Not much time was wasted in discussion. Every minute was of value if the blow was to be struck before betrayal was possible. Vergara’s sergeants, dazzled at the prospect of a thousand dollars apiece (and, possibly, each with an eye to the possibility of repeating later the same scheme on his own behalf after the governor was out of the way), pledged themselves enthusiastically to an attack on the other company of the garrison. They could answer for their men, they said. Some of the rank and file would fight at any call whatsoever; some would obey their sergeants automatically; one and all would fight on a promise of gold and drink and women. Vergara issued his orders briefly to his sergeants, and dismissed them to make all ready; he had not troubled to take his subaltern officers into his confidence, for they would demand so large a share of the plunder as to make their deaths eminently desirable. So as night fell Captain Vergara’s company assembled here and there over Birds Island, in driblets and platoons; for fortune was on Vergara’s side in that it was his company’s turn to supply the guards and duty men for the day.
The moon rose, serene, untroubled and three-quarters full. It looked down upon the prisoners’ compound—a big square enclosed by a broad belt of barbed wire. At one corner the broad belt was wanting, being replaced by two successive gates of wood hung thickly with barbed wire, with a clear space between in which, in the mornings, the gangs were one by one chained ready for the day’s work. Outside the outer gate was an adobe tower which served as a guard-house, and on whose flat top were mounted the two machine-guns which could sweep the compound clear in case of mutiny. Here stayed the prison guard which was not on sentry duty, each side of the wire compound had three sentries; and there were two posted outside the gates. President Eguia, when he had organized the Birds Island Convict Colony (as it was euphemistically called officially), had borne in mind that sentries and barbed wire will hold prisoners far more effectively than stone walls or iron bars—besides being infinitely cheaper. The expense to which Eguia was put per head of prisoners (one can be sure he worked it out carefully enough) amounted to a few hundred yards of barbed wire and two blankets, for the men had nothing else, literally nothing—no roof, no clothes, no furniture, but lived like beasts in the open enclosure.
Dawkins, huddled sleepless in his blanket on the edge of the compound, gazed out through the strange shadows cast by the moon. He looked to see the silhouettes of the sentries on the other side of the belt of wire. He could see nothing. He looked for the sentries on the gate. Again he could see nothing. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, disbelieving his senses. He looked carefully again, but he could see no sign of the guard. Then he saw a long file of soldiers, rifle in hand, moving silently out from beyond the guard-house round the enclosure. The moonlight was strangely deceptive, but he made an effort to count them. There were at least fifty men in the party, enough to account for every private, sergeant and bugler in the prison guard. They moved silently past the compound and on up the slight slope to where shone the lighted windows of the governor’s house. Dawkins crouched down close to the ground as they went by. His soldier’s instinct told him that it might be as well if he was thought to be asleep, although so far he could not for the life of him guess what was going on.
It was unfortunate for Captain Vergara’s plans that General Aranguren’s aide-de-camp should have been taking the night air outside the general’s house. Captain Vergara had visualized a sudden bloodless capture of the treasure, the overawing of the surprised remainder of the garrison, and a rapid departure next day. But the meddlesome aide spoiled all this. He observed the advance of the long line of men through the shadows. He challenged, received no reply, challenged again, and was fired at (and, of course, missed) by a hot-headed private in the ranks. The aide just had time to rush into the house and slam the door as the attacking party rose of one accord and charged forward.
General Aranguren, his aides-de-camp and his servants did their duty and died for it. As the stormers burst in through the windows and the doors, they caught up whatever weapons came to hand and fought for five furious minutes before the last of them fell and the house with its treasure and its women was delivered over to the mercy of Captain Vergara and his followers.
The sudden explosion of rifle and revolver fire reached the ears both of those in the prison camp and of those in the military hutments on the other side. The other company of infantry came crowding out at the noise, and once more excess of zeal on the part of Vergara’s men precipitated events. For the line of pickets which Vergara had thrown out toward the hutments opened fire on the swarming mass of men, and these, not unnaturally aggrieved, rushed back for their weapons and opened a retaliatory fire. No sooner had Captain Vergara obtained satisfactory possession of General Aranguren’s house and treasure than he found himself with another battle on his hands. Tempers were short on Birds Island, and the soldiers were inflamed by the knowledge of the discovery of the treasure. Before very long the whole of the other company of infantry had automatically extended itself in a long firing-line centering upon the hutments, blazing away in the deceptive moonlight at the similar firing-line formed by such of Vergara’s men as Vergara, mad with rage, could force away from the pillaging of the governor’s house.
