The White Invaders Part 7

It was a world menace!

At about midnight Mr. Dorrance joined Jane, Don and me where we stood by the Government House windows watching the distant motionless group of enemy lights. He was pale and hara.s.sed.

"No use for you to stay here," he told us. "Don, you and Bob take Jane home. It's the safest place now."

The reports seemed to indicate that of all the parishes, St. Georges was now most free of the apparitions.

"Go home," he insisted. "You and Bob stay with Jane. Take care of her, lads." He smiled grimly. "We--all the government--may be moving to St. Georges by morning."

"But, father," Jane protested, "what will you do? Stay here?"

"For a while. I'll drive over by daybreak. I'll keep the Victoria.

You have your cycles; you three ride over. Be careful, lads. You have your revolvers?"

"Yes," said Don.

We had no time for leave-taking. He was at once called away from us.

We left the Government House shortly after that, got our bicycles and started for the north sh.o.r.e road. Government Hill, where the road climbed through a deep cut in the solid rock, was thronged with carriages, and with cyclists walking up the hill. Most of the traffic was going in one direction--refugees leaving this proximity to the enemy.

We reached the top of the hill, mounted and began the long coast down. In an hour and a half or less we would be home.... Ah, if one could only lift the veil which hides even the immediate future, upon the brink of which we must always stand unseeing!

The north-sh.o.r.e road had the rocky seacoast upon our left--calm moonlit ocean across which in this direction lay the Carolinas some seven hundred miles away. We had gone, perhaps three miles from Hamilton. The road was less crowded here. A group of apparitions had been seen in the neighborhood of the Aquarium, which was ahead of us, and most of the refugees were taking the middle road along Harrington Sound in the center of the island.

But we decided to continue straight on. It was shorter.

"And there will be more police along here," Don reasoned.

Heaven knows we did not feel in immediate danger. Cycling soldiers pa.s.sed us at frequent intervals, giving us the news of what lay ahead. And we both had revolvers.

We came presently to the bottom of one of the many steep little hills up which it is difficult to ride. We were walking up the grade, pus.h.i.+ng our machines with Jane between us. A group of soldiers came coasting down the hill, but when we were half-way up they had pa.s.sed out of sight. It chanced at the moment that we were alone on the road. No house was near us. The ocean to our left lay at the bottom of a fifty-foot rocky cliff; to the right was a thick line of oleander trees, heavy with bloom.

Ahead of us, to the right within the line of oleanders, the glowing white figure of an apparition was visible. We stopped, out of breath from the climb, and stood by the roadside.

"See it there?" Don murmured. "Let's wait and watch it a moment."

One may get used to anything. We were not frightened. The figure, no more than twenty feet ahead of us, stood partly within a tree-trunk.

It could not materialize there. It was the figure of a man, with helmet and looped wires.

"Not that fellow who called himself Tako," I whispered.

This one was smaller, no larger than Jane, perhaps. He raised his arms as though warning us to stop. We stood gazing at him, undecided whether to retreat or advance. An omnibus carriage coming from St.

Georges stopped at the brow of the hill. Its occupants climbed out and began shouting at the apparition, at the same time flinging stones, one of which came bounding past us.

"Hi!" I called. "Stop that! No sense to that!"

Suddenly I heard a rustling of the oleanders at my side. We had no warning; our attention was wholly upon the apparition and the men by the carriage on the brow of the hill flinging stones. There was a rustling; the shadowed oleanders parted and figures leaped upon us!

I recall hearing Don shout, and Jane cry out. Our cycles clattered to the road. I fired at an oncoming white figure, but missed. The solid form of a man struck me and I went down, tangled in my wheel.

There was an instant when I was conscious of fighting madly with a human antagonist. I was conscious of Don fighting, too. Jane stood, gripped by a man. Four or five of them had leaped upon us.

I had many instant impressions; then as I fought something struck my head and I faded into insensibility. I must have recovered within a moment. I was lying on the ground, partly upon a bicycle.

Don was lying near me. White figures of men with Jane in their midst were standing off the road, partly behind the bushes. They were holding her, and one of them was swiftly adjusting a network of wires upon her. Then, as I revived further, I heard shouts; people were arriving from down the hill. I tried to struggle to my feet, but fell back.

In the bushes the figures--and the figure of Jane--were turning silvery; fading into wraiths. They drifted down into the ground.

They were gone.

CHAPTER V

_Into the Enemy Camp_

"But Bob, I won't go back to Government House," Don whispered.

"Lord, we can't do that--get in for theories and questions and plans to gather a police squad. Every minute counts."

"What can we do?"

"Break away from these fellows--send Uncle Arthur a message--anything at all; and say we'll be back in half an hour. I tell you, Jane is gone--they've got her. You saw them take her. By now probably, they've got her off there in Paget among them. We've got to do something drastic, and do it now. If the police attacked--suppose Jane is in that Paget group--the first thing they'd do when the police came at them would be to kill her. We can't go at it that way, I tell you."

We were trudging back up Government Hill with a group of soldiers around us. I had revived to find myself not seriously injured; a lump was on my head and a scalp wound where something had struck me.

Don had regained consciousness a moment later and was wholly unharmed. His experience had been different from mine. Two men had seized him. He was aware of a sudden puff of an acrid gas in his face, and his senses had faded. But when they returned he had his full strength almost at once.

We realized what had happened. Half a dozen of the enemy were lying in ambush there on the roadside. It was young white girls they were after, and when we appeared with Jane, one of the invaders showed himself as an apparition to stop us, and then the others, fully materialized and hiding in the oleanders, had leaped upon us. They had had only time to escape with Jane, ignoring Don and me where we had fallen. They seemed also not aware of the nature of our weapons for they had not taken our revolvers.

Had they gone now with Jane into the other realm of the Unknown? Or was she with them, over in Paget now in the little enemy camp there which was defying Bermuda? We thought very possibly it was the latter. The giant who had called himself Tako, who had escaped us in the Police Station, had been driven from our minds by all the excitement which followed. Was that Tako the leader of these invaders? Had he, for some time perhaps, been living as he said in the Hamiltonia Hotel? Scouting around Bermuda, selecting the young girls whom his cohorts were to abduct?

The thoughts made us shudder. He had noticed Jane. He it was, doubtless, who as an apparition had prowled outside Jane's room the night before last. And last night he had followed us to the Fort Beach. And again to-night in the restaurant he had been watching Jane. These men who had captured Jane now might very well carry her to Paget and hand her over to their leader, this giant Tako.

A frenzy of desperation was upon Don and me at the thought.

"But what shall we do?" I whispered.

"Get away from these soldiers, Bob. We've got our revolvers. We'll ride over there to Paget--just the two of us. It's our best chance that way. Creep up and see what's over there. And if Jane is there, we've got to get her, Bob--get her some way, somehow."

We could plan no further than that. But to return to Government House, to face Jane's father with the tale of what had happened, and then become involved in an official attempt to attack with open hostilities the enemy in Paget--that was unthinkable.