His Unknown Wife by Louis Tracy (little readers .TXT) 📕
Maseden was so astonished at discovering the identity of the lawyer that he momentarily lost interest in the mysterious woman who would soon be his wife.
"Señor Porilla!" he cried. "I am glad you are here. Do you understand--"
"It is forbidden!" hissed Steinbaum. "One more word, and back you go to your cell!"
"Oh, is that part of the compact?" said Maseden cheerfully. "Well, well! We must not make ma
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He had no definite notion as to the type of weapons used by the Indians. Nearly all savages are armed with spears and clubs, but he believed that a people so low in the social scale as these South American nomads would not possess firearms. At any rate, he bade all hands keep a sharp lookout, and specifically ordered Sturgess and the girls to take cover in the event of an attack, unless an actual attempt was made to board the boat, in which case the girls could thrust with the rapiers and Sturgess might do good work with an ax.
They ran on several miles without incident, and were beginning to think that their guide was, perhaps, swayed more by recollection of earlier sufferings than by any active peril of the hour, when Topsy, whose piercing black eyes were ever and anon turned to the bluffs on either hand, uttered a sharp cry and pointed to a low cliff overhanging a bay they had just passed on the left.
Three thin columns of smoke were ascending from its summit.
Maseden could make nothing of her excited speech, but he understood her gestures readily, and took it that the smoke was a signal, while the danger, whatever it may be, lay ahead.
And, indeed, they had not long to wait for an explanation. From around a point not a mile distant, and directly in front, appeared a number of coracles, eight all told, and each containing two men, or a man and a woman. It was clear that this flotilla meant to waylay them, and the terror exhibited by the Indian girl was only too eloquent as to the fate of the boat’s occupants if they allowed themselves to be overpowered.
Maseden disposed his forces promptly. Sturgess was given the tiller. Topsy was put back on her couch in the bottom of the boat, and Nina and Madge were told to crouch by her side until their help was called for. From the outset the Americans did not dream of attempting to parley. Topsy’s unfeigned dread was sufficient to ban any such quixotic notion.
The coracles were strung out in an irregular line, covering a width of about four hundred yards, and, in laying his plans, Maseden recalled the strategy of a certain great admiral.
“Head slap for their center,” he told Sturgess confidently. “That was Nelson’s favorite way of attack. If possible, he always broke the enemy’s line in two, and I suppose it paid him. I think these heavy-caliber bullets will rip a native craft as though it were made of brown paper, and I should be able to sink at least four before the others can close in.”
Sturgess nodded.
“What Nelson says goes,” he grinned.
The battle opened at a range of one hundred yards, and Maseden’s first shot buckled the framework of the nearest coracle, so that it sank like a stone. There was a spurt of steam as the fire which every Indian boat carries reached the water, and two men swam away like otters.
The second shot struck a little too high. It whizzed through the craft’s hide cover and lodged in an Indian’s body, because the man yelled frantically. Maseden fired again, and damaged another coracle.
But by this time he had made the unpleasing discovery that these light skiffs could be propelled very rapidly for a short distance. In each a man or woman was paddling with furious energy, while their companions were using slings. Small, heavy stones rattled against and into the boat.
Sturgess was struck twice on the breast and left shoulder, and was only saved from serious injury by the stout oilskin coat he was wearing. Even so, he went white with pain, but he neither utter a word nor neglected his task, which was to keep the sail filled and the boat traveling.
Maseden had two objects in mind-to beat off their assailants and yet keep sufficient ammunition in stock lest other Indians were encountered later. He sank two more coracles, and had killed or wounded three men, when a flint pebble struck him on the head, finding the exact spot where he was injured during the wreck.
He sank to his knees, and tried to say something. He believed he heard a crash and some shouting. Then the sky and hills and swift running waters whirled in a mad dance before his eyes, and he lost consciousness.
Just as before, when he awoke on board the Southern Cross in surroundings so bewildering that he gave up the effort to localize them, his puzzled eyes now surveyed white-painted panelled walls, a brass-bound port-light, and some tapestry curtains. At any other time he would have realized at once that he was in a ship’s cabin, but now an uncomprehending stare soon yielded to a torpor of pain.
He believed that a gentle hand adjusted a bandage on his head, and was aware of a grateful coldness where before there had been heat and a throbbing ache. Afterwards-he thought it was immediately, though the interval was a full half hour-he looked again at the walls and ceiling with something of real recognition in his glance.
“Glad to see you’re regaining your wits, Mr. Alexander,” said a man’s voice, a strange but very pleasant voice. “Lucky for you you’ve got the right sort of thick head, or, from what I hear, it would certainly have been cracked twice.”
Mr. Alexander! Who was he? And where was he? Where were—
“May he talk a little now, doctor?” and Maseden would have had to be very dead if he did not know that Nina Forbes was sitting by his side. He turned, and even remembered to repress a groan lest some one in authority might not grant her request.
