Читать книгу Castle Vane - J H M Abbott - Страница 8

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RACHEL and her charge hurried down Pitt Street with the wind and rain at their backs. A stiff southerly was blowing and it promised to be a wild night. It was a little after nine o'clock as they came to the shores of Sydney Cove.

Once they passed a picket of the 146th, under charge of a corporal, strolling perfunctorily along the sidewalk, the moisture gleaming on their high shakoes as they swung by lighted windows. They took no notice of the tall, bearded countryman and his youthful companion, and Dick felt that his disguise was complete. They were men of his own company.

At the end of the street stood an inn, the Seaman's Rest—its front distinguished by a great red oil-lamp. From its interior came a discordance of drunken choruses—old sea chanteys, and obscene songs of the wide world, blended with pathetic ballads of poor sailor lads who find themselves upon lee shores. Half a dozen singers seemed to be favouring the company together, each according to his individual fancy.

"Some ship just in," said Rachel in a low tone.

As they passed before the open door, a tall figure emerged, and stood for a moment in the strip of glare that shone out into the wet street. It was a woman's figure, and Delane noticed that she seemed to sway a little, as if intoxicated. Suddenly she threw her arms up with a wild gesture, and plunged out into the muddy causeway, running, in the darkness, towards the water's edge. With some half-defined notion that the woman sought her own destruction, Delane followed her.

"You fool!" called the young Jewess, "You fool—let her alone!" As she, too, hurried after them, she heard a splash, and came to the water's edge just as Delane, hastily divesting himself of his top-coat, sprang into the water.

"Oh—the idiot, the numskull!" muttered Rachel, striving to pierce the darkness and to make out what had become of them. Then she uttered an exclamation, and ran to the wharf-side. She knew that she was close to where a boat was awaiting their coming, in charge of old Tom Higgins, one of her grandfather's wharfmen.

Yes—just below her lay the boat, with a lantern in the stern-sheets. She turned back, and picked up Delane's discarded overcoat.

"Quick, Tom—is that you?"

"Aye, aye, Miss Rachel!—bin 'ere this quarter-hour or more."

There was another man in the boat with him.

"Hurry," she said, "and cast off." She lowered herself down from the wharf. "Our man has jumped in to save a woman. We must get him out. Did you hear the splash?"

"Thought I 'eard something," he answered in a surly tone, as they pulled the boat round. "But 't'warn't our business."

The girl stood up.

"Dick!" she called, and the wind carried her voice across the waters. "Dick—where are you."

"'Tis all right!" came his voice, quite close to them. "I've got her."

Rachel held up the lantern, and in the edge of its radiance caught sight of Delane, supporting a white-faced woman above the surface. In a moment the boat was beside them, and in a few seconds they were both aboard.

"We must land her, and take her to the inn," said Delane, bending over the unconscious figure in the boat. "She's half drowned."

"No!" cried Rachel, angrily. "You fool—do you want to be taken? Pull, Tom—pull across to Sirius Cove. She will take no harm—'tis a warm night, in spite of the rain. You cannot risk it, Dick. You'll be certain to be recognized. She must come with us to the other side. Tom, here, will bring her back."

The two oarsmen bent their backs to their task, and soon the boat was out in the stream opposite Fort Macquarie. The night was as black as pitch, and the southerly wind pressed hard on their beam. Rachel was at the tiller, but she took all her steering directions from Tom, the boatman.

That worthy seemed to be gifted with a supernatural faculty of direction. He was never wrong as to his position in the harbour, and his short, terse advices to the girl kept them well up the stream until they were beyond the island of Pinchgut. Then he swung the boat's prow to the north, and the wind drove them up into the mouth of Great Sirius Cove—round which the red-roofed suburb of Mosman clusters to-day. It was not long before the keel grounded on the sandy beach at the head of the bay.

Dick had been studying the features of the unconscious woman at his feet in the dim light of the ship's lantern. They were regular and well cut, and he judged that she might have been a handsome enough girl not so long ago. But there were unmistakable and disfiguring traces of dissipation and drink—tell-tale lines and wrinkles that spoke of reckless living and despair. As the boat grounded, she opened her eyes and stared up at the dimly-lit faces that bent over her.

"Where am I?" she gasped, in a weak voice. "Oh, why didn't you let me go? I wanted to go. I've had enough."

She fell to sobbing bitterly, and hid her face in her arm. Dick looked at Rachel, but there was no sign of pity in her handsome face—only contempt and disgust.

"What's to be done with her?" he asked hopelessly.

"We can do nothing," answered the girl. "She must go back to Sydney. Tom will take her back. She is not our business. You'll land her, Tom?"

"Aye—I knows her!" growled the boatman. "All the waterside men knows her—an' many others. 'Tis Sal Devine. She's—savin' y'r presence, Miss Rachel—not what she ought to be. She's a hout-an'-houter, Sal is. Bin drinkin' a bit extra, I s'pose—to try an' cut 'er lucky like this 'ere. Ho—I'll take 'er back. There's some as'll give 'er shelter, maybe. She can doss in th' boatshed if there's nowhere else."

"Come," said Rachel. "She will be all right. We have no time to waste, Dick. The horses will be waiting for us up here."

But Delane lingered by the boat. He could not help pitying the poor creature whom he had saved from death.

"See here, you Tom Higgins," he said, putting his hand in his breeches pocket. "See, here's a crown piece. Take it, and do what you can for her. Think if it were your own daughter. Poor devil! See to her, will you?"

"I'll land her, y'r honor, and see to it she gets lodgings to-night. But y'd have done her a kindness to let her go the way she wanted."

"Is he to be trusted?" Dick asked Rachel, in an undertone.

"Yes—if I tell him to. See to her, Tom. And now—we must hasten. Come."

She almost dragged him up to the edge of the flat beach. The tide was out, and there was a wide expanse of sand left bare. At its shoreward side, under the trees, beside a little brook, they came to where a man held two horses.

"Is everything right, Tim?" asked the girl.

"Yes, Miss Rachel—they knows you're coming down to Pittwater. Billy-the-boy took word this afternoon. Ye'll find all ready. Ye've a bad night. But th' rain will blow itself out."

"I'll be back to-morrow night, Tim," she said, as she took the reins from him and mounted. "Up with you, Dick. We must be moving. We've wasted too much time over that trollop already."

"Thank God I was able to save the poor creature," said Dick.

Rachel led the way unerringly, along a narrow track that took them up the gully, down which a little streamlet trickled into the Cove. They did not go near the buildings of the whaling station that stood at one side of the beach, but reached the ridge behind it, and followed it up by a winding bridle path through the wet and dripping bush, until they gained the higher ridge that divides the waters of Port Jackson proper from Middle Harbour. Every inch of the way seemed familiar to the girl, and Delane, an indifferent horseman, and no bushman, marvelled at the unerring instinct that guided her in the blackness of the night, amidst the dense forest of scrub-covered rock and boulder through which their track seemed to lie.

Dimly, he could see her ahead of him at intervals. As a rule, however, it was only by the clatter of her horse's hooves amongst the stones that he could make out her position. Often she was obliged to halt until he caught her up.

"Leave your reins alone, Dick," she said to him once, when he had pulled his steed off the track and wandered away to the left, so that she had to ride back looking for him. "Your horse will follow mine. They both know the road."

He took her advice, and found that it was sound.

There was little settlement at that time in the wild country that lay about Middle Harbour. Opposite to Sydney itself, in the vague district known as the North Shore and St. Leonards, there was the beginning of a scattered village whose villagers were still pioneers of a wild and inhospitable country. Settlement thinned out towards Gordon and the head of the Lane Cove River into a rugged No Man's Land that stretched to the creeks and ravines of the estuary of the Hawkesbury. But between Sirius Cove and the Spit, the land was hardly occupied at all. There was the whaling station beside the Cove, and one or two country houses that overlooked Sydney from the northern heights—the residences of retired military officers and holders of grants from the Crown. Beyond the dividing ridge, along which the Military Road leads to Middle Head to-day, there was hardly a single dwelling. Only cunningly hidden, little, rough stone huts were planted, here and there, at the head of some rivulet emptying its tiny stream into the great landlocked lake of Middle Harbour.

They were mere squattages—as often as not the centre of some contraband trade, such as the illicit distillation of spirits. It was almost as wild a country as might be explored in the Blue Mountains themselves. Delane found it hard to believe that only a journey of an hour or so separated them from the capital of Australia.

It was past midnight when, descending from the heights, they stumbled down on to a long, level point of sand—the Spit, which they followed to its end, and found themselves on the southern shore of the great harbour's narrowest part. Here there was a tiny hut, on whose door Rachel, dismounting, knocked with the butt of her riding crop. Presently a light glowed within, and the door opened.

A burly and bearded man shaded the flickering light of a tallow candle with his hand, as he peered out into the darkness.

"Is it Miss Rachel?" he growled. "They told me to expect ye to-night. Billy-the-boy left word this afternoon. Ye're goin' across?"

"Yes, Isaac—and be quick. We have a long way to go yet; we are to be at Pittwater by daylight."

"Well, Miss Rachel, wait till I light my lantern, an' I'll be with you."

In a few moments he came out, and led the way down to the waterside, where a flat-bottomed boat was moored to a post driven into the sand. It was just about large enough to accommodate a cart and horses. Without much trouble—they were evidently used to it—the horses were led aboard, and, manipulating a pair of sweeps from the forward end of the boat, the ferryman slowly transported them across the narrow waters. The boat grounded on a little sandy beach, and presently, with a rough "Good-night" from Isaac in their ears, they were again in the saddle, and climbing up a tortuous zig-zag cart track leading to the top of the further hillside.

Through the dark hours they pressed on at a steady walk. They hardly spoke at all. Rachel always rode some yards in advance of Delane, and he, letting his horse have its head, was content to follow blindly in her tracks.

The tiny settlement at Manly Beach they left far on their right, and followed a bridle path that took them round the head of the lagoon to the north of it. Every inch of the way seemed to be familiar to the girl. Though the path she took was narrow and rough, it was evidently a well-used one. She told him that her grandfather made much use of Broken Bay in connection with his shipping enterprises, and that this bridle track was his nearest and most direct means of communication with his agents at Pittwater.

Round the ends of rough, jutting tongues of land, across little creeks, past still lagoons, they travelled through the small hours of the morning. About two o'clock the weather began to clear, and towards daylight—as they passed along by gleaming white beaches beyond the Narrabeen Lakes, which they skirted round through the foot-hills—a declining fragment of moon lit them on their way.

Just as the dawn was coming, the girl reined in her horse, and waited for Delane to ride up beside her.

"Dick," she said, as he drew level with her, "a mile from here, and we will be at our journey's end. You've travelled far in the last twenty-four hours. But 'tis but a little way compared with the distance you have to go yet."

"Well, it's not far off in miles, is it," he replied, wondering at the seriousness of her tone and look. "We are hardly twenty miles from Sydney?"

"I don't mean that. What I mean is, since you ran through the barrack gates yesterday morning you have travelled all the distance that lies between Honest Town and Rogue City. You've become a rogue—and you were an honest man. Do you see? You were of the world yesterday, and now you are out of it—an outcast, a vagabond. You are one of Father Jacob's bargains."

"What choice had I? What was there between this and the lash? But for your grandfather, and for you, I'd have been in the cells by now, awaiting a trial at which I was condemned beforehand. Then I'd have been cut to pieces at the triangles, and drummed out of the regiment to the tune of the 'Rogues' March.' A rogue! I think I am less of a rogue as a free man than I'd have been as a convict in irons on one of the road-gangs. There was not much choice, Rachel."

"And yet, I don't know," she said, looking at him thoughtfully with her great black eyes, in which there was a gleam of pity. "You are young—you might have lived through it all. But once you make this journey into the bush as an outlaw, you begin a journey that only has one ending—death. The bullet, or the gallows—most likely the gallows."

She looked very handsome, as she rode beside him in the early morning in her manly costume—a well-built, active stripling. But there was something of the woman in the way she regarded him, despite her breeches, and boots, and whiskers. He felt full of gratitude towards her, and of an interest in her, that might not altogether have been due to gratitude alone.

"They'll never catch me!" he cried, a little boastfully.

"Maybe, maybe," she said. "Others have felt that too, Dicky—others who have been caught and hanged."

For a time they rode on in silence. She was deep in thought, whilst he breathed in the fresh morning air, as they jogged along, and thanked his good fortune that he was free, and not an unwilling guest of the provost-marshal.

Presently she drew rein.

"Here, Dick, I leave you. I take the horses to a place I know of, and rest for the day. You must go on alone. Follow this path down, and it will take you to where you are expected, hardly half a mile from here. Give me your reins."

He dismounted, and handed the reins to her. He walked round to the near side of her horse.

"Rachel," he said, "I thank you. You have saved me—you and your grandfather both."

"My grandfather has not saved you, Dick. He has sentenced you. But I may be able to. God knows! Take this packet, and when you reach the Jewboy, give it him unopened."

She looked at him with a strange wistfulness. Suddenly she leaned over towards him until her face was close to his, and he could feel her warm breath upon his cheek.

"Kiss me, Dick," she said.

More in astonishment than fervor, his lips met hers. Instantly she straightened up in the saddle, crimson-faced, wheeled her horse, and trotted off through the trees, leading his. His eyes followed her wonderingly.

"Well, I'm blowed!" he said, as he turned, when she was out of sight, to follow the path along which she had directed him.