although the words of warning uttered by the pirate were deliberate and emphatic, there was not a sound while he was speaking them to denote that they were true. nevertheless, he had spoken the truth; and he had gaged the moment of interruption so exactly that even as he ceased speaking the door which communicated with the outer cabin was burst open, and three men, followed by several others, leaped in upon them.
but short as was the warning, short as was the time of preparation on the part of the detective and his companions, they were none the less prepared.
the foremost of the men who entered the cabin thus unceremoniously was a giant in stature, and nick saw at a glance that he could not be one of the members of the regular crew, since no mention had been made to him of a person of such gigantic proportions. and here it was that the detective gained a momentary advantage, by reason of the fact that he had arrayed himself in the costume of the pirate chieftain; and it was that moment of time which brought about the final result.
when the giant burst into the room he beheld two individuals who seemed to him to be his chief. one was seated upon a chair, to which he was tightly bound; the other was almost directly in front of him.
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for one instant he halted, dismayed, not knowing what to do.
but captain sparkle cried out to him from his chair—a quick command in french, which was as serviceable to the giant as a full and complete explanation could have been. nevertheless, that instant of hesitation worked his ruin, for, although it was only instantaneous, it still afforded the detective time to gather himself for the attack.
as the giant sprang toward him. nick stooped and darted past his guard, under his extended arms, and he seized him around his massive body in a grip as powerful as the giant himself could have exerted. they were oddly matched, these two. the giant towered over the detective like a goliath over a david. the scene had the appearance of a full-grown man fighting with a half-grown boy.
but the giant was, nevertheless, lifted bodily from his feet, and he hung there, struggling vainly to touch his toes or his heels to the deck, for, like certain animals we know about, his defensive powers were fruitless if he could not get his feet to the ground.
he bellowed like a bull at first, until the pressure of nick’s powerful arms squeezed him into silence. he swung his arms about him like the blades of a windmill, and he kicked frantically with his feet in an effort to bring the detective down. his huge, animallike face turned red, then purple, then black. blood oozed from his nostrils and mouth; and then, like the snapping of a[108] whip in the distance, his ribs cracked under the awful pressure which nick put upon them.
instantly his hold upon the detective relaxed; his flaying arms dropped to his sides, useless; he gasped, and then, as nick released him, he fell in a heap to the floor of the cabin, uttering howl after howl of rage and anguish. like all brutes of gigantic strength, once conquered, he could fight no more, and he remained where he had fallen, moaning, helpless, whipped—and whipped into a bleeding mass of flesh by the mere pressure of the great detective’s muscular arms.
then nick turned like a flash toward the others.
five of the attacking party were down and out, laid where they were by the hammering fists of maxwell kane and chick, for there had been no time or opportunity to make use of their revolvers, which happened to be inside their pockets when the onslaught occurred. four more men were pressing the two fighters into one corner of the cabin, and were almost at the point of getting the upper hand of them, when nick rushed to their assistance.
but the fighting powers of the pirates was short-lived after that happened.
nick carter’s fist caught one of them under the ear; another went down from a blow against the side of his jaw; a third was knocked squarely into chick’s arms by a kick in the small of his back from nick’s foot, and the fourth, dismayed by what was happening around him, lost his head just long enough to give kane an opening, and[109] he received a well-directed blow on the end of his nose which finished him.
the fight was over, and there was no remnant of one left in any of the men who had entered that cabin so bravely to capture nick carter and his friends. there had been ten in all, against three; but now those ten men were bound and speedily rendered helpless, and the three stood over them, comparatively uninjured.
it is true that kane wore a discolored lump on his right cheek, and that chick was nursing the knuckles of his right hand tenderly; but otherwise they were uninjured.
and all this time captain sparkle had been compelled to sit idly by, a spectator of the downfall of his followers. however, when nick carter looked toward him he was smiling.
“well, captain,” said the detective, “what do you think about being free now?”
“i think,” replied the pirate, with a broader smile, “that the moment will have to be postponed because of unavoidable circumstances.”
“quite right,” said the detective.
the ten men captured by the detective, assisted by maxwell kane and chick, proved to be the entire complement of the pirate crew; they included every man who acted under the orders of captain sparkle.
seven of these comprised the crew of the shadow and three were those who remained on shore at the strange harbor where she was in the habit of lying by, out of the sight and the ken of the world at large.
and this harbor was a strange one, indeed. it lies[110] considerably to the eastward of hempstead bay, and any one of those who read can readily discover the spot if he will take the trouble to journey there.
there is a place where boulders and rocks and reefs jut out of the water at low tide, capped at the outer end of the fringe by one huge one, so that the general appearance of the formation has led the residents along the shore near there to name them the sow and pigs. between these two projections of rocks is a deep and narrow way, through which a vessel built after the model of the shadow may pass at certain conditions of the tides.
at the base of it, or against the shore, it dips into the bluff somewhat more than a hundred feet, with a high sand-bank on either side; a barren, abrupt, precipitous bank fringed by stunted verdure, which grows down almost to the water’s edge.
it was here that the detective discovered the shadow to be moored. an excavation had been made in the bank on one side, and within it were found the effects taken from the goalong and the harkaway; on board the cruiser, of course, were still all the articles stolen from the aurora.
and the pirate craft—the shadow?
she was all that has been claimed for her. she had herself been stolen from her builders in france, at the very time when she was about to be delivered to a russian prince, for whom she had been built. operated by electricity, derived from storage batteries, which were supplied by a charging dynamo so that she never ran out of power, she was fleet and powerful, and half a submarine; that is, she could sink and rise again without[111] remaining for a long time immersed; and she could skim swiftly along the surface of the water with only her turrets showing above it.
madame cadillac did not follow her husband to prison. she returned to france, a sadder and a much wiser woman. the count—he who was called jean—disappeared from the club-house that night.
it was thought that he had somehow discovered the absence of kane and the detective from the goalong, and that he decided that it would be good policy to decamp. at all events, that is what he did do.
“too bad!” murmured nick. “that fellow will be up to mischief yet.”
