CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
THE RESCUE.
With all due observance of the courtesies of the sea the graceful,white-hulled _Thetis_ dipped a farewell salute to the Spanish warshipsin Havana harbour as she next morning swept past them, outward bound,shortly after nine o'clock in the morning of a glorious April day. Jackwas on the navigating bridge with Milsom, and as the beautiful littleship, looking as spick and span as though just fresh from the stocks,and with all her brasswork gleaming and flashing like burnished gold inthe brilliant morning sunlight, brought the lighthouse abeam and gailyplunged her keen, shapely bows into the heart of the first blue, wind-whipped, foam-crested surge that met her, and in joyous greetingplayfully flung a shower of diamond-tinted spray over her starboardcathead, the young man sighed a sigh of relief, and flung from hisshoulders the heavy load of care and anxiety that had of late beenwearing him down a great deal more than he knew or even suspected: fornow, at last, the expedition that meant so much to him had actuallybegun, and very soon he would know the best and the worst that was to beknown; and perhaps, after all, the worst might prove to be not nearly sobad as he had been led to believe. Alvaros, he was convinced, was notonly a blatant braggart, but also an unmitigated liar, and it might bethat the foul deed of which he had boasted had never happened, and thatthe boast was merely another lie.
Milsom, regarding his companion with a sympathetic eye, noted how Jackstraightened up and flung back his shoulders like a fighter preparingfor the fray, and how his eye brightened and his cheek flushed as thestrong, salt breeze met his nostrils and swept into his lungs,exhilarating as a draught of wine--and chuckled, for he knew now thatthe worst was over, and that the collapse which he had been half-dreading would not now come. As for himself, he was as happy as a mancan be who is unable to forget that a calamity has befallen certain ofhis friends. But he was a keen, light-hearted sailor, intensely fond ofhis profession, and he was now fairly started upon an expedition thatvery strongly appealed to his professional instincts; he felt like ahunter, and the exhilarating excitement of stalking and running down hisprey tended to very largely obliterate the memory of everything else.And he was throwing himself heart and soul into this mad undertaking ofJack's for the deliverance of their friends; he saw the difficulty andrecognised the extreme danger of the adventure, and with keen zest helaid himself out to conquer the one and evade the other. Even now, whenthe yacht had but barely cleared the harbour mouth, he adopted his firstruse for the mystification of the foe, for he understood that it wasquite possible that some curious eye might follow the course of thevessel and possibly suspect something if it were seen that she was goingthe same road that the convict steamer would be following a few dayslater; he therefore instructed the helmsman to make a very wide andgradual sweep to the eastward, hauling up almost imperceptibly at therate of a point every quarter of an hour, and thus rendering itabsolutely impossible for an observer to guess whether the _Thetis_ wasgoing out through the Florida Strait or down the Nicholas and Old Bahamachannels. Also, for the first hour he allowed her to travel at thesober pace of fourteen knots; after which he spoke down the voice tubeto Macintyre in the engine-room, and the next instant the little craftwas shearing through the long, foam-flecked surges like a chasingdolphin, as the Scotchman gave her all the steam that her engines couldtake.
It was about seven bells in the afternoon watch when, the yacht runningin toward the land on a south-easterly course, the head of the mast fromwhich the light on Hicacal Cay is shown appeared dead ahead, and Milsomat once gave orders for the engines to be slowed down to fourteen knots.Then, turning to Jack, he said: "Now, young man, I shall want yourassistance, for I am going to personally undertake the job of pilotingthe little hooker into her hiding-place. The chart still lies spreadout on the chart-house table, where we left it last night, and with thatbefore you you ought to be able to con the ship into the Boca withoutthe slightest difficulty. Once she is there, I will take charge again,and give you my directions from the fore-masthead, whither I am about togo; and I shall want you to stand by the engine-room telegraph andtransmit my orders to the engine-room smartly. You had better keep thatmast yonder fair and square over the bowsprit end until the Boca opensout clearly; then you can ease your helm over to port and head herstraight in. Now, I'm off."
