CHAPTER XXVII
THE FLIGHT
They crept across the deck, hand in hand, to where the shadowy outlines of one of the life-boats blocked their path. They slipped in under the bow of this life-boat, groping their way to the davit, where the ship's rail ended. Before them was a drop of six feet, from the ship's deck to the string-piece of the pier, against which the rusty side-plates were creaking and groaning.
McKinnon made a sudden motion for the girl to wait, for dark figures were moving about on the pier below. She could make out the gloomy mass of the weigh-scales shed, its oxid-red paint leaving it black by night. She could see that the west door of the shed was open, and that a figure stood just inside this door, holding a lantern. She knew it was the officer, for she could see the light glimmer on the sword-scabbard that moved back and forth with every movement of his body. She could see, too, that he was contentedly smoking a cigarette. She could even smell the tobacco smoke, mingled with the heavy odour of a decaying shipment of bananas that rotted farther out along the pier-edge.
She could hear low voices, now and then, speaking cautiously in Spanish, as two bare-footed soldiers padded past the swinging lantern, in through the door. They carried a heavy box that reminded her of a baby's coffin; and as they came out again two others passed them on their way in.
Then she felt McKinnon touch her arm, warningly, and heard his quick whisper for her to be ready. She could also hear the slow tread of the sentry's feet behind her, to the north of the shielding life-boat.
"Now's our chance," McKinnon was saying in her ear. He dropped silently over the deck-edge. She could just make out the white patch of his face as he stood there waiting to lift her down.
She knew no emotion, beyond a vague and persistent anxiety, as she felt his arms clasp her surrendering body. The moment's intimate contact brought her neither joy nor repugnance. She only knew that McKinnon was leading her by the hand to the far end of the shed that faced the west. Then he took away his hand, and drew a revolver from his pocket. It struck her that the odour from the rotting banana-pile was becoming almost unendurable.
She followed him blindly, her outstretched fingers keeping in touch with his coat-sleeve. She saw him step in over the railway-tracks that were bridged by the shed. A broken right angle of light, from the lantern within, outlined the huge, loosely fitting door that covered the west end of the black-boarded building. In this huge door a smaller one had at some time been cut; it was through this smaller door that McKinnon led her, cautiously, noiselessly.
The track-motor stood backed almost against the eastern end of the shed, next to the door through which the barefooted soldiers were carrying the heavy boxes. The officer with the lantern still kept his position, just inside this door, placidly smoking his cigarette.
The girl and McKinnon had to stoop low to keep in the shadow of the square-topped, heavy-bodied motor—car. They crouched in under its acetylenes, close to the rust—covered, many-dented circulating coil, as a cartridge-box was lifted into the body of the car by the two bare-footed carriers, with a muffled thump as the weight was released, and then the grating of wood against wood as the box was pushed and twisted and jerked into position. They could hear the sigh of one of the men, the pad of bare feet, and the nonchalant "Forty-three, forty-four" of the counting officer.
It was then that McKinnon lifted her bodily into the driving-seat, whispering to her to sit low, even catching at her outstretched hand and conveying it to the starting-lever.
"Start as the door opens," she heard whisper, and she knew that he had crept forward again, and that she was alone in the car. She tried to school herself to calmness, to coerce her attention on which was the starting-lever and which the speed-lever, to force into life the hope that all might still turn out well. Once free of that door, she felt, she could breathe again.
She waited, straining through the dim light, wondering what kept McKinnon so long.
Then the quietness was broken by the sudden sound of metal rasping on metal, of a falling piece of wood that echoed cavernously through the high-roofed shed.
"Who is there?" cried the startled officer, in Spanish, as he swung about with his lantern. He whipped out a revolver from his belt as he repeated the challenge. The door had not opened; they were shut in, trapped.
The oflicer sprang forward, holding the lantern out at his side as he ran. The girl's heart stopped beating: it was over—it was the end of everything!
Then a sudden roar of sound filled the shed, followed by the crash of glass. It was a shot from McKinnon's revolver, a deliberate and well-put shot that shattered the lantern and left the place in darkness.
"Quick—come ahead!" called McKinnon, out of the darkness. As he spoke the officer emptied his revolver toward the sound of the intruder’s voice. The shots, in rapid succession, filled the shed with tumult, left the air stifling with powder smoke. Quick calls and counter-calls came from the ship. The four barefooted soldiers, springing for their carbines, charged in through the narrow east door. They fired as they came, but only into utter darkness.
