Chapter XXV

Jeff could not remain thus for long. The tide is never still, but dropping to its lowest level, immediately begins to rise again. There is no motionless body in heaven and earth, and quiescence is intolerable to the moving spirit of the universe. If it were true that his hopes could not fall lower, they must certainly rise according to the changeless laws of change. Three hours after nightfall marked the slack tide.

Jeff at first was not interested in the voice that he heard so dimly at the head of the stone steps that led down to the corridor. Perhaps Staritsa was coming to talk to him again, more likely it was merely the conversation of some of the Governor’s guests walking in the gardens. The language used was unknown to him; and at first the sound did not arrest his brooding thoughts. But presently he started, and his eyes opened wide.

He had heard a familiar voice. It was a girl’s voice, like a low-murmuring stream and full of marvelous, gliding tones. He had often heard it sound plaintive and appealing, but now, although it was subdued, it was charged full of a bewitching coquetry such as he had never imagined it could possess. At intervals a man answered her, rather grimly but with rough familiarity and, unmistakable in his tone, a certain gruff humor.

They spoke in a tongue he did not understand, and although he did not discern a single familiar word, the larger import of the conversation was not lost on him. The girl was employing all her feminine arts to win some favor from his jailer. She was bewitching him with her voice, charming him with the sheer music of her tones; and there was a suggestiveness, an invitation all but veiled in her manner to which Jeff, waiting in the darkness below, was keenly conscious. This girl knew how to appeal to men. There was nothing coarse or obvious about her coquetry; it was the kind which men regard as unconscious, and which is therefore all the more flattering.

With the possible exception of the night of the Governor’s dance, he had never heard her speak in this tone before; yet now that he heard her distinctly he could not for an instant question her identity. This was Molly, of course. Even in his moment of deepest despair he might have known she would come.

Again she had proved to him her linguistic skill, in that she made herself easily understood to the jailer. What was their common language he did not know, but he assumed it was some coastwise jargon she had picked up while traveling with her uncle. Evidently her purely feminine language was likewise lucid to him, because she soon won her plea. His tone indicated hesitating compliance with some request on the girl’s part. Jeff’s guess was immediately confirmed by the rattle of a latch on the prison door and the tramp of feet on the stone steps. Beams from a lantern leaped about in the corridor, casting, running, chasing shadows on the walls.

The yellow light showed two visitors beside the jailer. One was Molly, of course—she who had never failed him. Jeff saw with mounting hope that the other was the barrel-chested, unrefined old Yankee skipper, Captain Skinner.

It was plain now that the girl’s charm had not been the only _sesame_. She had had substantial aid in the shape of a prime sea otter skin which the jailer now carried under his arm, the luster and beauty of which was almost past imagining, as the lantern beams glided over the quivering, shimmering fur. It was evidently an argument hard to answer.

“Impress it on him that piece of fur is a high price just for a farewell word to Jeff,” Captain Skinner told the girl in English, as he paused in front of the cell. “It’ll pay off his debt and get him back to Russia.”

The girl repeated Skinner’s message; then turning, talked through the bars to the prisoner. Instead of speaking English, which Jeff had every reason to expect she would do, she spoke in a tongue unknown to him, evidently the same language with which she had addressed his keeper; and at first he could conceive of no possible explanation for her strange conduct. Yet in a moment he guessed the incredible truth. It was plain now that this message-bearing was a ruse, and that she was repeating unimportant tidings purely for the keeper’s benefit and to quiet his suspicions. Evidently this midnight visit had another theme.

He nodded, pretending that he understood. The girl smiled, then turning, spoke again to the jailer, and resting her white arm on the sleeve of his uniform, drew him up beside her. Jeff’s eyes were not shadow-filled now, and they glittered in the beams of the lantern that was now held close to the bars. Obviously Molly had requested the jailer to throw his light on the prisoner’s face—asking, probably, for a last clear view of him before they parted—and urged by her moving touch, he had not been able to refuse. Now on pretense of getting the light nearer, she reached, thrilled him with the touch of her hand on his, and gently took the lantern from him. Just for an instant she held it so that it shone on Jeff’s face.

Then without warning, with a motion swift as bird’s flight, she dashed the lantern against the bars of the cell.

Jeff was only aware of a swift trail of light, a sudden bright flicker that showed the whole scene in minute detail, and then overwhelming darkness.

In that final glimpse Jeff had discerned certain things of considerable moment to him. He saw first the look of grotesque amazement on the jailer’s face; evidently this lantern-breaking was not in the bargain he made. In the same glance he saw that Captain Skinner’s wish had come true, and he was getting into action at last. In the final gleam before the darkness obliterated everything he saw the old skipper with outspread arms, come diving through the air.

The darkness that dropped down was absolutely blinding; and only such sound as reached him through the bars conveyed to Jeff what was taking place in the corridor. He heard the distinct impact of Skinner’s head against the jailer’s back, and the thud of their bodies on the floor. These sounds were all but obscured by a queer gobbling sound, largely unintelligible except that it was not unlike the utterances heard when human breathing is summarily shut off. This was followed by other noises that might have been made by struggling bodies rolling about the floor and against the walls.

It was a strange sensation to Jeff to stand helpless behind the bars in the presence of an unseen battle. This was the kind of thing that reacts violently on human nerves. He was glad when the more heavy sounds abruptly ceased, and the corridor lay in silence except for the subdued whisper of troubled breathing. A moment later he heard the scratch of a matchhead against the wall, followed by its soft explosion as it ignited.

Molly had scratched that match, and she had not broken it in the attempt. Neither did she have to scratch it twice, and so firm was her hand that it burned with a candle’s steady flame. Thus the fact that her face was stark white did not seem to argue scattered faculties. Presumably oblivious to the scene about her she now lighted the lantern, holding it high and touching the little torch to its wick.

The jailer was at present lying prone in the corridor; and his usefulness had for the time being departed wholly. He was plainly unconscious, and furthermore he was now being confined against such time as he should waken. Captain Skinner had produced cords from his pockets—indicating that this enterprise had been worked out in considerable detail—and he not only bound the man’s hands and feet, but also tied a handkerchief in his mouth. Skinner was a sailor, used to handling ropes, so it seemed likely that the work was thoroughly and satisfactorily done.

The skipper’s next act was to unhook the key ring from the fallen jailer’s belt and unlock Jeff’s cell. “Get a jump on,” he cautioned the late prisoner. They put out the light, took the steps of the corridor two at a time, and glided through the darkened gardens. “We’ve got to get back to the ship before that bloody guard-mount.”

Jeff did not understand fully, but he paused not at all to ask questions. Still with his arms bound behind him he followed his friends through the shadows and on to the deck of the ship. And now it became apparent that this night’s activities had not in the least been confined to the prison, and that the main business of the evening had occurred on the ship itself.

As soon as Jeff stepped aboard he detected a pleasant rumble in the bowels of the ship which had great meaning for him; and he noticed also that the ship quivered slightly in its place at the quay. At first he saw no signs of the guards, but on the way down to the engine room in search of tools to break his bonds, he encountered all four of them lying side by side in a passage. They moved their eyes toward him as he walked by, but they did not speak. The practiced skill with which Captain Skinner had pinioned the unfortunate jailer could not be misunderstood.

As the mess boy filed at his wristlets, Jeff was told the larger aspects of the night’s work. The ship had been put in running order in record time, and it was plain that Captain Skinner had purposely deceived Yanovisk when he had told him, the preceding afternoon, that repair work would last a fortnight. In reality there had been very little to do; but he had thus put the Russian off his guard. Now the giant of steam thundered in the boilers. Led by Captain Skinner, the crew had procured all the armament aboard, made a concerted attack on the guard, disarmed them in silence, and stored them below for safe-keeping.

Even now, Captain Skinner was on the bridge, calling down commands to his men. The gang was taken in, the screw churned the waters, and the ship moved grandly out to sea.