“there!” exclaimed george. “i knew i had something at the end of my line.”
“knew you had something?” ejaculated the sergeant. “you knew you had something! why, hang it, man, do you think i am going to be dragged out of my bed after a thirty miles ride because a blamed fool with the horrors or something hooks a handkerchief off the bottom of the clarence?”
“it was more than that!” cried george, firmly. “i’ll swear i had a dead man on the hook.”
“i’ve a mind to put you on your oath about it,” said the sergeant, tartly.
“i’d swear it in court,” averred george.
“nice crown witness you’d make, wouldn’t you.”
“there!” cried george, suddenly stepping back and pointing tragically at the lamp-lit water.
“what!” ejaculated the sergeant, gazing intently over the stern of the greenwich.
“there!” repeated george, in the attitude of macbeth locating banquo’s ghost—“there! i told you so.”
[96]
“by gad!” cried the sergeant, with a start. “a floating corpse!”
“the same one i hooked,” said george, in a hollow voice.
“you’ll get a name as a fisherman if you keep on,” observed the officer.
“i suppose it’s an inquest.”
“what’ll we do?” asked the first mate, excitedly.
“hook him again!” replied the sergeant, in a matter-of-fact voice. “you must have had him by the neck and the cloth gave way. the disturbance floated him.”
“ugh!” cried george; “i’ll never throw out a blamed line in this river again as long as i live.”
“well i will!” said the sergeant. “i’ll throw one now. lend me that shark hook a minute.”
the officer who was paid, not too liberally, by government, to act either as assistant pathologist or undertaker, as occasion required, jumped upon the after grating with the end of george’s shark line in his hand.
a human head could be seen bobbing gently up and down with the swell and fall of the tide. it drifted neither to right nor left, but in a sort of ghastly oscillation waited—waited. there was a sardonic smile on the parted lips. the smile that is seen on the face of the murdered dead who come up again from under the earth, from the depths of the waters, anywhere. the dead who come for justice.
livid and ghastly, and utterly unreal and horrible was the face of the corpse floating steadily in that pool of yellow lamplight. and when the sergeant, after several throws with the line, succeeded in hooking on,[97] it came towards the stern without resistance. the man of law leaned over the low rail to make an examination.
“fetch the lantern!” he called to the deck-hand, “and a rope.”
the tide lapped by softly, the little town lay wrapped in darkness, broken only by an occasional lantern in the main street, and the dim lamp at the hotel.
“hold the light over till i see, can’t you?”
“ugh!” cried the deck-hand.
“well, turn your head away if you don’t want to look, or shut your eyes.”
“it’s horrible!” murmured george, whose face was deadly pale. “i don’t want to look at it.”
“well, don’t!” exclaimed the officer.
“i can’t help it——”
“great scott!” ejaculated the sergeant, taking another pull on the line.
“what!” cried george, his heart in his mouth.
“murder!” exclaimed the officer, with a new interest in his voice.
“murder!” cried george, hoarsely.
“look! yes, by gad! the man’s been stabbed.”
“stabbed! oh, lord!”
“hold the light, can’t you?”
“no,” said george, sitting down suddenly; “i can’t. i’m hanged if i can!”
the sergeant was busy with the rope. notwithstanding his ride of thirty miles, he had become active and alert. he passed a slip-noose over the stern presently, drew it tight, and tied the end securely to a stanchion.
“now,” he said, his mind already full of business;[98] “you’ll have to stay here and keep an eye on this while i go up town and make arrangements!”
“me?” exclaimed george.
“yes you! i’ll send the constable down by-and-bye.”
“how long will he be before he comes?” asked george, anxiously.
“couple of hours at the outside; i’ve something i want him to do first——”
“two hours!” cried george. “here by myself, at night, with that—that—that thing tied up to the greenwich! i wouldn’t do it for ten pounds!”
“but,” argued the sergeant, “you must. i don’t want the town to know anything about it. i want to keep everything dark till i make a few inquiries. this is a very serious matter. there is a big case hanging to it—a big case for me!”
“i don’t care,” cried george doggedly, “what’s hanging to it or who! i won’t stay here by myself—that’s straight!”
