CAPTAIN MARGARET

 BY
 JOHN MASEFIELD
 Author of “The Everlasting Mercy,” “The Widow
 in the Bye Street,” etc.

 New York
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
 1916
 _All rights reserved_




 [DEDICATION]

 TO
 MY WIFE




 CONTENTS

 I. The “Broken Heart”
 II. A Farewell
 III. Outwards
 IV. A Cabin Council
 V. Stukeley
 VI. A Supper Party
 VII. The Tobacco Merchant
 VIII. In Port
 IX. A Farewell Dinner
 X. The Landfall
 XI. The Flag of Truce
 XII. The End




 CAPTAIN MARGARET

 I.
 THE “BROKEN HEART”


 “All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
 To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”


The short summer night was over; the stars were paling; there was a
faint light above the hills. The flame in the ship’s lantern felt the
day beginning. A cock in the hen-coop crowed, flapping his wings. The
hour was full of mystery. Though it was still, it was full of the
suggestion of noise. There was a rustle, a murmur, a sense of
preparation. Already, in the farms ashore, the pails went clanking to
the byres. Very faintly, from time to time, one heard the lowing of a
cow, or the song of some fisherman, as he put out, in the twilight, to
his lobster-pots, sculling with one oar.

Dew had fallen during the night. The decks of the _Broken Heart_,
lying at anchor there, with the lantern burning at her peak, were wet
with dew. Dew dripped from her running rigging; the gleam of wetness
was upon her guns, upon her rails, upon the bell in the poop belfry.
She seemed august, lying there in the twilight. Her sailors, asleep on
her deck, in the shadow, below the break of the quarter-deck, were
unlike earthly sleepers. The old boatswain, in the blue boat-cloak,
standing at the gangway watching the dawn, was august, sphinx-like,
symbolic. The two men who stood above him on the quarter-deck spoke
quietly, in hushed voices, as though the hour awed them. Even the boy
by the lantern, far aft, stood silently, moved by the beauty of the
time. Over the water, by Salcombe, the fishers’ boats got under way
for the sea. The noise of the halliards creaked, voices called in the
dusk, blocks piped, coils of rope rattled on the planks. The flower of
the day was slowly opening in the east, the rose of the day was
bursting. It was the dim time, the holy time, the moment of beauty,
which would soon pass, was even now passing, as the sea gleamed,
brightening, lighting up into colour.

Slowly the light grew: it came in rosy colour upon the ship; it burned
like a flame upon the spire-top. The fishers in their boats, moving
over the talking water, watched the fabric as they passed. She loomed
large in the growing light; she caught the light and gleamed; the tide
went by her with a gurgle. The dim light made her larger than she was,
it gave her the beauty of all half-seen things. The dim light was like
the veil upon a woman’s face. She was a small ship (only five hundred
tons), built of aromatic cedar, and like all wooden ships she would
have looked ungainly, had not her great beam, and the height of her
after-works, given her a majesty, something of the royal look which
all ships have in some proportion. The virtue of man had been busy
about her. An artist’s heart, hungry for beauty, had seen the idea of
her in dream; she had her counterpart in the kingdom of vision. There
was a spirit in her, as there is in all things fashioned by the soul
of man; not a spirit of beauty, not a spirit of strength, but the
spirit of her builder, a Peruvian Spaniard. She had the impress of her
builder in her, a mournful state, a kind of battered grandeur, a
likeness to a type of manhood. There was in her a beauty not quite
achieved, as though, in the husk of the man, the butterfly’s wings
were not quite free. There was in her a strength that was clumsy;
almost the strength of one vehement from fear. She came from a man’s
soul, stamped with his defects. Standing on her deck, one could see
the man laid bare--melancholy, noble, and wanting--till one felt pity
for the ship which carried his image about the world. Seamen had lived
in her, seamen had died in her; she had housed many wandering spirits.
She was, in herself, the house of her maker’s spirit, as all made
things are, and wherever her sad beauty voyaged, his image, his living
memory voyaged, infinitely mournful, because imperfect, unapprehended.
Some of those who had sailed in her had noticed that the caryatides of
the rails, the caryatides of the quarter-gallery, and the figurehead
which watched over the sea, were all carven portraits of the one
woman. But of those who noticed, none knew that they touched the
bloody heart of a man, that before them was the builder’s secret, the
key to his soul. The men who sailed in the _Broken Heart_ were not
given to thoughts about her builder. When they lay in port, among all
the ships of the world, among the flags and clamour, they took no
thought of beauty. They would have laughed had a man told them that
all that array of ships, so proud, so beautiful, came from the brain
of man because a woman’s lips were red. It is a proud thing to be a
man, and to feel the stir of beauty; but it is more wonderful to be a
woman, and to have, or to be, the touch calling beauty into life.

She had been a week in coming from the Pool to the Start. In the week
her crew had settled down from their last drunkenness. The smuts had
been washed from the fife-rails; the ropes upon the pins had lost the
London grime from the lay of the strands. Now, as the sun rose behind
the combes, flooding the land with light, smiting the water with gold,
the boy, standing far aft, ran up her colours, and the boatswain, in
his blue boat-cloak, bending forward slightly, blowing his smouldering
match, fired the sunrise gun, raising his linstock in salute. The
sleepers stirred among their blankets; one or two, fully wakened,
raised themselves upon their elbows. A block creaked as the peak
lantern was hauled down. Then with a shrill wail the pipe sounded the
long double call, slowly heightening to piercing sharpness, which bids
all hands arise.

The sunshine, now brilliant everywhere, showed that the _Broken Heart_
was “by the head,” like most of the ships of her century. Her lines
led downwards, in a sweep, from the lantern on the taffrail to the
bowed, inclining figurehead. A wooden frame thrust outward over the
sea; the cutwater swept up to meet it; at the outer end, under the
bowsprit, the figurehead gleamed--the white body of a woman, the
breasts bared, the eyes abased, the hands clasped, as in prayer, below
the breasts. Beyond the cutwater, looking aft, were the bluff bows,
swollen outwards, rising to the square wall of the forecastle, from
which the catheads thrust. The chains of the fore-rigging, black with
deadeyes and thickly tarred matting, stood out against the dingy
yellow of the paint. Further aft was the gangway, with its nailed
cleats; then the main-chains, and the rising of the cambered side for
poop and quarterdeck. Far aft was the outward bulge of the coach,
heavy with gold leaf, crowned by the three stern lanterns. The
painters had been busy about her after-works. The blue paint among the
gilding was bright wherever the twisted loves and leaves left space
for it. Standing at the taffrail and looking forward, one could see
all over her; one could command her length, the rows of guns upon her
main deck, the masts standing up so stately, the forecastle bulkhead,
the hammock nettings, the bitts and poop-rails with their carvings,
each stanchion a caryatid, the square main-hatch with its shot rack,
the scuttle-butt ringed with bright brass, the boats on the booms
amidships, the booms themselves, the broken heart painted in scarlet
on their heels.

The two men on the poop turned as the boatswain piped. They turned to
walk aft, on the weather side, along the wet planks, so trimly
parquetted. They walked quietly, the one from a natural timidity, the
other from custom, following the old tradition of the sea, which bids
all men respect the sleeper. The timid one, never a great talker,
spoke little; but his wandering eyes were busy taking in the view,
noting all things, even when his fellow thought him least alive. He
was the friend of Captain Margaret, the ship’s owner. His name was
Edward Perrin. He was not yet thirty-five, but wild living had aged
him, and his hair was fast turning grey. He was wrinkled, and his
drawn face and drooping carriage told of a sapped vitality, hardly
worth the doctoring. It was only now and then, when the eyes lifted
and the face flushed with animation, that the soul showed that it
still lived within, driving the body (all broken as it was) as
furiously as it had ever driven. He suffered much from ill-health, for
he was ever careless; and when he was ill, his feeble brains were
numbed, so that he talked with difficulty. When he was well he had
brilliant but exhausting flashes, touches of genius, sallies of
gaiety, of tenderness, which gave him singular charm, not abiding, but
enough to win him the friends whom he irritated when ill-health
returned. In his youth he had run through his little fortune in evil
living. Now that he was too weak for further folly, he lived upon a
small pittance which he had been unable to spend owing to the
forethought of a bequeathing aunt. He had only two interests in life:
Captain Margaret, whom he worshipped with touching loyalty; and the
memories of his wild youth, so soon spoiled, so soon ended. Among
those memories was the memory of a woman who had once refused his
offer of marriage. He had not loved the woman, for he was incapable of
love; he was only capable of affection; but the memory of this woman
was sweet to him because she seemed to give some note of splendour,
almost of honour, to his vicious courses.

