<h2 id="c13">XIII</h2>
<p>As Tankred had intimated, Blake’s journey
southward from Panama was anything
but comfortable traveling. The vessel
was verminous, the food was bad, and the heat
was oppressive. It was a heat that took the
life out of the saturated body, a thick and
burdening heat that hung like a heavy gray
blanket on a gray sea which no rainfall seemed
able to cool.</p>
<p>But Blake uttered no complaint. By day
he smoked under a sodden awning, rained on
by funnel cinders. By night he stood at the
rail. He stood there, by the hour together,
watching with wistful and haggard eyes the
Alpha of Argo and the slowly rising Southern
Cross. Whatever his thoughts, as he
watched those lonely Southern skies, he kept
them to himself.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_180">[180]</div>
<p>It was the night after they had swung about
and were steaming up the Gulf of Guayaquil
under a clear sky that Tankred stepped down
to Blake’s sultry little cabin and wakened him
from a sound sleep.</p>
<p>“It’s time you were gettin’ your clothes
on,” he announced.</p>
<p>“Getting my clothes on?” queried Blake
through the darkness.</p>
<p>“Yes, you can’t tell what we’ll bump into,
any time now!”</p>
<p>The wakened sleeper heard the other man
moving about in the velvety black gloom.</p>
<p>“What’re you doing there?” was his sharp
question as he heard the squeak and slam of
a shutter.</p>
<p>“Closin’ this dead-light, of course,” explained
Tankred. A moment later he
switched on the electric globe at the bunk-head.
“We’re gettin’ in pretty close now
and we’re goin’ with our lights doused!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_181">[181]</div>
<p>He stood for a moment, staring down at
the sweat-dewed white body on the bunk,
heaving for breath in the closeness of the little
cabin. His mind was still touched into
mystery by the spirit housed in that uncouth
and undulatory flesh. He was still piqued by
the vast sense of purpose which Blake carried
somewhere deep within his seemingly tepid-willed
carcass, like the calcinated pearl at the
center of an oyster.</p>
<p>“You’d better turn out!” he called back as
he stepped into the engulfing gloom of the
gangway.</p>
<p>Blake rolled out of his berth and dressed
without haste or excitement. Already, overhead,
he could hear the continuous tramping
of feet, with now and then a quiet-noted order
from Tankred himself. He could hear other
noises along the ship’s side, as though a landing-ladder
were being bolted and lowered
along the rusty plates.</p>
<p>When he went up on deck he found the boat
in utter darkness. To that slowly moving
mass, for she was now drifting ahead under
quarter-speed, this obliteration of light imparted
a sense of stealthiness. This note of
suspense, of watchfulness, of illicit adventure,
was reflected in the very tones of the motley
deckhands who brushed past him in the humid
velvety blackness.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_182">[182]</div>
<p>As he stood at the rail, staring ahead
through this blackness, Blake could see a light
here and there along the horizon. These
lights increased in number as the boat steamed
slowly on. Then, far away in the roadstead
ahead of them, he made out an entire cluster
of lights, like those of a liner at anchor.
Then he heard the tinkle of a bell below deck,
and he realized that the engines had stopped.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_183">[183]</div>
<p>In the lull of the quieted ship’s screw he
could hear the wash of distant surf, faint and
phantasmal above the material little near-by
boat-noises. Then came a call, faint and
muffled, like the complaining note of a harbor
gull. A moment later the slow creak of
oars crept up to Blake’s straining ears. Then
out of the heart of the darkness that surrounded
him, not fifty feet away, he saw
emerge one faint point of light, rising and
falling with a rhythm as sleepy as the slow
creak of the oars. On each side of it other
small lights sprang up. They were close beside
the ship, by this time, a flotilla of lights,
and each light, Blake finally saw, came from
a lantern that stood deep in the bottom of a
boat, a lantern that had been covered with a
square of matting or sail-cloth, until some
prearranged signal from the drifting steamer
elicited its answering flicker of light. Then
they swarmed about the oily water, shifting
and swaying on their course like a cluster of
fireflies, alternately dark and luminous in the
dip and rise of the ground-swell. Within
each small aura of radiance the watcher at
the rail could see a dusky and quietly moving
figure, the faded blue of a denim garment, the
brown of bare arms, or the sinews of a straining
neck. Once he caught the whites of a
pair of eyes turned up towards the ship’s deck.
