CHAPTER XXI
Crack o' Doom
MR. LAW'S capacity for surprise was exhausted. He viewed the schooner with no more display of emotion than resided in narrowing eyelids and tightening muscles about his mouth.
"Much farther to go?" he inquired presently.
"At our present pace—say two hours."
"And can we hold our own?"
"Just about," Barcus allowed.
"Anything to be done?"
"Nothing but pray, if you remember how."
Later, however, after another glance astern, Barcus revised this opinion. "Take the wheel and let me have a squint at that engine. She ought to have more power than she's developing just now. … No good," he soon reported briefly, taking the wheel again; "she'll go just so fast and no faster."
As the next hour wore itself out, it was seen that the pursuer was gaining. Inch by inch she crept up in the wake of her prey; and they counted surely on being overhauled by the time they could effect a landing, if not before.
In the end, however, they made it by the narrowest margin. The features of Judith Trine, watching them from the schooner's side, were distinctly revealed in the chill gray light of the early dawn as they aimed for the first fair landing on the main waterfront of the city.
Long since Alan had wakened Rose and brought her on deck. With matchless seamanship, Barcus laid the smaller boat smoothly alongside the wharf. By the time they had climbed to the street level the schooner was scraping the piles at the end of the dock.
Alan swept the neighbouring street with a hungry glance. There was neither policeman, nor watchman, nor motor-car in sight. If they ran for it, they must surely be overtaken. Something must be done to hinder the crew of the schooner from landing.
"Here!" he cried sharply to Barcus. "You take Rose, hurry to the street, and find that motor-car. I know she's there; Digby never failed me yet!"
"But you?"
"Don't waste time. I'll be with you in three shakes. I've got a scheme!"
Urged frantically, the reluctant pair made off at a round pace. Then bare-handed and alone, he turned back to oppose his strength and courage and wits against a dozen.
As for his scheme, Alan Law had none other than to give battle, and sacrifice himself, if need be. His eye lighted on a four-foot length of stout three-inch oak scantling—an excellently formidable club.
Snatching this up, he pelted down the wharf, arriving at the end barely in time to oppose the first man who landed from the schooner. This one the club took on the side of the head; he fell without a murmur. The one who followed took a cracked crown back to the schooner's deck. The third brought a capstan-bar and proved more difficult to deal with. Others were swarming to his aid when a swing of the bar knocked Alan's club from his grasp. But his opponent was luckless; before he could recover from the sweep of his blow, Alan had landed on his chin a fist that had all his heart and soul behind it. A flourishing pair of heels and a ringing thump on the schooner's deck finished that episode.
But now, disarmed, Alan's case was desperate. He was being surrounded.
Wildly casting about for some weapon, he leaped toward a pyramid of little but heavy kegs, and seizing one, swung it overhead and cast it full force into the midriff of his nearest enemy; so that this one doubled up convulsively, with a sickish grunt, and vanished in turn over the end of the wharf. His fellow followed with less injury, in his effort to escape a second hurtling keg, which, meeting with no resistance, pursued him even to the deck, where the force of its impact split its seams.
None of the combatants noticed that the powder that filtered out was black and coarse. Alan, indeed, had only the haziest notion that gunpowder kegs were his ammunition. He had discharged the last of a dozen more when he became aware that Judith had climbed up the rigging and, lightly poised, was drawing a revolver preparatory to coming ashore.
In the same breath he heard a friendly shout of warning far up the dock, and knew that Barcus was coming to his aid.
Judith's revolver fell level with his head, and he thought that his last minute had dawned. He made a forlorn attempt to dash in under the weapon and grapple with her, but it was not that which caused the weapon, even as the woman pulled the trigger, to lift from its deadly aim and explode harmlessly in the air. Alan closed with her, wrested the pistol from her grasp, and mechanically tossed it aside. It went over the end of the wharf and fell on the deck of the schooner.
It was an old-fashioned weapon, and the force with which it struck the deck released the hammer. Instantly a .44 cartridge blazed into the open head of a broken powder keg.
With a roar like the Trump of Doom a mighty gust of flame and smoke broke forth, and the decks of the schooner were riven and shattered; her masts tottered and fell. …