“oh, confound you!” exclaimed the sergeant. “all right if you’re such a coward as that i’ll send someone down as soon as i go up to the barracks!”
“i ain’t a coward,” said george; “but i haven’t engaged with the owners of this boat to mind floating corpses. it ain’t part of my duty, and i won’t do it.”
“remember you are to be a witness—an important witness—in this case,” said the sergeant, severely.
“all right,” replied george; “but i’ll wait ashore up under the lamp, till somebody comes, i wouldn’t stop on the boat—and another thing, i’m hanged if i think i’ll sleep aboard of her after this!”
[99]
whereat george stepped on to the gangplank and got ashore, so placing himself when he landed that various opaque objects would come between his line of vision and the stern of the steamer.
tom pagdin sat on the edge of the bed in jacob cayley’s farmhouse and thought hard.
once he got up and tried the door very gently.
it was firmly locked.
he went to the window and pressed against it.
“there’s an iron bar or a chain across the outside,” he muttered to himself, “and the shutters is an inch thick. it’s no go!”
he felt the boards along the wall with his feet carefully; one of them seemed a little loose.
“if i could raise a bit of the floor and burrow out, like they do in some of those detective yarns, it would be o.k.,” he reflected; “but i got nothin’ to burrow with—unless i break the handle of the washin’ jug,” he added as an after-thought, “an’ sharpen one end.”
but another minute’s consideration convinced him of the futility of this idea.
“it’s all up,” he cried at last in despair. “i’ll be found out an’ took back or sent to gaol! i wonder where dave is, anyhow.”
just at this moment tom heard a bird calling off somewhere towards the river bank.
“morepoke,” he said listening. “i misremember ever hearin’ a morepoke callin’ so late at night.”
the cries of the night bird were repeated at regular intervals; they seemed to come nearer.
[100]
“a morepoke don’t walk about whoopin’ like that,” muttered tom, “’specially this hour of the night. ’sides he’s down in the corn. i never heard a morepoke in the corn before.”
a thought struck the elder pirate.
he slipped to the window, and putting his mouth to the shutter, called: “mo’poke! mo’poke!” softly.
“mo’poke! mo’poke!” came the answer.
“mo’poke! mo’poke! mo’-o-poke!” repeated tom.
this time he varied the call, putting in an emphasis where no night owl was ever known to place it.
“mo’-poke! mo’-poke! mo’-o-poke!” came the reply.
“by gosh, it’s dave!” cried tom, excitedly.
he put his mouth to a crack in the wall and repeated the cry.
dave answered, drawing nearer and nearer.
he was trying to locate tom’s exact whereabouts.
the people of the house were sound asleep.
dave, guided by the sounds uttered sotto voce by his commander, came as blondin to the call of richard.
“where are you?” he whispered at last, outside the wall.
“in ’ere,” responded tom. “come round ’ere close; there’s an opening in the weatherboards. i’m locked in,” he explained. “see, if you can get the fastenin’ off the winder-shutter.”
“it’s a padlock an’ chain,” explained dave from outside. “what will we do?”
“do!” muttered tom. “there’s only one thing to do—i got to get out somehow! have a look at the door.”
[101]
“it’s locked,” whispered dave through the keyhole.
“ain’t the key outside?”
“no; there’s no key ’ere.”
“he’s took it to bed with him,” muttered tom in an injured tone. “it’s outrageous!”
“can’t you get out through the roof?” asked dave.
“no, i can’t,” replied tom; “it’s a lined ceilin’. if it wuz calico or bags i’d cut through ’em an’ find a ’ole somewhere; but it ain’t.”
“what about the floor?” asked dave; “ain’t there no boards loose? the house is built up on piles ’ere at the back——”
“is it?” asked tom, eagerly. “make sure.”
“yes,” responded the lieutenant pirate. “if you could lift a couple o’ boards you could crawl out under easy enough.”
“they’re all nailed down,” mourned tom; “i been tryin’ ’em. say,” he went on—“how thick is the chain on the winder?”
“it’s only a dawg chain,” said dave through the crack; “but it’s too strong to break.”
“you won’t have to break it,” responded tom, “if you can get a file.”
“a file!”