Even so the doctor was dubious. “He must not be allowed to get excited,” he said.
“Then may he listen to me a minute?” “Yes, if you really keep to schedule.” “Don’t move, Alec!” whispered Nina, and there seemed to be a note in her voice that Maseden had heard only once before, though he could not recall the occasion. “We’re on board a mail steamer bound for England, but she touches at Punta Arenas and Buenos Ayres, so you must be ‘Mr. Alexander,’ not ‘Mr Maseden,’ until we reach home. Don’t ask why just now. I’ll tell you tomorrow, or next day, when you are stronger. You will trust me, won’t you?”
“Trust you, Nina! Yes, forever!”
He looked at her, as though to make sure that
his senses were not deceiving him and that it
was really Nina Forbes who sat there, a Nina
with her hair nicely combed and coiled and wearing a particularly attractive pink jersey and white serge skirt.
He thought that her eyes-those frank blue eyes he had gazed into so often-were suffused with tears.
“Why are you crying?” he demanded, with just a hint of that domineering way of his.
“Not for grief,” she said quietly. “But you must drink this now, and go to sleep. When you awaken again, perhaps the doctor will let C. K. come and chat with you.”
“O.K.? Is he all right?”
“Yes.”
“And Madge?”
“Yes. Not another word. Drink—to please me.”
“I’ll do anything to please you.”
He swallowed some milk and soda-water; took a whole tumbler-full, in fact.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Now I’ll hold your hand and you’ll tell me-”
“You’re going to close your eyes and lie still,” she said firmly. “If you don’t I’ll leave you. If you do, I’ll stay here.”
“I’m bribed,” he said, smiling. Soon he slept, but this was nature’s healing sleep, not the coma of insensibility. When next he entered a world of reality he found Sturgess sitting where Nina had been.
“Going strong now, Alec?” inquired his friend.
Maseden did not answer at once. He wanted to be quite sure that the wretched throbbing in his head had ceased. Yes; there was a great soreness, but it was of the scalp, not of the internal mechanism. He sat bolt upright.
“Hi!” shouted Sturgess, “you mustn’t do that! Gosh! The doctor man will raise Cain with me if he knows I let you move.”
“I’m all right, C. K.”
“You’re going to flatten out straight away, or I’ll shriek for help.”
Maseden lay down. The dominant emotion of the moment was curiosity. Perhaps, if he kept quiet, Sturgess would talk.
At any rate, the New Yorker was much relieved, and said so.
“You’ve nearly hopped it,” he explained anxiously. “It was a case of touch and go with you for two days, and-”
“Two days!” gasped Maseden. “Have I been stretched here two days?”
“And more. We were picked up by the Valentia on Thursday evening, and now it is Sunday morning.”
“Everything seems to happen on a Sunday,” said Maseden inconsequently; but Sturgess understood.
“Sunday is our day,” he agreed. “Now, if you don’t butt into the soliloquy, but show an intelligent interest by an occasional nod, I’ll switch you on to the Information Bureau. The doc said I might, just to stop you from worrying.
“When an Indian with a spit lip got you with a stone at about five yards there were two coracles on each side of us. I suspicioned that the Thugs in them meant to spring aboard at the same time, which would have meant trouble, so it was up to me to spoil the combination. I shoved the helm hard over and drove into the two on the port side. Our heavy boat went through them as though they were jelly-fish, and the sudden rise of our starboard gunwale upset the calculations of the other crowd.
“Everybody, including you, rolled over with the sudden lurch, but Nina gathered herself together, grabbed your gun, stood straight on her feet, and said to me: ‘Do you know which of these men hit Alec?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that joker with the criss-cross mouth. But you lie down. We’re clear now.’ Without another word she drew a steady bead on the stone-slinger and got him with the first shot.
“Then she attended to you. It seemed almost as though we had reached the limit, with you lying like dead, and me weak and sick, because the slingers gave me a couple to begin with, and the Indian girl screaming for all she was worth. Nina was just crooning over you like a mother nursing an ailing baby, so Madge came and took the tiller-not before time, as I didn’t know enough to run with the wind again.
“We missed a howling reef by a hair’s breadth-missed it only because the new course had taken us close inshore towards the north. Half an hour later we were in Smyth’s Channel, and didn’t know it, so we would have been sailing yet into the middle of the Andes if the Valentia hadn’t bumped around a corner. Since then we three have been setting the scene for you when you come on deck. The passengers are the right sort, every man and woman among ‘em all wool and a yard wide. Tell you what, Alec-I’d better warn you-Nina and Madge have fixed up a star turn for you on your first appearance.”
Sturgess paused to grin largely, so Maseden broke in with a question.
“Are we at sea now?” he inquired.
“No. We’re anchored at Punta Arenas. The girls have gone ashore to see that Topsy is well fixed
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