He could also see the running and wavering
lines of fire as the oars puddled and backed in
the phosphorescent water under the gloomy
steel hull. Then he heard a low-toned argument
in Spanish. A moment later the flotilla
of small boats had fastened to the ship’s side,
like a litter of suckling pigs to a sow’s breast.
Every light went out again, every light except
a faint glow as a guide to the first boat at the
foot of the landing-ladder. Along this ladder
Blake could hear barefooted figures padding
and grunting as cases and bales were
cautiously carried down and passed from boat
to boat.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_184">[184]</div>
<p>He swung nervously about as he felt a hand
clutch his arm. He found Tankred speaking
quietly into his ear.</p>
<p>“There’ll be one boat over,” that worthy
was explaining. “One boat—you take that—the
last one! And you’d better give the
<i>guinney</i> a ten-dollar bill for his trouble!”</p>
<p>“All right! I’m ready!” was Blake’s low-toned
reply as he started to move forward
with the other man.</p>
<p>“Not yet! Not yet!” was the other’s irritable
warning, as Blake felt himself pushed
back. “You stay where you are! We’ve got
a half-hour’s hard work ahead of us yet!”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_185">[185]</div>
<p>As Blake leaned over the rail again, watching
and listening, he began to realize that the
work was indeed hard, that there was some
excuse for Tankred’s ill-temper. Most men,
he acknowledged, would feel the strain, where
one misstep or one small mistake might undo
the work of months. Beyond that, however,
Blake found little about which to concern
himself. Whether it was legal or illegal did
not enter his mind. That a few thousand tin-sworded
soldiers should go armed or unarmed
was to him a matter of indifference. It was
something not of his world. It did not impinge
on his own jealously guarded circle of
activity, on his own task of bringing a fugitive
to justice. And as his eyes strained
through the gloom at the cluster of lights far
ahead in the roadstead he told himself that it
was there that his true goal lay, for it was
there that the <i>Trunella</i> must ride at anchor
and Binhart must be.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_186">[186]</div>
<p>Then he looked wonderingly back at the
flotilla under the rail, for he realized that
every movement and murmur of life there had
come to a sudden stop. It was a cessation of
all sound, a silence as ominously complete as
that of a summer woodland when a hawk soars
overhead. Even the small light deep in the
bottom of the first <i>lancha</i> tied to the landing-ladder
had been suddenly quenched.</p>
<p>Blake, staring apprehensively out into the
gloom, caught the sound of a soft and feverish
throbbing. His disturbed mind had just
registered the conclusion that this sound must
be the throbbing of a passing marine-engine,
when the thought was annihilated by a second
and more startling occurrence.</p>
<p>Out across the blackness in front of him
suddenly flashed a white saber of light.
For one moment it circled and wavered restlessly
about, feeling like a great finger along
the gray surface of the water. Then it smote
full on Blake and the deck where he stood,
blinding him with its glare, picking out every
object and every listening figure as plainly as
a calcium picks out a scene on the stage.</p>
<p>Without conscious thought Blake dropped
lower behind the ship’s rail. He sank still
lower, until he found himself down on his
hands and knees beside a rope coil. As he
did so he heard the call of a challenging Spanish
voice, a murmur of voices, and then a repeated
command.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_187">[187]</div>
<p>There was no answer to this challenge.
Then came another command and then silence
again. Then a faint thrill arrowed through
Blake’s crouching body, for from somewhere
close behind him a gun-shot rang out and was
repeated again and again. Blake knew, at
that sound, that Tankred or one of his men
was firing straight into the dial of the searchlight,
that Tankred himself intended to defy
what must surely be an Ecuadorean gunboat.
