Lord help 'em! They cursed hounds have surely played 'em false."
"What! not taken them, Joan?"
"They won't be taken," she said fiercely. "Do you think, unless 'twas over their dead bodies, they'd ever let king's men stand masters on the Lottery's deck?"
Eve's heart died within her, and with one rush every detail of the lawless life seemed to come before her.
"There they go again!" cried Joan; and this time, by the sound, she knew their position was altered to the westward and somewhat nearer to land. "Lord send they mayn't knaw their course!" she continued: "'tis but a point or two on, and they'll surely touch the Steeple Reef.—Awh, you blidthirsty cowards! I wish I'd the pitchin' of every man of 'ee overboards: 'tis precious little mercy you'd get from me. And the blessed sawls to be caught in yer snarin' traps close into home, anighst their very doors, too!—Eve, I must go and see what they means to do for 'em. They'll never suffer to see 'em butchered whilst there's a man in Polperro to go out and help 'em."
Forgetting in her terror all the difficulties she had before seen in the path, Eve managed to keep up with Joan, whose flying footsteps never stayed until she found herself in front of a long building close under shelter of the Peak which had been named as a sort of assembling-place in case of danger.
"'Tis they?" Joan called out in breathless agony, pushing her way through the crowd of men now hastening up from all directions toward the captain of the Cleopatra.
"I'm feared so;" and his grave face bespoke how fraught with anxiety his fears were.
"What can it be, d'ee think?"
"Can't tell noways. They who brought us word saw the Hart sail, and steady watch has been kept up, so that us knaws her ain't back."
"You manes to do somethin' for 'em?" said Joan.
"Never fear but us'll do what us can, though that's mighty little, I can tell 'ee, Joan."
Joan gave an impatient groan. Her thorough comprehension of their danger and its possible consequences lent activity to her distress, while Eve, with nothing more tangible than the knowledge that a terrible danger was near, seemed the prey to indefinite horrors which took away from her every sense but the sense of suffering.
By this time the whole place was astir, people running to this point and that, asking questions, listening to rumors, hazarding a hundred conjectures, each more wild than the other. A couple of boats had been manned, ready to row round by the cliff. One party had gone toward the Warren, another to Yellow Rock. All were filled with the keenest desire not only to aid their comrades, but to be revenged on those who had snared them into this cunningly-devised pitfall. But amid all this zeal arose the question, What could they do?
Absolutely nothing, for by this time the firing had ceased, the contest was apparently over, and around them impenetrable darkness again reigned supreme. To show any lights by which some point of land should be discovered might only serve as a beacon to the enemy. To send out a boat might be to run it into their very jaws, for surely, were assistance needed, those on board the Lottery would know that by this time trusty friends were anxiously watching, waiting for but the slightest signal to be given to risk life and limb in their service.
The wisest thing to be done was to put everything in order for a sudden call, and then sit down and patiently abide the result. This decision being put into effect, the excited crowd began to thin, and before long, with the exception of those who could render assistance, very few lookers-on remained. Joan had lingered till the last, and then, urged by the possibility that many of her house-comforts might be needed, she hurried home to join Eve, who had gone before her.
With their minds running upon all the varied accidents of a fight, the girls, without exchanging a word of their separate fears, got ready what each fancied might prove the best remedy, until, nothing more being left to do, they sat down, one on each side of the fire, and counted the minutes by which time dragged out this weary watching into hours.
"Couldn't 'ee say a few hymns or somethin', Eve?" Joan said at length, with a hope of breaking this dreadful monotony.
Eve shook her head.
"No?" said Joan disappointedly. "I thought you might ha' knowed o' some." Then, after another pause, struck by a happier suggestion, she said, "S'pose us was to get down the big Bible and read a bit, eh? What do 'ee say?"
But Eve only shook her head again. "No," she said, in a hard, dry voice: "I couldn't read the Bible now."
"Couldn't 'ee?" sighed Joan. "Then, after all, it don't seem that religion and that's much of a comfort. By what I'd heard," she added, "I thought 'twas made o' purpose for folks to lay hold on in times o' trouble."
CHAPTER XXVII
It was close upon three o'clock: Joan had fallen into an uneasy doze and Eve was beginning to nod, when a rattle of the latch made them both start up.
"It can't be! Iss, it is, though!" screamed Joan, rushing forward to meet Adam, who caught both the girls in a close embrace.
"Uncle? uncle?" Joan cried.
"All safe," said Adam, releasing her while he strained Eve closer to his heart. "We're all back safe and sound, and, saving Tom Braddon and Israel Rickard, without a scratch 'pon any of us."
"Thank God!" sighed Eve, while Joan, verily jumping for joy, cried, "But where be they to, eh, Adam? I must rin, wherever 'tis, and see 'em, and make sure of it with my awn eyes."
"I left them down to quay with the rest: they're all together there," said Adam, unwilling to lose the opportunity of securing a few minutes alone with Eve, and yet unable to command his voice so that it should sound in its ordinary tone.
The jar in it caught Joan's quick ear, and, turning, she said, "Why, whatever have 'ee bin about, then? What's the manin' of it all? Did they play 'ee false, or how?"
Adam gave a puzzled shake of the head. "You know quite as much about it as I do," he said. "We started, and got on fair and right enough so far as Down End, and I was for at once dropping out the kegs, as had been agreed upon to do, at Sandy Bottom—"
"Well?" said Joan.
"Yes, 'twould ha' been well if we'd done it. Instead of which, no sooner was the fires seen to be out—meaning, as all thought, that the Hart was safe off—than nothing would do but we must go on to Yellow Rock, which meant waiting for over an hour till the tide served for it."
"But you never gived in to 'em, Adam?"
"Gived in?" he repeated bitterly. "After Jerrem had once put the thought into their heads you might so well have tried to turn stone walls as get either one to lay a finger on anything. They wanted to know what was the good o' taking the trouble to sink the kegs overboard when by just waitin' we could store all safe in the caves along there, under cliff."
"Most half drunk, I s'pose?" said Joan.
"By Jove! then they'd pretty soon something to make 'em sober," replied Adam grimly; "for in little more than half an hour we spied the two boats comin' up behind us, and 'fore they was well caught sight of they'd opened out fire."
"And had 'ee got to return it?" asked Joan.
"Not till they were close up we didn't, and then I b'lieve the sight of us would have been enough; only, as usual, Mr. Jerrem must be on the contrary, and let fly a shot that knocked down the bow-oar of the foremost boat like a nine-pin. That got up their blood
