C. N. Williamson & A. N. Williamson: 30+ Murder Mysteries & Adventure Novels (Illustrated). Charles Norris Williamson
between beaching her immediately or having her sink? It looked as if this explanation might be the right one, for she was certainly retiring, and that with haste. To beach she must go round the point whence she had come in, approaching the lagoon, and this she was doing, the yacht having no more to say to her.
"The Frenchies know what their sea-wolves have done," George thought grimly, "and so they can afford to let things slide and save themselves. No good sending out a boat and trying to pick up their man under the nose of the enemy, for the poor fellow's gone where neither friends nor foes can get him. The episode is closed. And all the Bella Cuba wanted was to put the prison boat out of the running. There's no good being vindictive. I could get to her now, if I liked—provided those brutes would let me. But it's impossible—I won't think of it. Afterward I should loathe myself for being a coward and going back to life without the others. I couldn't have helped them—but it would seem as if I might have, and didn't. Heavens! When is this going to end? I can't bear it long. The best thing I could do would be to drown myself like a man, and get it over before the worst can happen."
He flung up his arms, meaning to sink, and wondering whether it would be really possible for a strong swimmer deliberately to drown himself, or whether instinct would keep on countermanding the brain's orders, until exhaustion did its work. One last look at the world he gave before the plunge, and that look showed him a thing which he could not believe. Between him and the black horns of the outer reef he saw once more two dark heads close together.
"It can't be!" Trent said to himself; nevertheless, instead of flinging away life, with all his strength he struck out lustily toward those floating dots in the water. Then, suddenly, something cold and solid rubbed against his leg. How the knowledge of what it was and what to do came to him so quickly, and how he acted upon that knowledge swiftly almost as light moves, he could not have told; but he knew that a shark was after him; he knew that it must turn over on its back in the water before the cavernous, fang-set jaws could crunch his bone and flesh, and like a flash he dived. Queerly, as he shot down through the water, he thought again of something outside the desperate need of self-preservation. "This is what happened when I saw their heads go down before and supposed it was all up with them both!" he said to himself. "That's what they are supposing about me now, if they're looking my way. Well, we shall see. It's going to be a race between this infernal brute and me. I'd bet on him—but the dark horse sometimes gets in."
After that he had no more consecutive thoughts. Primitive instinct guided him, and hope was the light which marked the goal. The others were not dead yet, so he had a right to his life, if he could keep it; and toward that end he strained, swimming as he had never swum before, diving, darting this way and that, feeling rather than seeing which spot to avoid, which to strive for. At last his foot touched rock. He had reached that part of the jagged coral-reef which rose out of the sea. He ceased to swim, and found that slipping, sliding, stumbling on a surface, which felt to clinging hands and feet as if coated with ice, and smeared with soap, he could scramble up to a point above water. He got to his knees, then to his feet, and as he stood up, dripping and dizzy, a shout came to him. Roger's voice again!—but no longer sharp with horror and loathing. There he stood on another low peak of the reef, and Dalahaide was beside him, slimmer, taller, and straighter than he, as the two figures were darkly outlined against the light.
They were safe, at least from the sharks; and from the Bella Cuba a boat with four rowers was swiftly approaching. The reaction of joy after the resignation of despair was almost too great. George Trent's throat contracted with a sob, and there was a stinging of his eyelids which was not caused by the salt of the sea.
"Hurrah!" he cried out, waving his hand to the two men on the reef, and to the rowers in the boat. While his shout still rang in the air a canot, such as that in which they had crossed from Noumea to the Ile Nou, manned by twelve rowers, leaped round the point of rock behind which the French boat had disappeared, and came straight as an arrow for the reef on which the three men stood.
Now it was a race once more for life and death. The yacht's boat had the start, but those twenty-four oars carried the canot, heavy as it was, far faster through the water. The Bella Cuba could not use her cannon lest she should destroy her own friends, so nearly did the two boats cross each other as both from, different directions, sped toward the same goal.
The yachtsmen's blood was up, and they worked like heroes, but they were four to twelve. The canot shot ahead and got the inside track. The race, as a race, could now have but one end. The canot was bound to be first at the spot where the runaway forçat and one of his English friends stood side by side out of reach of the hungry sharks, but not beyond the grasp of justice. The fugitives, who had fought so long with the sea, were unarmed, while the four surveillants in the canot had revolvers, and would either recapture or kill.
But Maxime Dalahaide spoke a word to his companion; and, as if the triumph of the canot over the yacht's boat had been a signal, the two sprang from the shelf of the reef into the sea. George Trent knew well what was in their minds; they preferred to risk being food for sharks to certain capture; and without hesitating for an instant, George followed their example. If they could swim under water to the yacht's boat before the sharks took up the prison cause, all was not yet lost, for the boat would do its best to dodge the canot while the Bella Cuba's cannon seized their chance to work once more.
George kept under water as long as he could, then came up to breathe and venture a glance round. Crack! went a pistol-shot close to his head, and he dived again; but not before he had seen the yacht's boat not thirty yards off. How near the canot lay he had not been able to inform himself, but the narrow shave he had just had gave him a hint that it could not be far distant. He aimed for the boat as well as he could judge, felt an ominous, cold touch, dived deeper for a shark, forged ahead again, trying to forget the double danger, came up to breathe because he must, and could have yelled for joy, if he had had breath enough in his lungs, to see that either Roger or Maxime was being pulled into the yacht's boat, while a second head bobbed on the water a couple of yards away. The air cracked with revolver-shots, but George was not the target now: the eyes of the surveillants were for the fugitives nearest safety. Whether Roger or Dalahaide were hit, George could not tell, but he kept his head above water in sheer self-forgetfulness until both had been hauled on board. Then he dived again, and when he rose to the surface he was close to the boat. It was his turn to be helped over the side and to become a target. Something whizzed past his ear, leaving it hot and wet, and he had a sudden burning pain in his left arm; but nothing mattered, for there were Roger and Maxime, and he was beside them. The rowers had set to their work with a will once more, not to reach the Bella Cuba with the best speed, but to dodge from between her guns and the canot. Once she could let her cannon speak, the canot was no longer to be feared. Brave as the Frenchmen were, clearly as they had right on their side, from their point of view, they would have to recognize that they were helpless, that the rest of the battle was to the strong.
A moment more, and one of the little cannon roared a warning. She did not try to hit the canot; the message she sent was but to say, "Hands off, or take the consequences." And the men of the canot understood. Not only did they cease firing, but began to retire with leisurely dignity toward the point which hid the disabled prison boat.
Now, suddenly, when all such peril was over, the thought of that slimy, cold touch on his flesh, and what it had meant, turned George Trent sick. He did not see how he or his friends had escaped the horror. If it were to come again he was sure that escape would be impossible; and somehow he knew, as if by prevision, that there would be nights so long as he lived when he would dream of that touch in the water, and wrench himself awake, with sweat on his forehead and his hands damp.
"Roger, are you all right, and Dalahaide, too?" he asked, wondering at the weight he felt on his chest and the effort it was to speak.
"Thanks to Dalahaide, I am all right," Roger answered. "If it hadn't been for his quickness and presence of mind, twice I should have been nabbed by a shark. Weak as he was, he pulled me down for a dive that I should have been too dazed to think of without him."
"I have cause enough to know something of these waters and their danger," Maxime said slowly, as if he too