He felt, poor wastrel, poor burnt moth, that his life had touched
romance, that it was a part of all high beauty, that some little
tongue of flame had sealed him. He had loved unavailingly, he thought,
but with all the lovely part of him. Now that he was broken by excess
he felt like the king in the tale, who, wanting one thing, had given
up all things, that the grass might be the sooner over him. Vice and
poverty had given him a wide knowledge of life; but of life in its
hardness and cynicism, stripped of its flowers. His one fond memory,
his one hopeless passion, as he called it, the one time in his life
when he had lived emotionally, had given him, strangely enough, an odd
understanding of women, which made him sympathetic to them. His
ill-health gave him a distaste for life, particularly for society. He
avoided people, and sought for individuals; he hated men, and loved
his master; he despised women, in spite of his memory of a woman; but
he found individual women more attractive than they would have liked
to think. Intellectually, he was nothing; for he had never grown up;
he had never come to manhood. As a boy he had had the vices of a man;
as a man he had, in consequence, the defects of a woman. He was a
broken, emotional creature, attractive and pathetic, the stick of a
rocket which had blazed across heaven. He was at once empty and full
of tenderness, cruel and full of sympathy, capable of rising, on his
feelings, to heroic self-sacrifice; but likely, perhaps on the same
day, to sink to depths of baseness. He was tall and weedy-looking,
very wretched and haggard. He delighted in brilliant clothes, and
spent much of his little store in mercers’ shops. He wore a suit of
dark blue silk, heavily laced at the throat and wrists. The sleeves of
his coat were slashed, so as to show a bright green satin lining; for,
like most vicious men, he loved the colour green, and delighted in
green clothes. He drooped forward as he walked, with his head a little
on one side. His clumsy, ineffectual hands hung limply from thin
wrists in front of him. But always, as he walked, the tired brain, too
tired to give out, took in unceasingly, behind the mask of the face.
He had little memory for events, for words spoken to him, for the
characters of those he met; but he had instead a memory for places
which troubled his peace, it was so perfect. As he walked softly up
and down the poop with Captain Cammock that lovely morning, he took
into his brain a memory of Salcombe harbour, so quiet below its
combes, which lasted till he died. Often afterwards, when he was in
the strange places of the world, the memory of the ships came back to
him, he heard the murmur of the tide, the noise of the gulls
quarrelling, the crying out of sailors at work. A dog on one combe
chased an old sheep to the hedge above the beach of the estuary.

“I am like that sheep,” thought Perrin, not unjustly, “and the hound
of desire drives me where it will.” He did not mention his thought to
Captain Cammock, for he had that fear of being laughed at which is
only strong in those who know that they are objects of mirth to
others.

“I’ll soon show you,” he cried aloud, continuing his thought to a
rupture with an imaginary mocker.

“What’ll you show me?” said Captain Cammock.

“Nothing. Nothing,” said Perrin hastily. He blushed and turned to look
at the town, so that the captain should not see his face.

Captain Cammock was a large, surly-looking man, with long black hair
which fell over his shoulders. His face, ruddy originally, was of a
deep copper colour; handsome enough, in spite of the surly look,
which, at first glance, passed for sternness. There were crow’s-feet
at the corners of his eyes, from long gazing through heat haze and to
windward. He wore heavy gold ear-rings, of a strange pattern, in his
ears; and they became him; though nothing angered him more than to be
told so. “I wear them for my sight,” he would say. “I ain’t no town
pimp, like you.” The rest of his gear was also strange and rich, down
to the stockings and the buckled shoes, not because he was a town pimp
like others, but because, in his last voyage, he had made free with
the wardrobe of the Governor of Valdivia. A jewel of gold, acquired at
the same time, clasped at his throat a piece of scarlet stuff, richly
embroidered, which, covering his chest, might have been anything, from
a shirt to a handkerchief. The Spanish lady who had once worn it as a
petticoat would have said that it became him. His answer to the
Spanish lady would have been, “Well, I ain’t one of your dressy ducks;
but I have my points.” Those who had seen him in ragged linen drawers,
pulling a canoa off the Main, between Tolu and the Headlands, with his
chest, and bare arms, and naked knees, all smeared with fat, to keep
away the mosquitoes, would have agreed with him.

“There’s one thing I wish you’d show me,” said Captain Cammock,
glancing at the schooners at anchor.

“What’s that?” said Perrin.

“Well,” said Captain Cammock, turning towards the harbour entrance,
“why has Captain Margaret put into Salcombe? Wasting a fair wind I
call it. We could a-drove her out of soundings if we’d held our
course.”

“I don’t think I ought to tell you that, Captain Cammock. I know, of
course. It has to do with the whole cruise. Personal reasons.”

Captain Cammock snorted.

“A lop-eared job the cruise is, if you ask me,” he growled.

“I thought you approved of it.”

“I’ll approve of it when we’re safe home again, and the ship’s
accounts passed. Now, Mr. Perrin, I’m a man of peace, I am. I don’t
uphold going in for trouble. There’s trouble enough on all men’s
tallies. But what you’re going to do beats me.”

Perrin murmured a mild assent. The pirate’s vehemence generally
frightened him.

“Look here, now, Mr. Perrin,” the captain went on. “One gentleman to
another, now. Here am I sailing-master. I’m to navigate this ship to
Virginia, and then to another port to be named when we leave England.
I don’t know what you want me to do, do I, James? Well, then, can’t
you give me a quiet hint, like, so I’ll know when to shoot? If you
don’t like that, well, you’re my employers, you needn’t. But don’t
blame me if trouble comes. You’re going to the Main. Oh, don’t start;
I’ve got eyes, sir. Now I know the Main; you don’t. Nor you don’t know
seamen. All you know is a lot of town pimps skipping around like burnt
cats. Here now, Mr. Perrin, fair and square. Are you going on the
account?”

“As pirates?”

“As privateers.”

“Well, you see, captain,” said Perrin, “it’s like this. Captain
Margaret. I don’t know. You know that, in Darien, the
Spaniards--they--they--they drove out the Indians very brutally.”

Captain Cammock smiled, as though pleased with a distant memory.

“Oh, them,” he said lightly.

“Well,” continued Perrin. “You’d have been told to-day, anyhow; so it
doesn’t much matter my telling you now. What he wants to do is this.
He wants to get in with the Indians there, and open up a trade;
keeping back the Spaniards till the English are thoroughly settled.
Then, when we are strong enough, to cut in on the Spanish
treasure-trains, like Sir Francis Drake did. But first of all, our aim
is to open up a trade. Gold dust.”

Captain Cammock’s face grew serious. He gazed, with unseeing eyes, at
the swans in the reach.

“Oh,” he said. “What give you that idea?”

“Do you think it possible?”

“I’ll think it over,” he said curtly. “I’m obliged to you for telling
me.” He made one or two quick turns about the deck. “Here you, boy,”
he cried, “coil them ropes up on the pins.” He glanced down at the
quarter-deck guns to see if the leaden aprons were secured over the
touch-holes. “Mr. Perrin,” he continued, “about Captain Margaret. Has
he got anything on his mind?”

“Yes, captain. He’s had a lot of trouble. A woman.”

“I thought it was something of that sort. Rum or women, I say. Them
and lawyers. They get us all into trouble sooner or later.”

“He was in love with a girl,” said Perrin. “He was in love with her
for four years. Now she’s gone and married some one else.”

“I suppose she was a society lady,” said Cammock, investing that class
with the idea of vices practised by his own.

“She was very beautiful,” said Perrin.

“And now she’s married,” said Cammock.

“Yes. Married a blackguard.”

“Yes?” said the captain. “And now she’ll learn her error. Women aren’t
rational beings, not like men are. What would a beautiful woman want
more, with Captain Margaret?”

“It’s about done for him,” said Perrin. “He’ll never be the man he
was. And as for her. The man she married cheated a lad out of all his
money at cards, and then shot him in a duel.”

“I’ve heard of that being done,” said the captain.

“Oh, but he did a worse thing than that,” said Perrin. “He’d a child
by his cousin; and when the girl’s mother turned her out of doors, he
told her she might apply to the parish.”

“Bah!” said the captain, with disgust. “I’d like to know the name of
that duck. He’s a masterpiece.”

“Tom Stukeley, his name is,” said Perrin. “His wife’s Olivia Stukeley.
They are stopping in Salcombe here. They are still wandering about on
their honeymoon. They were married two or three months back.”

