"Waste of time," answered Timar. "I shall soon be wet again; now I am thoroughly soaked. We have no time to spare."
The last words he whispered into Euthemio"s ear.
The man"s eyes glittered as he agreed. The captain sprung into the boat and rowed himself, so as to get quicker to the post-house on the bank, where towing-teams could be engaged. He collected hastily eighty oxen.
Meanwhile, a new towing-rope was attached to the vessel, the oxen harnessed, and before half an hour had pa.s.sed, the "St. Barbara" was on her way again through the Iron Gate, and on the opposite side of the stream.
When Timar returned on board, his exertions had dried his clothes.
The ship was saved, perhaps doubly saved, and with it the cargo, Euthemio, and Timea.
But what are they to him that he should work so hard? He is only the captain and supercargo, and receives a scanty salary as such. It can not matter to him whether the vessel"s hold is full of wheat or contraband tobacco or real pearls; his wages remain the same.
So also thought the "purifier," who, when they reached the Roumanian ca.n.a.l, resumed his interrupted conversation with the steersman.
"You"ll allow, neighbor, that we were never nearer all going to destruction together than we were to-day."
"There"s some truth in that," answered Fabula.
"But why should we try the experiment whether we could get drowned on St. Michael"s day?"
"H"m!" said Johann, and took a short pull at his brandy-flask. "What salary do you get, sir?"
"Twenty kreutzers a day," answered the purifier.
"Why the devil do you come here to venture your life for twenty kreutzers a day? I didn"t send for you. I get a gulden and my food; so I have forty kreutzers more reason to venture my life than you. What does it matter to you?"
The health-officer shook his head, and threw back his hood, so as to be more easily heard.
"Listen," he said; "it strikes me the brigantine is chasing you, and the "St. Barbara" is trying to escape."
"H"m!" coughed the steersman, clearing his throat, and becoming suddenly too hoa.r.s.e to make a sound.
"Well, it doesn"t matter to me," said the purifier, with a shrug. "I"m Austrian born, and I don"t like the Turks. But I know what I know."
"Well, then, will the gentleman listen to what he doesn"t know?" said Fabula, who had suddenly recovered his voice. "Certainly the gunboat is chasing us, and that"s why we are showing him our heels. For, look you, they wanted to take the white-faced maiden into the sultan"s harem, but her father would not consent; he preferred to escape with her from Turkey, and now the object is to reach Hungarian territory as quickly as possible--there the sultan can"t touch her. Now that"s all about it, so no more questions, but go to St. Barbara"s picture, and light the lamp again if the water has extinguished it; and don"t forget to burn three consecrated willow-twigs, if you"re a good Christian."
The purifier drew himself up slowly, and looked for his tinderbox, and then he growled in his beard--
"_If_ I am an orthodox Catholic? But they say you are only a Papist on board, and a Calvinist directly you set foot on sh.o.r.e; that you pray in the ship, and can hardly wait for dry land before you begin cursing and swearing. And they say too that your name is Fabula, and that Fabula means just the same as a pocketful of lies. But of course I believe all you have told me, so you need not be angry."
"You"re quite right there; but now you be off, and don"t you come back till I call you."
The twenty-four rowers in the gunboat required three hours to get from the point where first the "St. Barbara" was seen to the Perigrada Island, where the Danube divides into two arms. The cliffs of the island masked the whole bend, and on board the brigantine nothing of what had pa.s.sed behind them could be seen.
Even below the island the gunboat had met with floating wreckage, which the eddy had thrown to the surface. This was part of the sunken mill, but could not be distinguished from the remains of a vessel. When the brigantine had pa.s.sed the island a reach of a mile and a half lay open before her; neither in the stream nor by the bank was any large craft to be seen; near the sh.o.r.e were only barges and rowing-boats.
The man-of-war went a little higher, cruised about in the river, and then returned to the sh.o.r.e. There the Turkish first-lieutenant inquired of the watchmen about a cargo-vessel pa.s.sing by. They had seen nothing, for the ship had not got so far. Presently the brigantine overtook the "St. Barbara"s" towing-team, and of them also questions were asked. They were all good Servians, and explained to the Turks where they could find the "St. Barbara."
"She has gone down at the Perigrada Island with her cargo of fruit and all her crew; you can see here how the tow-rope parted."
