第 24 页

“Good!” said I. “We’ll do it. But we ought to let the others know our intentions, otherwise they may get uneasy and, coming out to look for us, run foul of the exploring party which those fellows are pretty sure to send up in this direction. I wish now that we had that look-out fellow with us who brought the news; he would have been very handy to carry messages for us.”

“He would,” agreed Oldroyd. “But what about the other chap? He will be up there still, won’t he? Take a squint through your telescope and see if you can spot him.”

I did so, and soon made him out, apparently watching us intently.

“Yes,” I said; “there he is, and he seems to be keeping an eye upon us.”

“Good man!” remarked Oldroyd. “Then, let us get behind that clump of bushes, where we cannot be seen from the ship, and I’ll signal to the fellow to come down while you watch him through your glass to see whether he observes my signals.”

We did so, Oldroyd waving his pocket-handkerchief vigorously with a beckoning motion while I watched the man through my telescope. He seemed to catch the signal almost immediately, and after a pause of about a minute, as though considering what it might mean, he threw up both hands, by way of an answering signal and set off at a run down the slope of the mountain.

“That will do with the handkerchief,” I said. “He has seen it, and is coming.”

“Right-o!” remarked Oldroyd. “He’ll be here in about a quarter of an hour. Now, Massey, I guess the proper thing to do will be for you to write a note to Mason, telling him what we propose to do, and giving him instructions how to act in certain eventualities. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” I said. “But the trouble is that I have neither pencil nor paper. Have you?”

“You bet,” returned Oldroyd, groping in his pocket. “Here are both, a memorandum book and a pencil, found by me one day in a drawer of the skipper’s stateroom. I was investigating on the off-chance of finding something likely to be useful, and I happened upon these and pocketed both. Now, fire away with your screed to Mason. Better tell him, among other things, that we may be absent all night. And let him send us along a few sandwiches and a bottle of wine.”

I wrote a fairly long letter to Mason, giving him what small measure of information we had so far been able to acquire, telling him what our immediate plans were, and instructing him how to act under every contingency I could think of; adding also Oldroyd’s message touching refreshments. By the time that I had finished, the native was standing by my side.

We gave him his instructions, dismissed him, and then turned in earnest to the business in hand. By the time that we got back to our post of observation the boat which the Germans had lowered was so near the passage through the reef that we could only see her at intervals through the spray of the surf; but as we continued to watch we saw her shoot through the passage into smooth water, when, somewhat to our amusement, we noted that she also was flying the German naval ensign, trailing from a staff erected at her stern. But, as Oldroyd remarked, the Germans love ceremony, and never miss a chance to indulge in it.

“In the present case,” said he, “it is doubtless done duly to impress the inhabitants of the island—should there be any.”

Watching the boat for a few minutes after she had entered the lagoon, I saw that she was now paddling slowly toward the beach, and that those in her were taking soundings, which seemed to suggest that perhaps the German skipper might be contemplating the possibility of bringing his ship into the lagoon. Well, so much the better for us! it was precisely what I could have wished.

But it was high time for us to be moving, if we desired to be on hand when the boat should reach the beach, so we set off, cutting across the spurs of the volcano until we reached the stream, the almost dry bed of which we were wont to use as a pathway when going to and fro between the ruins and the big lagoon, and which we now followed on our way to the beach.

It will perhaps be remembered that at the spot of which I am now speaking the woods came down the hill side to within a very few yards of the beach, leaving only a narrow strip of grass between the two; by following the bed of the stream, therefore—which led us down to the site of our original camp—we could keep under cover until within a few yards of the water’s edge, and thus avoid being seen from the lagoon. Arrived at this spot, we once more got a glimpse of the boat, which had by this time reached the beach at a point some two miles from our lurking place. She had landed two men, armed with rifle and bayonet, who were walking slowly in our direction, while the boat kept them company at scarcely more than oars-length from the beach. One of the men was tramping through the dry, heavy sand: he seemed to be scrutinising the sand in search of footprints, while his companion, several yards distant from him, was wading through the long grass, evidently keeping a wary eye on the woods at no great distance on his right. Also I now saw that the boat carried what I took to be a machine-gun mounted in her bows, with a man crouching behind it, apparently ready to open fire at a moment’s notice. The spot where they had first touched the shore was plainly indicated by the German flag, which, staff and all, had been removed from the boat’s stern and firmly planted on the grassy slope, a few yards inshore from the beach. So we were now standing on German soil; a few more square miles of territory had been added to the German empire!