“Ah,” said Cammock, “so that’s why the captain put in here. He’ll be
going ashore, I reckon.” He walked to the break of the poop and blew
his whistle. “Bosun,” he cried. “Get the dinghy over the side, ’n
clean her out.” He walked back to Perrin. “Much better get him away to
sea, sir. No good’ll come of it.”

“What makes you think that?” said Perrin.

“He’ll only see her with this Stukeley fellow. It’ll only make him
sick. Very likely make her sick, too.”

“I can’t stop him,” said Perrin. “He’ll eat his heart out if he
doesn’t go. It’s better for him to go, and get a real sickener, than
to stay away and brood. Don’t you think that?”

“As you please,” said Cammock. “But he ain’t going to do much on the
Main, if he’s going to worry all the time about a young lady. The
crowd you get on the Main don’t break their hearts about ladies, not
as a general act.”

“No?” said Perrin.

The conversation lapsed. The captain walked to the poop-rail, to watch
the men cleaning up the main-deck. He called a boy, to clean the
brass-work on the poop.

“Not much of that on the Main, sir, you won’t have,” he said.

“No?” said Perrin.

“No, sir,” said the captain. “On the Main, you lays your ship on her
side on the softest mud anywheres handy. And you gets Indian ducks to
build little houses for you. Fine little houses. And there you lays
ashore, nine months of the year, listening to the rain. Swish. Your
skin gets all soft on you, like wet paper. And you’ll see the cabin
below here, all full of great yellow funguses. And all this brass will
be as green as tulips. It will. And if you don’t watch out, you could
grow them pink water-lilies all over her. It’s happy days when you’ve
a kind of a pine-apple tree sprouting through your bunk-boards.” He
paused a moment, noted the effect on Perrin, and resolved to try an
even finer effort. “I remember a new Jamaica sloop as come to One Bush
Key once. I was logwood-cutting in them times. She was one of these
pine-built things; she come from Negrill. They laid her on her side in
the lagoon, while the hands was cutting logwood. And you know, sir,
she sprouted. The ground was that rich she sprouted. Them planks took
root. She was a tidy little clump of pines before I left the trade.”

“Eight bells, sir,” said the boy, touching his cap.

“Thank you,” said Cammock. “Make it. Who’s watchman, bosun? Let him
call me at once if any boat comes off.”

“Ay, ay, Captain Cammock,” said the boatswain.

The steward, an old negro, dressed in the worn red uniform of a
foot-soldier, came with his bell to the break of the poop, to announce
the cabin breakfast. The men, with their feet bare from washing down,
were passing forward to the forecastle. Their shirts, of red, and
blue, and green, were as gay as flags. The wet decks gleamed; the
banner blew out bravely from the peak. As the bell struck its four
couplets, the bosun ran up to the main-truck the house-flag, of
Captain Margaret’s arms, upon a ground of white. The watchman, in his
best clothes, passed aft rapidly to the gangway, swallowing the last
of his breakfast.

“After you, sir,” said Cammock to Perrin, as they made politeness at
the cabin door.

“Thank you,” said Perrin, with a little bow.

They passed in to the alley-way, to the cabin table.

The cabin of the _Broken Heart_ was large and airy. The stern-windows,
a skylight amidships, and the white paint upon the beams and
bulkheads, made it lighter than the cabins of most vessels. A locker,
heaped with green cushions, so that it made a seat for a dozen
persons, ran below the windows. Under the skylight was the table, with
revolving chairs about it, clamped to the deck. At both sides of the
cabin were lesser cabins opening into it. On the port side, the
perpetual wonder of Captain Cammock (who, though, like all seamen, a
scrupulously clean man, never dreamed of desecrating it by use), was a
bath-room. To starboard was a large, double state-room, with a
standing bed in it, where Captain Margaret slept. Forward of the cabin
bulkhead (which fitted in a groove, so that it might be unshipped in
time of battle) were other quarters, to which one passed from the
cabin by an alley-way leading to the deck below the break of the poop.
To port, in these quarters, was Perrin’s cabin, with Cammock’s room
beyond. To starboard was the steward’s pantry and sleeping-place, with
the sail-room just forward of it. The bulkheads were all painted
white, and each cabin was lighted by scuttles from above, as well as
by the heavy gun-ports in the ship’s side, each port-lid with a glass
bull’s-eye in it. The cabins were therefore light and bright, having
always an air of cleanly freshness. The great cabin would have passed
for the chamber of a house ashore, but for the stands of arms, bright
with polished metal, on each side of the book-case. Over the book-case
was a small white shield, on which, in red brilliants, was the _Broken
Heart_. When the light failed, at the coming of the dusk, the crimson
of the brilliants gleamed; there was a burning eye above the
book-case, searching those at meat, weighing them, judging them.

The stern-windows were open, letting in the sunlight. The table was
laid for breakfast. The steward in his uniform stood bare-headed,
waiting for the company. The door of the state-room opened smartly,
and Captain Margaret entered. He advanced with a smile, shook hands
with the two men, bidding them good morning. Perrin, ever sensitive to
his friend, glanced at him for a moment to note if he had slept ill,
through brooding on his love; but the mask upon his friend’s face was
drawn close, the inner man was hidden; a sufficient sign to Perrin
that his friend was troubled. Captain Cammock looked at his employer
with interest, as he would have looked at a man who had been at the
North Pole. “So he’s in love with a girl, hey?” he thought. “Gone half
crazed about a girl. In love. And the lady give him the foresheet,
hey?” He even peered out of the stern-window over Salcombe, with the
thought that somewhere among those houses, or walking in one of those
gardens, went the lady Olivia, wonderfully beautiful, squired by the
unspeakable Stukeley.

“Hope we didn’t wake you, sir,” he said politely. “One can’t carry on
without noise, coming to anchor.”

“I thought I heard your voice once,” said Captain Margaret. “You were
talking about grilling the blood of some one.”

“They don’t understand no other language,” said the captain, with a
grin. Then, rapping the table with his knife, at his place as captain,
he mumbled out a blessing. “Bless this food, O Lord, for the support
of our bodies.” The rest of the blessing he always omitted; for a
jocular shipmate had once parodied it, in a scandalous manner, much
appreciated by himself. “He’d had a wonderful education, that man,” he
always maintained. “He must have had a brain, to think of a real wit
like that was.”

Captain Cammock helped the fresh salmon (bought that morning from a
fisherman) with the story of the duff. Until the tale was ended, the
company hungered.

“Did y’ever hear of the captain and the passenger?” he asked. “They
was at dinner on Sunday; and they’d a roll of duff. So the captain
asks the passenger, like I’d ask you about this salmon. He asks him,
‘Do you like ends?’ No, he didn’t like no ends, the passenger didn’t.
‘Well, me and my mate does,’ says the captain; so he cuts the duff in
two, and gives the mate one half and eats the other himself.”

“Strange things happen at sea,” said Perrin.

“I believe Captain Cammock makes these stories up,” said Margaret. “In
the night-watches, when he isn’t grilling seamen’s bloods.”

“Yes,” said Perrin, “yes.”

“Is that right, captain?” asked Margaret. “Do you make these stories
up yourself?”

“No, sir,” said Cammock, “I’ve not got the education, and I’ve
something else to think about. These writer fellows--beg pardon,
Captain Margaret, I don’t mean you, sir--they’re often very
unpractical. They’d let a ship fall overboard.”

“So you think them very unpractical, do you, captain?” said Margaret.
“What makes you think that?”

“Because they are, sir,” he replied. “They’re always reading poetry
and that. From all I can make out of it, poetry’s a lot of slush.”

“Have you ever read any?” said Perrin.

“Who? Me?” said Cammock. “Bless yer, yes. Reams of it. A book of it
called _Paradise Lost_. Very religious, some of it. I had enough of
poetry with that inside me. I can’t say as I ever read much since.”

“Well, captain,” said Margaret, “it hasn’t made you unpractical.”

“No, sir,” said the captain. “But then I never give it a chance to.
I’ve always had my work to see to.”

“And what has been your work? Always with ships?”

“No, sir, I was a logwood-cutter one time.”

“And what is logwood-cutting like?”

“Oh, it’s hard work, sir. Don’t you forget it. You’re chopping all the
forenoon, and splitting what you chopped all afternoon, and rolling
the pieces to the lagoon all evening. And all night you drink rum and
sings. Then up again next morning. Your arms get all bright red from
logwood, and you get a taste for sucking the chips. A queer taste.”

“And who buys your logwood?” said Margaret. “Who uses it? What’s it
used for?”

