Nearer to London than where the inn was--nearer by some three or four hundred paces--and upon the bank close by, where there was a rough causeway running out into the river and down to the point which the lowest tide touched, two men paced slowly--Algernon Bufton and Lewis Granger. Each was now wrapped in a long cloak, that which the latter wore being almost the counterpart of the one that Anne had laid her hand upon that morning in his house--nay8, in the mist and grime through which the sickly light of the moon shone fully9, it was the counterpart, Bufton's being very similar to it. Each, too, held in his hand, though he had not yet assumed it, a vizard mask.
"You hear that sound?" Granger said to his companion, as now upon his accustomed ear, if not upon the other's, there came a deep grunting10 noise, a noise as regular as the ticking of a clock. "You hear it and know what it is?"
"I hear nothing yet. Ah! yes; now I catch it. What is the noise?"
"The thumping11 of oars12 in rowlocks. It is the quarter-boat of the schooner13 coming ashore14 for its victims. And, alas15! I fear now that it will get none."
"I fear so, too," said Bufton, glancing under the flap of his hat at the other, who was peering forward along the river-bank as though he might be imagining that still there was a hope of Ariadne and Anne coming. "I fear so, too," Bufton repeated, though as he spoke16 he knew that nothing could now well prevent there being one victim.
"No time must be wasted," Granger said. "The schooner sails to-night as soon as the boat returns to her. Empty or full, that boat must go back within half an hour."
"What shall we do?" Bufton asked, feeling that he was trembling with excitement.
"Best go on a hundred yards or so up the road they should come. Then, after a quarter of an hour, bid the boat put off. Tell them that we are unable to provide what was expected."
"Yes. Yes. Quick. Let us do that," his companion said, while as he spoke they heard the keel of the boat grate against the causeway. They heard also a whistle given.
"A quarter of an hour," cried Granger, casting his voice towards the spot where the sound had come, "a quarter of an hour. Wait so long," and, doubtless because of the filthy17 reek18 and mist around, that voice sounded different in Bufton's ears from usual.
"Ay, ay," was called back hoarsely19, in a subdued20 tone, from the boat. "Shall we come ashore? Shall we be needed?"
"What shall I say?" asked Granger, appearing to hesitate. "What need of----"
"Nay," his companion replied, feverishly21 it seemed, and in great agitation22. "Tell them to do so. To--do so. They may be needed. The women may come."
"So be it." Then Granger called back, "Ay, get ashore, and be ready. You know your work."
"We know it."
"The fool!" thought Bufton. "He has signed his own death-warrant--or as good as a death-warrant."
"Come," said Granger now. "Let us go on a few hundred yards. Then, if nothing appears when ten minutes are past, 'tis very certain we have lost them."
"Ay, of course. Come."
So they walked forward those few hundred yards--they were, indeed, but three hundred--when Granger stopped near a dry dyke23, along the bank of which some stunted24, miserable bushes grew that, in summer, had sparse25 leaves upon them, but were now dank and dripping, and said--
"'Tis useless waiting. All is still as death; if wheels were coming we should hear them, as well as the jangle of harness or crack of whip. 'Tis useless. Best go back and send the boat away."
Bufton was trembling even more than before with excitement by this time, and could scarcely stammer26, "Yet--yet--'tis best that one--should wait. One go back--to--the boat--and--one wait. They may--they--the women--may come yet."
"'Tis so. Well, go you back! If Anne should see you!--if--go back, I say--I--will--follow--I will follow;" and he, ordinarily so cool and collected, stammered27 somewhat himself.
"So be it. You will follow? Soon! Will you not?"
"Ere you have gone a hundred yards, half the distance. Go. Go. Walk slowly--to--to--give--them--the women time even now to come. Yet--stay--those guineas--for--the master."
"He has not earned them," Bufton said, appearing to hesitate about parting with his money. "He has not earned them. He----"
"No matter! Give them to me. When I come up to you we will send them off by the man in charge of the boat. The master will earn them--later. When he returns to England."
With still an affectation of disliking to part with the money, Bufton, nevertheless, drew a silken purse forth28 and handed it to the other, chuckling29 inwardly to himself at how Granger, who was now to be the "second man," would carry upon his own person the price of his enslavement--of his doom30.
Then he prepared to set forth towards the causeway, where the boat was.
"Walk slowly, there is no hurry," Granger whispered; "the quarter of an hour is not yet passed. And pause once or twice--look--back; may wish you to return--to assist, if--if--at the last moment I should hear them coming."
"I will," Bufton said, "I will"; and added to himself, "I will walk slowly, and look back more than once--to make sure of you."
Whereon he set out.
As he did so, and before he had gone thirty paces Granger went off swiftly at left angles to the path the man was following--off into the mist and fog, so that none on that path, not even Bufton could see him. Yet, still, there was a figure standing31 where he had stood--a figure enshrouded in a long cloak, with, hanging over its brows, a flapping broad-brimmed hat--a figure that, as Granger vanished, stepped out from behind the bush by the dyke's side and stood there for some moments.
And that figure saw the man ahead turn back and look at it, while, when Bufton had done so a second time, it called out in a gruff, fog-choked voice, "Hist! I am coming now. 'Tis useless."
"Ay, come on," replied Bufton. "Come on now. 'Tis useless."
While, as he spoke, he went on himself.
Yet, because of the state of the atmosphere, he did not know that ahead of him a "first man" (who had been listening with straining ears for his oncoming footsteps--who had, by a detour33, come panting to the spot sixty yards ahead of where he was) was now walking along towards the causeway. A figure, masked as those behind him were, which, hearing a deep, husky voice close by say, "You are the 'first.' Is the 'second' coming?" answered from beneath the folds of the cloak he held across his mouth, doubtless to keep out the fog--
"Ay, he is coming."
"And--he is to be taken at all hazards?"
"At all hazards."
In truth the other was coming, though still turning and turning again, to see that his supposed victim was following him. And he did see that that supposed victim was following in his footsteps. Then he turned for the last time, gloating in his triumph, rejoicing that now--in a few moments--Granger would be gone from out his path for ever; turned to find himself confronted by three shadowy forms close to him, which, ere he could utter a cry, had sprung at him; one, the biggest and most burly, almost choking the life out of him with the brawny34 hands that were clenched35 upon his windpipe. Yet now he struggled to be free, as the rat in the trap, the panther caged, will struggle for freedom when snared36 and doomed37; struggled so, that, at last, one of those figures struck him on the head with a bludgeon, and knocked him senseless.
"Away," that burly figure cried now. "Away with him to the boat. The time is past. Hark to the anchor cable grating through the hawse-hole; they are making ready. Away with him."
Whereupon they bore the miserable man off to the causeway, carrying him face downwards38, and with still upon his face the vizard over which blood streamed now from the wound upon his crown, when, throwing him into the boat, they made off for the Nederland.
Then Granger stepped out from the dark obscurity to which he had retreated after speaking to the sailor who had greeted him as the "first man" and had asked if the second was coming, and went back to meet that other shrouded32 figure which had taken his place.
"He is gone," he said; "we are avenged39 and you are free. You heard?" Then, suddenly, he cried, as he saw Anne reel towards him, "What is it? You do not regret, surely?"
"Nay," the girl replied, falling almost fainting into his arms. "Nay. There is no regret, and he deserves his fate--whatsoever it may be. Yet--yet--actress as I have been--the strain was too much. Granger, help me now to get back to your house to change my clothes, and, next, to get on board the Mignonne."
"First come to the 'Red Rover' and have something to revive you. Come."
"Hark," she said, pausing in the step she had taken towards the inn, "hark. What is that out there in the river? That shouting?"
"It is the men's cries as they haul on to the halyards, so as to be ready when the wind comes. Yet the schooner has enough tide beneath her to carry her swiftly down to the open. Listen, Anne, their voices are becoming fainter.
"I hear. They are moving."
"They are moving. In ten minutes they will be gone."
As they sat together later, and he ministered to her wants, recognising well that, without her bravery to assist him, he could never have turned the tables so thoroughly40 upon Bufton's villainous scheme as he had done, he remembered the fifty guineas which the latter had handed over to him at the last moment. Whereupon he passed them over to the girl.
"They are yours, Anne. You are his lawful41 wife--soon, doubtless, you will be his executrix. He has still money about him, which I make no doubt the skipper of the Nederland will appropriate. He will land a beggar. Heaven help him!"
"You say that?" Anne exclaimed, "Heaven help him! Help him who ruined you. You can say that?"
"No," he cried savagely42. "No. I do not say it. I retract43. Damn him! he forged Lord Glastonbury's name, but passed the bill to me, since he owed me one-half the sum, and I paid it into Child's bank. Then, when Glastonbury caused me to be arrested on board the ship I served in, and I stated where I had obtained the bill, that craven hound now going to his fate swore he knew nought44 about it--that my story was a fabrication. But that his lordship and I loved the same woman, and she sacrificed herself to save my neck--unknown to me--as well as paid the money to the bankers, I should have swung at Tyburn."
"Wherefore," said Anne, "you forgave him for the time--with an end in view."
"With an end in view. An end, my determination to reach which never slackened. And it is reached. Anne, it is borne in on me that he will never come back. If he does, then----"
"He never will return," said Anne. "It is also borne in on me. Now let us go," and she moved towards the door, throwing over her the great cloak which she had removed after the drawer had quitted the room, and replacing the hat.
"You have forgotten the guineas," said Granger, noticing that she had let them lie unheeded where he had originally placed them.
"The guineas!" the girl cried. "The guineas! His money! I will never take them--never touch them. Except," she cried, seizing on the packet, "to fling them into the river. Never! Never!"
"Be not foolish. They are yours. Can you devise no means to which you can put them?"
"Ay," she said a moment later, and after thinking deeply while she stood gazing down at the table. "Ay, I can. Kitty's grave is a lonely, desolate45 one. Now it shall be brightened and made cheerful with the money of the man who drove her to death. Come," and as she spoke she took the packet and dropped it into her pocket. "Come, I must get back."
So Lewis Granger took the girl back to Brunswick Stairs and sent her off by a shore boat to the Mignonne, he learning on shore, and she when she, stepped on board the frigate46, that Sir Geoffrey had set out an hour ago to board the Nederland, so as to take from out of her some of the men who were now so much required.
"For," said Ariadne, whom she found in the state cabin, "Sir Edward Hawke sails in a fortnight for Torbay, thence to set out and attack the French. And, Anne, the Mignonne goes as one of the frigates47. Oh, Anne!"
"It must be so. Be brave, darling. Sir Geoffrey is a sailor, as your father and my father were. It is duty. But--Ariadne--be cheered also with one small thing. Sir Geoffrey will be back to-night in an hour."
"In an hour?"
"Ay, in an hour. The Nederland has sailed."
"Sailed! With all those wretched trepanned creatures on board!"
"With them all. And with one other besides, trepanned as he would have trepanned you and me had he had his will, and as he would have done to Lewis Granger, too."
Whereon she told her foster-sister everything.
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1
murky
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| adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗 | |
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2
disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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3
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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4
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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5
marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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6
glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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7
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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8
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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9
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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10
grunting
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| 咕哝的，呼噜的 | |
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11
thumping
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| adj.重大的，巨大的；重击的；尺码大的；极好的adv.极端地；非常地v.重击(thump的现在分词)；狠打；怦怦地跳；全力支持 | |
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12
oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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13
schooner
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| n.纵帆船 | |
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14
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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15
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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16
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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17
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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18
reek
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| v.发出臭气；n.恶臭 | |
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19
hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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20
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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21
feverishly
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| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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23
dyke
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| n.堤，水坝，排水沟 | |
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24
stunted
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| adj.矮小的；发育迟缓的 | |
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25
sparse
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| adj.稀疏的，稀稀落落的，薄的 | |
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26
stammer
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| n.结巴，口吃；v.结结巴巴地说 | |
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27
stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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29
chuckling
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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30
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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31
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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32
shrouded
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| v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密 | |
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33
detour
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| n.绕行的路，迂回路；v.迂回，绕道 | |
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34
brawny
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| adj.强壮的 | |
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35
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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36
snared
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| v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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37
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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38
downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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39
avenged
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| v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的过去式和过去分词 )；为…报复 | |
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40
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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41
lawful
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| adj.法律许可的，守法的，合法的 | |
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42
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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43
retract
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| vt.缩回，撤回收回，取消 | |
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44
nought
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| n.／adj.无，零 | |
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45
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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46
frigate
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| n.护航舰，大型驱逐舰 | |
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47
frigates
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| n.快速军舰( frigate的名词复数 ) | |
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