The morning of the fifth day he woke with an uneasy conviction that somebody had just been bending over him. Men were moving about, the usual ones. They were silent, and it seemed to Adam that they were furtive, avoiding his eyes. He sat up. He could actually smell something! And what he smelled, he swore, was Maisie Treadway.
He sank back. Of course this was only his imagination, which had been playing strange tricks of late. It was no more than another touch, if a singularly cruel one, of the fever-that-wasn't-a-fever. It would be no use to speak to Boardman or any of the rest about what, for a little while there, he'd thought he smelled. It made no sense. Tarnation! Love ain't a toilet water! Anyway, they had all been hush-up on the subject of Maisie. Whenever he mentioned her they would turn the talk to something else.
He was stronger and clearer-headed this morning, he thought; yet that feeling of uneasiness persisted.
The camp was curiously quiet.
"Open the flap," he commanded.
Sharpy Boardman complied without a word, and he and Frenchy Foureau, his tentmate, lugged Adam's cot to the entrance.
Ordinarily, even at this hour, the lane would be crowded. Now there was nobody in sight. The sun was fully up but not yet warm—otherwise he wouldn't have ventured to loll in it like this—and the dew was disappearing, to leave dust. Not even a mongrel gave movement to the scene; yet Adam sensed that behind tarpaulins and tent flaps men were watching, waiting. For what?
Adam turned. Boardman was just behind him; Foureau on the other side, near. They, too, were expecting something. They scarcely breathed.
This tent was the unofficial headquarters of an unofficial plot, and as such it was suspect by the orthodox. Doubtless somebody watched it, night and day, though Adam could see nobody now.
No, there was somebody! Far down near the beach a person in yellow had appeared. Gay colors were commonplace on Providence, but this was a remarkable yellow even here.
A woman? Yes. He saw now that it was a woman, and that there were men behind her.
He sat up. He peered, his heart beating fast.
It was more than just a woman—it was Maisie!
He might have shouted something. He must have tried to rise, for he became aware that Foureau and Boardman were holding him from behind, one grasping each elbow.
Was he raving? Had he gone mad entirely? He closed his eyes. Gasp ing, he kept them closed for a full two minutes.
When he opened them, Maisie was only fifteen or twenty feet away, still coming toward him. She was a vision of frills and furbelows, and her glorious hair was piled higher than ever and surmounted by a rickety but magnificent commode. There were rings on her fingers, where diamonds sparkled, and around her neck was a triple string of pearls. Her lips were painted, and there was rouge on her cheeks, patches, too, on her chin. She was laughing.
Adam sat motionless, fascinated, a rabbit before a snake.
He had previously noticed that Maisie was not alone, but he saw now that in addition to the men who trailed her, men who carried cocked pistols, there was a man on whose arm she leaned. She was talking to this man, whose earrings glittered, whose bald head shone in the sun, this squat, toadlike Everard van Bramm.
The monster squeezed her arm tight in his, and she smiled at him.
"There's nothing you can do, it's all over now," Sharpy Boardman whispered. "It's the bargain she made."
The Honorable Maisie de Lynn Treadway-Paul saw Captain Long, and she beamed at him. Captain van Bramm bowed.
Adam just looked at them.
"There's nothing you can do— She heard about the marooning somehow, and she got in touch with us through Walter's."
"She— She set the price herself," Foureau whispered.
The men with the pistols were watching Adam. They walked slowly. Here was a prearranged event, a dramatic demonstration of who owned the English lady, as formal as a court masque and easier to understand.
"She wouldn't take off her clothes for him till she'd seen you alive. She was here last night. She— She kissed you."
Adam said nothing.
The couple passed. Van Bramm took his arm away from hers and gave her a small possessive pat on the rump. She stiffened, and her step faltered; but soon she had her smile back in place, and she took his arm again, and they walked on.
The lane was quiet once more. The sun was out in full now.
"There's nothing you can do—"
"Stop saying there's nothing I can do!"
He swung his legs over the side of the cot.
"I want everybody who's on our side called here right now."
"Where are we going, Captain?"
"We're going to call on Everard van Bramm."
They persuaded him that he couldn't possibly mix it with van Bramm right now. Why, he could scarcely stand, much less swing a sword! He nodded in glum agreement. Shaken though he was, and infuriated, he wasn't blind.
At the same time his announcement was as dramatic as the midnight ringing of a bell. In minutes it was all over camp.
That very night it was reported to Adam that the fort stood empty, the cannon untended. He did not smile.
"Tell him, Thank you, I'm staying.'"
The next night and the next the pass was left open, and there were many to take advantage of this; but these were traders and pimps and the like: none of the Long faction left.
The fourth morning, early, a keg of gunpowder blew Sharpy Board-man's tent to smithereens, leaving, when the dust and the clitter-clatter of pebbles had settled, a great gaping crater.
Of course it might have been an accident. Many of the pirates, deserters from some navy or other, were opposed to any manner of discipline, while most of the others were slipshod in their habits anyway. There were frequent fires. The wonder was that this town of boards and canvas had not long ago been wiped out.
The explosion shredded the tent beyond repair but did no harm to any person. Adam and Sharpy and the Frenchman Foureau had reckoned that van Bramm would try some such trick; and though they made Sharpy's tent their daytime headquarters they were sleeping in another part of the camp.
The camp in fact was rather two camps now. Already it was largely deserted. Not more than a hundred men remained; and no women at all —excepting, unseen, Maisie.
It had apparendy been van Bramm's original intention to parade his purchase, and that daily. Was this pure vanity? Or he might have calculated that the possession of Maisie would lend him the semblance of added strength, as any item of prestige does, for after all she was not only expensive and spectacular but in her person she represented a triumph over the redoubtable Captain Long. Or it could be that he thought to shame Adam off the island with displays too hard for him to endure. Conceivably, again, all three of these thoughts might have found lodgment in van Bramm's reasoning.
Nevertheless, after that first stroll past the recumbent Captain Long, and one small additional saunter the following morning, van Bramm kept his prize indoors. Nothing whatever was heard from her, whose seclusion must have been positively Oriental. The chief's shack was scarcely more pretentious than any of the others in this shabby place, and there were no windows at which the lady might from time to time be glimpsed. None but the most trusted van Bramm followers were permitted to get anywhere near that particular shack, which was down on the beach, next to the warehouse.
It was simply not safe for van Bramm and his doxie to be abroad, even with bodyguards. His trick had backfired. It did not enhance his own importance in the eyes of the others or degrade Adam Long to laughingstock status. It had had indeed almost the opposite effect. Many men who had vacillated before now plumped with the rebels. The sight of The Smiler paddling and pawing his purchase had been too much.