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For a while I could see nothing when I entered the little cavern it laid bare; but, becoming used to the dim light presently, I took a few steps forward, and looking up I saw a rocky chimney and an orifice far up and the stars glimmering in the grey blue sky above me. This, then, was the second gate to Czerny's house, I said; the seagate by which his men passed in.
"Luck put me in the way of the thing," he continued, the mood being on him now and my silence helping him; "I met Czerny's skipper in 'Frisco, and he was a talker. There's nothing more dangerous than a loose tongue. The man said that his master was the second human being to set foot on Ken's Archipelago. I knew that it was not true.
And here upon the threshold a strange voice hails them; they are asked a question which turns every ear towards the rock, sends every man's hand to the gun beside him. Instantly, their own vile deeds accusing them, they cry, "Discovery!" They tell each other, I make sure, that Czerny's house is in the possession of strangers.
There were steps leading down to the water's edge, a still pool wherein boats were warped, other crags of the reef defying the tides; these and the silence of the night everywhere; but of men I saw nothing. The bloody fight we had anticipated, blow for blow, and ringing alarm, the struggle for foothold on the rock, the challenge to Czerny's men such things did not befall.
Czerny's yacht lay, the picture of a ship, eastward in the offing. The longboats, twelve of them, and each loaded with its devil's crew, drifted round and round the master's ship; but never a man that went aboard from them. "The ship," said I, "is where many a good ship has gone before: a thousand fathoms down by yonder cruel reef.
Sounds of the night came to us from that dismal island; we heard the lowing of the kine, the sea-bird's hoot, ever and anon the terrible human cry which spoke of a soul in agony. And with these were mingled grimmer sounds, like very music of the storm: the echo of distant gunshots fired by Czerny's men at the anchored yacht which refused them harbourage.
"Like a man who has bought a wooden leg and prefers the old one," said he; asking at the same time, "What's the course, captain, and why do we follow it?" "The course," said I, "is to Mme. Czerny's boudoir, and a good couch to lie upon. Do you two get on as fast as you can and leave us to the parley. It's coming, sure enough, and lame men won't help the argument.
He answered me by pointing to a figure on the floor beside him, stark and motionless and very still. Peter had played his part, indeed; I knew that the gate of Czerny's house was open. "All together, lads," said I, leading them on now with a light heart; "all together and out of the shadows, if you please.
"Then the sooner you let us look at it the better, doctor," said I. "Aye, but you were nearly gone. My heart was in my throat all the time you stood there." "Which is no place for a man's heart to be," said he, brightly; "especially at the door of Edmond Czerny's house." He stood a moment and bade me listen.
Ever and anon, as the mood takes them, the gunners on Czerny's yacht let fly at us with their erring shells; but they smite the air or hurt the water, or drop the bounding fire on the shimmering spread of sand beyond us. Perhaps it is that this employment occupies the minds of the longboats' crews and keeps them from reckoning with the master who has befooled them.
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