Slowly the boat approached us, the two men ashore performing their allotted tasks, while the officer in charge stood up in the stern-sheets, peering keenly about him, now seaward at the ship, and anon at the tree-clad slopes on his right sweeping upward to the naked crater with its trailing column of brown smoke. Evidently, like ourselves, upon our arrival at the island, they were seeking for signs of possible inhabitants.

At length the strangers reached the point at which the rivulet, near which we were lurking, flowed into the lagoon, and here they again unconsciously imitated us by beaching the boat while all hands but one of them landed, as we had anticipated they would. The officer in charge of the boat spoke a few sharp words to his men, which we were not near enough to hear distinctly, but which, from his gestures, we judged to be orders, and then, ascending the stream for a few yards, he tested the water by tasting it. It was deliciously cool and sweet, as we well knew, and an eloquent gesture assured us of his satisfaction at the discovery. Facing round toward the boat’s crew who, with the exception of the man behind the machine-gun in the bows of the boat, were all ashore, he shouted an order to them—which Oldroyd immediately translated to me—to get the two casks out of the boat, roll them up to the stream, fill them and return them to the boat; adding that he and “Karl” were going a short distance inland to explore, but that the others were on no account to leave the beach. He then called to “Karl”—who proved to be a petty officer—to accompany him, and, both of them fully armed, the pair started to climb the grassy slope which led upward to the wood.

“That craft in the offing is short of water, which is one reason—if not the reason—for her calling here,” I remarked to Oldroyd.

“Ah!” he returned, “how do you know that?”

“Easily enough,” said I. “The fact that they have brought a couple of casks ashore to be filled, shows that they are down to pretty nearly their last drop. Now, having found that there is good drinking water to be had here, the skipper will bring his ship into the lagoon to fill up his tanks; and I intend that when she goes out again it shall be under my command, with the rest of the party occupying her best cabins, of course.”

“Good for you, old son!” commented my companion, in a cautious whisper. “But how are you going to manage it? There are eleven men with that boat, and probably fifty or sixty more in the ship. Those are long odds, you know; but of course you may count upon Mason and me to back you up in any practicable scheme.”

“Yes, I know,” said I. “Of course I recognise that the odds against us are tremendously heavy, and those fellows are evidently much too cautious to be easily caught unawares; but I’ll find a way to do it, somehow, though it will take a bit of thinking out. Now, let us follow those two, and see how far they go. I don’t want them to get as far as the ruins, if it can be helped, because, if they do, they can scarcely avoid detecting the signs of occupation which we have left behind us.”

“True for you, Jack,” returned Oldroyd. “But I don’t think you need fear. Those ruins are a good four miles away, and most of the distance up-hill. Neither of those chaps is in condition to walk that distance in such heat as this.”

