CHAPTER XIX
The Sunset Tide
FOR a time after Barcus had tramped off she lingered upon the sands, in the mouth of the shelter he had selected, staring hungrily out over the shimmering sea. Slowly the sea darkened with the slow decline of the sun, by whose altitude above the horizon the day had now not ninety minutes more to run. She thought drowsily that if that sun sank without her learning that her lover lived, it would not rise again upon a world tenanted by Rose Trine.
It was not true, she told herself, that people never die of broken hearts. … Then sleep overwhelmed her suddenly, like a great, dark cloud. But its dominion over her was not of long duration. She came to her senses to find Barcus gently shaking her by the shoulder, and sat up with a cry of mystified compassion; for in the brief time that he had been absent—it had not been more than an hour—most unquestionably Mr. Barcus had been severely used.
He had acquired a long but shallow cut over one eye, together with a bruised and swollen cheek; and what simple articles of clothing remained to him, after his strenuous experiences of the last forty-eight hours, had been reduced to even more primitive simplicity: his shirt, for example, now lacked one entire sleeve.
"No," he told her, "don't waste time pitying me. I'm all right—and so is Alan! That's the main thing for you to understand; he's still alive and sound"
"Where is he? Take me to him!" she demanded.
"That's the rub," Barcus confessed, knuckling his hair. "I dassent take you to him. Judith might not like it. Besides, it isn't safe to mingle with the inhabitants of this tight little island, and you can't get to Alan without mingling considerably. Sit down; I'll tell you all about it, and we'll try to figure some way out. Maybe we can frame up a rescue under cover of night."
And when the girl settled herself beside him, he launched into a detailed report.
"It's Katam Island," he announced, "but the place has changed since I visited it some years ago. Then it was a decent community; now, unless all signs fail, it's a den of smugglers. I noticed a number of Chinese about; and when I ventured to introduce myself to the village gin-mill and ask a few innocent questions, the entire population landed on me like a thousand of brick. I suspect we've stumbled on a settlement of earnest workers at the gentle art of helping poor Chinamen evade the exclusion laws."
With a wry smile, he continued: "I came to just in time to witness the landing of your amiable sister, her gang, and Alan, in company with as choice a crew of scoundrels as you'd care to see. I gathered from a few words that leaked out of the back door of the barroom that Judith had stolen a boat from the ship that picked her up, and then piled it up on Norton's Reef; and shortly after she had gathered Alan in, the schooner of these smugglers happened along, and she hailed it and struck a bargain with them. Anyway, her lot and the islanders were soon as thick as thieves, and tanking up so sociably that I got a chance to whisper a word to Alan and tell him you were all right, and that he'd find us both down here on the beach, if he escaped. He's locked up now in a little stone hut on the edge of the cliff, with the door guarded and the window overlooking a sheer drop of thirty feet or so to the beach. When I'd seen that much, I calculated it was about time for me to go before Mam'selle Judith nicked me with the evil eye."
"You don't think she saw you?" the girl cried.
"I don't think so," Barcus allowed gravely; and then, lifting his gaze, he added as he rose in a bound, "I just know she did—that's all!"
In another instant he was battling with three ruffians who had come suddenly round a shoulder of rock. Weak with suffering and fatigue, he was overborne in a twinkling, and his hands were made fast behind his back. Rose's resistance was as futile as his own; she, too, was captive, and her hands were bound like his.
Suddenly the sound of a strange laugh chilled the blood in Barcus, and he swung sharply to confront Judith Trine.
He was by no means poor-spirited, but he shrank from the look she gave him, and was relieved when with a sneer she passed him by and planted herself before her sister.
"Well?" she demanded brusquely. "How many more lessons will you need to make you realize I mean to have my way, and that you'll cross me only to suffer for it?"
Rose's courage won the admiration of Barcus. Far from cringing, she seemed to find fresh heart in her sister's challenge.
"So you've tried again?" she inquired. "You've offered him your love yet another time, have you?"
"Silence!" Judith cried in fury.
"Only to learn once more that he would rather death than you?" Rose persisted, unflinching. "And so you come to take your spite out on me, do you? You pitiful thing!"
Judith controlled herself and her voice marvellously.
"You will see," she said evenly. "I have prepared a way to make you understand what opposition to me means. ..." She waved a hand toward the nearest point of rocks. "Take them along!" she commanded.
Her men without hesitation or further instructions marched Rose and Barcus down to the end of the spit and on into the water.
It was nearly knee-deep before Barcus was halted, forced to sit down, and swiftly made fast in that position, submerged to his chest. This accomplished, the men turned attention to Rose, lashing her in similar wise at Barcus's side.
Then quietly those well-trained servants turned their backs and marched off.
Judith, watching them, laughed her short, mirthless laugh.
"The tide will be high," she said, "precisely at sunset. You may time your lives by that. When the sun dips into the sea, then will your lives go down with it."
She turned on her heel and strode swiftly away.
For some time Barcus struggled vainly. As for Rose, she wasted no strength in struggling.
He noted that already the water had risen more than an inch.
Humbled even in his terror by that radiant calm that dwelt upon his companion, he ventured diffidently: "Rose—Miss Trine—I'm sorry," he said, which was not at all what he had meant to say. "I've done my best. I suppose it's wrong to give up, but they've made it too much for me this time."
"I know," she said gently.
The sun was close upon the rim of the world. He closed his eyes to shut out the vision of its slow, implacable descent.
The water was now almost level with his lips.
"It's a good-bye now," he faltered.
"Not yet!" her voice rang beside him, vibrant. "Look—up there—along the cliff!"
Two men were running along the cliff, and the man in the lead was Alan.
Then, even as Barcus gazed, the skyline of the cliff was empty; one or the other had tripped and fallen over the brink, and falling had grasped his enemy and carried him down as well.
By no chance, Barcus told himself, could either escape uninjured.
Yet, to his amazement, he saw one break from the other's embrace and rise. He who lay still was Judith's man.
With a violent effort Barcus lifted his mouth above water and shrieked:
"Alan! Alan! Help! Here—at the end of the point—in the water—help!"
A precious minute was lost before Alan discovered their two heads. Then he ran toward them as he had never run before, and as he came whipped out a jackknife and freed its blade.
Even so—since it was, of course, Rose who was first freed—Barcus was half-drowned before Alan helped him in turn up to the beach.
And as this happened the last blood-red rim of the sun was washed under by the waves.
Two minutes later the lifeboat was afloat, and Mr. Barcus, already recovered, was labouring with the flywheel of the motor, stimulated by the sight of a party, led by Judith, racing down the beach.
But it was not until well out from shore that any one of them found time for speech. Then Mr. Barcus straightened up from his assiduous attentions to the motor, and inquired:
"Would you mind, Mr. Law, telling how you got out of that hut?"
"Jumped," Alan responded tersely, "from the window. There was no other way."
"You bear a charmed life," was the only comment. "If ever I get out of this affair I'm going to have a try at your life, myself, just once, for luck!"