The Yellow Snake (26 page)

    The man nodded.

    "Sure. He got fresh with Fing-Su, and the Chink handed him one with a bottle. They chucked him overboard just after I brought you your eats."

    He looked round again and then gave them a piece of vital information.

    "The skipper and two of the hands are getting the lifeboat down round about six bells," he whispered. "You'll have to slide down a rope for it. Can the young lady make it?"

    "She'll make it all right," said Clifford and the door closed.

    What was happening, he could guess. Ever since that mad dream of empire had come to Fing-Su he had had the advantage of expert advice. Leggat in his way was clever; Spedwell in his own particular line was brilliant; both were cautious men, for whose judgment the Chinese millionaire had respect. But now Fing-Su had no master but his own whims; his judgment was governed only by his muddled philosophy.

    The hours of waiting seemed interminable. They sat around in the little cabin, not daring to speak for fear they should miss the signal, or be caught by the 'rush' which the purser had predicted. So slowly did the hands of his watch move that Clifford once or twice thought it had stopped.

    Three o'clock passed; the clang of the timing bell came faintly through the protected portholes, and then there was a tap at the door and it was swung open on its hinge. The purser, in heavy sea-boots, a revolver belt about his waist, was waiting, and he beckoned them. Clifford followed, holding the girl's hand in his, Joe Bray bringing up the rear, a gun in each hand and a partiality for violence in his heart.

    They had to pass a lighted galley, and their guide put his finger on his lips to enjoin quietness. Joan had a glimpse of the broad back of the Chinese cook stooping over a steaming pot, and came safely and unobserved to the after well deck.

    Two steel doors in the ship's side had been opened. Over the edge of the deck was a taut rope, and looking down, Clifford saw that the rope was attached to a large whale-boat in which three muffled men were sitting. He turned to the girl, his lips to her ear.

    "Will you dare go down that rope hand over hand?"

    As the purser passed a slender line about the girl's waist and knotted it, he said in a low voice:

    "Don't waste time...I had a radio in the night." He did not explain what this had to do with the escape, but addressed the girl. "You'll have to go down hand-over-hand miss," he whispered, and she nodded, and whilst they held the safety line she slid slowly down the rough rope that cut and scorched her fingers.

    The whale-boat held to the ship's side seemed to be racing along at an incredible speed, though it was going no faster than the steamer. Somebody reached up and caught her unceremoniously by the waist and dragged her into the boat. Joe Bray followed, and justified his claim to youth by the agility with which he went down hand-over-hand in the dark. The purser was the last to leave the ship, and scrambled over the bow of the whale-boat with incredible ease.

    "Stand by!" said a thick voice.

    The purser groped in the bottom of the boat, found an axe, and with one blow severed the rope. In an instant they were in the maelstrom of the ship's wake, rocking and tossing from side to side, and only by the narrowest margin did they avoid capsizing, for the iron side of the
Umveli
grazed the rudder-post. And then, as the whale-boat rocked free, they heard a yell, a light flashed from the bridge; clear above the gurgle of the water and the thud of the retreating screw they heard a whistle blow, and the
Umveli
swung round in a circle.

    "They've seen us," said Clifford between his teeth.

    The purser, grinning with fear, glared back at the circling vessel and grunted. Turning, he ran to the middle of the boat and assisted one of the black sailors to step the mast. The Negro captain, a grotesque figure in his gold-bound cap and gaudy badges of rank, was pulling desperately at the sail. A fresh north-easter was blowing, and in another second the whale-boat lay over and was running into the wind. But what hope had they of escaping from a fifteen-knots steamer?

    A thunderous blast from the ship's siren directed their attention to their monstrous pursuer. From the bridge came the flicker of a signal lamp, and the captain spelt it out.

    "Yeller nigger!" was his only comment; he, for his part, was the blackest man that Clifford had ever met.

    The whale-boat tacked about. Obviously he was more hopeful than one of the watchers. Clifford sank down on his knees by the side of the girl, who lay covered with a tarpaulin in the bottom of the boat.

    "Not scared, are you, honey?" he asked.

    She looked up with a smile, and that was all the answer he needed.

    The captain's English was the English of the coast, but it was both expressive and illuminating.

    "Elephant no catchum flea," he said. "Big ship she no catchum little boat! S'pose they lower dem cutter onetimes dem cutter she no catchum sail-boat."

    "There is danger enough, captain."

    The broad-faced man shook his head in assent.

    "Presently they done bring them ha-ha guns," he said, "but by and by we see anudder ship."

    That was their hope. They were still in the English Channel, which is the main street of Northern Europe. Here the traffic is usually thick. But for the moment there was no sign of smoke or sail.

    Clifford turned to the purser.

    "Whether we escape or not, I owe you something, my friend," he said, and Haki smiled broadly.

    "We ought to have got away before," he said, "but the captain was scared. But the radio made him skip!"

    "The radio?"

    The purser put his hand in his pocket and took out a soiled scrap of paper.

    "I got this last night," he said, and Clifford read the scribbled words with difficulty:

    Get away from ship before seven o'clock. Take with you anybody who value lives. If Miss Bray aboard take her with you. Admiralty sending destroyer Sunbright to overhaul you.

    Soldier.

    "That's the Major—we called him 'Soldier,'" explained the purser. "But the Sunbright mightn't catch us—and if they did, Fing-Su wouldn't leave anybody alive who could tell on him."

