"Do you know what fool"s errand brought me to this place?"
"I have imagined it," said I. "You wanted to know the truth about the sleep-time."
He laughed that queer little laugh which expressed so much when you heard it.
"No," said he, "I do not care a dime either way! I just came along to advertise myself. Ken"s Island and its secrets are my newspaper. When I go back to New York people will say, "That"s the specialist, Duncan Gray, who wrote about narcotics and their uses." They"ll come and see me because the newspapers tell them to. We advertise or die, nowadays, captain, and the man who gets a foothold up above must take some risks.
I took them when I shipped with Edmond Czerny."
It was an honest story, and I liked the man the better for it. No word of mine intervened before he went on with it.
"Luck put me in the way of the thing," he continued, the mood being on him now and my silence helping him; "I met Czerny"s skipper in "Frisco, and he was a talker. There"s nothing more dangerous than a loose tongue. The man said that his master was the second human being to set foot on Ken"s Archipelago. I knew that it was not true. A hundred years ago Jacob Hoyt, a Dutchman, was marooned on this place and lived to tell the story of it. The record lies in the library at Washington; I"ve read it."
He said this with a low chuckle, like a man in possession of a secret which might be of great value to him. I did not see the point of it at the time, but I saw it later, as you shall hear.
"Yes," he rattled on, "Edmond Czerny holds a full hand, but I may yet draw fours. He"s a clever man, too, and a deep one. We"ll see who"s the deeper, and we will begin soon, Captain Begg--very soon. The sleep-time"s through, I guess, and this means waking."
Now, this was spoken of the storm without, and a heavy clap of thunder, breaking at that moment, pointed his words as nothing else could have done. I had many questions yet to ask him, such as how it was that he persuaded Czerny to take him aboard (though a man who knew so much would have been a dangerous customer to leave behind), but the rolling sounds awoke the others, and Peter Bligh, jumping up half asleep, asked if any one knocked.
"I thought it was the devil with the hot water--and bedad it is!" cries he. "Is the house struck, or am I dreaming it, doctor? It"s a fearsome sound, truly."
Peter meant it as a bit of his humour, I do believe; but little he knew how near the truth his guess was. The storm, which had threatened us since dawn, now burst with a splendour I have never seen surpa.s.sed. A very sheet of raging fire opened up the livid sky. The crashing thunder shook the timbers of the house until you might have thought that the very roof was coming in. In the gardens themselves, leaping into your view and pa.s.sing out of it again as a picture shuttered by light, great trees were split and broken, the woods fired, the gravel driven up in a shower of pelting hail. I have seen storms in my life a-many, but never one so loud and so angry as the storm of that ebbing sleep-time. There were moments when a whirlwind of terrible sounds seemed to envelop us, and the very heavens might have been rolling asunder. We said that the bungalow could not stand, and we were right.
Now, this was a bad prophecy; but the fulfilment came more swiftly and more surely than any of us had looked for. Indeed, Dolly Venn was scarce upon his feet, and the sleep hardly out of Seth Barker"s eyes, when the room in which we stood was all filled by a scathing flame of crimson light, and, a whirlwind of fire sweeping about us, it seemed to wither and burn everything in its path and to scorch our very limbs as it pa.s.sed them by. To this there succeeded an overpowering stench of sulphur, and ripping sounds as of wood bursting in splinters, and beams falling, and the crackling of timber burning. Not a man among us, I make sure, but knew full well the meaning of those signals or what they called him to do. The bungalow was struck; life lay in the fog without, in the death-fog we had twice escaped.
"She"s burning--she"s burning, by----!" cried Seth Barker, running wildly for the door; and to his voice was added that of Duncan Gray, who roared:
"My lead, my lead--stand back, for your lives!"