The detective was oppressed by the thought
that his own jealously nursed plan might at
any moment get a knock on the head.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_188">[188]</div>
<p>At almost the same time the peevishly indignant
Blake could hear the tinkle of the
engine-room bell below him and then the
thrash of the screw wings. The boat began
to move forward, dangling the knocking and
rocking flotilla of <i>lanchas</i> and surf-boats at
her side, like a deer-mouse making off with its
young. Then came sharp cries of protest, in
Spanish, and more cries and curses in harbor-English,
and a second engine-room signal and
a cessation of the screw thrashings. This was
followed by a shower of carbine-shots and the
plaintive whine of bullets above the upperworks,
the crack and thud of lead against the
side-plates. At the same time Blake heard
the scream of a denim-clad figure that suddenly
pitched from the landing-ladder into
the sea. Then came an answering volley,
from somewhere close below Blake. He could
not tell whether it was from the boat-flotilla or
from the port-holes above it. But he knew
that Tankred and his men were returning the
gunboat’s fire.</p>
<p>Blake, by this time, was once more thinking
lucidly. Some of the cases in those surf-boats,
he remembered, held giant-caps and
dynamite, and he knew what was likely to happen
if a bullet struck them. He also remembered
that he was still exposed to the carbine
fire from behind the searchlight.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_189">[189]</div>
<p>He stretched out, flat on the deck-boards,
and wormed his way slowly and ludicrously
aft. He did not bring those uncouth vermiculations
to a stop until he was well back in
the shelter of a rusty capstan, cut off from
the light by a lifeboat swinging on its davits.
As he clambered to his feet again he saw this
light suddenly go out and then reappear. As
it did so he could make out a patrol-boat, gray
and low-bodied, slinking forward through the
gloom. He could see that boat crowded with
men, men in uniform, and he could see that
each man carried a carbine. He could also
see that it would surely cut across the bow of
his own steamer. A moment later he knew
that Tankred himself had seen this, for high
above the crack and whine of the shooting and
the tumult of voices he could now hear Tankred’s
blasphemous shouts.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_190">[190]</div>
<p>“Cut loose those boats!” bellowed the frantic
gun-runner. Then he repeated the command,
apparently in Spanish. And to this
came an answering babel of cries and expostulations
and counter-cries. But still the firing
from behind the searchlight kept up. Blake
could see a half-naked seaman with a carpenter’s
ax skip monkey-like down the landing-ladder.
He saw the naked arm strike with
the ax, the two hands suddenly catch at the
bare throat, and the figure fall back in a huddle
against the red-stained wooden steps.</p>
<p>Blake also saw, to his growing unrest, that
the firing was increasing in volume, that at the
front of the ship sharp volley and counter-volley
was making a pandemonium of the
very deck on which he knelt. For by this
time the patrol-boat with the carbineers had
reached the steamer’s side and a boarding-ladder
had been thrown across her quarter. And
Blake began to comprehend that he was in the
most undesirable of situations. He could
hear the repeated clang of the engine-room
telegraph and Tankred’s frenzied and ineffectual
bellow of “Full steam ahead! For
the love o’ Christ, full ahead down there!”</p>
<p>Through all that bedlam Blake remained
resentfully cool, angrily clear-thoughted.
He saw that the steamer did not move forward.
He concluded the engine-room to be
deserted. And he saw both the futility and
the danger of remaining where he was.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_191">[191]</div>
<p>He crawled back to where he remembered
the rope-coil lay, dragging the loose end of it
back after him, and then lowering it over the
ship’s side until it touched the water. Then
he shifted this rope along the rail until it
swung over the last of the line of surf-boats
that bobbed and thudded against the side-plates
of the gently rolling steamer. About
him, all the while, he could hear the shouts of
men and the staccato crack of the rifles. But
he saw to it that his rope was well tied to the
rail-stanchion. Then he clambered over the
rail itself, and with a double twist of the rope
about his great leg let himself ponderously
down over the side.</p>
<p>He swayed there, for a moment, until the
roll of the ship brought him thumping against
the rusty plates again. At the same moment
the shifting surf-boat swung in under him.
