THE MASKED LIGHT.

San José Lighthouse shone from the back of a tunnel-like creek on a barren stretch of the Chilian seaboard. Passing ships caught its secret rays most suddenly; much in the same manner as a lonely wayfarer might be startled at a swift glance of a light far down a secret entrance.

The moment the light of San José fell upon a ship, that vessel at once hugged the land and crept warily along the inshore water. A false order, a mistake at the helm, and the "Devil's Teeth," the offshore reef, would grind her ribs to matchwood.

The light was built on top of an old chapel whose ponderous walls could have carried the Eddystone itself. This building crouched in the left-hand corner of the creek, with its back built into the angle of the cliff, which, on that side, rose plumb as a wall and ran out into deep soundings. There was, however, one break in it about eighty yards in front of the lighthouse. From this opening an overhead traveling cable passed across the creek to the mid-level of "Cassandra Mine," which honeycombed the right bank.

This latter side, though rocky, was fairly easy of ascent by means of buttress-like masses of rock jutting out from the cliff, and the rubbish shot out from the mine.

Such was the lonely creek of San José when the revolution broke out against President Balmaceda, and left us, Gilbert and myself, stranded helplessly on a foreign shore.

Nine months before, we had departed from our homes in the States, appointed engineers to the Cassandra Coppermining Company, Limited. Nine months before! and now our situation was worse than any Bowery loafer's; he, at all events, could try the station house when the nights grew colder.

"I knew it was too good to last," cried Gilbert, one morning as we awoke to find ourselves in a dismal plight. The mine was deserted: every man had gone to shoulder a musket on the principle of "compulsory volunteering." We transferred our worries by means of a letter to the head office, and then fell to unlimited euchre, awaiting instructions. Meanwhile, our funds melted away.

At last came one day of maddening heat that drove us to the shade of the mid-level of the mine. There we did what we ought to have done a month before: we held a council of war.

"We've just three and a half pesos left—that's about three dollars," quoth Gilbert sourly.

"Then we've got to tramp."

"Tramp!" echoed Gilbert, "in that!" and he cast an exasperated glance at the landscape. It was an open oven. Below us, the lighthouse lenses flashed back the sunlight in such brightness that if we had not known that all the lights on the coast had been extinguished by order, we might have thought the lamps were still burning. The village huts seemed to shrink and huddle from the glare. Not a creature was abroad; the very air seemed to have swooned in the heat of that narrow creek.

And yet, over the hill crest where the village path cut the upland, a tiny speck rose to sight, and without a pause descended the slope toward us.

"Impossible!" gasped my chum, starting up in amazement. "He's stark, staring mad!"

It was a man running at a sling trot.

"Madman number two," cried Gilbert, and another speck breasted the crest, and hurriedly descended on the heels of the first comer. And then, by ones and twos, more men appeared and swung downward, hurriedly and without a halt, until we counted twenty-one of them on the slope. They came nearer and lower, and we saw sparkles of light breaking off them as they ran; then we both cried together: "Soldiers!" And at that word all the world was of interest.

By this time they were up to the first huts, and at a cry every soul rushed outside.

Some of the runners had fallen by the houses, and people began to carry water to them.

"Poor beggars," cried Gilbert, "but if they will run on a day like this—why on earth don't they go inside and rest peacefully?"

But that was the last thing they gave us any impression of so doing. We saw Henrico, the old sailor with the earrings and Spanish handkerchief for a cap, talking among a group of the soldiers. Now and again they looked back to the crest, and then toward our side of the creek. Something of great interest was meanwhile passing from hand to hand. Suddenly Henrico turned to the villagers, addressing them in no little heat. The soldiers seized their guns, and then, led by Henrico, the whole crowd, villagers and soldiers, began to ascend the talus of the mine. Halfway up, Henrico turned and called back to the women, "All you in siesta again." But one of them, Chloe, the sharp-tongued beauty of the village, broke away, and headed the whole crowd.

Striding along with her buoyant energy, she soon outstripped them all, and in a few minutes she appeared on the ledge in front of us, two hundred feet above the creek. For a moment she stood silent, a swarthy black-eyed beauty, holding the two plaits of her hair in outstretched hands: just in the same attitude and with just the same smile on her arched lips we saw her every morning when she called us to breakfast; for she was Henrico's niece and we lodged with him.

