A RESCUE.
LIMBING back hurriedly, but cautiously, to the top, Paul groped his way through the thick mist to the lighthouse, where all was already bustle and confusion. The first gray light of dawn was beginning to struggle faintly through the dense fog, and swirling wreaths of vapor grew vaguely visible in the direction of the cliff, whither people were feeling their way with outstretched arms, and much noise of preparation, toward the cove and the lifeboat.
“What’s the matter?” Paul asked one rough sailor-looking man, whom he followed toward the house where the lifeboat was harbored.
“Matter?” the man answered. “Why, salvage, that’s what it is. Vessel gone ashore on the Long Men Rocks. Steamer, most likely. Brazil Packet from Southampton, I take it. Very good salvage.”
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. The descendant of the wreckers was thinking only of his own inheritance.
Paul hurried on in the man’s footsteps till he reached the shore. There, through the vague gloom, he saw Mr. Solomons and the detective already before him. The sailors were pushing out the lifeboat over the short shingle-beach, and fishermen about were putting off small rowing-craft to take their share in the expected harvest of salvage.
Before he knew exactly how it was all happening, he found himself seated in one of the small boats, with Mr. Solomons and the detective, while two sturdy fishermen were pushing them seaward through that tremendous surf that seemed certain to swamp them with its huge curling breakers.
For a minute or two the waves broke in upon them, drenching them through and through with showers of spray, and half filling the boat. Then the fisherman, finding at last the long-looked-for opportunity, pushed her successfully off on a retiring wave, and got her safe out to sea beyond the reach of the great curving billows. Once well afloat, they found the sea itself comparatively smooth, though heaving and tossing with a long glassy swell, whose ups and downs were far deeper in their way than anything that Paul had ever before experienced. The boatmen rowed on in the wake of the lifeboat, through the fog and darkness, toward the sound of a bell that rang with a long, irregular, rocking movement some hundred yards or so southward of them. Paul knew instinctively, somehow, that no one was ringing the bell. It was the rise and fall of the vessel as she dashed helplessly upon the rocks that made that unearthly rhythm; she was tolling her own knell as the breakers broke her upon the jagged and waterworn pinnacles of the Lizard.
As they approached nearer, little more was visible. It added to the weird horror and awe of the tragedy, indeed, that nothing could be seen of it. They knew only by inference that a great ship was being foundered and ground to pieces by some invisible force within a few yards of them.
But the breakers themselves and the rocks were faintly in evidence. Paul could make out through the gloom some sunken stacks of serpentine, round whose crest the big waves made vast curling swoops, and boiled and roared in hideous whirling eddies. The ship had struck from the opposite side, and the boatmen refused to row any nearer; indeed, even where they now held her off, pressing with all their might on the bending oars, the danger of grounding was very considerable. No boat could possibly live in that wild surf upon those broken granite points. If once a wave should catch them on its summit and carry them on to the rocks, all would be up; no human aid could ever avail to save them.
And then, as they held off there, keeping carefully to the trough of the waves, and listening to the cries and shouts that came over to them through the fog, and hearing the dull grating of the hull as it scraped along the rock with each lifting billow, a louder voice than any rose distinct across the waves — the voice of a ship’s officer calling out in wild tones of horror, “She’s parting amidships.”
And so she was! Next moment they saw upon the breakers close by great fragments of wreck and bits of floating board. There could be no doubt the voice had cried out what was true. A loud snap rent the air; a crash of breaking; the shrieks and screams redoubled in intensity; and the boatmen holding the boat away, out of reach of the wash, called out aloud, “She’s gone to pieces that time. I heard her crack. Row round the other way, Jim, and help pick up the passengers.”
“Are they drowning?” Mr. Solomons cried, with a face of terrible relentlessness.
“They’re drowning, no doubt,” the man answered, with the stolid, matter-of-fact air of the hardened seaman. “They can’t many of ’em live in such a sea as that is. Anywhere’s else, they wouldn’t come to much hurt this calm weather, leastways if they could swim; but the breakers on the Long Men Rocks is always terrible. Why, that’s where the East Indiaman went to pieces twelve years ago come Christmas, don’t you mind, Jimmy?”
“I hope he won’t drown,” Mr. Solomons cried savagely, “and balk me of justice! I hope he won’t die till I’ve had my fourteen years out of him!”
The men were rowing their hardest now, and as Paul could judge by the sounds growing gradually fainter, away from the wreck and the reef of rocks, so as to turn their flank sideways and come in upon them from the open. For nearly ten minutes they rowed on in silence as hard as arms and legs could row, Mr. Solomons sitting grim and unmoved in the stern, while the detective eyed him ever with a strange, suspicious side-glance. At the end of that time, the fog lifted a little, a very little, and Paul saw they were skirting the long ridge of rocks, marked some twenty yards off by their white line of breakers.
Presently they saw other boats about — boats whose occupants were engaged in peering into the water in search of black objects bobbing up and down in it, which they lunged at with boat-hooks. And then, with sudden realization of the whole horror of the thing, Paul recognized with a start that these were human bodies.
In another minute there loomed dimly ahead some dozen yards or so off a great dark mass, moving wildly about among the white sheets of foam; and Paul saw with another terrible shock of awe that it was half the broken hull of a huge ocean-going steamer. She had parted amidships, and one half had sunk already in the deeper water. The other half, yet dashing wildly on the rocks, hung together still upon the reef in front of them.
