"We will have those dogs skinned," he remarked in his ordinary voice.
"They will make a fine rug for your house, Sir John."
"No doubt; but we've got to get out of this first. Remember that there
are a dozen desperate scoundrels not far away. And I don't see either
Miss Shepherd or myself returning to the world up that rope! By the way,
I haven't heard how you managed to get here in time."
He told me the story shortly enough. There was not an unnecessary detail
and no comment whatever. Thumbwood supplied the lacking picturesqueness
some days later. But even as Danjuro told it, I realized the marvellous
sagacity and contempt of danger that had saved us.
It seemed that when he had arrived at Zerran, the idea of a cave, either
natural or enlarged by pretended mining operations, was already in his
mind. As soon as I had left the inn on my expedition, Danjuro and
Thumbwood had taken one of Trewhella's boats and set out eastwards along
the coast. The Japanese had already taken his bearings, and knew that
Tregeraint House would be a little to the left of the jagged peak of
Carne Zerran. They cruised along into the moonlight until they picked up
their mark, and not two hundred yards further on struck the entrance to
the S-shaped cove. Then Danjuro had no longer any doubts. No boat could
live in that cauldron of the waves, but it seemed a man could, for our
rescuers proved it!
He stripped and went in--I learnt afterwards that he was as much at home
in the water as a seal, and, of course, like so many of his countrymen,
he was simply a mass of steel muscles. In twenty minutes the secret was
a secret no longer.
Danjuro's next move was to row back to Zerran Cove at top speed, and
hasten up the cliff path to the inn. Here he disinterred the coastguard
from the pigsty and roused him to immediate action.
Ropes and crowbars were procured, the fenced-off "dangerous" area on the
cliff-top invaded, and Danjuro, with Charles, descended in the nick of
time. But there was more than this. The coastguard had his orders.
Directly the two men disappeared over the brink he was instructed to
make all haste to the watch-house, some two miles away in the direction
of St. Ives. From there the Chief Boatswain was to telephone all along
the coast to the various stations, and also to the police at St. Ives,
Camborne and Penzance.
"In three or four hours, perhaps sooner," Danjuro concluded, "an armed
force should be concentrating on the moors upon the house above. The
pirates will be desperate, and will put up a fight--at least, I think
so, but the end is certain."
"And meantime, all we can do is to wait here until something happens?"
"That is as you please, Sir John," he answered, looking at me curiously.
For a minute I did not see what he meant, but then a great idea dawned
upon me.
"The Pirate Ship!" I burst out.
"I have always heard that Sir John Custance is a skilled pilot," he said
with a bow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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