haul it firmer aground. Fowling piece in hand, I stepped down to the sand.
It was very quiet, only the soft rain falling, and the whisper of the rain upon
the water. “Stay with the boat,” I whispered, and then walked forward alone in
the darkness.
The space under the over-hang was empty, yet I was not reassured. Something
about the place was wrong, very wrong. Retreating to the boat, I whispered,
“Ease her back on the water, Sakim, and stand by to shove off.”
“There is something?”
“Nothing … only I have a feeling.”
“I, too.”
Could they have found the cave where lay our furs? Were they waiting there? It
was possible they could find the cave but not the furs.
“I want to sleep.” Rufisco said, irritably. “And I am hungry.”
“Better to wait for food,” I said, “than try to digest cold steel.”
Moving back along the shore, I circled warily toward the cave. Suddenly I heard
uncalled-for sounds. I stood stock still and listened.
The crack of a breaking stick, then another. The sound of flint against stone.
Somebody was building a fire. I turned around.
Rufisco! He had come ashore and already had a small blaze going.
I swore bitterly, under my breath, and had taken a step toward him when suddenly
the night exploded with a rush of human bodies. They charged the fire.
The attackers had eyes only for the fire, perhaps could see only it.
Suddenly, Nick Bardle’s voice roared through the falling rain: “Damn you all to
Hell! There’s only one! Who gave the word? Where are the others?”
Turning, I crept toward the shore, hoping, praying, that Sakim would be near and
waiting in the boat. I eased through the dark water, over my ankles, my knees
… A hand from utter darkness caught me. It was Sakim.
Handing him my fowling piece and sword, I swung silently and thankfully aboard.
Rufisco was dead or a prisoner. There was nothing we could do to help him at the
moment. We could help him best by retaining our freedom, our mobility.
Sakim wasted no time. He dipped the oars into the water very gently and sculled
the boat deeper into the darkness.
Ashore there were angry arguments and shouts. Then I clearly heard Bardle.
“Where are they? Damn you! Tell me or I’ll slit your gullet!”
“I am alone,” Rufisco’s voice carried well, as no doubt he intended. “The others
have gone upstream after furs. I was left to hunt for meat …”
Then their voices were lost.
How long until dawn? Dared we try to slip around the rock into the river? We
might be visible a few minutes only, but if they saw us …
How had they found us? By boat? Or overland, on foot through the woods?
We eased the boat along by pushing with our hands upon the rock wall. Now the
voices were less plain.
We rounded a corner of the rock. The opening was before us, seeming much too
light now for our wishes, but Sakim sat to the oars, and taking breath, he
dipped deep and shot the boat forward as best he might, laden as she was. She
moved well and he dipped his oars again. Suddenly from the shoreside there came
a great shout and somebody fired, yet I had slight fear now of a hit, for we
were some distance off and moving faster. Another dip of the oars and we caught
the first suggestion of the river’s current, then more, and we were swept
through the passage.
It was no part of my plan to desert Rufisco. First we must find a place to cache
our furs. Then, with the gig lightened, we might move with more freedom.
When dawn was brighter, we lifted our sail and started across river to the far
side. There was little time, but we made to the shelter of an unpromising island
and pointed toward shore. It was low, offering less visible shelter, yet there
were some trees and shrubs about and clumps of willows.
“They would not think to look there,” Sakim said, as if reading my mind. “We can
find a place.”
We sailed into shore, dropped our canvas and tied up to a huge old drift log
with more branches than a porcupine, and waded ashore, keeping low.
Sakim betook himself to one end of the island, I to the other. Then a low call
from him and I turned back.
He was waiting for me, and led me into the willows where I stopped, astonished
indeed.
There lay, among the willows, the bow and a portion of the hull of a goodly
vessel, almost buried in sand. How many years she had lain there, no man could
say, but the stout oak timbers were still strong, and her sides formed a roof.
Entering the shelter thus formed, we found the Captain’s quarters intact,
although lying sideways and half-filled with sand. Yet here was a shelter from
the weather for our furs, though hopefully for a few days only.
We carried the bales inside, covering them with broken willow branches and
reeds.
Returning to the gig, we shoved off, raised our sail and crossed back to a safe
distance from home shore.
Our gig anchored, we crept back overland to the rocks, but they were deserted.
All was still as death in the cloudy light, the sand churned by charging feet, a
spot or two of blood.
“They will have returned to their vessel,” I said. “We must follow.”
“You will try to get him back?”
“He is one of us. We will have him back, if he lives.”
“He is but bait for the trap,” Sakim replied. “It is you they want.”
“Nevertheless, he was one of us. You are with me?”
“Where you go, I follow.”
If there was a sun that day it remained unseen, for there were lowering clouds
and raindrops dripping from leaves in branches. We found the narrow game trail
they had taken, but we turned aside from it and searched out another, almost
parallel.
The fowling piece I left on the gig, but took my sword, dagger, bow and arrows.
Sakim recharged a brace of the pistols and took them along, tucked in his sash.
He also carried his scimitar and a spear.
It was wet under the trees. The path was slippery, but we moved in silence,
pausing from time to time to listen for what we might hear, and we heard
nothing. We covered what must have been a mile, then found ourselves climbing,
ever so slightly. At the end of the second hour we reached the crest of a low
hill that gave us a view of all that laid east and south of us, and there, not
half a mile away, was the Jolly Jack.
For all my confident talk I knew not what to do to recover our companion, only
that it must be done. And done by wit and wile rather than strength of arm and
hand.
We worked our way down through brush and trees, avoiding the trail that might be
guarded, until finally we came to the edge of a high woods not one hundred and
fifty feet from the Jolly Jack. We were well hidden.
There could be but one reason for Bardle not killing Rufisco immediately. They
hoped to have from him our hiding place. To save him suffering, we must somehow
free him at once.
“What is there to do?” Sakim whispered, staring at the vessel.
A man with a crossbow loitered near the ladder. On the shore nearby were several
crude huts, hastily built of ship’s canvas, driftwood poles and the like. A fire
was blazing on the shore.
This was no place found by accident, but one known to Bardle or someone else
aboard, for the bank was steep and the vessel lay in close, one line running
from the bow to an oak tree, the other from the stern.
“They are close,” I commented.
Sakim shrugged. “In my country we run our ships on the sand, then let the tide
float them clear. It has always been so.”
“Here there is a current,” I said thoughtfully, studying the water on which they
lay, as much as it could be seen. “Another river must come into the sound from
somewhere west of them.”
“There he is. They did not take him aboard,” Sakim said suddenly. He pointed.
“Two of those with him just came from that hut.”
I could see them. If they would just leave Rufisco there, and if we could create
a diversion …
They were a rough, ugly lot, and I had no desire to see them go to work on
Rufisco. He was a good man, if surly and given to sarcasm and doubt—too good a
man to be tortured by this lot of scoundrels, who were little better than
pirates.
It worried me that they should have chosen to stop at this place, for it was my