would be only too glad
to find no occasion for his long stay at the top of the ladder.
So he thrust his head out of the gap before mentioned, and examined the
metal arm socketed in the wall. It was not iron, but bronze, full three
feet long to the hook, a little thicker than the thumb. It was planted
solidly in a horizontal direction.
Without further reflection, hearing the respiration of captain
Matasiete, who had been goaded on by the whisperings ascending of his
men beginning to criticise his halt, Gladsden noiselessly pushed his
legs out, bent forward, seized the bronze bar with both hands with that
grip which enables the sailor to defy the squall to dislodge him from
the yard, and hung stiffly at arm's length over the void.
If the Mexican saw him in looking out of the window by one of the
less frequent electrical flashes, he intended to kick him under the
jaw, reenter, convert the body into a rampart, and fight whilst there
was a shot in the barrel, or till he had a chance to claim Ignacio's
safeguard. The lieutenant could but be grateful to a man who removed
his superior in his favour, and, moreover, brought him a fortune.
He had no more than assumed this trying position, being drenched to the
skin at the very first instant of exposure, before Matasiete at last,
with many misgivings pulling at his toes, lifted his head above the
flooring, and, with indescribable joy, saw there was no one there.
"Well, Captain?" was the half-ironical inquiry from below.
"There is no one, you asses!" was the polite reply, in a gleeful tone.
Gladsden sighed in relief as deep as the captain's.
"Stand from under!" added the latter, putting his knife in its sheath.
"I am coming down."
The Englishman was saved!
He prepared to return within his nook. The imminent danger was over.
The rain was unpleasant, and the uneasiness of horses beneath him,
which he heard whinnying as if they scented him, as was probable,
offered the chance of exciting the curiosity of a Mexican, who would
infallibly descry him if he looked up outside. So he wished to cut
short the feeling of fatigue which already attacked his wrists and
shoulders. But, at the first movement, what he believed a mere fancy
was confirmed as fact: the bar was set with an unalterable firmness
which spoke volumes for the mason of old, but the metal, in which too
much copper had been alloyed, or deteriorated by the weather, was
slowly bending, arching over the abyss!
No time was there to spare. He began by shifting his grip, moving one
hand inwards and bringing the outer up to it, to overcome the curve
in the rod. He looked to the socket to make sure that it still held,
when his anxious eyes met another pair in the very gap. They were the
Mexican robber's!
Matasiete had smelt the powder, at least, he had, in a final and idle
sweeping round of the visual ray, perceived the gun of the Englishman,
which he had, nevertheless, concealed with unusual and creditable care
in the angle of floor and wall.
Now, Matasiete placidly leaning on the sill of the window, so to call
it, fixed his ferocious eyes on Gladsden, gleaming with delight at
having so complete a chance to avenge on another his companions' taunts
of cowardice.
"The owl!" he said ironically.
"You devil!" returned Gladsden, in English, for in such critical
moments a man does not display his linguistical acquirements.
Devil, indeed! Matasiete drew his knife and slowly leaned outward in
order to slash the poor wretch's fingers to anticipate their relaxing
the grasp on the overdrooping bar.
The other made an offer to let go with one hand in the hope to get
at a pistol to blow out the fiend's brains at a snap shot, but the
impossibility of the feat was immediately so impressed upon him, that
he grasped with a double hold once more in deeper desperation.
"Oh! Any death but this waking nightmare!" he ejaculated, as a kind of
prayer.
Before his fingers should be pinched by his own weight, between the
metal and the brickwork, he thought, by a final spurt of strength, to
leap up and seize the grinning demon.
"No, you don't!" cried the captain, guessing his aim, and leaning well
out over him, gleaming steel in hand, "Thou shalt die like a dog."
He lifted his arm to strike. Gladsden shuddered in his anguish--his
grasp did not relax, rather was it cramped, but he was thrust by his
body coming sidewise to the wall, from that direction, and slid thus
perforce to the end of the bar downwards. He closed his eyes not to
see the knife and fiendish eyes, not to hear the devilish laugh, when
a sharp shot resounded below, a bullet shrieked beside his tingling
ear, and louder than the cry which the feeling of falling through space
wrung from the brave man, seemed the shriek of captain Matasiete,
"creased" through the prominent nose.
Gladsden descended, like a rock loosened from a sierra summit, upon the
plain below. Instead of the solid earth, however, he fell upon a warm
yielding substance--the backs of a couple of horses. Clutching the mane
of one at random--not the one on which he had landed, and of which he
all but broke the back and so left paralysed--he was instantly carried
away by the frightened steed.
Behind him, as he was borne helter-skelter over the prairie, converted
into a shallow lake, he heard the clamour of the Mexicans startled
by the shot, and later by a stampede in reality of their horses. It
seemed to him, stunned in a measure though he was, that in the thick of
the swarm of quadrupeds madly in flight like his own, but in another
direction, there was a figure, black and bowing its head between its
steed's ears, with a white object across the saddlebow.
But it was a mere glimpse! A new Mazeppa, he went careering on an
unchained thunderbolt over the prairie, whilst the old Tower quivered
in a fresh onset of the tempest.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE "LITTLE JOKER."
There rode a charming little sailing vessel in Guaymas Port. It flew
the Chilian flag, was about a hundred and twenty tons register, and was
named _La Burlonilla_, or "Little Joker," which might be interpreted
innocently, or as a tacit allusion to the pea used in "thimblerig."
She was so coquettish, so fine of run, so light and buoyant, and
yet carried a good spread of sail, that the experienced Gladsden
reckoned she would do her twelve knots an hour without shipping enough
water to drown the purser's cat. But there seemed to be some mystery
attending the ownership. The shipkeeper allowed no one to inspect her
closely, far less to board her, even threatening our Englishman with
a blunderbuss. He heard at the Heaven-and-Liberty Tavern that she