I MAKE MY ESCAPE
I had plenty of time to run away. I do not know why I did not do so;but the fact stands that I remained where I was until they hadfinished Captain Selover. Then I took to my heels, but was sooncornered. I drew my revolver, remembered that I had emptied it in theseal cave--and had time for no more coherent mental processes. Asmothering weight flung itself on me, against which I struggled ashard as I could, shrinking in anticipation from the thirsty plungeof the knives. However, though the weight increased until furtherstruggle was impossible, I was not harmed, and in a few moments foundmyself, wrists and ankles tied, beside a roaring fire. While Icollected myself I heard the grate of a boat being shoved off fromthe cove, and a few moments later made out lights aboard the LaughingLass.
The looting party returned very shortly. Their plundering had goneonly as far as liquor and arms. Thrackles let down from the cliff topa keg at the end of a line. Perdosa and the Nigger each carried anarmful of the 30-40 rifles. The keg was rolled to the fire andbroached.
The men got drunk, wildly drunk, but not helplessly so. A flamecommunicated itself to them through the liquor. The ordinarycharacteristics of their composition sprung into sharper relief. TheNigger became more sullen; Perdosa more snake-like; Pulz moreviciously evil; Thrackles more brutal; while Handy Solomon staggeringfrom his seat to the open keg and back again, roaring fragments ofa chanty, his red headgear contrasting with his smoky black hair andhis swarthy hook-nosed countenance--he needed no further touch.
Their evil passions were all awake, and the plan, so long indefinite,developed like a photographer's plate.
"That's one," said Thrackles. "One gone to hell."
"And now the diamonds," muttered Pulz.
"There's a ship upon the windward, a wreck upon the lee,
Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e,"
roared Handy Solomon. "Damn it all, boys, it's the best night's workwe ever did. The stuff's ours. Then it's me for a big stone house inFrisco O!"
"Frisco, hell," sneered Pulz, "that's all you know. You ought totravel. Paris for me and a little gal to learn the language from."
"I get heem a fine caballo, an' fine saddle, an' fine clo's,"breathed Perdosa sentimentally. "I ride, and the silver jingle, andthe se駉rita look----"
Thrackles was for a ship and the China trade.
"What you want, Doctor?" they demanded of the silent Nigger.
But the Nigger only rolled his eyes and shook his head. By and by hearose and disappeared in the dusk and was no more seen.
"Dam' fool," muttered Handy Solomon. "Well, here's to crime!"
He drank a deep cup of the raw rum, and staggered back to his seaton the sands.
"'I am not a man-o'-war, nor a privateer,' said he. Blow high, blow low! What care we! 'But I am a jolly pirate and I'm sailing for my fee,' Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e."
he sang. "We'll land in Valparaiso and we'll go every man his way;and we'll sink the old Laughing Lass so deep the mermaids can'tfind her."
Thrackles piled on more wood and the fire leaped high.
"Let's get after 'em,' said he.
"To-morrow's jes' 's good," muttered Pulz. "Les' hav' 'nother drink."
"We'll stay here 'n see if our ol' frien' Percy don' show up," saidHandy Solomon. He threw back his head and roared forth a volume ofsound toward the dim stars.
"Broadside to broadside the gallant ships did lay, Blow high, blow low! What care we? 'Til the jolly man-o'-war shot the pirate's mast away, Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e."
I saw near me a live coal dislodged from the fire when Thrackles hadthrown on the armful of wood. An idea came to me. I hitched myselfto the spark, and laid across it the rope with which my wrists weretied. This, behind my back, was not easy to accomplish, and twice Iburned my wrists before I succeeded.
Fortunately I was at the edge of illumination, and behind the group.I turned over on my side so that my back was toward the fire. Thenrapidly I cast loose my ankle lashings. Thus I was free, and selectinga moment when universal attention was turned toward the rum barrel,I rolled over a sand dune, got to my hands and knees, and crept away.
Through the coarse grass I crept thus, to the very entrance of thearroyo, then rose to my feet. In the middle distance the fire leapedred. Its glow fell intermittently on the surges rolling in. The menstaggered or lay prone, either as gigantic silhouettes or astatterdemalions painted by the light. The keg stood solid andsubstantial, the hub about which reeled the orgy. At the edge of thewash I could make out something prone, dim, limp, thrown constantlyin new positions of weariness as the water ebbed and flowed beneathit, now an arm thrown out, now cast back, as though Old Scrubs sleptfeverishly. The drunkards were getting noisy. Handy Solomon stillreeled off the verses of, his song. The others joined in, frightfullyoff the key; or punctuated the performance by wild staccato yells.
"Their coffin was their ship and their grave it was the sea, Blow high, blow low! What care we? And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea, Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e,"
bellowed Handy Solomon.
I turned and plunged into the cool darkness of the ca駉n.