“I don’t rightly know about that, except for dyeing,” said Cammock. “A
Captain Brown bought all we cut. But we’d great times along the banks
of the lagoon.”

“When you say great times,” said Margaret, “what do you mean exactly?
What was it, in logwood-cutting, which seems great to you? And was it
great to you then, or only now, when you look back on it?”

“Did y’ever hear tell of the ‘last ship,’ sir?” said Cammock. With
another man he might have resented the continual questioning; but
Captain Margaret always made him feel that he, old pirate as he was,
had yet, even in spite of, perhaps by reason of, his piracies, a claim
upon, an interest for, the man of intellect and the man of culture.
“Did y’ever hear tell of the ‘last ship,’ sir?” said Cammock.

“No,” said Margaret. “Tell us about the last ship.”

“Do you mean Noah’s ark?” said Perrin.

“The public-house?” asked the captain.

“No. A ship. I’ll tell you of the last ship.”

“What has the last ship got to do with the great times on the lagoon?”
asked Margaret.

“Just this, Captain Margaret. When a growler. A pug, you understand;
one of the hands forward there. When a seaman comes aboard a new ship,
he always blows at the rate of knots about his last. You’ll never hear
of the ship he’s in. No, sir. She’s hungry. Or wet. Or her old man’s a
bad one. But so soon as he leaves her. Oh, my love, what a ship she
was, my love. Bacon for breakfast; fires to dry your clothes at;
prayers and rum of a Sunday forenoon. Everything. That’s what I mean
by a last ship. So when I says we’d great times on the lagoon, why,
it’s only a way of speaking. I mean as it seems just beautiful, now
it’s over. I’ll just trouble you, Mr. Perrin, if there’s any more beer
in the jug.”

“So that’s the last ship, Captain Cammock,” said Margaret. “Well, and
now tell us what seems great to you, when you think of--of your last
ship, in the lagoon, as you call it.”

Captain Cammock looked at Perrin, who seldom spoke at meals, perhaps
because his intellect was too feeble to allow him to do more than one
thing at a time. Perrin, who hated to be looked at when he was eating,
from some shy belief that no one looked at him save with a desire to
laugh, gulped what he had in his mouth at the moment, choked, and hid
his confusion in his tankard. Captain Cammock did the same, lest he
should appear rude.

“Now that’s no easy question, Captain Margaret,” he said. “It wasn’t
great, now I come to think of it. It was hard work. As hard as
shovelling coal. And hot. Oh, it’s hot in them lagoons. Sometimes our
shirts would be wringing wet with perspiration. And often we were up
to our knees in mud, where we worked, and little red devils biting us,
besides mosquitoes. And there were thorns on the logwood; spikes as
sharp as stings.”

“What were your amusements?” said Margaret.

“Oh, as to them,” replied the captain. “We’d go hunt a wild cow on
Saturdays. Or perhaps fish. Or sometimes we’d go a lot of us among the
Indians, to a paw-waw. And then ships come. We’d great times when
ships come. In the moonlight. We’d sing and drink rum. And firing off
pistols and cheering. Oh, we’d great times.”

“Why don’t you go back to it?” asked Captain Margaret. “You don’t go
back to it. Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be the same,” said Cammock, as he prepared his morning’s
pipe. “The men I knowed are gone. They’d have new ways, the new lot.
Besides, that sort of thing only goes when you’re young. When you get
the salt in your bones, you find the young devils don’t like having
you around. And the girls get particular. You can’t get a wife no
longer for a yard of blue baize and a stick of sealing-wax. Excuse me,
captain. I’m a sailor. I sometimes talk rough. But there it is. All a
sailor has at the end is just what he can remember. What I can mind of
logwood-cutting is the same as a trader’s money-bags is to him. I must
be off forward, to have my morning draw.” He spun his chair round, and
rose, pressing the tobacco into his clay pipe. “Give me my hat,
stooard.” He bowed to the two friends, walking slowly to the cabin
door. “By the way, sir,” he called back. “I forgot to ask. I suppose
you’ll be going ashore this fine morning?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “I am going ashore. I shall want the boat,
captain.”

“Very good, sir,” said Cammock. “Will you want to fill our water,
sir?”

“No,” said Margaret. “I shall sail before sunset, if the wind holds.
We shall fill no more water till we make Virginia.”

“Very good, Captain Margaret,” said Cammock. “If you don’t want the
hands, I’ll try them at the guns. It’s time they got into the way of
doing things.”

He spun upon his heel, leaving the two friends together. The steward,
gathering up the gear, retired to the pantry to wash up.

Captain Charles Margaret, the owner of the _Broken Heart_, sitting
there in his chair, in the quiet cabin, was not yet forty; but his
brown hair was grizzled, and his handsome face, so grave, so full of
dignity, was marked austerely with lines. He gave one, at first, the
impression of a man who had lived fully, grandly, upon many sides of
life; with a nobility inherent, not to be imitated. It was only after
long months of friendship that the observer could learn the man’s real
nature. He would see then that the real nature, ripened, as it was, on
so many sides, ready, as it was, to blossom wonderfully, had never
come to flower, still less to fruit. It was a great nature, checked by
some hunger of the soul, which (this is the sorrow of all beautiful
desire) would perhaps have destroyed the soul, had it been satisfied.
He was one who had loved for many years. He had paid away all the gold
of his life, for a sorrow and a few copper memories. He had loved
nobly, like a man of the heroic time, letting life go by him with a
smile, so long as the woman whom he loved might be spared one little
moment’s annoyance, one little wrinkling of the beautiful brow. He had
said to himself that he had worn this woman’s glove, and that he would
wear no other woman’s petticoat. And from long brooding on this
wayward beauty who had spoiled his life, he had learned much of women.
He understood them emotionally with a clearness which sometimes
frightened him. He felt that he took a base advantage of them in
allowing them to talk to him. Their hearts were open books to him.
Though the woman said, “Look on this page, or on this,” his instinct,
never wrong, revealed to him the page she tried to hide; and his
indulgence of this sense made him, at times, of little use in
conversation; for the revealed truth amused him more than its polite
screen. At times its possession saddened him, for he knew that he
would never exercise that sense in the tenderness of the accepted
lover, reading the unspoken thought in the beloved eyes. In his person
he was tall and finely built, but a certain clumsiness in his walk
made his appearance ungraceful when he left his chair. His hands were
singularly beautiful. His eyes were grey and deep-set. His face was
pale, inclining to sallow, but bronzed by the wind and sun. He was
careful, but quiet in his dress. He wore a black suit, precisely cut,
like the clothes of a Puritan, but for its fine lace collar and
elaborately carved buttons of scarlet ivory.

He had, as he felt, failed in life, because he had failed in love; a
point of view common among women, in a man a confession of
self-praise, selfishness, almost of vanity. He had allowed his passion
to keep him from action; by which, alone, growth or worth can be
determined. He, as a lover, having, as he thought, created a life for
himself, more beautiful, because intenser, than the lives of others,
even of artists, had lived retired, judging, as all retired men will,
all actions, all life, all things, by an arbitrary standard, his own
standard, the value of which he was incapable of judging. He had been
certain, led away, as he had been, by wild love, that his way was the
way of self-perfection, to which all ways assisted, rightly used. In
so far as his passion had fitted him for the affairs of the world, by
adding graces, or accomplishments to a nature rich already, he had
profited. He had studied arts, some half a dozen different kinds, so
that his mind might have the more facets to twinkle agreeably for his
mistress’s pleasure. But with the confidence of various skill had
come, also, intellectual pride; for to the man who knew a little of
many things, many things seemed little, since none, save a hopeless
passion, seemed great. With this had come a shrinking from the world,
a tolerance of it that was half contempt, a distrust of it that was
half sorrow for it. He lived away from the world, in a fanciful
chamber, where the kings of his imagination offered precious balms for
ever to the aloof lady, queen and saint. It was his fancy, in the
latter years of his passion, to sublime all human experience, to
reduce all action to intellectual essence, as an offering to her. This
had begun from a desire to amuse her in conversation. Later, as his
aloofness from the world drove him still more upon his folly, he had
one day trembled lest she should ask him something that he did not
know, or could not resolve. It had given to him a new interest in the
world; but a fantastic interest; he saw it only for her, to some
extent through her. He searched the measure of his friends’
experience, trying to find, as he had tried that morning with Captain
Cammock, some purpose or delight, some glory or dignity in the various
tale, which might, in his own hands, become beauteous to her, and to
himself sweet, being, as he never doubted it would prove, less
glorious, less grand, than his daily experience of high emotion.