Releasing his hold, he went tumbling down
between the cartridge-cases and the boat-thwarts.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_192">[192]</div>
<p>This boat, he saw, was still securely tied to
its mate, one of the larger-bodied <i>lanchas</i>, and
he had nothing with which to sever the rope.
His first impulse was to reach for his revolver
and cut through the manilla strands by means
of a half-dozen quick shots. But this, he
knew, would too noisily announce his presence
there. So he fell on his knees and peered and
prodded about the boat bottom. There, to his
surprise, he saw the huddled body of a dead
man, face down. This body he turned over,
running an exploring hand along the belt-line.
As he had hoped, he found a heavy nine-inch
knife there.</p>
<p>He was dodging back to the bow of the
surf-boat when a uniformed figure carrying
a rifle came scuttling and shouting down the
landing-ladder. Blake’s spirits sank as he
saw that figure. He knew now that his movement
had been seen and understood. He
knew, too, as he saw the figure come scrambling
out over the rocking boats, what capture
would mean.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_193">[193]</div>
<p>He had the last strand of the rope severed
before the Ecuadorean with the carbine
reached the <i>lancha</i> next to him. He still felt,
once he was free, that he could use his revolver
and get away. But before Blake could
push off a sinewy brown hand reached out and
clutched the gunwale of the liberated boat.
Blake ignored the clutching hand. But, relying
on his own sheer strength, he startled the
owner of the hand by suddenly flinging himself
forward, seizing the carbine barrel, and
wresting it free. A second later it disappeared
beneath the surface of the water.</p>
<p>That impassioned brown hand, however,
still clung to the boat’s gunwale. It clung
there determinedly, blindly—and Blake knew
there was no time for a struggle. He
brought the heavy-bladed knife down on the
clinging fingers. It was a stroke like that of
a cleaver on a butcher’s block. In the strong
white light that still played on them he could
see the flash of teeth in the man’s opened
mouth, the upturn of the staring eye-balls as
the severed fingers fell away and he screamed
aloud with pain.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_194">[194]</div>
<p>But with one quick motion of his gorilla-like
arms Blake pushed his boat free, telling
himself there was still time, warning himself
to keep cool and make the most of every
chance. Yet as he turned to take up the oars
he saw that he had been discovered by the
Ecuadoreans on the freighter’s deck, that his
flight was not to be as simple as he had expected.
He saw the lean brown face, picked
out by the white light, as a carbineer swung
his short-barreled rifle out over the rail—and
the man in the surf-boat knew by that face
what was coming.</p>
<p>His first impulse was to reach into his
pocket for his revolver. But that, he knew,
was already too late, for a second man had
joined the first and a second rifle was already
swinging round on him. His next thought
was to dive over the boat’s side. This
thought had scarcely formulated itself, however,
before he heard the bark of the rifle and
saw the puff of smoke.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_195">[195]</div>
<p>At the same moment he felt the rip and tug
of the bullet through the loose side-folds of
his coat. And with that rip and tug came a
third thought, over which he did not waver.