He threw a m.u.f.fler round his neck and ran out from the stricken bungalow. The whole westward wing of the house was now alight. Great clouds of crimson flame wrestled with the looming fog above us; they illumined all the garden about as with the light of ten thousand fiery lamps. Suffocating smoke, burning breezes, floating sparks, leaping tongues of flame drove us on. Cries you heard, one naming the heights for a haven, another clamouring for the beach, one answering with an oath, another, it may be, with a prayer; but no man keeping his wits or shaping a true course. What would have happened but for the holding fog and the sulphurous air we breathed, I make no pretence to say; but Nature stopped us at last, and, panting and exhausted, we came to a halt in the woods, and asked each other in the name of reason what we should do next.
"The sea!" cries Peter Bligh, forgetting his courage (a rare thing for him to do); "show me the sea or I"m a dead man!"
To whom Seth Barker answers:
"If there"s breath, it"s on the hills; we"ll surely die here."
And little Dolly, he said:
"I cannot run another step, sir; I"m beat--dead beat!"
For my part I had no word for them; it remained for Doctor Gray to lead again.
"I will show you the road," cried he, "if you will take it."
"And why not?" I asked him. "Why not, doctor?"
"Because," he answered, very slowly, "it"s the road to Edmond Czerny"s house."
CHAPTER XIV
A WHITE POOL--AND AFTERWARDS
We must have been a third of a mile from the sh.o.r.e when the doctor spoke, and three hundred yards, perhaps, from the pool in the glens. It is true that the storm seemed to clear the air; but not as we had expected, nor as fair argument led us to hope. Wind there was, hot and burning on the face; but it brought no cool breath in its path, and did but roll up the fog in banks of grey and dirty cloud. While at one minute you would see the wood, green and gra.s.sy, as in the evening light, at another you could scarce distinguish your neighbour or mark his steps. To me, it appeared that the island dealt out life and death on either hand; first making a man leap with joy because he could breathe again; then sending him gasping to the earth with all his senses reeling and his brain on fire. Any shelter, I said, would be paradise to men in the bond of that death-grip. Sleep itself, the island"s sleep, could have been no worse than the agony we suffered.
"Doctor," I cried, as I ran panting up to him, "Edmond Czerny"s house or another--show us the way, here and now! We cannot fare worse; you know that. Lead on and we follow, wherever it is."
The others said, "Aye, aye, lead on and we follow." Desperation was their lot now; the madman"s haste, the driven man"s hope. There, in that fearful hollow, lives were ebbing away like the sea on a shallow beach. They fought for air, for breath, for light, for life. I can see Peter Thigh to this day as he staggers to his feet and cries, wildly:
"The mouth of blazes would be a Sunday parlour to this! Lead on, doctor, I am dying here!"
So he spoke; and, the others lurching up again, we began to race through the wood to a place where the fog lay lighter and the mists had left. Wonderful sights met our eyes--aye, more wonderful than any words of mine could picture for you. In the air above flocks of birds wheeled dizzily as though the very sky was on fire. Round and round, round and round, they darkened the heaven like some great wheel revolving; while, ever and anon, a beautiful creature would close its wings and swoop to death upon the dewy gra.s.s. Other animals, terrified cattle, wild dogs, creatures from the heights and creatures from the valleys, all huddled together in their fear, raised doleful cries which no ear could shut out. The trees themselves were burnt and blackened by the storm, the glens as dark as night, the heaven above one canopy of fiery cloud and stagnant vapour.
Now, I knew no more than the dead what Duncan Gray meant when he said that he would lead us to Czerny"s house. A boat I felt sure he did not possess, or he would have spoken of it; nor did he mean that we should swim, for no man could have lived in the surf about the reefs. His steps, moreover, were not carrying him towards the beach, but to that vile pool in the ravine wherein a man had died on the night we came to Ken"s Island. This pool I saw again as we ran on towards the headland; and so still and quiet it seemed, such a pretty lake among the hills, that no man would have guessed the terror below its waters or named the secret of it. Nevertheless, it recalled to me our first night"s work, and how little we could hope from any man in Czerny"s house; and this I had in my mind when, the doctor halted at last before the mouth of an open pit at the very foot of the giant headland. He was blown with running, and the sweat dropped from his forehead like water. The place itself was the most awesome I have ever entered. On either hand, so close to us that the arms outstretched could have touched them, were two mighty walls, which towered up as though to the very sky beyond the vapour. A black pit lay before us; the fog and the burning wind in the woods we had left. Silence was here--the awful silence of night and solitude. No eye could fathom the depths or search the heights. What lay beyond, I might not say. The doctor had led us to this wilderness, and he must speak.