The prisoners in the compound awoke one and all when the firing began. They heard the storming of the house, and they heard the splutter of fire of the new battle swell rapidly into a wild volume of sound. They crowded up to the wire to see what was going on, but in that half-light they could only make out the red flashes of some of the rifles without distinguishing any of the features of the battle. Some stray bullets came crackling overhead; one came lower, smashed the elbow of one of the onlookers, and left him yelling with pain on the ground while the others hurriedly scattered.
Henry Dawkins stood by the barbed-wire gate and peered forth. He was looking away from the battle; eighteen months of guerrilla warfare against Spanish-American troops enabled him to guess automatically the cause and course and probable result of the skirmish. He was most interested in discovering whether the machine-gun tower was manned or not, and both deduction (from his estimate of the number of men he had seen pass) and observation on the spot told him it was not. Nor was it—that was another of the many blunders Captain Vergara had committed in his clumsy attempt on the treasure. As soon as Dawkins was sure of this, he turned back toward the others with an instinctive plan fermenting in his mind. He caught up an armful of the blankets that littered the ground, he tugged at the sleeves of the men within reach, he shouted and he called. At first only some half-dozen followed his lead; the rest were too apathetic, too panic-stricken, or too dull of mind—besides, the grim menace of the machine-gun tower, during months of imprisonment, had left its trace on the reactions of most of them.
But the efforts of half a dozen were sufficient. Blankets were flung round strands of the wire gate, and the ends were pulled until the wire broke. Dawkins and a couple of others, more clear-headed, knotted together four or five blankets into a rope long enough to pass over the whole gate. The others, desisting from their more ineffective efforts, tailed on as well, and amid a howl of triumph the whole gate was dragged down and out of the way—a success gained at the cost of a good many frightful lacerations from the wire, but the haggled cuts passed unnoticed in the excitement of the moment. By this time the attention of the whole prison camp was drawn to the gates, and all the two hundred convicts swarmed forward to the second gate.
This latter held out a little longer, thanks to the blundering manner in which two hundred excited men hampered one another’s efforts, but it yielded in the end, and all the prisoners came rushing out, tearing themselves fearfully on stray strands of barbed wire, trampling underfoot those who fell, and proclaiming, by their wild yells, to the opposed companies of infantry that two hundred maddened criminals were let loose on their flank. Some of the startled soldiers fired wildly into the dark mass of men as it came surging out in the moonlight, but the surprise was too great to be withstood. Both the lo
ng thin firing lines crumpled up and drifted away across the island, still firing at each other, at the escaped prisoners, and of course, in their panic, at themselves, while the prisoners, masterless and leaderless, broke up into a swarm of raging madmen scattering hither and thither, some making blindly for the sea, some racing for the stores of food and drink in the sheds behind the soldiers’ huts, while a few blundered upon the adobe walled compound of the female prisoners—and stayed there. The whole island was soon dotted with men, armed and unarmed, in ones and twos, firing wildly at whomever came near, grappling in the half-light and fighting to the death with whomever they met, killing, fleeing, plundering, to the accompaniment of the flame and crackle of the rifle-fire and the eternal thunder of the surf.
Chapter V
Dawkins was perhaps the only one of the prisoners who made any attempt at clear thinking in that mad rush from the gates. There were two things he wanted. One was to get away from the island, and the other was to find Corporal Barroso and to take from him the pocketful of jewels which Dawkins was certain he had. Dawkins may have been far from quick-witted, but even as he ran he made a whole series of mental deductions. He realized that a man with a fortune in jewels in his pocket would not willingly involve himself in the wild battle which was being fought; he guessed that he would try to get away from the island as speedily as he could, and he came to the conclusion that if Barroso were on the island he would be near the jetty, where the motor-boat was which alone could take him, or any one else on Birds Island, out of the reach of President Eguia. Dawkins swung sharply aside, and ran, heavily but purposefully and speedily, down to the jetty along the faint trail which had been worn by the myriad feet of the working parties.
