“Go on,” she begged; “don’t try to save me. You can get away if you don’t have to bother to help me along.”
“I’ll not leave you,” answered Bob firmly, taking a quick look over his shoulder. “The soldiers have not yet reached the path, and there’s a good chance for us. Do your best, Ysabel!”
The girl struggled along as well as she could, Bob bounding ahead and dragging her by main force. The shouts behind were growing louder. A rifle was fired and the bullet hissed spitefully through the air above their heads.
“Fingal will kill you if he catches you,” panted the girl.
“I’m not going to let him catch me,” answered Bob.
“He will catch you if you try to take me with you! Leave me, I say. I won’t be hurt. Perhaps, if I turn around and run toward them, I can do something to help save you.”
“You’re wasting your breath,” said Bob finally. “Save it for running.”
Ysabel was a girl who was accustomed, in some things, to having her way. She thought that, if Bob persisted in burdening himself with her, he would surely be captured, and she was anxious to save him at all costs. Thus, in a fashion, she could atone for what she had done in New Orleans.
Suddenly, while Bob was dragging her onward, she threw herself upon the ground.
77
“I can’t go another step!” she cried breathlessly. “Leave me and save yourself.”
He made no reply, but bent down and picked the girl up in his arms. Then, thus burdened, he staggered on along the path.
The pursuers were coming closer and closer. Two or three shots rang out, so close together that they sounded almost as one. Bob stumbled and nearly fell.
“You’re hurt!” cried the girl, noticing how his left arm dropped at his side, releasing her.
“Nicked, that’s all,” he answered. “The shock of it came near to taking the strength out of me for an instant. I’m all right now, although the arm isn’t much good for the present.”
“I’ll run along beside you,” said the girl, in a strangely subdued tone.
Her ruse to get Bob to leave her had not succeeded. On the contrary, it had cost Bob something. The girl, all contrition, ran at his side and did much better than she had done before.
A turn in the woods put them out of sight of their pursuers and presented a screen against the vicious firearms.
“Just a little farther,” breathed the girl. “The river is close now.”
“We’ll make it,” returned Bob cheerily. His face was a trifle pale, but the same dogged look was in his gray eyes which, more than once, had snatched victory from seeming defeat.
“Does your arm hurt, Bob?” the girl asked.
“It’s feeling better now.”
A little stream of red had run down his hand. The girl stifled a cry as she looked, but he only laughed lightly.
“A scratch, that’s all,” he assured her. “Let’s see78 how quick we can get around that next turn. When we pass that, we’ll have a straight run to the river.”
They called on every ounce of their reserve strength, and were around the bend before their enemies had had a chance to do any more firing.
Bob was wondering, during that last lap of their run, whether they were to be defeated at the very finish of their plucky flight. They had delayed too long in leaving the girl’s camp. He saw that, plainly enough, and yet he would not have started back to the boat at all unless he had received the news contained in Coleman’s note.
Had Dick reached the river in time to attract the attention of those on the submarine and have the craft brought to the surface, ready and waiting for Bob and the girl? If not, if the slightest thing had gone wrong and caused a delay, then Bob and his companion must surely fall into the hands of Fingal and General Pitou. Yet, harassed though he was by these doubts, Bob’s nerve did not for a moment desert him.
The rebels were behind them, and firing, when he and Ysabel reached the bank of the river. But the soldiers were firing wildly now, and their bullets did not come anywhere near their living targets.
And there, plainly under Bob’s eyes, was the Grampus. She was at the surface, he could hear the throb of her working motor, and Dick was forward, swinging back on the cable and holding her against the bank. Carl was half out of the conning tower, tossing his hands frantically.
“Hurry up! hurry up!” clamored Carl. “Don’d led dose fellers ged you, Bob. Schust a leedle furder und——”
Bob was about to yell for Carl to drop out of the tower and clear the way, but a bullet, fanning the air79 close to Carl’s head, caused him to disappear suddenly.
