Never-Fail Blake

  XII

  As Tankred had intimated, Blake's journey southward from Panama wasanything but comfortable traveling. The vessel was verminous, the foodwas bad, and the heat was oppressive. It was a heat that took the lifeout of the saturated body, a thick and burdening heat that hung like aheavy gray blanket on a gray sea which no rainfall seemed able to cool.

  But Blake uttered no complaint. By day he smoked under a soddenawning, rained on by funnel cinders. By night he stood at the rail.He stood there, by the hour together, watching with wistful and haggardeyes the Alpha of Argo and the slowly rising Southern Cross. Whateverhis thoughts, as he watched those lonely Southern skies, he kept themto himself.

  It was the night after they had swung about and were steaming up theGulf of Guayaquil under a clear sky that Tankred stepped down toBlake's sultry little cabin and wakened him from a sound sleep.

  "It's time you were gettin' your clothes on," he announced.

  "Getting my clothes on?" queried Blake through the darkness.

  "Yes, you can't tell what we 'll bump into, any time now!"

  The wakened sleeper heard the other man moving about in the velvetyblack gloom.

  "What 're you doing there?" was his sharp question as he heard thesqueak and slam of a shutter.

  "Closin' this dead-light, of course," explained Tankred. A momentlater he switched on the electric globe at the bunkhead. "We 'regettin' in pretty close now and we 're goin' with our lights doused!"

  He stood for a moment, staring down at the sweat-dewed white body onthe bunk, heaving for breath in the closeness of the little cabin. Hismind was still touched into mystery by the spirit housed in thatuncouth and undulatory flesh. He was still piqued by the vast sense ofpurpose which Blake carried somewhere deep within his seeminglytepid-willed carcass, like the calcinated pearl at the center of anoyster.

  "You 'd better turn out!" he called back as he stepped into theengulfing gloom of the gangway.

  Blake rolled out of his berth and dressed without haste or excitement.Already, overhead, he could hear the continuous tramping of feet, withnow and then a quiet-noted order from Tankred himself. He could hearother noises along the ship's side, as though a landing-ladder werebeing bolted and lowered along the rusty plates.

  When he went up on deck he found the boat in utter darkness. To thatslowly moving mass, for she was now drifting ahead under quarter-speed,this obliteration of light imparted a sense of stealthiness. This noteof suspense, of watchfulness, of illicit adventure was reflected in thevery tones of the motley deckhands who brushed past him in the humidvelvety blackness.

  As he stood at the rail, staring ahead through this blackness, Blakecould see a light here and there along the horizon. These lightsincreased in number as the boat steamed slowly on. Then, far away inthe 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 bellbelow deck, and he realized that the engines had stopped.

  In the lull of the quieted ship's screw he could hear the wash ofdistant surf, faint and phantasmal above the material little near-byboat-noises. Then came a call, faint and muffled, like the complainingnote of a harbor gull. A moment later the slow creak of oars crept upto Blake's straining ears. Then out of the heart of the darkness thatsurrounded him, not fifty feet away, he saw emerge one faint point oflight, rising and falling with a rhythm as sleepy as the slow creak ofthe oars. On each side of it other small lights sprang up. They wereclose beside the ship, by this time, a flotilla of lights, and eachlight, Blake finally saw, came from a lantern that stood deep in thebottom of a boat, a lantern that had been covered with a square ofmatting or sail-cloth, until some prearranged signal from the driftingsteamer elicited its answering flicker of light. Then they swarmedabout the oily water, shifting and swaying on their course like acluster of fireflies, alternately dark and luminous in the dip and riseof the ground-swell. Within each small aura of radiance the watcher atthe rail could see a dusky and quietly moving figure, the faded blue ofa denim garment, the brown of bare arms, or the sinews of a strainingneck. Once he caught the whites of a pair of eyes turned up towardsthe ship's deck. He could also see the running and wavering lines offire as the oars puddled and backed in the phosphorescent water underthe 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'sside, like a litter of suckling pigs to a sow's breast. Every lightwent out again, every light except a faint glow as a guide to the firstboat at the foot of the landing-ladder. Along this ladder Blake couldhear barefooted figures padding and grunting as cases and bales werecautiously carried down and passed from boat to boat.

  He swung nervously about as he felt a hand clutch his arm. He foundTankred speaking quietly into his ear.

