The Crow walked first, as guide, carrying a musket taken from Harry. Then came Gabbett, with an axe; followed by the other six, sharing between them such provisions as they had obtained at Signal Hill. John Rex, with the carbine, and Troke’s pistols, walked last. It had been agreed that if attacked they were to run each one his own way. In their desperate case, disunion was strength. At intervals, on their left, gleamed the lights of the constables’ stations, and as they stumbled onward they heard plainer and more plainly the hoarse murmur of the sea, beyond which was liberty or death.
After nearly two hours of painful progress, Jemmy Vetch stopped, and whispered them to approach. They were on a sandy rise. To the left was a black object–a constable’s hut; to the right was a dim white line– the ocean; in front was a row of lamps, and between every two lamps leapt and ran a dusky, indistinct body. Jemmy Vetch pointed with his lean forefinger.
“The dogs!”
Instinctively they crouched down, lest even at that distance the two sentries, so plainly visible in the red light of the guard-house fire, should see them.
“Well, bo’s,” said Gabbett, “what’s to be done now?”
As he spoke, a long low howl broke from one of the chained hounds, and the whole kennel burst into hideous outcry. John Rex, who perhaps was the bravest of the party, shuddered. “They have smelt us,” he said. “We must go on.”
Gabbett spat in his palm, and took firmer hold of the axe-handle.
“Right you are,” he said. “I’ll leave my mark on some of them before this night’s out!”
On the opposite shore lights began to move, and the fugitives could hear the hurrying tramp of feet.
“Make for the right-hand side of the jetty,” said Rex in a fierce whisper. “I think I see a boat there. It is our only chance now. We can never break through the station. Are we ready? Now! All together!”
Gabbett was fast outstripping the others by some three feet of distance. There were eleven dogs, two of whom were placed on stages set out in the water, and they were so chained that their muzzles nearly touched. The giant leapt into the line, and with a blow of his axe split the skull of the beast on his right hand. This action unluckily took him within reach of the other dog, which seized him by the thigh.
“Fire!” cried McNab from the other side of the lamps.
The giant uttered a cry of rage and pain, and fell with the dog under him. It was, however, the dog who had pulled him down, and the musket-ball intended for him struck Travers in the jaw. The unhappy villain fell– like Virgil’s Dares–“spitting blood, teeth, and curses.”
Gabbett clutched the mastiff’s throat with iron hand, and forced him to loose his hold; then, bellowing with fury, seized his axe and sprang forward, mangled as he was, upon the nearest soldier. Jemmy Vetch had been beforehand with him. Uttering a low snarl of hate, he fired, and shot the sentry through the breast. The others rushed through the now broken cordon, and made headlong for the boat.
“Fools!” cried Rex behind them. “You have wasted a shot! LOOK TO YOUR LEFT!”
Burgess, hurried down the tramroad by his men, had tarried at Signal Hill only long enough to loose the surprised guard from their bonds, and taking the Woody Island boat was pulling with a fresh crew to the Neck. The reinforcement was not ten yards from the jetty.
The Crow saw the danger, and, flinging himself into the water, desperately seized McNab’s boat.
“In with you for your lives!” he cried. Another volley from the guard spattered the water around the fugitives, but in the darkness the ill-aimed bullets fell harmless. Gabbett swung himself over the sheets, and seized an oar.
“Cox, Bodenham, Greenhill! Now, push her off! Jump, Tom, jump!” and as Burgess leapt to land, Cornelius was dragged over the stern, and the whale-boat floated into deep water.
McNab, seeing this, ran down to the water-side to aid the Commandant.
“Lift her over the Bar, men!” he shouted. “With a will–So!” And, raised in twelve strong arms, the pursuing craft slid across the isthmus.
“We’ve five minutes’ start,” said Vetch coolly, as he saw the Commandant take his place in the stern sheets. “Pull away, my jolly boys, and we’ll best ’em yet.”
The soldiers on the Neck fired again almost at random, but the blaze of their pieces only served to show the Commandant’s boat a hundred yards astern of that of the mutineers, which had already gained the deep water of Pirates’ Bay.