"Fortune, señors!" cried she. "Here are soldiers with a message; we do not read in our village; we come to you to speak it to us." And now the soldiers filed in, and Henrico proffered me a crumpled paper. I read on it: "To Capitan Barras." "Here!" cried I, "this is not for us."

"No," said a dusty, sweat-soaked soldier, "Capitan Barras is killed. I am his sergeant. Read, señor, I am the next."

"I nodded and read on:

"The enemy are reënforcing by sea. Have correct information that they intend capturing the lighthouse at San José on the 12th, and light it to guide the transports which are due to pass the inshore channel of the Devil's Teeth. Detail a command to destroy the lighthouse beyond repair. I have wired to the cruisers; latter will be able to overtake and capture transports if delayed off San José on the night of the 12th. You have six (6) hours start of the enemy.

"Rodrique Gomez."

As I finished this terse and emphatic message the sergeant cried "Ho!" and "Is that the lighthouse?"

"Yes," sang out the villagers as one man.

"Advance!" cried the sergeant, shouldering to the front of the crowd; Chloe was already on her way out, but with a sharp, smothered cry she stopped dead in the opening, turned round, and thrust back the following men, hissing the while through her teeth:

"Silence! not a breath; the enemy!"

There came a sudden metallic rattling, a rapid snapping of rifle breeches, then dead, nervous silence.

The lighthouse was in possession of the enemy! Already a couple of soldiers leaned over the balcony round the lenses, and we could hear their voices as they sang out to a mounted officer below. About this latter, and standing at ease, were some eighty men.

"And the videttes," growled the sergeant, as he pointed to the hill crest. At this an angry murmur arose about us. They were completely outnumbered by the Balmacedians; and outmaneuvred by the fatal mischance to their captain in a skirmish at daybreak. He had been shot through the throat. With a last effort he had thrust the note into the sergeant's hands and bade him haste to San José, halting neither to fight nor to rest. This we learned afterward.

From the first appearance of the soldiers in the mine, Gilbert had been eying them with undisguised irritation. He now called out in a sharp voice for their attention.

"If you stay here those other soldiers will attack you and 'gastado' the whole set of you. And this mine being American property and not a battle field, the best you can do is to clear out by the level on the far side before they discover you."

At this the sergeant looked blankly in his face.

"It's no good," quoth Gilbert, "you must clear out."

The sergeant's face changed. He slapped the breech of his rifle, swore a round oath, and cried heartily: "This place is our last stand; I shoot the first of my men that leaves!"

Gilbert dropped his eyelids in his tired way, and pulled out his watch.

"I give you five minutes," he said, in a level, matter-of-fact voice.

"And we," cried the sergeant, "have to destroy that lighthouse!"

Here Chloe thrust herself into the front of the gathering storm.

"The soldier has it," she cried, "the lighthouse must be destroyed. You, señors, engineer chiefs will show us the way; it will be done."

"I'll see you all hanged first," broke in Gilbert in terse English. Then he added in Spanish: "Clear out! only another two minutes." Chloe lifted her head in a passion, and her black eyes narrowed.

"Señors," she cried with scorn, "have we idled in the fetching of water when water was so scarce, for the big 'tub' every morn? and you have had meat and your coffee roasted to the hour. All; and not one pesos these months. Have we cried 'clear out' to you when you could not no more than these soldiers?"

Gilbert thrust his watch back in his shirt. We both flushed hotly, and we both found it disconcerting to look in one another's faces. But it had to be done.

"That's a bitter pill to swallow," growled he.

"It's true enough," I said.

Gilbert, with a short, grim laugh in his throat, growled out, "Well, let us begin to earn our grub."

Chloe read our decision in our faces. "Huzza," she cried, "the engineer chiefs—capitanos—will show us how to destroy it. We are the legs, the arms; they are the head. The lighthouse shall not be there to-night!"

In this manner Gilbert and I became "capitanos" in the Revolutionary army. From an inert and baffling position we were lifted on a wave, and flung into a rushing current. There was work for our hands and brains: a problem to solve, a thing to accomplish. And we were no longer weary.

Henrico and the sergeant joined us in a short council of war. And as at any moment the enemy's scouts might blunder on us and bring on a fight, we decided to retreat to a lower level, where we could hold an army corps at bay. Safe in this, Gilbert and I sat apart; the soldiers scooped out resting places, and, with their knapsacks for pillows, fell instantly asleep.