“You’ll make it!” yelled Dick, reaching over to help the girl to the rounded steel deck.
“Into the tower hatch with you, Ysabel!” cried Bob. “Help her, Dick,” he added. “There’s no use hanging to the rope now.”
As Bob scrambled to the deck, the impetus of his leap flung the bow of the submarine away from the bank. Dick was already pushing and supporting Ysabel toward the tower hatch.
The bullets were now flying too thickly for comfort, but Bob drew a long breath of relief when he saw the girl disappear behind the protection of the tower.
“In with you, Dick!” shouted Bob, the rain of bullets on the steel deck giving point to his words.
“But you’re hurt, matey,” answered Dick.
“No time to talk!” was Bob’s brief response.
Dick, without delaying matters further, dropped through the top of the tower. The firing suddenly ceased. As Bob mounted the tower and threw his feet over the rim, he saw the reason.
Four of the ragged soldiers had leaped from the bank to the submarine’s deck. More would have come, but the gap of water had grown too wide for them to leap across it. These four, scrambling and stumbling toward Bob, caused their comrades to hold their fire for fear of injuring them.
Just as Bob dropped down the iron ladder, the foremost of the negro soldiers reached the tower. His big hands seized the rim as he made ready to hoist himself upward and follow the fugitives into the interior of the boat.
Bob had yet to close the hatch, and the negro’s hands were in the way. With his clenched fist he struck the black fingers. His work was somewhat hampered80 from the fact that his left arm was still not to be depended on, so he had to use his right hand entirely.
With a howl of pain the negro pulled away his hands. Thereupon, quick as a flash, Bob reached upward and closed the hatch. Not a moment too soon was this accomplished, for the other three soldiers had reached the tower and were preparing to assist their comrade.
Bob pushed into place the lever holding the hatch shut.
“Fill the ballast tanks!” he shouted. “Pass the word to Clackett, Dick. Lively, now! Ten-foot submersion! We’ve got to clear the decks of these negroes. If they should break one of the lunettes, we’d be in a serious fix.”
Down below him Bob could hear Dick roaring his order to Clackett. With eyes against one of the narrow windows Bob watched the rebel soldiers.
They were beating on the hatch cover with their fists, and kicking against the sides of the tower. On the bank, their comrades were running along to keep abreast of the boat and shouting suggestions.
The Grampus, steered by Dick with the aid of the periscope, had turned her nose downstream in the direction of the Izaral. The hissing of air escaping from the ballast tanks as the water came in was heard by the four ragamuffins on the outside of the steel shell, and they began to feel alarm. This strange craft was more than their primitive minds could comprehend.
Slowly the submarine began to sink. As the water crept up the rounded deck, the negroes lifted their bare feet out of it gingerly and pushed up higher. One of them leaped on the conning-tower hatch.
Then, suddenly, the Grampus dropped below the water. A mud-colored blur closed Bob’s view through the lunette, and as he slid down the ladder into the81 periscope room, he heard faint yells from the negroes.
Dick, hanging over the periscope table, twirling the steering wheel, was laughing loudly.
“Look, Bob!” he cried. “If you ever saw a lot of scared Sambos, there they are, up there in the Purgatoire!”
Bob stepped to Dick’s side and peered down upon the mirror. Far behind, in the trail of bubbles sent up from the Grampus, the four negroes were swimming like mad toward the shore. Their comrades on the bank were leaning out to help them, and it was evident that they would all be saved.
“We can laugh at the affair now,” said Bob, “yet it was anything but a laughing matter a while ago. Eh, Ysabel?”
“You saved me, Bob Steele,” replied the girl, “and now let us see how badly you are hurt.”
“A bandage will fix that in a little while, Ysabel,” said the other; “just now I’ve got something else to attend to, and the arm can wait.”
Turning back to the periscope, he watched the river bank sliding away behind them, and waited for the moment when they should draw close to the Izaral.
Their work—the work which they had one chance in ten of accomplishing—must be looked after.