The Turkish brigantine left the Servian drivers, who were all lamenting because no one was left to pay their wages. (In Orsova they know full well they will come up with their ship and tow her on.) But the commander, being a Turk, of course turned about and went down-stream.
When the brigantine got back to the island the sailors saw a board dancing on the water which did not float away. They fished it out: a rope was fastened to it by an iron hook, for the board was a float from the mill-wheel. Then they heaved up the rope, which had an anchor at its other end. This also was got in, and on its cross-piece, painted in great letters, there was the name "St. Barbara."
Now the whole catastrophe was quite clear. Her towing-rope had broken, she cast her anchor, but it could not hold her, she drifted into the whirlpool, and now her timbers float on the surface, but her crew rests below in the deep pool.
Mashallah! We can not follow her there.
CHAPTER IV.
A STRICT SEARCH.
The "St. Barbara" had escaped two dangers--the rocks of the Iron Gate and the Turkish brigantine; two remained, the Bora and the quarantine in Orsova.
Above the bay of the Iron Gate, the powerful stream is confined by its steep banks in a chasm only a hundred fathoms wide, through which the pent-up current forces its way, in parts with a fall of twenty-eight feet.
Up above the mountain peaks, three thousand feet in air, the eagles circle in majestic flight across the narrow strip of sky visible, whose pure azure, seen from the awful depths below, looks like a gla.s.s vault, and further yet rise more and higher peaks.
It is a sight, I trow, to call up spirits from h.e.l.l. The impotent vessel, which has neither hands nor feet, nor yet fins, which, like an overladen nutsh.e.l.l, floats upward in this narrow channel against wind and stream; and in it a handful of men, trusting in their intelligence and their strength. Here, too, even the Bora can not harm them, for the double range of cliffs keeps off the wind. The steersman and the towing-team have easier work now.
But the Bora was not asleep. It was already afternoon. The chief steersman had given over the tiller to his deputy, and had gone to the galley, which was in the stern. There he was busy preparing a "thieves"
roast," of which the recipe is to spit on a long skewer a piece of beef, a piece of ham, and a piece of pork alternately, and then turn the skewer above an open fire till the meat is cooked.
All at once the narrow strip of sky visible between the almost touching cliffs grew dark. The Bora will not be defied.
Suddenly it drives down before it a storm which overcasts the blue sky, so that it is pitch dark in the valley. Up above ma.s.ses of cloud; dark rocks on either hand. Now and then a dazzling flash darts through the heights, followed by a short abrupt thunderclap, as if the narrow gorge could only contain one chord of the awful concert; then again the lightning shoots into the Danube just in front of the ship, and by its fiery rays for an instant the whole rocky cathedral looks like the flaming gulf of h.e.l.l, and the thunder rolls, with a crash as of a world destroyed, from one end of the resounding t.i.tan"s hall to the other.
Rain falls in torrents, but the vessel must go on.
It must get on, that it may have left Orsova before night.
They can only see by the flicker of the lightning. Even with the horn they dare not signal, for it might be heard on the Roumanian side. But inventive man has found a way out of this difficulty.
The captain goes into the bow, gets out his flint and steel, and begins to strike out sparks. This fire can not be extinguished by rain; it can be seen by the drivers through the darkness, and as often as the steel strikes a spark they know at once what to do; they also make signals from the bank by sparks. This is the secret telegraph of sailors and smugglers at the Iron Gate. And this silent language has been brought to perfection by the sh.o.r.e population on each side of the river.
Timea liked the tempest. She had drawn her Turkish hood over her head, and looked out of the cabin window. "Are we in a cavern?" she asked the captain.
"No," answered Timar, "but at the door of a tomb. That high peak, which glows in the lightning flashes like a mountain of fire, is the grave of St. Peter, the "Gropa lui Petro." And the two other monsters near it are the "Two Old Women.""
"What old women?"
"According to the legend, a Hungarian and a Wallachian woman quarreled as to which of their two countries could claim the tomb of St. Peter.
The apostle could not sleep in his grave for their squabbling, and in his anger he turned them into stone."
Timea did not smile at the grotesque legend. She did not see anything ridiculous in it. "And how do they know that this is the grave of an apostle?" asked she.