"See here," he cried, mopping the sweat from his face and rolling up his shirt-sleeves, like a man who has good work to do, "the road"s down yonder, and we need a light to strike it. Give me your hand, one of you, while I fetch up the lantern. A Dutchman didn"t write of Ken"s Island for nothing. I guess he knew we were coming his way."
He stretched out a hand to me with the words, and I held it surely while he bent over the pit and groped for the lantern he spoke of.
"Three days ago," said he, "I ran a picnic here all to myself. It is as well to find new lodgings if the old don"t suit. I left my lantern behind me, and this it is, I reckon."
He pulled up from the depths a gauze lantern such as miners use, and, lighting it, he showed us the heart of the pit. It was a deep hole, 30 feet down, perhaps, and strewn with rubbish and fragments of the iron rocks. But what was worth more to us, aye, than a barrel of gold, was the sweet, fresh air which came to us through a tunnel"s mouth as by a siphon from the open sea herself; and, blowing freshly on our faces, sent us quickly down towards it with glad cries and the spirits of men who have broken a prison gate.
"The sea, the sea, by all that"s holy!" cries Peter Bligh. "Oh, doctor, I breathe, I breathe, as I am a Christian man, I breathe!"
We tumbled down into the pit headlong and sat there for many minutes wondering if, indeed, the death were pa.s.sed or if we must face it again in the minutes to come. There before us, once we had pa.s.sed the tunnel"s mouth, stood a vast, domed hall which, I declare, men might have cut and not Nature in the depths of that strange cavern.
Open to the day through great apertures high up in the face of the cliff, a soft glow like the light which comes through the windows of a church streamed upon the rocky floor and showed us the wonders of that awesome place. Room upon room, we saw, cave upon cave; some round like the mosques a Turk can build, others lofty and grand as any cathedral; some pretty as women"s dens, all decked with jewels and ornament of jasper and walls of the blackest jet. These things I saw; these rooms I pa.s.sed through. A magician might have conjured them up; and yet he was no magician, but only Duncan Gray, the man I knew for the first time yesterday, but already called a comrade.
"Doctor," I said, "it is a house of miracles, truly! But where to now--aye, that"s the question; where to?"
He sat upon a stone, and we grouped ourselves about him. Peter Bligh took out a pipe from his pocket and was not forbidden to light it.
There was a distant sound in the cave like that of water rushing, and once another sound to which I could give no meaning. The doctor himself was still thinking deeply, as though hazarding a guess as to our position.
"Boys," he said, "I"ll tell you the whole story. This place was discovered by Hoyt, a Dutchman. If Czerny had read his book, he would know of it; but he hasn"t. I took the trouble to walk in because I thought it might be useful when he turned nasty. It is going to be that, as you can see. Follow through to the end of it, and you are in Czerny"s house. Will you go there or hold back? It"s for you to say."
I filled my pipe, as Peter had clone, and, breathing free for the first time for some hours, I tried to speak up for the others.
"A sailor"s head tells me that there is a road from here to the reef; is that true?" asked I at last; "is it true, doctor?"
He put on his gla.s.ses and looked at me with those queer, clever eyes of his. I believe to this day that our dilemma almost pleased him.
"A sailor"s head guesses right first time," was his answer. "There is a road under the sea from here to Czerny"s doorstep. I"m waiting to know if it"s on or back. You know the risks and are not children. Say that you turn it up and we"ll all go back together, or stay here as wisdom dictates. But it"s for you to speak----"
We answered him all together, though Peter Bligh was the first he heard.
"The lodgings here being free and no charge for extras," said Peter, sagely.
And Dolly Venn, he said: