Chapter XII: The Flaming Sword

Blair's face was tighter and grimmer than ever as he took it all in, and the faces of the rest were sympathetically hard.

But this was no time to stand glooming. The wrong was done. Now to see if it could be righted.

He turned and led the way back to the boat, thinking too hard for speech. He knew what had to be done, but there were disquieting items in the programme for which he had been unable to make provision, and which he would gladly have escaped.

They would follow the marauders and rescue the victims--that he took as settled.

The settlement could hardly be a mild one, and he would fain have spared the women the sight of it; but there was nothing else for it--they could not possibly be left behind.

The raiders had doubtless filled their holds here to the last man. But there must be many left. They would be in hiding yet, but presently they would come out of their retreats, full of grief and anger, and it would go hard with the first white faces they encountered. The women must go with them--that was one of his troubles. And the next, supposing they caught these blood-thirsty and body-hungry rascals--and catch them they would, if it took a month's circling round--what were they to do with them when they had them?

There would probably be fighting, though the results did not trouble him. What he wanted was to put an end once and for all to this horrible traffic. The only way that suggested itself as adequate and final was to string them up to the yard-arm, every man-jago of them, and whether that might be done with impunity was more than doubtful. The only impunity he desired was for his future work. Morally, he would feel justified. And whether or no, the spirit that was in him would have borne lightly the burden of such a deed, even though its outward results to himself were personally painful and disastrous.

It took no more than two minutes after they had scrambled on board to set things in motion.

"We are too late," said Blair to the anxious waiters. "We follow at once, captain. They will have filled up here, and will make straight for home. Lay her straight for the Chincha Islands, please, and make all speed possible."

Captain Cathie had foreseen the possibility. He set their course due east for the present, and spread his wings again to the last stitch, and they swept away past the other islands, with no more than fleeting glimpses of them in the mellow distance.

Then Blair begged them to confer with him in the saloon, and laid his difficulties before them.

"I take it for granted we shall catch them," he said.

"Certainly," said the captain.

"I am distressed at thought of bringing you ladies into contact with bloodshed and violence. But there is no help for it; it would not be safe to leave you behind."

"Certainly not," said Aunt Jannet Harvey emphatically.

"We would not have been left in any case," said Jean. "Our places are by your sides," and the others quietly endorsed her.

"The next thing is this: we shall catch this ship, we shall rescue these islanders, by force if necessary. What are we to do with the crew and the ship?"

"Hang them and scuttle her," said Captain Cathie, with decision.

"That is one's natural first feeling, and possibly it would be the wisest thing in the end. And yet----"

"It is a question if we are justified in going that length," said Charles Evans gravely.

Stuart, too, shook his head doubtfully.

"Fighting in so good a cause is one thing," he said slowly, "but hanging in cold blood is another."

"Exactly," said Blair. "And that is the point of my dilemma."

"Do you know what will happen if you let 'em go?" said Cathie brusquely.

"I'm afraid I do, captain. And yet--even then---- You mean, of course, that they'll come back in larger force, and with a double incentive--plunder plus revenge."

"That's it to a T, sir, and you know it. There'll be no peace and security till they're wiped out. Wipe 'em out at once and completely, and you're all right till a new lot comes along, knowing nothing of these others, except that they never came back. And when the new lot comes we'll tackle them same way. I'm not by nature a bloodthirsty man, but if there's one thing can set me afire, it's this kind of work. I've seen so much of it. They're not men. They're scum of hell--asking your pardon, ladies!"

"Speak your mind, captain," said Aunt Jannet Harvey. "No good being mealy-mouthed when it's a question of life and death. I think they should be scuttled."

"I've no doubt we all agree as to what we would like to have done, but whether, in our position, we are justified in pronouncing and executing judgment to the extent of death--it is a difficult matter to decide."

"If you let one single man of them go, Mr. Blair, you're only breeding future trouble."

"I know it, captain. And yet--at times--I have seen the attempt to clear the future of trouble lead only to greater. Is there no alternative?"

"There's alternatives," said Cathie gloomily; "but they're only makeshifts--playing with nettles to get stung: you could fling all their arms overboard, and threaten 'em with worse if they come back. And they'll come. You could scuttle the ship and maroon 'em somewhere. You could bring 'em all back here and make 'em work. But there's trouble in it whatever you do, unless you hang 'em out of hand."

"I'm afraid there is, and I would dearly like to rid the earth of them; but----"

And Evans and Stuart felt as he did. They lacked nothing in courage, but to their minds this matter of essential right went deeper than any mere question of courage or future trouble.

Jean, and Alison Evans, and Mary Stuart listened with grave, troubled faces, but ventured no opinion. These were deeper waters than any they had ever sailed on, and they felt rather out of their depths.

"Well, we have some little time to think it over," said Blair, at last. "If any illumination comes to any of us, let the rest have the benefit of it. You will get all ready for what we may need to do, captain?"

"All's ready, sir. Long Tom's loaded, and the men are keen to square things with these rascals if we can come up with them."

"I suppose even these terrible men may have wives and children waiting for them at home," said Jean thoughtfully, as they rose.

"Like enough, ma'am," said Cathie--"and so have the brown men."

"Men like that have no right to have wives and children," said Aunt Jannet Harvey, with vehemence past grammar. "If they have they'll be better without them. They ought to be scuttled."

Nevertheless, Jean's suggestion remained in all their minds.

Never was such a bright look-out as the Torchmen kept for the _Blackbirder_, as they dubbed the chase. The rigging was never free from anxious gazers. It looked as though a flight of great birds had lighted on the ship.

Jean remarked on it to Aunt Jannet Harvey.

"They're fine fellows and all of one mind. See how eager they are to catch her."

"Ay, ay!" said Aunt Jannet. "They'll find her if she's to be found," and did not think it necessary to add that, through Captain Cathie, she had offered five pounds to the man who first sighted the other ship.

Blair walked the deck strenuously, mostly alone, occasionally with one of the others. And the more he walked and the more he thought, the more averse he became to the idea of hanging.

"We're doing right for right's sake in freeing these islanders," he said to Evans and Stuart one time. "If we hang those men I can't help feeling we're doing wrong for right's sake, and there we come to the old Jesuitical practice which we all condemn. We do a wrong in the belief that it will save future trouble. I don't believe we're justified. We've got to do what seems to us right now. The future is in God's hands. If trouble comes, He will show us how to meet it."

"That, I think, is highest wisdom," said Stuart. "If the trouble comes, we shall meet it with clear consciences, and clear consciences make stout hearts."

"I'm with you," said Evans. "I'd like to see them wiped out as much as Captain Cathie would, but I think we're on a higher plane in doing as you suggest. You feel sure of catching them?"

"Hopeful--and determined to do it, if it can be done. They've got at most two days' start. Less, perhaps, for the village was still smoking. They're heavily laden, and we are making good way. We cut into a belt of calms and variables soon, and there we can take to steam. And then--they don't know they're being chased. We do."

There was, however, this one element of doubt in the chase: would the raiders carry on due east, in order to get all possible out of the fairly steady westerly winds,--thereby lengthening the distance they had to cover, and having, after all, in the end, to encounter the possibly adverse winds of the coast,--or would they take their chance across the doubtful calm belt and make straight for the Peruvian coast?

It was an even question, and the board on which the game had to be played was several thousand miles square.

Blair and Cathie discussed the matter in all its bearings.

"What would I do if I was them?" summed up the captain. "Well, that would depend too. If I had two or three hundred passengers aboard, and each one worth so much alive and nothing dead, I'd want to get 'em home alive as quick as possible. If I was well stocked with provisions I might carry on with this wind for the coast. If I was anyways short I'd probably try a beat straight for home. If we don't sight them in two days we'll edge up north-east a bit; but I'm pretty sure they'll keep this wind as long as they can, and chances are we'll sight them within twenty-four hours. They're probably not hurrying, and we're making every inch we can."

But it was the morning of the third day before the welcome hail from aloft brought every soul on board into the bows, to search for the tiny mote on the horizon on which all their hopes were concentrated.

It was a very early bird who had discovered the worm. He had gone up aloft before the dawn, and, as the sun shot up, the rim of the sea was lucent like the edge of a glass plate brimming with water. An almost invisible flaw, a mere film against the light, was enough for the practised eye, and his joyful "Sail ho!" turned the ship upside-down.

Captain Cathie swung up alongside the look-out with his glasses, and was presently on deck again beaming contentedly.

"That's her right enough," he said. "A brig, and we're raising her fast. You'll see her from below here inside an hour."

"When shall we catch her up?" asked Blair anxiously.

"Perhaps by three o'clock or so," said Cathie, after a moment's consideration, but added cautiously, "if the wind holds," and, as if resenting his doubt, the sails gave an ominous warning flap.

"Right," said the captain, with a determined nod, and set the engineers to work at once to get up steam. "We'd be as well to have it on anyhow, to keep the weather gauge of him when we come up," and presently the screw was churning the merry bubbles up astern, and the chase was rising slowly on the horizon.

The brig, however, had held the wind longer than they had. It was mid-afternoon before they got within range of her, and she was still drawing slowly along with sails that bulged and flapped in desultory catspaws.

"Shall I send a shot over her, just to show we mean business?" brimmed Cathie.

"No shots unless they're absolutely necessary, captain," said Blair. "We'll hail her first. And I think you ladies had better go below. Their answer may be lead."

Aunt Jannet was for resisting.

"I want to see," said she.

"There may be things not for your seeing, Aunt Jannet," said Blair quietly, "and other things besides. Please go with the others and keep them from feeling nervous if you can."

So the ladies went below, and we may imagine to what helpful furtherance of patient waiting they betook themselves.