Now that the two friends were together in the cabin, there was a
silence. Throughout the meal Margaret had kept the old pirate talking,
in order to divert Perrin from the protests which he knew would come.
Now that they were alone, the protests were long in coming. Perrin
fidgeted between the table and the book-case, biting his thumbs,
evidently waiting for his friend to speak. At last, feeling that he
could wait no longer, and speaking crudely because he spoke from his
own initiative, he began--

“Look here, Charles, you ought not to go ashore to-day.”

“Why not?” said his friend. “It’s the end of everything.”

“Her marriage was the end of everything,” said Perrin. “Look here,
man, you’re coming this cruise to get rid of your sorrow. Don’t go
ashore and begin it all over again. You’ll only upset yourself, and
very likely give her pain.”

“You don’t understand, Edward,” said Margaret. “She has been my whole
life for four years. If I could. I don’t know. If I could, it might be
wiser to go away without a word. Ah, no, no. I can’t. You can’t cut
off a part of your life like that. I must go.”

“Well, then,” said Perrin, “I insist on coming with you. You’ll just
see her, and come away. I’m weak, I know, and all that; but I will
save you from making ducks and drakes of your life. If you see her,
you’ll see her with me. But I think you’re very unwise, Charles. If
you weren’t owner, I’d clap you in irons and put to sea. I know one
thing. If you see her, no good’ll come of it. Look here, man; do drop
her, and let’s get away while the wind holds.”

“No. I must see her,” said Margaret stubbornly. “And I couldn’t have
you with me. That’s impossible.”

“Why impossible?”

“Because. Well, we won’t talk of that. My mind is made up. By the way,
Edward, you were up very early, weren’t you?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to see the sunrise. I’ve heard so much
about sunrise at sea. And I got into talk with the captain. I told him
a little about our plans. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No. I’m glad. We shall have to go into that to-night. By the way,
Edward, I want you, after this, to stand two watches a day. I shall do
the same. We must learn what stuff our men are made of before we reach
Virginia; for in Virginia we shall have to weed out our crew. We can
have no skulkers where we are going.”

“All right, Charles. I’m going on deck now. I think you’re very
foolish. Your going to see her will do no good. So I tell you.
Remember me to her.” He picked up his hat, and walked out of the cabin
to the deck.

Captain Margaret rose from his chair, glanced through the stern-port
at the harbour, and sighed a little.

“Well,” he said abruptly, shrugging his shoulders, “what must be, must
be. Perhaps they’ll be out when I get there. Perhaps she’ll refuse to
see me.”

His mind, which now made none save romantic images, imaged for him the
_Broken Heart_ at sea, under her colours, going over the water, her
owner looking astern at land he would never again tread. It imaged for
him a garden ashore, full of roses and tall white campanulas. A lady
walked there, looking seaward, regretting that she had not seen him,
that she had not bidden him good-bye. Oh, very sweet, very tender,
were the images which rose up in him, for the ten thousandth time, as
he stared out over Salcombe harbour. And each image, each romantic
symbol imagined or created, was a heavy nail, a heavy copper bolt,
nailing him within the coffin of his past, among the skeletons of
starved hopes and strangled passions.




 II.
 A FAREWELL


 “Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing.”
                          _Sonnet lxxxvii._

 “Here take my picture; though I bid farewell,
 Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell.”
                                  John Donne.


In a little room ashore, in a private suite of a big inn near the
church, Tom Stukeley sat alone at breakfast, staring down the garden,
across the sea, to the moored ships. He was a tall, powerful,
well-made man, of a physical type more common in Ireland than in
England, but not rare here. He was, above all things, a creature of
the body. One had but to look at him to realize that when he died
there would be little for Rhadamanthus. One could not like the man;
for though his body had a kind of large splendour, it was the
splendour of the prize cabbage, of the prize pig, a splendour really
horrible. It is horrible to see any large thing without intelligence.
The sight is an acquiescence in an offence against nature. Tom
Stukeley was designed by nature for the position of publican. He had
the vulgarity and the insolence of a choice English bagman, in the
liquor line, together with this handsome body, red face, and thick
black hair. By the accident of birth he was a gentleman. In seeing him
one realized the tragedy of life’s apportionments. One realized that
to build up this, this mass of mucous membrane, boorishly informed,
lit only by the marsh-lights of indulged sense, the many toiled in
poverty, in enforced though hated ignorance, in life without ease,
without joy.

His coarsely coloured face passed for beauty, his insolence for
strength of character, even for wit, among those men and women with
whom he consorted. His outward manner had something of the off-handed
ease of the inferior actor, who drinks, and tells tales, and remarks
upon the passing women. But he had little of the actor’s good humour.
He had, instead, that air of insolent superiority which makes the
inferior soul, arrogant always, like the dunghill cock, clamorous of
the glory of dung. In company he was rude to all whom he did not fear.
He was more rude to women than to men, partly because he feared them
less; but partly because his physical tastes were gross, so that he
found pleasure in all horse-play--such as the snatching of
handkerchiefs or trinkets, or even of kisses--in gaining which he had
to touch or maul his victims, whether protesting or acquiescent. Women
were attracted by him, perhaps because he frightened them physically.
His love affairs were not unlike the love affairs of python and
gazelle. “They like it,” he would say. “They like it.”

To men whom he did not fear, to those of them, that is, who had no
advantage of fortune or position from which he could hope to profit,
he acted with studied rudeness, with the unintellectual unvaried
rudeness of a school bully, particularly if they displayed any little
sally of wit, any fondness for art, any fineness of intelligence
beyond him. It is possible to think of him with pity, as of one born
out of his due time and out of his right circle. He was a cad, born a
gentleman.

He sat alone at breakfast, with the breakfast dishes pushed far away
from him; for he had risen late, and had sat late at wine the night
before. The thought of food was nauseous to him; he drank small beer
thirstily; and damned his wife under his breath for being risen from
table, as he would, perhaps, have damned her aloud had she been
present. He had been married for some three months and had begun to
find the simulation of virtue tedious. His head ached; and he was very
angry with his wife. He had married her for her money, and he now
found that the money was so tied that her husband had no power over
it; but that the trustees of her father’s estate, who viewed him with
no favour, had powers which he had not suspected. Much as he had ever
hated the law, he had never---- He rose up from his seat with an oath,
believing for a wild moment that the marriage might be set aside. She
had misled him; she must have known that all he wanted was her money.
The marriage had been a secret one. But that belief only lasted for a
moment; he was “married and done for,” and here was the lawyer’s
letter refusing supplies. He had run through their ready money at
cards the night before. All that remained to him was a handful of
small change, and a handful of tradesmen’s bills. All through
breakfast the bills had been arriving, for the word had spread abroad
that the Stukeleys were leaving Salcombe at the end of their third
week’s stay. He had been in awkward corners before; but never in the
country, and never before had he been involved with a wife. He could
not think what to do, for his head ached furiously. He had made too
free with the common purse in the certainty of receiving money that
morning. “Your obedient servants,” ran the letter. He stamped up and
down the room, swearing and biting his nails. He could not return to
London without money; nor did he dare to return; for he had many
debts, and feared arrest. He wondered whether Olivia had any friends
in those parts from whom he or she might borrow money. “It’s time
Olivia got broken in,” he thought.

A servant entered with a letter. He took it from her, staring at her
with the hard insolence of his class. The girl dropped her eyes,
looked confused, and then smiled at him.

“Aha,” he said lightly. He caught her hand and pressed it, still
looking into her eyes.

“No,” said the girl hurriedly. “There’s some one coming.”

“You’re my little duckling, aren’t you?” he said softly, catching her
round the waist.

“Be quiet,” she answered, frightened. “I’m sure I hear some one
coming.”

He listened for a second, maintaining his hold. “Nonsense,” he said.
“Nonsense, Amy.”

“My name’s Jessie,” she said pertly.

He bent and kissed her lips; the girl made some show of virtue by
calling him a bad man.

“Oh law,” said Jessie, breaking from him hastily. “There’s some
one----” She seized two plates upon the table, and made a bustling
pretence at clearing away. On learning that it was a false alarm, she
looked at him with a sort of slinking grace.

“You’ve made my hair untidy,” she said reproachfully.

He walked up to her, laughing. She backed from him with a grin.

“Jess-ie,” came a cry from without.

“It’s missus,” she said, terrified, going to the door.

“Yes, mum.”

“The man wants an answer for that letter he brought.”

“Yes, mum,” she cried. “In a minute, mum. There’s an answer, sir.
What’s the answer, sir?”