And, therewith, Milsom left the bridge and ran down on to the fore deck,from which he was presently hoisted to the fore-masthead in aboatswain's chair bent on to a whip rove through the sheave-hole at themasthead. By the time that he was up there the low, mangrove-clothedcays were visible from the bridge; then Jack gave orders for the helm tobe ported, and a quarter of an hour later the yacht shot into smoothwater between Bushy and Hicacal Cays, and Milsom took in hand theconning of the craft, following the trend of the channel by eye from hislofty lookout, with a couple of leadsmen in the forechains to furtherhelp him. But there was no difficulty, for, once inside the cays, thewater was both smooth and clear, and Milsom was able to followunerringly the line of deepest water. As he had anticipated, theunwonted spectacle of so trim and handsome a little vessel as the_Thetis_ attracted the interested attention not only of the lightkeepersbut also of the fishermen inhabiting the little cluster of huts near thecottage of the former; but that could not be helped, and, after all,they probably concluded that the yacht was bound to Sagua la Grande, andwould think no more about her. And a quarter of an hour later she hadslipped round a projecting point, out of sight, and was safely riding atanchor in her hiding-place.
As Milsom had foreseen, they reached their destination with some hoursof daylight in hand, and the moment that the anchor was down all handswent to work and routed out from the secret recesses of the ship aheterogeneous assortment of light iron rods, bars, angles, and sheets;wood framing and planking; and great rolls of canvas, painted a light,smoky-grey tint, which Milsom asserted would render a vessel practicallyinvisible at a distance of three miles, and the precise composition ofwhich had cost him weeks of anxious thought and study. Then the crewwere divided into three gangs; and while one party busied itself, underMacintyre, in sorting out, bolting together, and fixing in positionthose portions which were to effect a transformation in the appearanceof the yacht's bows, another party, under Milsom, was similarly employedin altering the appearance of the vessel's handsome stern, and the thirdparty, under Perkins, was clothing the brightly varnished masts intight-fitting canvas coats, painted in the all-pervading grey which wasto be the colour of the vessel when the work of disguising her should becomplete; fixing a bogus fighting top on the ship's foremast; enclosingthe chart-house in a casing which should give it the semblance of aconning tower; getting a couple of light signalling yards aloft; andpainting the several boats grey. When the men knocked off work atsunset, a great deal had been done; but it was not until six bells inthe forenoon watch next day that the work of transformation was finallycompleted to Milsom's satisfaction, and then the _Thetis_--temporarilyre-christened the _Libertad_--so strongly resembled a modern two-funnelled torpedo gunboat that she might easily have deceived even aprofessional eye at a distance of half a mile; and when, further, a longpennant flaunted itself from the main truck, and the flag of Cuba Librewaved from the ensign staff, the gallant skipper, critically surveyinghis transmogrified ship from the dinghy, confidently announced that hewould defy anybody to trace the most remote resemblance between thevessel upon which his eyes rested and the trim English yacht which hadsteamed out of Havana harbour on the previous day.
On the following Monday morning at daylight the furnace fires werelighted on board the disguised yacht, and at the same time a man withsharp eyes was sent aloft to the fore-masthead to watch the offing overthe tops of the low mangrove trees, and give notice of the passage ofthe _Maranon_, should she happen to heave in sight; but hour after hourpassed with no sign of her, unless one of the eastward-going trails ofsmoke that showed on the horizon during the forenoon happened to emanatefrom her. They waited patiently until noon, and then, nothing havingbeen seen of t
he convict ship, Jack and Milsom agreed that it was quiteuseless to wait any longer; and half an hour later the fishermen outsidethe Boca de Maravillas were astonished to see a craft, which some ofthem described as a cruiser, while the others spoke of her as a gunboat,sweep through the passage and head away north-east, as though to clearthe eastern extremity of Cay Sal Bank on her way northward through theSantaren Channel. The vessel showed no colours, but was flying apennant, and the general opinion was that she was an American man-o'-war; though what she had been doing in Sagua la Grande harbour, or howshe had got there, nobody seemed able to guess.