Moving with caution, following the Germans closely, but keeping a few yards to the right of them, and interposing the trunk of a tree between ourselves and them whenever it could be done, we continued to keep within earshot of them without betraying ourselves; and this was the more easily managed since the men we were stalking moved and talked noisily, making no effort to conceal their presence. We soon learned that, again like ourselves, they had jumped to the conclusion that the island was uninhabited and that there was therefore no need for special caution; and this conviction we determined to confirm, so far as might be in our power. We also learned that the name of the ship in the offing was the Seeadler; that her commander was named Traub; that the lieutenant ahead of us was named Kautsky; and that his companion rejoiced in the not inappropriate name of Wolff. Something was also said about certain prisoners on board, but precisely what it was Oldroyd could not catch, as we were at that moment passing a spot where the trees were rather farther apart than usual and we could not get near enough to the pair to hear all that was said. The conversation was desultory and fragmentary, and we did not get it all, but we heard enough to satisfy us that my conjecture as to her character was correct; she was indeed a commerce-destroyer which had slipped out of some unnamed German port, several months before, and succeeding somehow in evading the British Fleet, had made good her escape to the Atlantic, where—and subsequently in the Pacific—she seemed to have met with considerable success, plundering and sinking many ships without—as we gathered—giving very much consideration to the matter of their nationality. In plain language the Seeadler was neither more nor less than a pirate, perpetrating her atrocities under the shelter of the German naval flag. These particulars we gathered in the course of a two-mile walk toward the crater and back again to the beach, during which the Germans conversed scrappily when not gorging themselves with fruit, while we watched and trailed them in the most approved manner of the Boy Scout. We followed down to the beach, watched them shove off and head for the passage through the reef, and then betook ourselves to our former watching place, on the look-out for further developments. The wind being free enough to permit it, the boat set a big lugsail on her passage back to the ship, accomplishing the trip in less than an hour. We saw her run alongside, saw the barrels of water hoisted out of her, saw her hoisted to the davits, and then, as I fully expected, the Seeadler got under way, swept round with her bows pointing toward the passage through the reef, entered the lagoon, and came to an anchor as nearly as possible in the centre of it at the moment when the sun touched the western horizon. Some minutes later it was night, and the stars were shining.

“Well,” said I, as I closed my telescope with a snap, “there she is, safe enough—for to-night, at all events. And now we may get back to the Basin. I dare say our friends there will be curious to hear what we have to tell.”

“You bet they will,” agreed Oldroyd. He spoke as one thinking profoundly. I allowed him to think on, waiting patiently for his thoughts to translate themselves into speech, which they did, a few minutes later; but there was nothing at all helpful in his utterance. It took the form of a simple question.

“Well, Jack,” he at length said, “what do you think about it? Have you formed a plan, yet, for the capture of that ship?”

“I have two under consideration,” said I, “but I cannot make up my mind which to adopt. They are different. If I could only know how long a stay those fellows intend to make I could see my way a good deal more clearly.”

“No doubt,” agreed my companion. “But of course you can’t know that, can you?”

“No, I can’t,” said I. “One can only surmise. And the fact that they have annexed this island—which I take to be the meaning of that flag planted down there by the lagoon—leads me to fancy they will not leave before they have made at least a rough survey of the place, which will occupy two or three days. If they do this, their survey party will probably consist of two or three officers—of whom the skipper will doubtless be one—and perhaps half-a-dozen men. Now, I can see no objection to their exploring the southern end of the island as exhaustively as they please; but they must not be permitted to pass to the northward of the crater, because if they do they will almost certainly discover that the island is inhabited; and such a discovery will put them on their guard and make our task all the more difficult.”

“Sure!” agreed Oldroyd. “But how do you propose to prevent that happening?”

“By calling in the assistance of Kilau Minga and his people,” said I. “We must have a strong body of natives up here, whose business it will be to capture the survey party at the first favourable moment after they pass to the northward of the crater, if they get so far. The Germans will doubtless be armed to the teeth, and there may possibly be a fight, but I think that may be avoided by the adoption of precautions.”

“But,” objected Oldroyd, “how is the capture of the survey party going to help us? You estimate that it will consist of less than a dozen men, the capture of whom will not weaken the Germans to a material extent, while it will certainly put the remainder on their guard.”

“True,” I agreed; “and that is one of the weak points of the plan. But, to counterbalance that, we shall have the skipper in our power; and the capture of him and one or two of the other officers will cause search parties to be sent out to see what has become of them; and those search parties must also be captured. They, too, will be led by officers; and I am reckoning that their capture, together with that of the skipper and such officers as he may have with him, will so denude the ship of her executive that she will be unable to put to sea again. Also, I am reckoning that the loss of these two parties will cause a third party—a very strong one—to be landed; and their capture will so weaken the crew that it will be comparatively easy to carry the ship by a coup de main.”