Stukeley tore the paper open. A bill fell out.

“Oh damn,” he exclaimed. “Tell him I’ll look in in the morning.”

Jessie carried the message to the bearer; and returned with another.

“Please, sir, the man says he won’t go unless he has his money, sir.”

“Won’t he?” said Stukeley angrily. “I’ll see whether he won’t.”

He picked up his cane and walked out swiftly. The servant listened at
the door for the details of the quarrel.

“Hark-ee,” came Stukeley’s voice. “Here’s your bill. D’ye see it?
There!”--there came a sound of tearing paper--“Now take that back to
your master. Next time you disturb me at breakfast I’ll break your
head. Get out of this.”

The haberdasher’s clerk withdrew. The landlady aided his retreat with
a few words about not having her guests disturbed.

Stukeley returned to his breakfast-room. Jessie looked at him
admiringly.

“Aha, Jessie,” he said. “What nice arms you’ve got. Eh? Haven’t you?
Eh? Beautiful arms.” He pinched them, following her about as she
backed to avoid him.

“You’ve got a wife,” said Jessie. “What do you want with arms? Don’t!
Don’t! You’ll make me scream out.”

Again came the voice of the mistress.

“Jessie! Jessie! Drat the girl.”

The amorous by-play ceased; Jessie went swiftly.

She soon returned, bringing a visitor, a coarse fair-haired man, with
a face not unlike a horse’s face, but without the beauty. His cheeks
were rather puffy; his eyelids drooped down over his eyes, so that he
gave one the impression of extreme short sight, or of some
eye-disease. He peered out under his eyelids. One felt that the house
so lit was a dark, narrow, mean little thieves’ house.

“Mr. Haly to see you, sir,” said Jessie.

Mr. Haly entered, to find his friend Stukeley retiring through the
other door. He turned back in the doorway on hearing the name.

“Oh, it’s you, Monty,” he said. “What brings you to Salcombe?”

“You took me for a dun,” said Mr. Haly, with a jocular whine peculiar
to him. “You took me for a dun. I’ll sit down, if this pretty charmer
here”--he ogled Jenny, with a look which would have made a wanton
chaste--“will give me a chair. Thank you, my dear.” He sat down;
Jessie left the room.

“I’ve come down with young Killigrew,” he said. “He offered to pay my
expenses. So I thought I’d look you up, to see how married bliss
looks. Hey, Tom? How’s the wife? Hey, Tom? How’s Cupid’s dove? Hey? I
suppose she’s making little clothes already? Hey?”

He laughed pursily; helped himself, unbidden, to the beer, cut himself
a snack from his friend’s untasted breakfast, buttered it thickly, and
began to eat. His friendships were selfish always. “Give nothing, but
take all you can get,” would have been his motto, had he had
sufficient intellect to think it out. It had helped him in the world;
but his greed, never sated, had perhaps helped him less than his power
of flattering those who were richer, but no more intelligent than
himself. Stukeley ignored his friend’s questions, not because he
objected to them, but because he expected something more from Mr.
Haly.

“There was another reason why I called,” said Haly, after a pause. “I
travelled down from town with old Bent, your landlord that was.”

“With old Bent?” said Stukeley, becoming more attentive.

“Yes,” continued Haly. “He’d heard you were in Salcombe. I believe he
wants to see you.”

“Damn it. He does,” said Stukeley.

“Well,” said Haly, “then I hope it’s not a large sum. But still, now
you’re married to an heiress, you lucky dog, why, you can laugh at old
Bent, I should think.”

“Yes,” said Stukeley quietly. “What time is old Bent coming here?”

Haly shrugged his shoulders. “We’re not in town now,” he said. “He
might come any time.”

Stukeley offered his friend some more beer.

“By the way, Tom,” said Haly, “I don’t want to rob you, but could you
lend me a fiver, just to go on with?”

“I’m sorry, Monty,” said his friend; “I never lend money.”

“Oh, come, Tom,” said Haly. “Don’t be a swine, man. I’d lend it to you
fast enough. I’d not see a friend in want.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” said Tom. “But I never lend money.”

“Damn it,” said Haly, lowering his voice to a whining reproachful
tone. “Well, I wouldn’t be a mean swine. Lord, man! I gave you the
office about Bent. You might have a little gratitude. What’s a fiver
to you? Don’t be a swine, man. I wouldn’t refuse you, I know.”

Stukeley stared insolently at Haly’s blinking eyes. He seemed to
relish the man’s disappointment.

“No! Can’t be done, Monty,” he said. “Have some more buttered toast,
instead--with sugar on it.”

Haly had already eaten plenteously of this dainty; he was not to be
comforted with flagons.

“You are a swine,” he said angrily. “Now you’re married, I suppose
you’re going back on your pals. You dirty swine. My God! I wouldn’t be
mean like that. Well, keep your fiver. But old Bent shall hear
something. Yes, and my new wife shall hear something. My wife Olivia,
Olivia.”

Stukeley watched his friend with careless tolerance, ringing the bell
meanwhile, with a hand stretched idly behind him. He laughed lightly,
bidding Haly to be of good cheer. When Jessie came, in answer to the
bell, he bade his friend good morning, and bowed him out. Haly
disappeared, cursing.

When he had gone, Stukeley wondered if he had done wisely in choking
off Haly so soon. He had made up his mind, during the months of his
honeymoon, to break with his old circle; for his wife’s friends were
rich and powerful, and his own friends, being men about town, had
never been more to him than flash companions. Besides, he realized
that a man like Haly was hardly likely to bring him credit with his
new acquaintances. And anyhow his headache made him devilish, and he
had had pleasure in seeing the horse-face flush, and the little mean
eyes blink with anger. He did not set much store by the man’s threats.
If old Bent had come to Salcombe after him, he would see his victim,
whether Haly helped or refused to help. He did not rightly know what
he could say to old Bent, and his head was throbbing and in pain; he
could not think. Jessie returned to clear away; but even Jessie would
not comfort him, for missus was in the next room and could hear every
word.

“Perhaps after dinner,” said Jessie.

Something in the girl’s coyness stirred his lust. He caught hold of
her, shutting the door with his disengaged hand.

“You are a naughty man,” said Jessie reprovingly.

He drew her head back and kissed her lips and throat. Something in the
girl amused him and excited him. He was conscious of a sudden anger
against Olivia. She needed some devil of wantonness, he thought. She
never moved him as this tavern trollop moved him.

“Do you love me?” said Jessie.

“Yes,” he said passionately.

“I seen you look at me,” said Jessie.

It had been love at first sight. While they kissed, Olivia’s voice
sounded clearly in the passage. “I’ll see him in the breakfast-room,
with Mr. Stukeley.”

“Oh law!” said Jessie, wrenching herself free. “Go inside, Mr.
Stukeley. Don’t let’s be seen together.”

“Bent already,” said Stukeley, slipping into the inner room.

He went so quickly that Jessie’s question, “Is my hair tidy?” was
unanswered. As Jessie dabbed at her hair before the mirror, Olivia
entered. She thought that Jessie’s heightened colour and nervous
manner were signs that she was ashamed of being caught at a glass. She
smiled at the girl, who smiled back at her as she hurried to remove
her tray. Had Olivia looked at Jessie as she left the room with the
table-cloth, the trollop’s gaze of confident contempt would have
puzzled her; she might, perhaps, have found it disquieting.

She had only been married a few weeks; and she loved her husband so
dearly that to speak of him to any one, to an inn-servant, for
example, seemed sacrilegious to her. She felt this very strongly at
this moment, though she longed to ask Jessie where her husband might
be found. She felt some slight displeasure at her husband’s absence,
for he had never before left her for so long. This breakfast had been
the first meal eaten apart since the day of their marriage. When
Jessie had left the room, she looked at her image in the mirror,
straightening the laces at her throat and smoothing the heavy hair,
one of her chief beauties. She loved her husband. All other men were
mere creatures to her--creatures with no splendour of circling memory,
creatures of dust. But the announcement that Captain Margaret was even
then without, waiting to be admitted, was somehow affecting. She felt
touched, perhaps a little piqued. He had loved her, still loved her,
she felt. She had never much cared for him, though she had found a
sort of dreadful pleasure in the contemplation of her power over him.
At the moment, she felt a little pity for him, and then a little pity
for herself. Now that she was married, she thought, she would be
unattractive to him; her power would be gone; and as that was the
first time the thought had come to her, it made her almost sad, as
though she were parting with a beautiful memory, with a part of her
youth, with a part of her youthful beauty. Her look into the glass was
anxious. She was eager to look her best, to make the most of her pale
beauty; for (like less intelligent women) she believed that it was her
beauty which most appealed to him. As a matter of fact it was the
refinement of her voice which swayed him, her low voice, full of
music, full of intensity, of which each note told of an inner grace,
of some beauty of mind unattainable by men, but sometimes worshipped
by them. She was not a clever talker. Her power lay in sympathy, in
creating talk in others, for when she was of a company it was as
though music were being played; the talk showed fine feeling; at
least, the talkers went away delighted. She had a little beauty. Her
eyes were beautiful; her hair was beautiful; but beautiful beyond all
physical beauty was the beauty of her earnest voice, so unspeakably
refined and pure, coming holy from the inner shrine.

