The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

the early afternoon of the eighth day, after the noon reckoning had shown them close to landfall, they sighted the distant peak. Off the starboard bow was a cone of deep blue, a thimble-shaped stain against a clear sky; to port, a crooked crag rising from a wide-spreading base.

      “Clearer than when I was here,” said Jim after the first tumult of discovery had died down. “No storm brewing. Fair weather ahead. A good omen, Miss Whiting.”

      “Do you think so, Jim?” In the moment of excitement formality dropped.

      Perhaps the girl spoke as she had secretly thought of him. A wild hope leaped in him, and he thrilled to the touch of her eager hand on his arm, confiding, more than merely friendly. He saw the quick frown gather on Newton’s handsome features, the glance of understanding and endorsement from Lynda.

      By sunset they were close up, the men gathered at the rail, discussing the landing. The hump of highland to starboard had changed color, faded, diminished, dissolved as they headed for the island of the crag. About the latter evening mists had gathered, and the one talon-like peak, high above the forest of emerald where the shadows lay in deepest blue and violet, showed more than ever like a finder, blood red in the sunset. Along the line of the barrier reef the surf pounded and was tossed high, gold powdered, shot with rainbow glints, thundering ceaselessly in its perpetual cannonade. Jim himself mounted to the main spreaders to seek for the opening, masked by the spray. He gazed across the coral barrier to the quiet lagoon, recognizing at last the creek where the mate of the ill-fated Whitewing had gone for water, the spot where he and his own boat crew had landed, and the mass of jungle where the Golden Dolphin lay with a fortune hidden in her hold.

      He searched low level, beach and bush and grassy uplands, from deep forest where the plumes of cocoa palms thrust through the mass of tangled foliage and broomed in the gentle wind, up to bare slopes, down to the beach again—looking for some thread of smoke, some flutter of signal, some sign of habitation, and found none. So far as humanity was concerned it might have been an island of the dead. Here and there birds rose and wheeled, settling for the night; the pungent scent of tropic flowers and fragrant herb and bush came to him at the masthead; he could see fish rising in the lagoon, a school flushed from the water by dolphins, a turtle floating, a giant ray hurling itself from the surface—but no sign of man, no eager figure hauling up a makeshift flag or bursting through to the beach to stretch out his arms toward the rescuing schooner. Solitude was all that met his eye.

      He stayed aloft as they cruised along toward the opening under power, calling out directions from his perch to Baker at the wheel, as they threaded their way through the jags of the channel while the rapid dusk settled fast about them. The sun was down, the colors of the island had faded, the tip of the finger-like crag tipped with pink, for a fleeting instant. Then it was night, purple night, water and air and sky and the bulk of the island against the stars. The chain went rattling down to fifteen fathoms, the links stirring up a streak of phosphorescence as they shot down; the schooner swung gently to the last of the flood, a light shining in Cheng’s galley, another in the cabin. The native sailors were chanting in the bows, there was a chatter among the men. The clock in the cabin chimed eight bells and the mate gave instructions to “make it so” on the schooner’s bell. The coupled chimes rang out and Kitty Whiting came on deck to Jim.

      “You have brought us here,” she said. “But, Jim, somehow I am afraid. It all looks so lonely. Surely he would have seen us by this time, I am still sure he is alive. I feel it here”—she pressed a hand over her heart. It looked like a tired bird, Jim thought, and he battled with an impulse to take it in his own for comfort and assurance. “But—I don’t know. That island broods with mystery. It frightens me—a little.” She took her hand away from her bosom and put it out in a little appealing gesture Jim could not resist. He grasped it and laid it on his arm, his palm over it.

      “It’ll look far more cheerful by daylight,” he said. “As for your fear, that’s just natural reaction at having arrived. We’ll search every square yard of it, and there’s the other island we sighted.”

      “Yes, I know. I had nerved myself not to meet him, but—somehow—I pictured him waiting on the beach.”

      Jim ached all over with the restraint he put upon himself not to take her in his arms and comfort her. She seemed so small, so helpless, so appealing to his manhood. He was almost grateful when Newton came up with Lynda and Kitty drew away.

      There were no sleepers an hour before daylight aboard the Seamew. The smell of coffee came from the galley where Cheng stood in his doorway gazing at the shore at intervals between cooking. His monkey perched on his shoulder. They were to start ashore immediately after breakfast. Cheng, Wiltz and Hamsun were to remain aboard, the rest of the outfit to go with the landing party in two boats, one covering the other, all armed. For all its silence Jim knew that the bush might hide scores of naked savages, might at any moment vomit a bloodthirsty, cannibalistic, howling horde of them. He was taking no chances. He had trade goods with which to secure peace or truce if there was any chance of it, bullets if there was not.

      The night held its secrets. In the east the sky grayed, appeared to shake like a curtain, and with the shaking, the spangled stars suddenly lost luster. High up a cloud caught fire, flamed like a burning rag. Another took form and color lower down. Radiance showed beyond the rim of the sea. The fingertip of peak glowed golden, orange, and rosy coral. Light and color swept down the crags, the forest, the grassy uplands and the bush, like the passage of a magic brush restoring life.

      Parrots screamed to welcome the sun, doves cooed; a little wind blew off the land, ruffling the lagoon where fish flashed; gulls started out to sea, wheeling uncertain, to gaze at the thing that had appeared within the reef overnight, proclaiming their displeasure with raucous cries. Day had come with a leap, bringing warmth and cheer, the renewal of vitality and hope.

      “Bleakfast all leady!” piped out Cheng from the galley.

      Wiltz served them a rapid meal. They took their rifles, the women armed with holstered automatics. Both had donned knickers and shirts of light flannel. Jim discovered to his surprise that Lynda Warner had another treasure beside her voice; her figure was almost as youthful, almost as gracious in the revelation of the boyish costume, as Kitty’s. The men had had their meal; guns and cartridges were served out, instructions given. Baker was to take charge of the covering boat, Jim steered the first. With him went Kitty and Lynda; he assigned Newton to Baker’s outfit, much to the latter’s protest, overruled by the statement that two passengers were enough.

      Kitty, Lynda, Jim, Moore, Sanders, Neilson, Walker and two kanakas.

      Baker, Newton Foster, Vogt and the four remaining Fijians.

      On board Cheng, Wiltz, Hamsun and Wood.

      The boat-keels struck the water; the falls were released, oars put out. Cheng stuck his yellow face over the rail, the monkey squatting on his head like the familiar spirit of an Oriental wizard.

      “Goo’-by an’ goo’ luck,” he called. Wiltz and Wood stood at the forestay, glum but waving farewell. Hamsun was invisible.

      They rowed softly along the quiet lagoon where the ripples were like opals in the dawn. Cautiously the leading boat edged in toward the white beach of powdered coral and shells where sea pinks patterned the sand. The sunrise wind had died. There was not a sound but the splash and drip of the oars. Baker kept distance, two men rowing, the rest ready with their guns. But not a leaf of the thick wall of bush back of the beach waved. No canoe shot out from the mangroves guarding the freshwater creek.

      “Why are there no islanders here?” asked Kitty. “It is a beautiful place and fertile.”

      “They may have all been killed off in an epidemic,” Jim answered. “The place may be tabu after some such disaster. There are islands like this that seem never to have been inhabited for many centuries. Out of the currents, you see. The big migration never reached them.”

      “An Eden of the Seas,” suggested Lynda.

      “Minus snakes,” said Jim. “Mighty few snakes in the South Seas proper.”

      The keel grated