    Clifford had been puzzled as to what the captain meant by 'ha-ha gun,' but very soon came an unpleasant explanation.

    
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

    They had brought a maxim-gun into action. The bullets threw up a cloud of spray a little ahead of them, and the skipper pushed over the helm and went about on another tack. They were less than five hundred yards from the ship's side, Cliff realized, which meant that it would be a comparatively simple matter, once the light grew stronger—and it was improving every second—to riddle the boat with shots. Fing-Su would leave no trace of the men in whose hands was his very life.

    
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

    This time the aim was high; the bullets smacked through the canvas of the sail. One sent a splinter of wood flying from the mast.

    "Keep down!" yelled the purser, waving frantically.

    For the third time since they escaped he looked at his big silver watch.

    The
Umveli
had increased speed and was now running abreast and bearing in upon them. Again the Negro captain tacked and came round in a circle, running back on his own course. Individual marksmen were now firing, and the bullets were coming uncomfortably close. And above the 'click-clock' of rifles came the boom of a heavier weapon.

    "Seven-pounder," said Joe Bray laconically, and even as he spoke something smacked against the mast.

    There was a crackling and tearing sound, and mast and sail went limply over the side.

    "Now we're finished, I think," said the purser, and with great sang-froid took his revolver from the holster at his waist and turned the cylinder.

    They were lowering boats now from the
Umveli
. Three, one after the other, struck the water. She had reduced speed and was going astern. But the captain was by no means beaten. With the aid of one of his sailors he had flung mast and sail overboard, and in another instant the oars rattled into rowlocks.

    "All mans pull!" he roared, and Clifford obeyed the injunction.

    But the whale-boat was big and cumbersome compared with the light cutters that were pursuing them.

    "We want a miracle," said Cliff, and as he spoke the miracle happened.

    Two boats were already pushing off from the ship; the third was filling with sailors, when from the lower deck came a brilliant flame and the deafening crash of an explosion; it was followed almost instantly by a second and louder explosion.

    For a second there was silence, and then a pandemonium of whistles sounded. The two boats which had already pulled off turned and headed for the ship. Smoke poured along the decks so dense that it obscured a view of her funnel in the early morning light.

    "She blow up what for?" asked the black skipper huskily, and then: "Pull, you mans!"

    And the oars rose and fell. Then, of a sudden:

    "She's sinking," gasped Joe Bray, and he spoke the truth.

    Half a hundredweight of the most powerful explosive, which the ingenious Major Spedwell had timed to explode twenty-four hours after the ship had sailed, had not only blown a hole through the deck, but had ignited the munitions stored in the hold. The Umveli lay over on her side like something grown suddenly weary. Dense masses of smoke poured out of the exposed hatches; they saw the gleam of flames, and then a wild scramble for the boats. In their amazement they rested on their oars, watching the strange sight, until the purser's voice uttered a warning.

    "We'd better get as far away from the ship as we can," he cried.

    A few seconds after he spoke there was a third explosion, and the
Umveli
broke in half and went jaggedly out of sight in a wild confusion of foaming waters.

    There were four boats afloat, and they were heading in their direction.

    "Row!" yelled the skipper, and again they gripped the oars.

    But their effort was not to be sustained. Turning his head, Clifford Lynne saw a black billow of smoke on the right side of the horizon, and could just distinguish in the dawn light a long grey shape...

    They reached His Britannic Majesty's destroyer
Sunbright
twenty-five minutes before the remnant of a fear-maddened crew came to the destroyer's side, throwing their rifles in the water, offering everything for safety.

    Fing-Su was not amongst the party, and when Clifford interviewed one of the shivering officers he learnt of the Emperor's fate in a few pungent words.

    "Fing-Su...I saw his head...and his body...a little piece here, a little piece there."

    Eight months later, Mr Joe Bray brought a bride to his quaint house on the hills above Siangtan. In the marriage register he had been described as 'Joseph Henry Bray, bachelor,

    "And I might tell you," said Clifford ominously, "that men have got penal servitude in this country for making false statements on their marriage certificates."

    To his orphaned bride Joe suggested a cause for Clifford Lynne's implacable hostility.

    "Me being so young makes him look old," he suggested; and Mabel was in complete agreement, for she had spent that particular morning in the Rue de la Paix and had gathered to herself many wonderful possessions that only a millionaire can bestow upon his wife.

    "The difference," said Joe complacently, as he drew through a straw the luscious drink with which a waiter (privately instructed) had provided him—"the difference between our marriage and his is this, Mabel: ours is a love match, and his is, so to speak—well——"

    "He would never have married Joan but you told him to," said Mabel scornfully. "I hope Joan will be happy. I have my doubts, but I hope she will be."

    Mabel went to Siangtan, and had a reception from the European inhabitants of that noble town that was due to one who bore a family relationship with the Concession. And, curiously enough, she liked Siangtan, for it is better to be a great person in a small place than a nobody in Sunningdale.

    One day there came to them a letter from Joan which suggested that the unhappiness of marriage was an experience to be indefinitely postponed. Mabel read the letter and sniffed, not uncharitably.

    "'Carrying on the line'? What does she mean by that?" she asked, having her suspicions.

    Joe coughed and explained.

    "That was my idea too," he said modestly.

THE END