At the same moment a small, black body went floating past, like the others they had seen the neighboring boatman lunge at. As it passed them it rose spasmodically to the surface, and two arms were flung up wildly into the air. Through the gray haze of morning Paul could recognize them at once as a woman’s arms — a woman’s arms, plump and smooth, and white-skinned.
He jumped up, and seizing a loose oar in his hand held it hastily toward the despairing creature. But, even as he did so, the long swell carried her away from his sight, into the deep mist beyond, where she disappeared shrieking. They rowed with all speed toward the spot where she had disappeared, and there once more came in sight of the woman. By this time another boat had found her, and was pulling her in. With frantic struggles for life she clutched the gunwale, and climbed over, with the aid of the men’s arms, on to the boat’s seat. Then she turned round, with her wet dressing-gown dripping around her, and in a shrill voice of horror she cried out to the sailors, “Go ashore, go ashore! I shall perish of cold here!”
For a second the voice rang with curious familiarity in Paul’s ear, but he failed at first to recognize the pale and draggled creature round whose shoulders one of the fishermen was wrapping, with much care, his own rough pilot-coat. Next instant, with a sudden burst of recollection, the voice came back to him in all its well-known sharpness, “Why, it’s Mme. Ceriolo!” he cried, unable to restrain his surprise and wonder.
Madame turned round quick as lightning at the sound of her own name and the unexpected recognition. She remembered at once both voice and face. She gave a little start.
“What! Mr. Gascoyne! “she cried, forgetting for the moment Paul’s new-made dignity. Then suddenly her eyes fell upon Mr. Solomons’ stern and inflexible figure sitting bolt upright on the seat behind. She knew that face at once, though she had never seen it before. It answered exactly to the photograph Mr. Lionel had shown her of his unconscionable uncle. She read the whole history of the pursuit at a glance. It was old Cento-Cento, come after his dollars.
In the twinkling of an eye she had made up her mind how to behave under the circumstances. Dupe, not accomplice, was now her winning card. Still shivering with cold and half dead with terror, she yet stretched out her arms toward the grim old man, who sat there immovable, taking hardly any notice of the drowning people, and called out in a voice full of earnest gratitude:
“Why, it’s him, to be sure! It’s Leo’s uncle! He’s come out with a boat to save me and Leo.”
Like a flash of lightning Paul read the whole truth. It was Lionel, then, who had stolen the bonds from the safe! It was Lionel who was running away on board the Dom Pedro! He glanced at the detective, and caught his eye inquiringly. The detective nodded with that strange smile once more. Instinctively the full horror of the situation dawned at once upon him. Mr. Solomons was hunting down to the very death his own cherished nephew. And the detective was there to arrest Mr. Lionel.
He looked at the old usurer in a perfect paroxysm of pity. How on earth would he bear up against this blinding and staggering disillusionment? But a moment’s glance showed him that Mr. Solomons hadn’t even yet grasped the real situation. He had merely leaned forward eagerly at the sound of his nephew’s name, and repeated in a startled and puzzled, but by no means horrified tone.
“Yes, I’m Leo’s uncle. Tell me, what do you know or mean about Leo?”
Mme. Ceriolo hardly felt sure on the spur of the moment what to answer. It would suit her book better now, all things considered, that Mr. Lionel should go down, with his possibly incriminating evidence on his soul, and that she should be able to pose as one more victim of his selfish criminality. But the position was too strong for her. She felt she must at all risks keep up appearances. So she wrapped the pilot-coat around her tightly with a shudder of alarm (it was immensely easy to get up a shudder in that cold morning air, and with her thin clothes dripping) and cried out in wild tones of impassioned agony:
“Yes, Leo’s on board. Leo, my Leo! On the rocks there ahead. Oh, save him, save him!”
“Leo on board!” Mr. Solomons answered, clapping his hand to his forehead and letting his jaw drop slowly with a stare of astonishment. His look was dazed and bewildered now. “Leo on board!” he repeated, with a terrible wave of doubt passing over his face. Then his mouth closed up again. “No, no,” he went on fixedly. “Leo couldn’t be on board. It’s a lie! It’s a lie! He’s gone to Switzerland.”
Mme. Ceriolo gazed at him — a childlike and trustful woman.
“Not to Switzerland,” she said, for she felt certain now that all must come out, “he’d taken his ticket at the last moment for Buenos Ayres.”
At the word, Mr. Solomons jumped up in the boat with such energy that he almost sent it off its balance.
“For Buenos Ayres!” he cried. “You don’t say that! Well done, well done — well done indeed, Leo! He’s the very smartest chap in all London, that boy! Don’t you see it, Sir Paul? Don’t you see his game? He’d tracked the bonds before us, and was on the trail of the robber!”
“At any rate,” Paul cried, looking toward the detective for support, “our first business now must be to go out and save him.”
Mr. Solomons stood still in the boat and waved wildly forward with his outstretched hand.
“To the wreck! To the wreck!” he shouted aloud, above the noise of the breakers. “I see him! I see him!”
And, in truth, Paul, turning round toward the hull that still crashed and ground upon the great granite millstones, saw a frantic figure, clasping the shattered taffrail with one clenched hand, and waving wildly toward the boats for assistance with the other. The white swirls of fog were growing thinner now, and through the gap they made he could plainly perceive that the figure was beckoning them with a japanned tin dispatch-box of the sort in which bankers keep their clients’ documents.
“He would go down to fetch them!” Mme. Ceriolo cried apologetically from the neighboring boat. “We were all on deck and might have been saved together, but he would go down to his cabin to fetch them.”
Mr. Solomons gazed back at her with contemptuous pity.