Down the path went Dawkins, single-minded and grim. He halted in the shadow of the big pile of phosphate sacks at the shore end of the jetty and peered out. For the moment he could see no sign of Barroso. The dingey was not in its usual place at the pier-side; instead he could see it swinging close to where the big motor-launch was moored, a quarter of a mile from shore. He strained his ears and his eyes, trying to sift out from the bedlam of noises behind him any slight noise from the boat. He thought he heard such a noise; he thought he saw a man’s head over the gunwale of the launch. Dawkins put aside all thought of the sharks which sometimes came nosing within the coral, and slipped silently into the sea, swimming powerfully toward the launch.
Corporal Barroso was experiencing a burst of panic fear. On his person he bore wealth beyond his wildest dreams. Here he was, established in a motor-boat which would take him two hundred miles away, beyond reach of Eguia or Aranguren or Vergara. His limited imagination could picture himself established in a white palace on the hills overlooking Valparaiso, with men servants and maid servants, living that life of luxurious ease for which his soul hungered. It was within his reach—save that he did not know how to start the engine of the motor-boat. The dingey seemed to his mind too small to encounter the big Pacific swell. Somewhere within him Barroso’s little soul tried to assure him that in this case his best policy would be to go back and plunge into the strife on the island, and await some other chance of escape, seeing that no one knew of his possession of the jewels, but Barroso’s shrinking body could not face the prospect. He blundered on round the motor-launch in the darkness, racking his numb brain to recall the various successive operations of starting the engine—operations he had only casually observed.
And as he fumbled with chattering teeth, something made him look up. Two hands were clutching the side of the boat, and above and between them appeared a big head, shrouded in a tangle of hair. The head was followed by two broad shoulders, and a knee appeared beside the hands, before Barroso recovered sufficiently to reach for his rifle. Even as his fingers touched it, Dawkins’ big bulk heaved itself over the gunwale and fell upon him with crushing force.
The two men writhed and pitched about in the well of the launch. Dawkins’ big calloused hands reached Barroso’s throat. They were vast hands, powerful hands, and the palms were half an inch thick with horn. Barroso’s struggles suddenly became more frantic and as suddenly ceased. Dawkins heaved himself up to his knees, but Barroso lay limp, his cat’s-whisker mustache perky in the moonlight, curiously belying the pathetic helplessness of his dead body.
But Dawkins was not the man to moralize or to waste time. He ran rapid fingers through the pockets of Barroso’s drab gray uniform, turning the body backward and forward as though it were a doll. It was not long before he found what he sought—a cloth bag which gave forth a curious, distinctive, stony chink when shaken. Nowhere in Dawkins’ ragged shirt or shorts was there any pocket, but with cool rapidity he tied the bag into the tail of his shirt, stuffed it back into his shorts, and made a last examination of Barroso’s pockets for anything that might be useful. A few coins he stuffed into his cheek—the prisoners on Birds Island soon learned that was the safest place of all for money—but nothing else took his fancy. Then with the same calm haste he picked up the body and dropped it overboard, instinctively doing all he could to conceal evidence of his crime. Barroso sank with hardly a ripple, down through the dark sea where the shark and octopus awaited him. That was all the good his jewels had done him.
Dawkins continued his plan of campaign, more than half instinctively, with the experience gained by eighteen months of guerrilla warfare. A few seconds told him that he, no more than Barroso, knew not how to start the engine of the motor-launch. A few minutes’ experiment in daylight would show him, very probably, but Dawkins decided resolutely not to wait the five hours till dawn. It was the dingey or nothing, then, and Dawkins decided that the dingey, frail though it was, would serve his purpose, for the weather was calm, and seemed likely to remain so. He saw that oars lay in the dingey, but a quick examination showed him that neither in the launch nor in the dingey was there food or water; and these he must have before he steered out into the Pacific. Again his fierce soldier’s instinct asserted itself. He could not take the chance of drawing attention to himself and to his boat by rowing back to the jetty without being able to start away again at once. He lowered himself into the sea, reached the shore and walked hurriedly along to the barracks.