She had not waited a minute, before Captain Margaret entered. She had
expected to see him troubled, and to hear the ring of emotion in his
voice as he greeted her. She had half expected to be surprised by some
rush of frantic passion. But he entered smiling, greeting her with a
laugh. She felt at once, from his manner, from his obvious dislike for
her hand, which he scarcely touched and then dropped, an implied
shrinking from her husband. It gave her firmness. He looked at her
eyes a moment, wondering with what love they had looked at Stukeley
during the night-watches. The thought came to him that she was a
beautiful soiled thing, to be pitied and tenderly reproved. The image
of Stukeley cast too dark a shadow for any brighter thought of her.
When she began to speak she had him bound and helpless.

“Well, Olivia,” he said gaily, “I’m glad I came in time to catch you.”

“Yes,” she answered, “we were just going. We have been---- And how did
you come here?” She found it harder to talk to him than she had
expected.

“I came here in my ship,” he answered. “I wanted to see you, to wish
you, to hope--to wish you all happiness. Before I leave England.”

She smiled.

“Thank you very much,” she said. “Are you leaving England for long?”

“It may be a long time. If all goes well, it will be a very long
time.”

“I had not heard that you were going abroad. To what part are you
going? Italy again?”

“No. I’m going to Darien.” It seemed to him to be almost tragical that
she really did not know where Darien lay. “The Spanish Main,” he
added.

“Ah, yes,” she said.

He covered her retreat by saying that he was going to Virginia first.
She looked at him with quickened interest.

“Going in your ship,” she said. “That sounds very grand. Is she in
Salcombe here? Which is she among all those schooners?”

“That one,” he answered, pointing through the window. “The ship with
the flag.”

“And you’re leaving England at once?”

“Yes. This afternoon’s tide.”

“But what are you going to do when you get there?”

“Oh, don’t let’s talk about that,” he answered. “Tell me about
yourself, and your plans. What are you going to do, now you’re leaving
Salcombe? Will you go home to Flaxley?”

“No,” she answered, colouring slightly. “Uncle Nestor was rather rude
to Tom, to my husband.”

The captain bit his lip, and gazed out absently over the sea. He had
heard why Uncle Nestor had been rude. The knowledge made him doubtful
of Olivia’s future happiness.

“So I suppose you’ll go back to town,” he answered, “and settle down.
What do married people do, when they settle down?”

“Oh,” she said, “I’ve great schemes for Tom. He’s going to stand for
Parliament. But I want to know what you’re going to do in Darien. What
is your scheme?”

“Just to help the Indians,” he answered. “The Spaniards have robbed
them and ill-treated them, and I thought that if some Englishmen
settled on the Isthmus, and opened up a trade with them. For you see,
we could trade with both Jamaica and Virginia. And if we opened up a
trade there, we could check the Spanish power there, making the
Indians our allies.”

“And what would you trade for, or with? It sounds very romantic.”

“The country is very rich in gold. Gold is found in all the rivers.
But of course the gold is not to be our aim. I want, really, to found
an English colony; or a colony of workers, at any rate. The Spanish
colony is just a press, which squeezes the land. Now the land ought,
in a sense, to squeeze the colonists. It ought to bring out all their
virtues. That is what I want. The country will have to be cleared. And
then we shall plant cacao, or whatever the land is fit for, and----
The scheme is thought out, in detail. I’m confident; but I won’t talk
about it.”

“And the Indians will be your allies?” repeated Olivia; “and the
Spaniards will probably fight you?”

“Yes,” he answered. “And you will be in a townhouse in London, going
to the play, or dancing at a ball, in grey silk.”

“Blue, or grey.”

“And you will give sprigs of verbena to those who see over your garden
in the country.”

“And when will you come for some?”

“Ah! I shan’t see that garden again, for a long, long time.”

“We’re going to plant all sorts of things, when we get home. You must
send some roots from Darien.”

“I should like to do that. We have been such--such friends.”

“In the old days.”

“Yes,” he said, rising. “Now I must be off.”

“Oh, but you ought not to go yet.”

“I only just came ashore to see you.”

“Oh, you must stay to see my husband. He wants to see you. He’ll be so
disappointed if you don’t stay to see him.”

“You must make my apologies. Good-bye, Olivia.”

She held out her hand without emotion of any kind. She would have
shaken hands with any other acquaintance with just so little feeling.
Margaret wondered what it was that would get within her guard. He took
her hand. He tried hard to say no more, but failed, being sorely
tempted.

“God bless you,” he said. “I hope you will be very, very happy. God
bless you, dear. I wonder if I shall hear of you ever. Or see you
again.”

“If you want to, you will,” she said simply, glad that it had gone no
further.

“Yes, I shall see you again,” he said.

“Of course you will,” she answered. “I hope your colony will be a
success.”

Something in her voice made the conventional words beautiful. Captain
Stukeley, on the other side of the door, hearing that quality in his
wife’s voice, wished that the keyhole were bigger. With an effort,
Captain Margaret rewarded that moving tone.

“When I come back,” he said, “I hope that I shall get to know your
husband. Make my apologies to him.”

“Good-bye again,” she said.

Her voice seemed to come from her whole nature. All that her lover
could remember afterwards was the timbre of the voice; he had no
memory of her face. Her eyes he remembered, and her heavy antique
ear-rings. “Eyes, ear-rings, and a voice,” he repeated, walking down
to the jetty. He wondered what she was. “What is she? What is she? Oh
Lord, what is she?” He could not answer it. She was beautiful. Most
beautiful. Beautiful enough to drive him mad. Her beauty was not a
bodily accident; but a quality of soul, the quality of her nature, her
soul made visible. But what was she? She had talked commonly,
conventionally. She had said no wise thing, no moving thing. Never
once had she revealed herself; she was only kind, fond of flowers,
fond of music, a lover of little children. But oh, she was beyond all
beauty, that dark, graceful lady with the antique ear-rings. It was
her voice. Any conventional, common word her voice made beautiful. He
wondered if she were, after all, divine; for if she were not divine,
how came it that her voice had that effect, that power? He felt that
human beings were all manifestations of a divine purpose. Perhaps that
lovely woman was an idea, an idea of refinement, of delicate,
exquisite, right grace, clothed in fitting flesh, walking the world
with heavenly intention. But if that were so, how the devil came
Stukeley there, that was the puzzle? The blood came into that pale
face sometimes; and oh, the way she turned, the way she looked, the
way of that voice, so thrilling, so infinitely beautiful. Ah well; he
had played and lost, and there was his ship with her flag flying; he
was bound down and away


 Along the coast of New Barbary.


But he had loved her, he had seen her, he had been filled with her
beauty as a cup with wine. He would carry her memory into the waste
places of the world. Perhaps in the new Athens, over yonder, among the
magnolia bloom, and the smell of logwood blossom, he would make her
memory immortal in some poem, some tragedy, something to be chanted by
many voices, amid the burning of precious gums, and the hush of the
theatre. On the way, he stopped, thinking of her personal tastes. He,
too, would have those tastes. Little things for which she cared should
come with him to the Main. He gave the merchant the impression that he
was dealing with one melancholy mad.

Drums sounded in the street, for troops were marching west, to a
rousing quick-step. They marched well, with their heads held firm in
their stocks. The sergeants strutted by them, handling their halberds.
Captain Margaret paused to watch them, just as a sailor will stop to
watch a ship. “They are like the world,” he thought. “The men drop
out, but the regiment remains. It still follows the rags on the
broomstick, and a fool commands it, and a halberd drills it, and women
and children think it a marvellous fine thing. Well, so be it. I’ve
bought my discharge.” The fifes and drums passed out of hearing.
“They’ll never come back,” he said to himself. “Perhaps twenty years
hence I shall meet one of those men, and be friends with him. Why not
now? And why should I see that regiment now? What does it mean? It is
a symbol. All events are symbols. What does it mean? What is it a
symbol of? Why should that regiment pass to-day, now, after I’ve
bidden my love good-bye? And what ought I to learn from it? What
message has it for me?” He was convinced that it had a message. He
stood still, looking down the road, vacant as a British statue.