But although, to the unsophisticated fishermen of Sagua la Grande, themysterious warship appeared to be bound north, she was really boundsouth-east through the Nicholas and Old Bahama channels: and when theyacht had made an offing of some fifteen miles--by which time she was ofcourse out of sight of the fishermen's boats, Milsom ordered the helm tobe ported and the engines sent full speed ahead, she having by that timerun on to a line which the ex-Navy man had pencilled on his chart as theprobable course of the convict steamer; and if that craft had leftHavana at the hour arranged, and were steaming at the rate which theharbour-master had anticipated would be her pace, she must now be nearlysixty miles ahead. That was a fairly long lead, certainly; but there isa big difference between a speed of eight knots and that of twenty-four,and Milsom calculated that, if the _Maranon_ were really ahead of them,they ought to overtake her in something like three hours. As a matterof fact, they sighted the craft dead ahead about five bells in theafternoon watch, identified her to their entire satisfaction about halfan hour later, and passed her, some sixteen miles to the southward,about one bell in the first "dog."
"Now," said Milsom, when he came down from aloft after personallysatisfying himself as to the identity of the great, dirty-white, rust-streaked hull crawling along in the northern board, "let me make alittle calculation. Our plan is to appear ahead of her, steaming to thenorthward and westward--to meet her, in fact, instead of overtaking her;and the proper time to do this will be about a quarter of an hour beforesunset. I take it that she is steaming at about the pace which myfriend the harbour-master allowed her--that is to say, about eightknots. At that rate she will be about eight miles farther to theeastward at a quarter of an hour before sunset. That means that--um--um--yes, that will be about right. Now, Jack, my hearty, cheer up! forunless something goes very radically wrong with our scheme, our friendsought to be safe and snug aboard this dandy little hooker in a couple ofhours' time. Now, it is you, my friend, who are going to play the giddypirate and wrest our friends, at the sword's point, out of the hands ofthe oppressor, so cut away down below, my lad, and get into yourdisguise; and while you are doing that the deck hands can be doing thesame, so as to render it impossible for them to be identified at anyfuture time, should they be met in the streets of Havana, or elsewhere,by anybody belonging to the _Maranon_."
Half an hour later Jack re-appeared on deck, his already well-bronzedface and hands stained to the darkness of a mulatto's skin, and hiscorpus arrayed in an old, weather-stained, and very-much-the-worse-for-wear Spanish naval lieutenant's uniform, which Don Ramon had caused oneof his servants to procure for him at a second-hand wardrobe dealer's inHavana; his disguise being completed by the addition of a black wig anda ferocious moustache and whiskers, obtained through the same channel ata theatrical wig-maker's shop. To say that his own mother would nothave known him in this get-up is to put the matter altogetherinadequately; and his appearance on deck was the signal for a roar ofmingled admiration and mirth from all hands. Meanwhile, the crew hadpinned their faith to burnt cork and their working slops as a disguise,except the five who were to form Jack's boat's crew; these havingdiscarded their working slops and donned dungaree overalls, ancientcloth trousers, rusty with salt-water stains, and stiff with tar andgrease, big thigh-boots, and worsted caps. A cutlass belted to thewaist, and a knife and brace of revolvers in the belt gave the finishingtouch of realism to the get-up, and obviated any possibility of doubt asto the seriousness of their mission.
By this time the moment had arrived when, according to Milsom'scalculations, the yacht ought to be turned round to meet the _Maranon_,now out of sight astern; the helm was accordingly put hard over, and thenimble little craft swept round until she was heading direct for thespot where it had been calculated that the two ships should meet. Nocombination of circumstances could possibly have been more favourablefor the adventure than were those at that moment prevailing. There wasno craft of any description in sight as far as the eye could see; thetrade wind was blowing quite a moderate breeze; and the sea was notsufficiently formidable to render the task of transferring the rescuedpeople from one ship to the other by means of an open boat at alldifficult or dangerous. Moreover, the sun, fast dropping toward thehorizon, was quickly losing his intensity of light, and as rapidlyplunging all objects into a delicious soft golden haze, in which alldetail was lost; it was therefore in the highest degree unlikely thateven the keenest eye on board the convict steamer would be able todetect the imposition that was being practised upon them.