  "There 'll be one boat over," that worthy was explaining. "Oneboat--you take that--the last one! And you 'd better give the_guinney_ a ten-dollar bill for his trouble!"

  "All right! I 'm ready!" was Blake's low-toned reply as he started tomove forward with the other man.

  "Not yet! Not yet!" was the other's irritable warning, as Blake felthimself pushed back. "You stay where you are! We 've got ahalf-hour's hard work ahead of us yet!"

  As Blake leaned over the rail again, watching and listening, he beganto realize that the work was indeed hard, that there was some excusefor Tankred's ill-temper. Most men, he acknowledged, would feel thestrain, where one misstep or one small mistake might undo the work ofmonths. Beyond that, however, Blake found little about which toconcern himself. Whether it was legal or illegal did not enter hismind. That a few thousand tin-sworded soldiers should go armed orunarmed was to him a matter of indifference. It was something not ofhis world. It did not impinge on his own jealously guarded circle ofactivity, on his own task of bringing a fugitive to justice. And ashis eyes strained through the gloom at the cluster of lights far aheadin the roadstead he told himself that it was there that his true goallay, for it was there that the _Trunella_ must ride at anchor andBinhart must be.

  Then he looked wonderingly back at the flotilla under the rail, for herealized that every movement and murmur of life there had come to asudden stop. It was a cessation of all sound, a silence as ominouslycomplete as that of a summer woodland when a hawk soars overhead. Eventhe small light deep in the bottom of the first _lancha_ tied to thelanding-ladder had been suddenly quenched.

  Blake, staring apprehensively out into the gloom, caught the sound of asoft and feverish throbbing. His disturbed mind had just registeredthe conclusion that this sound must be the throbbing of a passingmarine-engine, when the thought was annihilated by a second and morestartling occurrence.

  Out across the blackness in front of him suddenly flashed a white saberof light. For one moment it circled and wavered restlessly about,feeling like a great finger along the gray surface of the water. Thenit smote full on Blake and the deck where he stood, blinding him withits glare, picking out every object and every listening figure asplainly as a calcium picks out a scene on the stage.

  Without conscious thought Blake dropped lower behind the ship's rail.He sank still lower, until he found himself down on his hands and kneesbeside a rope coil. As he did so he heard the call of a challengingSpanish voice, a murmur of voices, and then a repeated command.

  There was no answer to this challenge. Then came another command andthen silence again. Then a faint thrill arrowed through Blake'scrouching body, for from somewhere close behind him a gun-shot rang outand was repeated again and again. Blake knew, at that sound, thatTankred or one of his men was firing straight into the dial of thesearchlight, that Tankred himself intended to defy what must surely bean Ecuadorean gunboat. The detective was oppressed by the thought thathis own jealously nursed plan might at any moment get a knock on thehead.

  At almost the same time the peevishly indignant Blake could hear thetinkle of the engine-room bell below him and then the thrash of thescrew wings. The boat began t
o move forward, dangling the knocking androcking flotilla of _lanchas_ and surf-boats at her side, like adeer-mouse making off with its young. Then came sharp cries ofprotest, in Spanish, and more cries and curses in harbor-English, and asecond engine-room signal and a cessation of the screw thrashings.This was followed by a shower of carbine-shots and the plaintive whineof bullets above the upper-works, the crack and thud of lead againstthe side-plates. At the same time Blake heard the scream of adenim-clad figure that suddenly pitched from the landing-ladder intothe sea. Then came an answering volley, from somewhere close belowBlake. He could not tell whether it was from the boat-flotilla or fromthe port-holes above it. But he knew that Tankred and his men werereturning the gunboat's fire.

  Blake, by this time, was once more thinking lucidly. Some of the casesin those surf-boats, he remembered, held giant-caps and dynamite, andhe knew what was likely to happen if a bullet struck them. He alsoremembered that he was still exposed to the carbine fire from behindthe searchlight.

  He stretched out, flat on the deck-boards, and wormed his way slowlyand ludicrously aft. He did not bring those uncouth vermiculations toa stop until he was well back in the shelter of a rusty capstan, cutoff from the light by a lifeboat swinging on its davits. As heclambered to his feet again he saw this light suddenly go out and thenreappear. As it did so he could make out a patrol-boat, gray andlow-bodied, slinking forward through the gloom. He could see that boatcrowded with men, men in uniform, and he could see that each mancarried a carbine. He could also see that it would surely cut acrossthe bow of his own steamer. A moment later he knew that Tankredhimself had seen this, for high above the crack and whine of theshooting and the tumult of voices he could now hear Tankred'sblasphemous shouts.