"Confound that girl," said Gilbert, "and confound the whole place and their tin-pot armies too! But it is a fine problem, eh? I suppose the only way to do it is by—well, anything else but fighting."

I quite agreed with him. But as hour after hour passed, and scheme after scheme was rejected, we began to think a little less of our abilities. We wrestled with the problem till our heads reeled. If only we could get a side glance even at a workable scheme. But no. At last Gilbert pulled out his Waterbury. "Five o'clock!" he cried, "we are undiluted frauds if we can't do it in another hour. It will be dark by six!"

Chloe had, in the meantime, crawled out by another level to report what was doing in the creek. She had just come back. The enemy were bivouacked round the lighthouse. On the upland, and commanding every approach, sentries and videttes marked the land as far as she could see.

However, she had brought one piece of comfort in the shape of a cool jar of water. As she served us she asked for news of our scheme.

"How soon do the hands and legs begin to work, capitanos?" she asked with a complacent smile. Gilbert, with a diplomatic, Spanish-fashion wave of his hand, replied: "So! so!"

"Ah, señors," said she, "I should want to do it—how? Why, shut up that lighthouse like flinging a blanket over it: so!"

"And," cried Gilbert, "that's just what we are going to do! Tell the men to be ready on the instant." As she departed he turned to me with dancing eyes.

"See?" he whispered.

"No; not an atom."

"No? Well, old man, she has struck the only plan possible! Observe the overhead traveling wire. It lands on the flat just outside the other opening, doesn't it? Well, suppose we hang a curtain—even Chloe's skirt, if it were big enough—on that wire, and run it out, and cut off the light from flashing out to seaward."

"But," I objected, "we can't make a screen big enough to intercept all the light at a hundred feet distance—it is impracticable."

He laughed in my face, and cried out:

"My boy, rays of light from lighthouses are parallel!"

I had forgotten this elementary fact. I cried "Eureka!" and then we faced our task: a race against time.

The men streamed up to us, heard, and set to work immediately. We requisitioned the tarpaulin covers from the bags of cement; even emptied the bags themselves. We stripped hundreds of yards of telephone wires in the galleries. We descended to a still lower level; we were all tailors, sailmakers, anything, everything. Some patched holes, while others sewed cover to cover until a sheet, fifty feet square, grew beneath our hands, sewn together with wire, and impervious to a single ray of light.

As the last hole was stilettoed with the point of a bayonet, Gilbert and I sought the upper level. We found the night had fallen. The cold sea breeze tasted like nectar after the candle-burnt atmosphere in the workshop below. Our eyes sought the lighthouse; a couple of men were in the lantern; one held a candle, and was clumsily striving to light the argand burners.

"Good!" cried Gilbert, "they'll smash some glasses, or I'm an idiot. Now for the launch!"

We descended to our workshop. The flushed, wet faces of the screen makers confronted us, and Gilbert spoke.

"We want a volunteer to cross to the other side and clear the wire, and to signal back when ready for us to haul out the screen. It must be one of you from the village, one who knows every stone in the darkness. And one who is not afraid. Who volunteers?"

There was a silence in which we heard the water dripping in far-deep levels. Gilbert looked from face to face; in vain, it seemed. The villagers were, however, weighing the risk of failure. Chloe stepped quietly from the group, and as quietly said: "This is a woman's business; is it not so, Uncle Henrico? Who knows so well as I the rock paths through the lines of the sentinels? And if I meet them—well, I am a woman and I laugh. If I were a man—well, the end of me and our venture."

"'Tis true," growled Henrico, "Chloe must go."

He had hardly spoken before she had given a swift wave of her hand to us, and vanished up the adit.

We followed, dragging our great screen, and presently we peered out into the night. In that little time they had managed to get some at least of the lamps to burn, and now we saw a glowing circle of light. Henrico, Gilbert, and myself alone crept on to the ledge outside. Everything had to be done by touch. Henrico had been a sailor, and to him fell the delicate task of hooking the screen on to the traveling wire. Foot by foot it disappeared overhead, and presently Henrico swarmed back to us and we crept together, and laid our ears on the wire cable. It sang and hummed in the night wind like a harp string. Little jars and metallic jingles broke the even rise and fall of sound. Was it Chloe? Should we hear the signal clear or confused, loud or soft? On a sudden our doubts were settled. Our ears rang as a clear sharp blow quivered on the wire.

