CHAPTER XVI

THE GUNWALE

Rudolph’s mission began quietly, with a glimpse which he afterward recalled as incredibly peaceful.  Two of the women, at least, showed no fear.  In the living-room sat Mrs. Earle, her chin cramped on her high bosom, while she mournfully studied his colored picture-book of the Rhine.  Miss Drake, who leaned in one of the river windows, answered him, saying rather coldly that Chantel and Mrs. Forrester had gone down to the garden.

In the court, however, he ran across Ah Pat, loitering beside a lantern.  The compradore grinned, and in a tone of great unconcern called out that the pair were not in the garden.  “Walkee so.”  He pointed down the passage to the main gate, and hooked his thumb toward the right, to indicate their course.  “Makee finish, makee die now,” he added calmly; “too muchee, no can.”

Rudolph experienced his first shock of terror, like an icy blow on the scalp.  They had gone outside before the alarm; she, Bertha, was swept away in that tumult which came raging through the darkness.—­He stood transfixed, but only for an instant, rather by the stroke of helplessness than by fear; and then, blindly, without plan or foresight, darted down the covered way.  The tiny flame of a pith wick, floating in a saucer of oil, showed Heywood’s gatekeeper sitting at his post, like a gnome in the gallery of a mine.  Rudolph tore away the bar, heard the heavy gate slam shut, and found himself running down the starlit road.

Not all starlight, however; a dim red glow began to flicker on the shapes which rushed behind him in his flight.  Wheeling once, he saw two broad flames leaping high in wild and splendid rivalry,—­one from Heywood’s house, one from the club.  He caught also a whirling impression of many heads and arms, far off, tiny, black, and crowded in rushing disorder; of pale torches in the road; and of a hissing, snarling shout, a single word, like “Sha, sha!” repeated incessantly in a high key.  The flame at the club shot up threefold, with a crash; and a glorious criss-cross multitude of sparks flew hissing through the treetops, like fiery tadpoles through a net.

He turned and ran on, dazzled; fell over some one who lay groaning; rose on hands and knees, groped in the dust, and suddenly fingered thin, rough cloth, warm and sopping.  In a nausea of relief, he felt that this was a native,—­some unknown dying man, who coughed like a drunkard.

Rudolph sprang up and raced again, following by habit the path which he and she had traversed at noon.  Once, with a heavy collision, he stopped short violently in the midst of crowded men, who shouted, clung to him, wrestling, and struck out with something sharp that ripped his tunic.  He kicked, shook them off, hammered his fists right and left, and ran free, with a strange conviction that to-night he was invincible.  Stranger still, as the bamboo leaves now and then brushed his bare forehead, he missed the sharp music of her cicadas.