“yes; there’s sure to be a tool-shed round the back there somewhere. all these cockies does a bit o’ tinkerin’. you go round and see if you kin pinch one.”
tom waited anxiously for his mate to return, and when at last dave announced that he had got a file, the prisoner’s heart leaped.
“git to it!” he urged in an excited whisper. “git[102] to it as quick as you can! pick the thinnest link, an’ git to it! don’t make any more row than a dead snake, but ’urry up!”
dave got to it.
he worked away as rapidly and noiselessly as possible encouraged by frequent whispered inquiries and admonitions from inside.
the report that one side of the link was filed through caused tom to remark emphatically, in a subdued voice, that dave had the makings of a true pirate in him.
he also implied that his mate was destined to do great things in the business.
thus encouraged, dave worked on till the other side of the link gave way.
the chain was removed, the shutter opened, and tom climbed out of the window in his shirt.
“where’s yer clothes?” asked the exhausted first lieutenant.
“he’s took ’em,” replied tom, resentfully. “’e ’adn’t no right whatever. i could summons ’im if i wanted to. but i don’t want to. we’ve got to get out of this.”
“yes,” agreed dave; “i reckon the sooner we get out of it the better. it ain’t lucky.”
“i wouldn’t wonder if that holey sixpence had something to do with it,” observed tom. “but the bad luck oughter to run itself out now. i wish i ’ad a pair o’ pants though. let’s go round to the washshed an’ see if we can nick a pair o’ the old man’s. this is the[103] second time since we bin piratin’ i’ve been done in for clothes.”
they found some of the farmer’s working clothes in the shed and appropriated them.
tom rolled them into a bundle and tucked them under his arms.
they fossicked round for a few minutes longer, and picked up some eatables, including the commandeered fowls which had caused the trouble.
they were hanging up by the feet in the stock-shed, and tom reached them down with a grunt of satisfaction.
“these’ll pay for my togs,” he said; “that makes ’im an’ me square. ’e’s got my trousers, an’ i got ’is fowls.”
the pirates chuckled over this joke as they took their way to the boat.
as they went dave explained that after the skirmish in the fowl-shed he had fled back to the boat and waited for his chief. when the latter failed to turn up he came to the conclusion that he had been captured, and was perhaps held as a prisoner of war.
“then,” said dave, “i sneaked round by the corn an’ give that mo’-poke call. my word i was glad when i ’eard you answerin’.”
“i reckon,” said tom, “that we’re gettin’ adventures all right; but it ain’t nothin’ to what we will get when we’re right down the river.”
dave was silent.
the fact was that the second pirate felt very tired and sleepy.
[104]
they got back to the pirates’ camp safely, hid the boat in the creek, and lay down, thoroughly worn out, and slept the sleep of youth and health.
next day they lay close in case jacob cayley should have tracked them to the water’s edge and started to look for them along the river. it was unlikely that he should discover that they had come up to the raiding of his poultry in a whale boat like true buccaneers, but their experiences were making them cautious.
so they kept under cover, fed largely on stewed chicken, and laid in a stock of strength for the work which was before them.
they regretted leaving the camp, but a pirate’s life, like a policeman’s, is not all roses; so when evening came they pulled out softly, and started paddling down stream with the falling tide.
the breeze came fresh and cool across the river. they kept their boat in the middle of the stream, and in most places there was a wide stretch of open water between them and either bank.
it was nearly daylight before they reached the island which the chief pirate had in view as a new basis of operations, and they made a bad landing.
they ran in among some young mangroves and grounded.
it took pushing and hauling to get the heavy boat clear of the clinging mud—there is always mud where the mangroves grow—and they were very tired.
at length they found a place where they could get ashore and secure and hide their craft.
day had broken. the east was reddening with the[105] sun as they staggered along with their traps through a track in the lantana which seemed to lead towards a shady jungle closely covering the centre of the island.
dave was in front.
he stepped back suddenly, white to the lips, stumbling over tom, who was close to his heels.
“what’s up?” cried the latter. “what is it—a snake?”
“no,” choked dave. “no—him!”
“who?”
“him!” said dave, who seemed about to faint.
tom elbowed him aside and peered ahead through the bushes.
“oh, cripes!” he muttered, and dropping his load turned about to run.