Here stood in a line the soldiers’ huts, the storehouses, the distilling plant and the cook-houses; and here blazed a big fire. Scattered about were some hundred of the escaped prisoners, some of them lying dead or drunk already, most of them grouped in threes and fours about the brandy casks which had been dragged from the storehouse. They yelled and they sang and they tried to dance; beside the fire lay a huddled group which included half a dozen half-naked women from the women’s compound, clasped and tangled in hideous attitudes. Mingled with the prisoners were even some few soldiers in their drab uniforms, swilling brandy out of mugs.
Dawkins paid no attention to any of them, not even to the shouts of one or two who recognized him. Already he could foresee what would happen in the morning, when the soldiers would sink their differences and would sweep down upon the buildings, slaughtering every soul they found. Dawkins did not know, nor did he care, what would happen next; that was enough for him. He found a big iron cooking-vessel with a lid, and filled it with water at the still. He filled a panier with bread, and, loaded in a fashion which brought forth the sweat in streams down his chilled body, he staggered back to the jetty.
Once more he took to the water, bringing back the dingey to where his stores awaited him, and then, setting his course by the stars, he rowed westward away from the island, away from the mainland. Even now there were occasional flashes and reports from the island, where the skirmish still bickered on.
Barroso lay at the bottom of the lagoon with his neck wrung. General Aranguren lay with his household, with twenty bullets through him. Captain Vergara lay on the crest of Birds Island with a bullet through his heart. A score of other corpses lay hither and thither on the island, and six score more would be added to their number when daylight came. The pirates who, a hundred and fifty years ago, had
buried their plunder on Birds Island, had had no good of it—for was not the treasure left all that time untouched? And they in their turn had plundered and looted the towns of the mainland to obtain it, while before that Spanish taskmasters had burned Incas to death and had caused Indian and negro slaves to die under the lash for the precious gain. And now, after all that, the diamonds and the pearls and the rubies were crudely bound into the ragged shirt-tail of the man who was rowing a frail dingey out westerly over the Pacific rollers under the paling stars. He was rowing, rowing, rowing, tirelessly, automatically, with the strength and the endurance fostered by months of forced labor. Rowing, rowing, rowing, in his tossing cockle-shell. When dawn came Birds Island was only a speck on the horizon.
Chapter VI
Dawkins had taken a monstrous risk when he had launched himself in his little boat out on to the Pacific, but, as he had decided in his balanced fashion, it was not so great a risk as it would have been to remain on the island. And, moreover, he knew that fifty miles to the west of Birds Island lay the main route of the coastwise traffic; many times from the crest of Birds Island had he seen on the horizon the faint smudge of a steamer’s smoke. Yet it can hardly be denied that he was extremely fortunate to be picked up on his third morning by the steel four-masted bark Hammerfest, Norwegian owned, in ballast from San Francisco to Punta Arenas.
There was not an Englishman on board the Hammerfest (Englishmen are scarce on Scandinavian sailing ships), but the Swedish captain and the grave mystic Norwegians and Finns received him with kindness. They even asked fewer questions than their scant broken English would have permitted. Dawkins explained with due reticence that he was an escaped convict from the penal settlement on Birds Island, and they nodded sympathetically. Grim tales were already being told along the Rainless Coast about the horrors perpetrated on Birds Island, although of course the Hammerfest knew nothing of the late mutiny, and one glimpse of Dawkins’ back, all seamed and corrugated with scars, made the crew his fast friends. Any lingering fear that Dawkins might have had that he would be handed back to the justice of the Rainless Republic was dispelled by the kindness of his reception. The captain even went so far as to offer Dawkins a passage in the Hammerfest to London River, after loading with wheat at Punta Arenas, and the offer was gladly accepted, especially as the offer included a quiet landing at London Docks without the formalities of a police inquiry. But even with all this kindness heaped upon him, with a berth with the boatswain and sailmaker and a place at the officers’ table given him, Dawkins did not see fit to inform any one that, tied in the tail of his shirt, he had a parcel of jewels worth ten times as much as the Hammerfest and her cargo put together. Captain Andersen found him clothes from the ship’s stores, and when Dawkins hinted that he had wealthy friends in London who would make due repayment Andersen put the matter gravely to one side. The clothes were poor and the accommodation bad and the food scanty, as was only to be expected in a Norwegian wind-jammer, but somehow the unquestioning kindness touched Dawkins perceptibly; he could hardly remember receiving any other kindness during thirty-five years of a hard life.