Then, for the first time, the six prisoners became aware that John Rex was not among them.
Chapter XXIV.
In The Night
John Rex had put into execution the first part of his scheme.
At the moment when, seeing Burgess’s boat near the sand-spit, he had uttered the warning cry heard by Vetch, he turned back into the darkness, and made for the water’s edge at a point some distance from the Neck. His desperate hope was that, the attention of the guard being concentrated on the escaping boat, he might, favoured by the darkness and the confusion–swim to the peninsula. It was not a very marvellous feat to accomplish, and he had confidence in his own powers. Once safe on the peninsula, his plans were formed. But, owing to the strong westerly wind, which caused an incoming tide upon the isthmus, it was necessary for him to attain some point sufficiently far to the southward to enable him, on taking the water, to be assisted, not impeded, by the current. With this view, he hurried over the sandy hummocks at the entrance to the Neck, and ran backwards towards the sea. In a few strides he had gained the hard and sandy shore, and, pausing to listen, heard behind him the sound of footsteps. He was pursued. The footsteps stopped, and then a voice cried–
“Surrender!”
It was McNab, who, seeing Rex’s retreat, had daringly followed him. John Rex drew from his breast Troke’s pistol and waited.
“Surrender!” cried the voice again, and the footsteps advanced two paces.
At the instant that Rex raised the weapon to fire, a vivid flash of lightning showed him, on his right hand, on the ghastly and pallid ocean, two boats, the hindermost one apparently within a few yards of him. The men looked like corpses. In the distance rose Cape Surville, and beneath Cape Surville was the hungry sea. The scene vanished in an instant–swallowed up almost before he had realized it. But the shock it gave him made him miss his aim, and, flinging away the pistol with a curse, he turned down the path and fled. McNab followed.
The path had been made by frequent passage from the station, and Rex found it tolerably easy running. He had acquired–like most men who live much in the dark–that cat-like perception of obstacles which is due rather to increased sensitiveness of touch than increased acuteness of vision. His feet accommodated themselves to the inequalities of the ground; his hands instinctively outstretched themselves towards the overhanging boughs; his head ducked of its own accord to any obtrusive sapling which bent to obstruct his progress. His pursuer was not so fortunate. Twice did John Rex laugh mentally, at a crash and scramble that told of a fall, and once–in a valley where trickled a little stream that he had cleared almost without an effort– he heard a splash that made him laugh outright. The track now began to go uphill, and Rex redoubled his efforts, trusting to his superior muscular energy to shake off his pursuer. He breasted the rise, and paused to listen. The crashing of branches behind him had ceased, and it seemed that he was alone.
He had gained the summit of the cliff. The lights of the Neck were invisible. Below him lay the sea. Out of the black emptiness came puffs of sharp salt wind. The tops of the rollers that broke below were blown off and whirled away into the night–white patches, swallowed up immediately in the increasing darkness. From the north side of the bay was borne the hoarse roar of the breakers as they dashed against the perpendicular cliffs which guarded Forrestier’s Peninsula. At his feet arose a frightful shrieking and whistling, broken at intervals by reports like claps of thunder. Where was he? Exhausted and breathless, he sank down into the rough scrub and listened. All at once, on the track over which he had passed, he heard a sound that made him bound to his feet in deadly fear– the bay of a dog!
He thrust his hand to his breast for the remaining pistol, and uttered a cry of alarm. He had dropped it. He felt round about him in the darkness for some stick or stone that might serve as a weapon. In vain. His fingers clutched nothing but prickly scrub and coarse grass. The sweat ran down his face. With staring eyeballs, and bristling hair, he stared into the darkness, as if he would dissipate it by the very intensity of his gaze. The noise was repeated, and, piercing through the roar of wind and water, above and below him, seemed to be close at hand. He heard a man’s voice cheering the dog in accents that the gale blew away from him before he could recognize them. It was probable that some of the soldiers had been sent to the assistance of McNab. Capture, then, was certain. In his agony, the wretched man almost promised himself repentance, should he escape this peril. The dog, crashing through the underwood, gave one short, sharp howl, and then ran mute.