  "Cut loose those boats!" bellowed the frantic gun-runner. Then herepeated the command, apparently in Spanish. And to this came ananswering babel of cries and expostulations and counter-cries. Butstill the firing from behind the searchlight kept up. Blake could seea half-naked seaman with a carpenter's ax skip monkey-like down thelanding-ladder. He saw the naked arm strike with the ax, the two handssuddenly catch at the bare throat, and the figure fall back in a huddleagainst the red-stained wooden steps.

  Blake also saw, to his growing unrest, that the firing was increasingin volume, that at the front of the ship sharp volley andcounter-volley was making a pandemonium of the very deck on which heknelt. For by this time the patrol-boat with the carbineers hadreached the steamer's side and a boarding-ladder had been thrown acrossher quarter. And Blake began to comprehend that he was in the mostundesirable of situations. He could hear the repeated clang of theengine-room telegraph and Tankred's frenzied and ineffectual bellow of"Full steam ahead! For the love o' Christ, full ahead down there!"

  Through all that bedlam Blake remained resentfully cool, angrilyclear-thoughted. He saw that the steamer did not move forward. Heconcluded the engine-room to be deserted. And he saw both the futilityand the danger of remaining where he was.

  He crawled back to where he remembered the rope-coil lay, dragging theloose end of it back after him, and then lowering it over the ship'sside until it touched the water. Then he shifted this rope along therail until it swung over the last of the line of surf-boats that bobbedand thudded against the side-plates of the gently rolling steamer.About him, all the while, he could hear the shouts of men and thestaccato crack of the rifles. But he saw to it that his rope was welltied to the rail-stanchion. Then he clambered over the rail itself,and with a double twist of the rope about his great leg let himselfponderously down over the side.

  He swayed there, for a moment, until the roll of the ship brought himthumping against the rusty plates again. At the same moment theshifting surf-boat swung in under him. Releasing his hold, he wenttumbling down between the cartridge-cases and the boat-thwarts.

  This boat, he saw, was still securely tied to its mate, one of thelarger-bodied _lanchas_, and he had nothing with which to sever therope. His first impulse was to reach for his revolver and cut throughthe manilla strands by means of a half-dozen quick shots. But this, heknew, would too noisily announce his presence there. So he fell on hisknees and peered and prodded about the boat bottom. There, to hissurprise, he saw the huddled body of a dead man, face down. This bodyhe turned over, running an exploring hand along the belt-line. As hehad hoped, he found a heavy nine-inch knife there.

  He was dodging back to the bow of the surf-boat when a uniformed figurecarrying a rifle came scuttling and shouting down the landing-ladder.Blake's spirits sank as he saw that figure. He knew now that hismovement had been seen and understood. He knew, too, as he saw thefigure come scrambling out over the rocking boats, what capture wouldmean.

  He had the last strand of the rope severed before the Ecuadorean withthe carbine reached the _lancha_ next to him. He still felt, once hewas free, that he could use his revolver and get away. But beforeBlake could push off a sinewy brown hand reached out and clutched thegunwale of the liberated boat. Blake ignored the clutching hand. But,relying on his own sheer strength, he startled the owning of the handby suddenly flinging himself forward, seizing the carbine barrel, andwresting it free. A second later it disappeared beneath the surface ofthe water.

  That impassioned brown hand, however, still clung to the boat'sgunwale. It clung there determinedly, blindly--and Blake knew therewas no time for a struggle. He brought the heavy-bladed knife down onthe clinging fingers. It was a stroke like that of a cleaver on abutcher's block. In the strong white light that still played on themhe could see the flash of teeth in the man's opened mouth, the upturnof the staring eye-balls as the severed fingers fell away and hescreamed aloud with pain.

  But with one quick motion of his gorilla-like arms Blake pushed hisboat free, telling himself there was still time, warning himself tokeep cool and make the most of every chance. Yet as he turned to takeup the oars he saw that he had been discovered by the Ecuadoreans onthe freighter's deck, that his flight was not to be as simple as he hadexpected. He saw the lean brown face, picked out by the white light,as a carbineer swung his short-barreled rifle out over the rail--andthe man in the surf-boat knew by that face what was coming.

