第71章

"Do you understand - already?" Dominic muttered in a fierce undertone."Already! You know we left a good eight hours before we were expected to leave, otherwise she would have been in time to lie in wait for us on the other side of the Cape, and" - he snapped his teeth like a wolf close to my face - "and she would have had us like - that."I saw it all plainly enough now.They had eyes in their heads and all their wits about them in that craft.We had passed them in the dark as they jogged on easily towards their ambush with the idea that we were yet far behind.At daylight, however, sighting a balancelle ahead under a press of canvas, they had made sail in chase.But if that was so, then -Dominic seized my arm.

"Yes, yes! She came out on an information - do you see, it? - on information....We have been sold - betrayed.Why? How? What for? We always paid them all so well on shore....No! But it is my head that is going to burst."He seemed to choke, tugged at the throat button of the cloak, jumped up open-mouthed as if to hurl curses and denunciation, but instantly mastered himself, and, wrapping up the cloak closer about him, sat down on the deck again as quiet as ever.

"Yes, it must be the work of some scoundrel ashore," I observed.

He pulled the edge of the hood well forward over his brow before he muttered:

"A scoundrel....Yes....It's evident.""Well," I said, "they can't get us, that's clear.""No," he assented quietly, "they cannot."We shaved the Cape very close to avoid an adverse current.On the other side, by the effect of the land, the wind failed us so completely for a moment that the Tremolino's two great lofty sails hung idle to the masts in the thundering uproar of the seas breaking upon the shore we had left behind.And when the returning gust filled them again, we saw with amazement half of the new mainsail, which we thought fit to drive the boat under before giving way, absolutely fly out of the bolt-ropes.We lowered the yard at once, and saved it all, but it was no longer a sail; it was only a heap of soaked strips of canvas cumbering the deck and weighting the craft.Dominic gave the order to throw the whole lot overboard.

I would have had the yard thrown overboard, too, he said, leading me aft again, "if it had not been for the trouble.Let no sign escape you," he continued, lowering his voice, "but I am going to tell you something terrible.Listen: I have observed that the roping stitches on that sail have been cut! You hear? Cut with a knife in many places.And yet it stood all that time.Not enough cut.That flap did it at last.What matters it? But look!

there's treachery seated on this very deck.By the horns of the devil! seated here at our very backs.Do not turn, signorine."We were facing aft then.

"What's to be done?" I asked, appalled.

"Nothing.Silence! Be a man, signorine.""What else?" I said.

To show I could be a man, I resolved to utter no sound as long as Dominic himself had the force to keep his lips closed.Nothing but silence becomes certain situations.Moreover, the experience of treachery seemed to spread a hopeless drowsiness over my thoughts and senses.For an hour or more we watched our pursuer surging out nearer and nearer from amongst the squalls that sometimes hid her altogether.But even when not seen, we felt her there like a knife at our throats.She gained on us frightfully.And the Tremolino, in a fierce breeze and in much smoother water, swung on easily under her one sail, with something appallingly careless in the joyous freedom of her motion.Another half-hour went by.I could not stand it any longer.

"They will get the poor barky," I stammered out suddenly, almost on the verge of tears.

Dominic stirred no more than a carving.A sense of catastrophic loneliness overcame my inexperienced soul.The vision of my companions passed before me.The whole Royalist gang was in Monte Carlo now, I reckoned.And they appeared to me clear-cut and very small, with affected voices and stiff gestures, like a procession of rigid marionettes upon a toy stage.I gave a start.What was this? A mysterious, remorseless whisper came from within the motionless black hood at my side.

"IL FAUL LA TUER."

I heard it very well.

"What do you say, Dominic?" I asked, moving nothing but my lips.

And the whisper within the hood repeated mysteriously, "She must be killed."My heart began to beat violently.

"That's it," I faltered out."But how?"

"You love her well?"

"I do."

"Then you must find the heart for that work too.You must steer her yourself, and I shall see to it that she dies quickly, without leaving as much as a chip behind.""Can you?" I murmured, fascinated by the black hood turned immovably over the stern, as if in unlawful communion with that old sea of magicians, slave-dealers, exiles and warriors, the sea of legends and terrors, where the mariners of remote antiquity used to hear the restless shade of an old wanderer weep aloud in the dark.

"I know a rock," whispered the initiated voice within the hood secretly."But - caution! It must be done before our men perceive what we are about.Whom can we trust now? A knife drawn across the fore halyards would bring the foresail down, and put an end to our liberty in twenty minutes.And the best of our men may be afraid of drowning.There is our little boat, but in an affair like this no one can be sure of being saved."The voice ceased.We had started from Barcelona with our dinghy in tow; afterwards it was too risky to try to get her in, so we let her take her chance of the seas at the end of a comfortable scope of rope.Many times she had seemed to us completely overwhelmed, but soon we would see her bob up again on a wave, apparently as buoyant and whole as ever.

"I understand," I said softly."Very well, Dominic.When?""Not yet.We must get a little more in first," answered the voice from the hood in a ghostly murmur.