Presently, a smudge of brown smoke soaring above the horizon broad onthe port bow showed that the unsuspecting quarry was approaching; and aminute or two later her masts, fine as spiders' webs, began to riseagainst the warm, golden glow of the western sky, then her funnelappeared, and finally her bridge and chart-house--appearing ascompletely detached and isolated objects in the rarefied atmosphere--suddenly showed themselves on the horizon, alternately appearing anddisappearing with the rise and fall of the ship over the swell. ThenMilsom rang down to the engine-room for half speed; and a little later,when the _Maranon_ was hull-up and the two vessels were closing fast, heordered the forward port twelve-pound quick-firer to be loaded with ablank charge. Then, when the two craft were about a mile apart, heordered the Cuban flag to be run up to the main gaff-end, and the gun tobe fired as a polite invitation to the other craft to heave-to, at thesame time stopping his own engines.
Apparently the skipper of the _Maranon_ did not know what to make of it;for, beyond hoisting Spanish colours, he took no notice of the summons,making no attempt to stop his engines.
"Mr Perkins," shouted Milsom, "just heave a shot across that chap'sfore-foot, will ye? and we will see whether he understands thatlanguage. But for goodness' sake take care that you don't hit him bymistake. We don't want to have the destruction of that vessel on ourconsciences."
Bang! barked the twelve-pounder for the second time, and there was now avicious tone in the bark which said unmistakably that the gun wasshotted; while, if anybody on board the _Maranon_ had any doubt aboutit, that doubt was a moment later dispelled by the sudden up-leaping ofa fountain of foam some twenty fathoms ahead of the vessel. That provedconclusively that the mysterious gunboat flying the Cuban flag was in nohumour to be trifled with; and the Spanish captain, objurgatingvehemently, rang down for his engines to stop. Thereupon the "gunboat",which by this time had swung round, presenting a view of her stern, withthe name _Libertad_ emblazoned upon it in gold letters, lowered a boat,into which four seamen, a coxswain, and a big, black-bearded officerdropped. When the frail craft, propelled by the four sturdy oarsmen,pushed off, and went dancing, light as an empty eggshell, over thepurple swell toward the convict ship, the officers on the bridge ofwhich did not fail to note that the crew of the stranger had carefullytrained two long, beautifully polished guns and a couple of Maxims onthem, "as a gentle hint that there was to be no nonsense," as Milsom putit.
Meanwhile, the crew of the _Maranon_, seeing the boat approaching,busied themselves with the task of lowering their side ladder, whichthey got into position just as the boat dashed alongside and her crewtossed their oars. Although the swell was by no means high, the convictship rolled heavily upon it as soon as she lost her way, and Jack had towatch his opportunity to spring out of the boat on to the ladder withoutaccident; but he managed it cleverly, and the next moment stood upon thedeck of the _Maranon_, whe
re he found the captain of the ship and hischief officer awaiting him. As he stepped in through the gangway hecourteously lifted his cap in salute; but the other man was far tooangry to acknowledge or return the salute. Instead, he made a stepforward, with corrugated brow and clenched fist, and exclaimed:
"Senor, I demand to know the reason of this outrage! Who are you; andwhy have you dared to stop my ship upon the high seas?"
By way of reply to the man's menacing demeanour, Jack allowed his lefthand to drop on to the butt of one of the pair of revolvers which hecarried in his belt. And, instead of answering the very reasonablequestion which had been put to him, he said:
"Captain, I greatly regret to trouble you, but I must ask you to havethe goodness to muster your prisoners on deck. Please do it at once;for the light will soon be gone, and I am anxious to complete my;business with you before the darkness falls."
"Muster my prisoners on deck?" stormed the captain. "For what reason,Senor? And again I ask, Who are you; and by what authority--?"
Jack raised his hand deprecatingly. "My good sir," he exclaimed, "whywaste time in asking foolish and useless questions, when I have alreadyintimated to you that I am in a hurry? Will you have the very greatgoodness--and, I may add, the wisdom--to comply with my request? Orwill you compel me to shoot you, in the hope that this gentleman--who, Ipresume, is your chief officer--will be more reasonable and obligingthan yourself?"
This hint had the desired effect; the skipper turned away, and, givingcertain instructions to his companion, made his way up on to the bridgeagain, while the other went below. Ten minutes later the prisoners,under the charge of a strong guard of soldiers, began to make their wayup on deck; and presently the officer who had gone below to carry outthe skipper's instructions re-appeared, with the information that theprisoners were now all paraded forward, and ready for the inspectionwhich he presumed the Senor wished to make of them. Whereupon Jack,calling the coxswain up out of the boat alongside for the purpose ofkeeping an eye upon things generally, and seeing that no trickery wasattempted, went forward to the fore deck, where about three hundred men,women, and children were drawn up in four lines or ranks, two on eachside of the deck. The chief officer, or mate, accompanied him.
The first face he recognised was that of his friend and chum Carlos, butoh, how shockingly changed! The poor fellow was thin as a skeleton,ghastly pale under the almost vanished tan of the sun, dirty,dishevelled, and in rags. But that was not the most shocking changethat Jack noticed in him; it was the look of mingled fear, hate, andhorror that gleamed in the young man's eyes, the kind of look that tellsof systematic and long-continued cruelty.
"Take him aft," said Jack to the officer who was attending him, layinghis hand lightly on Carlos' shoulder as he spoke; and he noted withhorror how, as he lifted his hand, the poor youth shrank and cowered, asthough he expected to be struck. Then presently he came to SenoraMontijo, who, poor soul, looked into Jack's face vacantly and laughed,as he directed her, too, to be taken aft! It was clear that she wasquite mad; and Jack ground his teeth as he inwardly vowed fresh vows ofvengeance against the infamous ruffian who was the author of suchunspeakable misery and ruin. A little farther on he found Don Hermoso,whose condition seemed even worse than that of his son. But theSenorita Isolda he could not find, although he searched the remainder ofthe prisoners twice over. Then he walked aft to where Don Hermoso andhis wife and son were standing listlessly together, exchanging anoccasional word or two with each other, but apparently too utterlywretched to take notice of anything, or to engage in continuousconversation.
Jack addressed himself to Carlos, in English. "Carlos, old chap," hesaid, "don't start, or look surprised, or appear to recognise me; butyou know me, old fellow, don't you? I am Jack--Jack Singleton; that isthe yacht over yonder, disguised as a gunboat; and I have come to takeyou all away out of this wretched ship, and restore you to your home.But I cannot find your sister. Is she not with you?"
This apparently simple question had the most extraordinary effect uponDon Hermoso and Carlos. The former, suddenly dropping his face in hishands, began to sob and moan hysterically, while Carlos as suddenlydropped on his knees on the deck, and, lifting his clenched handsskyward, began to call down bitter curses upon the head of Alvaros.
Jack shuddered as he listened, and again ground his teeth in impotentfury, for he soon gathered, from his friend's wild words, that thecruelty of which the Spaniard had boasted had indeed been true. But hecould gather no information as to the whereabouts of Senorita Isoldafrom the now frenzied ravings of her brother; and it was only with theutmost difficulty that he at length drew from Don Hermoso the dreadfultidings that his daughter, who had been brought on board the ship araving maniac, had that very morning contrived to elude the guard, and,rushing on deck, had thrown herself overboard and never been seen again!
Poor Jack was so utterly overwhelmed at this awful confirmation of hisworst forebodings that several minutes elapsed ere he could speak, andeven then he could find no words wherewith to soothe the despair of hisfriends: but presently he managed to tell them again that he was thereto restore them to liberty, and that there were plenty of friends whowould stand by them upon their return to their home; then he asked themwhether they knew of any more prisoners on board who, like themselves,were the victims of Spanish injustice and tyranny, suggesting that, ifso, those poor wretches should also be restored to freedom; whereuponDon Hermoso mentioned that he believed there were two or three morepolitical prisoners on board, and, at Jack's request, accompanied himforward and pointed them out. These also Jack ordered aft, and whenthey came abreast of the gangway he directed them down into the boat,whither Don Hermoso and his bereaved family followed them, Jack goinglast, and informing the skipper of the _Maranon_ ere he left that hemight now proceed on his voyage, which that individual forthwith did;while, as soon as the released prisoners were on board the yacht, andthe boat hoisted to the davits, that craft continued her course to thewestward--until the convict steamer was out of sight, when the bows ofthe _Thetis_ were again turned eastward and her speed reduced to deadslow, for she now had to be stripped of her disguise and restored to hernormal appearance again, and some convenient spot for the performance ofthis operation had to be found, Milsom not deeming it wise to return andeffect it in the spot from which they had so recently come. This spotwas eventually found, in the shape of a tiny cove near Point Lucrecia;and into it they steamed at daylight next morning, leaving it again thesame evening, an hour before sunset, when the _Thetis_ again showed asthe trim, white-hulled English yacht, with all her boats brightvarnished as of yore, neither yacht nor boats bearing the slightesttrace of ever having been even remotely connected with the mysterious"gunboat" that had been seen by the fishermen to steam out of Sagua laGrande harbour.