He threw up his hands, sharply, and flung
himself headlong across the body of the dead
man in the bottom of the surf-boat.</p>
<p>He fell heavily, with a blow that shook the
wind from his body. But as he lay there he
knew better than to move. He lay there,
scarcely daring to breathe, dreading that the
rise and fall of his breast would betray his
ruse, praying that his boat would veer about so
his body would be in the shadow. For he
knew the two waiting carbines were still
pointed at him.</p>
<p>He lay there, counting the seconds, knowing
that he and his slowly drifting surf-boat
were still in the full white fulgor of the wavering
searchlight. He lay there as a second
shot came whistling overhead, spitting into the
water within three feet of him. Then a third
bullet came, this time tearing through the
wood of the boat bottom beside him. And he
still waited, without moving, wondering what
the next shot would do. He still waited, his
passive body horripilating with a vast indignation
at the thought of the injustice of it all,
at the thought that he must lie there and let
half-baked dagoes shower his unprotesting
back with lead. But he lay there, still counting
the seconds, as the boat drifted slowly out
on the quietly moving tide.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_196">[196]</div>
<p>Then a new discovery disturbed him. It
obliterated his momentary joy at the thought
that they were no longer targeting down at
him. He could feel the water slowly rising
about his prostrate body. He realized that
the boat in which he lay was filling. He
calmly figured out that with the body of the
dead man and the cartridge-cases about him it
was carrying a dead weight of nearly half a
ton. And through the bullet hole in its bottom
the water was rushing in.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_197">[197]</div>
<p>Yet he could do nothing. He could make
no move. For at the slightest betrayal of
life, he knew, still another volley would come
from that ever-menacing steamer’s deck. He
counted the minutes, painfully, methodically,
feeling the water rise higher and higher about
his body. The thought of this rising water
and what it meant did not fill him with panic.
He seemed more the prey of a deep and sullen
resentment that his plans should be so
gratuitously interfered with, that his approach
to the <i>Trunella</i> should be so foolishly
delayed, that so many cross-purposes should
postpone and imperil his quest of Binhart.</p>
<p>He knew, by the slowly diminishing sounds,
that he was drifting further and further away
from Tankred and his crowded fore-deck.
But he was still within the area of that ever-betraying
searchlight. Some time, he knew,
he must drift beyond it. But until that moment
came he dare make no move to keep himself
afloat.</p>
<p>By slowly turning his head an inch or two
he was able to measure the height of the gunwale
above the water. Then he made note of
where an oar lay, asking himself how long he
could keep afloat on a timber so small, wondering
how far he could be from land. Then
he suddenly fell to questioning if the waters
of that coast were shark infested.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_198">[198]</div>
<p>He was still debating the problem when he
became conscious of a change about him. A
sudden pall of black fell like balm on his
startled face. The light was no longer there.
He found himself engulfed in a relieving,
fortifying darkness, a darkness that brought
him to his feet in the slowly moving boat. He
was no longer visible to the rest of the world.
At a breath, almost, he had passed into eclipse.</p>
<p>His first frantic move was to tug and drag
the floating body at his feet to the back of the
boat and roll it overboard. Then he waded
forward and one by one carefully lifted the
cases of ammunition and tumbled them over
the side. One only he saved, a smaller
wooden box which he feverishly pried open
with his knife and emptied into the sea.
Then he flung away the top boards, placing
the empty box on the seat in front of him.
Then he fell on his hands and knees, fingering
along the boat bottom until he found the
bullet-hole through which the water was boiling
up.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_199">[199]</div>
<p>Once he had found it he began tearing at
his clothes like a madman, for the water was
now alarmingly high. These rags and shreds
of clothing he twisted together and forced
into the hole, tamping them firmly into place
with his revolver-barrel.</p>
<p>Then he caught up the empty wooden box
from the boat seat and began to bale. He
baled solemnly, as though his very soul were
in it. He was oblivious of the strange scene
silhouetted against the night behind him,
standing out as distinctly as though it were a
picture thrown on a sheet from a magic-lantern
slide—a circle of light surrounding a
drifting and rusty-sided ship on which tumult
had turned into sudden silence. He was oblivious
of his own wet clothing and his bruised
body and the dull ache in his leg wound of
many months ago. He was intent only on the
fact that he was lowering the water in his surf-boat,
that he was slowly drifting further and
further away from the enemies who had interfered
with his movements, and that under
the faint spangle of lights which he could still
see in the offing on his right lay an anchored
liner, and that somewhere on that liner lay a
man for whom he was looking.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_200">[200]</div>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />