The Hand of Ethelberta

The thought was like a dash of cold water in clearing my faculties. I raised my head. Seaward a white gull had caught the first rays of the sun beyond the cliffs. Landward–I saw with a choke in my throat–a figure emerging from the arroyo.

At the sight I made a desperate attempt to move, but with the effort discovered that I was again bound. My stirring thus called Pulz’s attention. Before I could look away he had followed the direction of my gaze. The discussion instantly ceased. They waited in grim silence.

I did not know what to do. Percy Darrow, carrying some sort of large book, was walking rapidly toward us. Perdosa had disappeared. Thrackles after an instant came and sat beside me and clapped his big hand over my mouth. It was horrible.

When within a hundred paces or so, I could see that Darrow laboured under some great excitement. His usual indifferent saunter had, as I have indicated, given way to a firm and decided step; his ironical eye glistened; his sallow cheek glowed.

“Boys,” he shouted cheerfully. “The time’s up. We’ve succeeded. We’ll sail just as soon as the Lord’ll let us get ready. Rustle the stuff aboard. The doctor’ll be down in a short time, and we ought to be loaded by night.”

Handy Solomon and Pulz laid hand on two of the rifles near by and began surreptitiously to fill their magazines. The Nigger shook his knife free of the scabbard and sat with it in his left hand, concealed by his body. I could feel Thrackles’s muscles stiffen. Another fifty paces and it would be no longer necessary to stop my mouth.

The thought made me desperate. I had failed as a leader of these men, and I had been forced to stand by at debauching, cruel, and murderous affairs, but now it is over I thank Heaven the reproach cannot be made against me that at any time I counted the consequences to myself. Thrackles’s hand lay heavy across my mouth. I bit it to the bone, and as he involuntarily snatched it away, I rolled over toward the sea.

Thus for an instant I had my mouth free. “Run! Run!” I shouted. “For God’s sake—-”

Thrackles leaped upon me and struck me heavily upon the mouth, then sprang for a rifle. I managed to struggle back to the dune, whence I could see.

XV

FIVE HUNDRED YARDS’ RANGE

Percy Darrow, with the keenness that always characterised his mental apprehension, had understood enough of my strangled cry. He had not hesitated nor delayed for an explanation, but had turned track and was now running as fast as his long legs would carry him back toward the opening of the ravine. My companions stood watching him, but making no attempt either to shoot or to follow. For a moment I could not understand this, then remembered the disappearance of Perdosa. My heart jumped wildly, for the Mexican had been gone quite long enough to have cut off the assistant’s escape. I could not doubt that he would pick off his man at close range as soon as the fugitive should have reached the entrance to the arroyo.

There can be no question that he would have done so had not his Mexican impatience betrayed him. He shot too soon. Percy Darrow stopped in his tracks. Although we heard the bullet sing by us, for an instant we thought he was hit. Then Perdosa fired a second time, again without result. Darrow turned sharp to the left and began desperately to scale the steep cliffs.