When at length, by the exercise of illimitable patience, Jack succeededin persuading his friends to believe that their troubles were over, andhad induced them to settle down in peace and comfort aboard the yacht,and also to ease their aching hearts by telling him what they hadundergone since that day when they so blithely parted from him at therailway station at Havana, it was a really heartrending story of crueloppression and shameful, irresponsible tyranny to which he felt himselfobliged to listen. There is no need to give the full details here; itis sufficient to simply state that upon their arrival at Bejucal, thefirst station beyond Santiago, they were accosted by a sergeant, whoordered them to leave the train, and who, with the assistance of acouple of files of soldiers, conveyed them back to Havana by goods trainlate that same night, marching them all off to La Jacoba prison aboutthree o'clock the next morning, where each of them was confined in aseparate cell. Later in the day--that is to say, about eleven o'clockin the morning--Don Hermoso was visited by a file of soldiers, whoinformed him that the governor demanded his presence, and roughlycommanded him to follow them. Having obeyed this command, the Donpresently found himself in a kind of office, and confronted withAlvaros, who ordered the two guards
to leave him alone with theirprisoner. Then, this having been done, Alvaros informed Don Hermosothat, in consequence of certain information supplied to the Government,his house had been searched during his absence, and sufficienttreasonable correspondence found therein to send the entire family tothe penal settlements for life. Next he reminded Don Hermoso that hehad on a certain occasion paid him and his family the compliment ofproposing for the hand of Dona Isolda, and that the Don had seen fit toreject the proposal with scorn and contumely; yet such, he said, was hisgenerous and forgiving nature that he was quite willing not only tooverlook that affront, but also to secure the pardon of Don Hermoso andhis family for their treason to the Spanish Government, if the said DonHermoso would now withdraw his refusal and give his consent to hisdaughter's marriage with him, Don Sebastian Alvaros, a scion of one ofthe most noble families in Old Spain. Don Hermoso's reply to thissuggestion was the repetition of a categorical and uncompromisingrefusal; whereupon Alvaros fell into a paroxysm of rage and swore thathe would either compel Don Hermoso to give his consent, or certain verydreadful things would happen to every member of the family, Dona Isoldaincluded. And certain very dreadful things had happened, among whichfloggings and starvation might be mentioned, the whole culminating intheir condemnation to transportation for life to the horrors of thepenal settlement of Fernando Po, when Don Hermoso persisted in hisrefusal and declared that he would rather see his daughter dead thanwedded to such a scoundrel as Don Sebastian Alvaros. These were thebare outlines of the story, as told by Don Hermoso, but there weredetails of words said and deeds done that caused Jack Singleton to "seered", and to wonder how it was that a man, made in God's image, couldever become degraded to a condition so much lower than that of thebeasts that perish; and how it was that such fiends in human form werepermitted to live and to work their wicked will upon others. "However,"he comforted himself by saying, "such atrocities as Senor Alvaros hascommitted do not go unpunished, and the time will come when he will wishthat he had shot himself rather than yield to the suggestions of his ownevil heart!" How truly he prophesied, and how awful was the retributionthat was to fall upon Don Sebastian Alvaros, Jack little knew, otherwiseit is possible that even his righteous anger might have been mitigated,his craving for vengeance drowned in the fountain of pity!