"Safe," we cried in delight, and soon after that came the arranged three clear blows across the wire.

In another second we were all heaving hard and fast at the traveler overhead. Foot by foot it crept along, until we saw, with breathless delight, a huge blackness slicing into the circle of light. An unforetold eclipse! It intersected it completely. Not a ray escaped seaward.

So far we had won.

Dripping with sweat, and nigh breathless, we dropped to the rock and looked toward the lighthouse. The lantern seemed to be utterly deserted. Against the lower windows of the chapel we could see the silhouettes of the guard. They were playing cards. Not an eye had seen our operations. As we rejoined the sergeant, Gilbert chuckled and said: "The game is ours! Joker, right bower, and left!"

"Not yet," quoth Henrico grimly, "the fight is at the dawn."

"Across there," added the soldier, nodding his head toward the other landing place of the wire.

We had much yet to learn of the ups and downs of war; and more, too, to learn about our mine. For we now found every villager busily polishing up a rifle; and soon, too, they were dragging up half a dozen cases of ammunition from secret places in the far levels. And we were the engineers of this same mine!

Henrico served round the ammunition. The sergeant inspected every new rifle. He handed one to each of us in such an ordinary way of routine, that we accepted them and fell immediately into line to wait the coming of events. Two hours later, the tide had fallen sufficiently to enable a crossing to be made outside the mine.

Fifteen men were to guard the other landing place of the wire.

They passed out in single file, five soldiers and ten villagers, the sergeant in command. He carried two rifles. "One for our 'advance guard,' Chloe," he said, with a laugh wrinkling his brown face as he passed us. The next instant he stepped through the opening. And so he passed from our life: a little, sinewy man, of few words, but of most prompt decision; following his trade cheerfully, and uncomplaining if in the day's march bad tools or adverse luck befell him. He died across there in the dawn; perhaps he saw the sun rise, and knew the end of the night's work; I hoped so.

It was now close upon ten o'clock, and there were about seven hours for us to keep most vigilant and secret watch upon the lighthouse. From time to time we saw a man enter the lantern and trim the lamps. Once he stepped out on the balcony, and, leaning over the rail, quietly smoked his cigarette.

Gilbert clutched my arm like a vise. "If that man moves to the other side we are done! He will see his shadow on the screen!"

But, to our infinite joy, he passed in and down to join his comrades. Below, in the chapel, they played cards, changed sentries, and slept; all in complete unconsciousness of the ill trick we had played them.

Night was waning. Henrico pointed to a paler shadow on the crest above the creek. The wind had dropped; the air was filled with the sound of the tide seething in the rocks and weeds below us. Save that, all was still. Everything seemed to be watching and waiting.

Presently we could see one another's hands and faces. Henrico at once mustered all the defenders and posted them among the serried rocks on the talus.

It was an ambuscade in an amphitheatre. Some one dropped a musket, and, at the sound, we all glanced nervously at the lighthouse; no one stirred within, and we were crouching down—when a most horrid crash and volleying of shots broke out across the creek.

"On guard!" cried Henrico; "the patrol has found our outpost."

Even while he spoke, and even above the din, we caught the ring of quick hoarse cries of command from the lighthouse. The door was flung open and a stream of soldiers sallied forth—to instant death. From every stone of our ambuscade, spitting flashes converged on the open door. It was a butchery at such a point-blank range, and with a light behind to show the mark. The crash of our volley died away as swiftly as it commenced. For a moment I thought that not a man had escaped uninjured. Nothing but a tumbled, dark heap filled the doorway and the little circle of light. But, suddenly, from the shelter of the interior, some one struck down the candle inside with the butt end of a musket, and the darkness swallowed all up, for it was as night yet down there.

Then we became aware of the hushed silence that was about us. Not a shot resounded from the direction of our outpost. Had the attack failed or had they captured our post? Involuntarily I glanced at our screen. It was still there, now just dimly outlined on the paling sky. Gilbert called softly to Henrico to know what he thought of the silence at the other side. We saw Henrico craning over his rock, and striving to pierce the blackness at the foot of the creek; his hand was up to keep silent. At last, out of the vagueness of empty sounds, we caught a faint patter of footsteps, and, as we heard it, it came nearer and nearer: men running in desperate haste. In a trice they were below us in the shadows. Some one cried "Up here"; another called to Henrico: "They have left the post," and all in the same breath we were fighting for our lives!

TO BE CONCLUDED.