"Come ahead!" called McKinnon still again out of that darkness—she could not tell where. "Sit low, and take the door on the run!"
She hesitated, bewildered, for the command seemed a foolish one. The carbines were spitting close about her. She heard the cries of alarm, the deafening detonations, the crash of wood.
"For God's sake, come ahead!" implored McKinnon. She knew he was still safe. She no longer hesitated. She threw the starting-lever back, threw the speed out full, and crouched low in the bottom of the car front. She knew that somebody was clubbing at the seat above her with a musket-end. She could hear the guns of the Laminian's sentries giving the alarm. Then she closed her eyes, and crouched lower, for she knew the car was under way.
It had some fifteen or sixteen feet of headway before it struck the huge pine door that barred the tracks. There was a sudden rending and splintering of pine, a crunching of wood, and the car had gone through the door like a hound through a paper hoop.
McKinnon swung up beside her as the door went down. He was astride her body almost, fighting and panting, for a swarthy-faced Locombian was on the car-step, making frenzied thrusts at her with his carbine-end. Another was on the cartridge-boxes, and he shot once, scorching the operator's face with his powder-flash as it passed him. He had no time for a second shot, for McKinnon's hand went up and his revolver barked. The carbine fell forward into the seat between them. The Locombian himself rolled sideways, to the left, with a howl of pain. He staggered to his feet, swayed there a second, and then toppled backward over the boxes, and fell from the car.
Another man took his place as he fell. McKinnon sprang for him, catching and jerking upward the barrel of his carbine as he fired, tearing a hole through the car-roof.
Then the two men closed, and as they fought and tore at each other in the swerving and pounding car, the sentries from the ship's bow kept firing along the dark track.
Then a third man, the officer who had held the lantern, swung from the now racing car's hand-rail forward, until he reached the driving-seat. He had taken out his sword—the girl could see the white steel glimmer in the dim light. The thought flashed through her, as she saw it, that swords were foolish and obsolete weapons. She had always looked on them as mere ornaments of dress, as useless as an epaulette. But now she knew that she had been mistaken, for she could see the agile little officer whipping and slashing with his naked blade as he climbed and worked his way up to the box-pile, and the nearness of that glimmering steel intimidated her even more than a carbine-flash could.
It must have been several seconds before she realised that the slashing sword-end was meant for her, that the frenzied little figure was beating and prodding through the darkness in an effort to reach her own shrinking body. McKinnon's revolver lay in the bottom of the car; the girl could feel it with her shaking hands. There was only one thing to do.
She quickly raised it, closed her eyes, and fired. The shot went wide, for she had aimed it low, at his knees. But it served to fix her position in the mind of her assailant; and again she saw the naked steel flash and shimmer in the darkness. She fired again, before it had time to reach her.
She knew the bullet had broken his arm, even before his grasp on the hand-rail relaxed. She saw him sway back, helplessly, and then topple and fall outward, against the stringpiece of the pier. She stood up, and looked back for her companion. She could just make out the two men still struggling back and forth, doggedly, determinedly. Then she heard a short scream of agony, for one of the strugglers had caught a forefinger of the other and levered it resolutely back, until it snapped and broke at the third joint. Then, even before that cry of pain died away, she saw one man raise the other up, bodily, and bring him down with all his remaining strength on the close-packed cartridge-boxes. The blow seemed to stun him; before his senses came back to him his panting adversary had taken advantage of that helplessness, and was rolling and pushing him out from the back of the racing car.
He remained so long there at the rear of the car, gasping and fighting for breath again, that the waiting girl was in doubt as to who had been the victor. Then he called to her, and she understood.
She lowered the revolver, slowly, as he clambered weakly back over the boxes, and dropped in the seat beside her.
"Are you hurt?" he gasped.
"No!" she said. But the sound was more like a sob. The siren of the Laminian was now screaming and bellowing out through the velvety black quietness of the midnight waterfront. The sentries on the ship were still shooting after them, foolishly, and adding to the intermittent uproar. But the car, by this time, had covered more than half of the mile-long pier. A land-breeze, balmy and many-odoured, blew in their faces. On either side of them, through the darkness, pulsed the ghostly white lacework of the beach-surf.
"Thank God, we're free!" said McKinnon devoutly.