  His first impulse was to reach into his pocket for his revolver. Butthat, he knew, was already too late, for a second man had joined thefirst and a second rifle was already swinging round on him. His nextthought was to dive over the boat's side. This thought had scarcelyformulated itself, however, before he heard the bark of the rifle andsaw the puff of smoke.

  At the same moment he felt the rip and tug of the bullet through theloose side-folds of his coat. And with that rip and tug came a thirdthought, over which he did not waver. He threw up his hands, sharply,and flung himself headlong across the body of the dead man in thebottom of the surf-boat.

  He fell heavily, with a blow that shook the wind from his body. But ashe lay there he knew better than to move. He lay there, scarcelydaring to breathe, dreading that the rise and fall of his breast wouldbetray his ruse, praying that his boat would veer about so his bodywould be in the shadow. For he knew the two waiting carbines werestill pointed at him.

  He lay there, counting the seconds, knowing that he and his slowlydrifting surf-boat were still in the full white fulgor of the waveringsearchlight. He lay there as a second shot came whistling overhead,spitting into the water within three feet of him. Then a third bulletcame, this time tearing through the wood of the boat bottom beside him.And he still waited, without moving, wondering what the next shot woulddo. He still waited, his passive body horripilating with a vastindignation at the thought of the injustice of it all, at the thoughtthat he must lie there and let half-baked dagoes shower hisunprotesting back with lead. But he lay there, still counting theseconds, as the boat drifted slowly out on the quietly moving tide.

  Then a new discovery disturbed him. It obliterated his momentary joyat the thought that they were no longer targeting down at him. Hecould feel the water slowly rising about h
is prostrate body. Herealized that the boat in which he lay was filling. He calmly figuredout that with the body of the dead man and the cartridge-cases abouthim it was carrying a dead weight of nearly half a ton. And throughthe bullet hole in its bottom the water was rushing in.

  Yet he could do nothing. He could make no move. For at the slightestbetrayal of life, he knew, still another volley would come from thatever-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 himwith panic. He seemed more the prey of a deep and sullen resentmentthat his plans should be so gratuitously interfered with, that hisapproach to the _Trunella_ should be so foolishly delayed, that so manycross-purposes should postpone and imperil his quest of Binhart.

  He knew, by the slowly diminishing sounds, that he was drifting furtherand further away from Tankred and his crowded fore-deck. But he wasstill within the area of that ever-betraying searchlight. Some time,he knew, he must drift beyond it. But until that moment came he daremake no move to keep himself afloat.

  By slowly turning his head an inch or two he was able to measure theheight of the gunwale above the water. Then he made note of where anoar lay, asking himself how long he could keep afloat on a timber sosmall, wondering how far he could be from land. Then he suddenly fellto questioning if the waters of that coast were shark infested.

  He was still debating the problem when he became conscious of a changeabout him. A sudden pall of black fell like balm on his startled face.The light was no longer there. He found himself engulfed in arelieving, fortifying darkness, a darkness that brought him to his feetin the slowly moving boat. He was no longer visible to the rest of theworld. At a breath, almost, he had passed into eclipse.

  His first frantic move was to tug and drag the floating body at hisfeet to the back of the boat and roll it overboard. Then he wadedforward and one by one carefully lifted the cases of ammunition andtumbled them over the side. One only he saved, a smaller wooden boxwhich 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 infront of him. Then he fell on his hands and knees, fingering along theboat bottom until he found the bullet-hole through which the water wasboiling up.

  Once he had found it he began tearing at his clothes like a madman, forthe water was now alarmingly high. These rags and shreds of clothinghe twisted together and forced into the hole, tamping them firmly intoplace with his revolver-barrel.

  Then he caught up the empty wooden box from the boat seat and began tobale. He baled solemnly, as though his very soul were in it. He wasoblivious of the strange scene silhouetted against the night behindhim, standing out as distinctly as though it were a picture thrown on asheet from a magic-lantern slide--a circle of light surrounding adrifting and rusty-sided ship on which tumult had turned into suddensilence. He was oblivious of his own wet clothing and his bruised bodyand the dull ache in his leg wound of many months ago. He was intentonly on the fact that he was lowering the water in his surf-boat, thathe was slowly drifting further and further away from the enemies whohad interfered with his movements, and that under the faint spangle oflights which he could still see in the offing on his right lay ananchored liner, and that somewhere on that liner lay a man for whom hewas looking.