He woke up with a start, remembering that he had to buy some materials
for the practice of one of his amusing handicrafts. A little gold,
some silver, and a few stones of small value, together with glass
beads, were all that he needed. He was planning to make jewels for the
Indian princesses. “Beads is what they goes for,” so Cammock had said.
He bought large stores of beads. He also bought materials for a jewel
for Olivia, thinking, as he examined the gems, of the letter he would
send with the gift. “It will be written under palm-thatch,” he
thought, “in the rains.” He was able to plan the jewel in all its
detail. People stared at him with curiosity. He was speaking aloud as
he walked. “Nothing matters very much to me,” he said. “I know the
meaning of life. Life and death are the same to me.” So saying he
arrived upon the jetty, and hailed his boat, which lay at a little
distance, her oarsmen playing dice in the stern-sheets. His purchases
were stowed between the thwarts, a few grocer’s boxes made an obelisk
in the bows. As they shoved off, there came a flash of fire from the
side of the _Broken Heart_. White smoke-rings floated up and away,
over her topgallant-masts. Grey smoke clung and drifted along the sea.
The roar of the cannon made the Salcombe windows rattle. The boat’s
crew grinned. Being boatmen, they had escaped the gun-drill. They knew
what all hands were getting from the stalwart Cammock.

He stepped quickly up the side, acknowledging Cammock’s salute and the
pipe of the boatswain. Perrin met him at the break of the poop. He
noticed that Perrin stared rather hard at him. He grinned at Perrin
cheerfully.

“Yes, I saw her,” he said gaily.

It seemed to Perrin that his gaiety was natural, and that, perhaps,
the sight of Mrs. Stukeley, with her husband, had proved an effective
cure. A gun’s crew swayed the gear out of the boat. The other guns’
crews, heaving the heavy trucks, training the guns forward, wished
that they might help. Captain Cammock resumed his drill.

“Starboard battery, on the bow!” he exclaimed. “Port battery, upon the
beam. Imagine them hulks. Them’s the enemy. Bring aft your train
tackles. No. No. Oh, what are you playing at? Drop them blocks. What
in hell are you thinking of there, number three? I’m not talking to
you, port battery. Now. Wait for the word of command. Take heed.
Silence. Silence there. Now. Cast off the tackles and breechings.
Carry on.”

The figures by the guns became active. Though they carried on “in
silence,” there was a good deal of noise, many muttered oaths, much
angry dropping of rammers. Captain Margaret stood by Cammock, waiting
till the guns were fired. He had learned the practical part of naval
gunnery from a book in Cammock’s cabin, _The Mariner’s Friend, or
Compleat Sea Gunner’s Vade Mecum_. He watched the drill wearily,
knowing how hard and dull a thing it was to the men who swayed the
tackles, and hove the trucks along with crows. In the moment of peace
after the broadsides, he felt a pity for his men, a pity for humanity.
He had hired these men at four shillings a week apiece. He gave them
their food, worth, perhaps, tenpence a day, with their rum worth
twopence more, bought wholesale, out of bond. “For eleven shillings a
week,” he thought, “a man will clog his heavenly soul with gun-drill,
which his soul loathes; and refrain from drabs and drams, which his
soul hungers and thirsts for.” He felt ashamed that he had not thought
more of his men’s comfort.

“You’ve got them into shape already, captain,” he said.

“I’ll get them into trim in time,” answered Cammock. “It takes time.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “it takes time.” He paused a moment, remembered
his kindly feeling, and continued. “I want to ask you about fresh
meat, captain. Shall I get some fresh meat here, to see us well into
the Western Ocean? Or flour, now? I want the hands kept in good trim.
I don’t want to lose any by sickness.”

“Fresh meat is always good at sea,” said Cammock. “But there’s better
things than meat. For keeping a crew in good shape, you can’t beat
sugar and flour. It takes the salt out of their bones.”

Perrin had joined them. “I’ve ordered fresh meat and sugar,” he said.
“And three dozen fowls. They’ll be off in about an hour’s time.”

“You oughtn’t to have done that,” said Margaret.

“I paid for them myself,” he answered. “There they come.”

Captain Cammock secured his guns, returned his powder, and piped the
boat to be cleared. The hen-coop was lashed down for a full due below
the break of the poop. After the meat had been hung in the
harness-room, the hands went forward to loaf and stand-by. The two
friends walked the poop with Cammock, ten paces and a turn, talking of
old times, and of the fortune of the sea.

They were waiting for the ebb-tide to take them out. The wind was
fair, but light; they needed the ebb. Waiting like that is always a
weariness. Captain Margaret wished that he had never put in to
Salcombe. He was a fool, he thought. The thing was over, the wound was
closed. He had begun it anew; reopened it. Now he had to apply the
cautery. If he had held his course, his ship would have been out of
sight of land, going on, under all sail, forty miles south-west from
Scilly, bringing him nearer to content at each wave, each bubble. He
felt also the discontent of the tide-bound sailor. He felt that he was
at liberty wrongfully; that it was wrong for him to be there, doing
nothing, merely because the tide still flowed. Perrin, though he was
eager to talk to his friend about the results of the farewell call,
was bored to death by the inaction, by the sudden stoppage of the
routine. As for Cammock, he smoked his pipe, and looked out to
windward, wondering inwardly at the strangeness of gentlemen. Thinking
that they were hipped, he told them his favourite tale of how the cow
came at him one time, when he was hunting for beef near One Bush Key.
It was an exciting story; but nothing, he said, to what “happened him”
one time when he was loading live steers at Negril, after the cattle
pest at Antigua.

“So I got into one of the shore-boats,” he concluded. “I’d had enough
of them great horns a yard long.”

“Every man to his trade,” said Perrin curtly.

Captain Margaret asked if the long-horns were bred from imported
stock. Cammock had expected them to laugh. The situation was saved by
the entrance of a sixth-rate, under all plain sail, on the last of the
flood. Her blue sides were gay with gold leaf; her colours streamed
out astern; she broke the water to a sparkle. In her main-chains stood
a leadsman crying his melancholy cry of “And a half, three,” which
another voice repeated harshly. Though she came quietly she came
swiftly; for the flood had strength. She was a lovely thing, swaying
in there softly. The _Broken Heart_ saluted her. The friends watched
her as she passed. Cammock saw his opportunity. He turned to his
companions.

“What d’ye make of her?” he asked them.

Perrin called her “a man-of-war”; Margaret “a beautiful thing.”

“I’ll tell you what _I_ make of her,” said Cammock. “She was built in
France, that’s easy seen, and she was bought or taken at least three
years back. She was re-masted at Deptford, and her captain thinks the
masting’s spoiled her. She’s been in the West Indies within a year,
and there she’d a pile of hard times. Lost her topmasts for one of
them. Then she came home, and took a big nob of some sort up the
Mediterranean, for political reasons, and in a hurry, with a scratch
crew. She’s made a quick passage, and the captain’s cabin is taken up
with ladies, probably one big sort of a duchess or that. The
Government is short of funds, and the wind’s going to draw more
westerly. Her lieutenant is a Devonshire man. And I bet I know her
captain’s name and what her hands think of him. That’s what I make of
her.”

“How d’you know all that?” said Perrin.

“Every man to his trade,” said Cammock. He felt that he had retrieved
the honour lost over the cows.

At this moment four bells were made; the cabin steward rang them to
the cabin supper.

They found the table heaped with dainties; for Perrin and Cammock had
foraged ashore together, so that the last night in port might be
merry. Punch, strawberries, and a pigeon-pie. Captain Margaret
proposed the conundrum, why strawberries would be considered flippant
among the bakemeats at a funeral dinner. Captain Cammock gorged the
conundrum, hook and all.




 III.
 OUTWARDS


 “And we are bound to New Barbary
 With all our whole ship’s company.”
                 _Captain Glen._

 “I have a vessel riding forth, gentlemen,
 And I can tell you she carries a letter of mart.
 What say you now to make you all adventurers?
 You shall have fair dealing, that I’ll promise you.”
                          _A Cure for a Cuckold._


After supper, the party went on deck again, to see the last of their
country. The two mates, who had their cabins in the after
’tween-decks, where they messed, had made all ready for getting under
way. The hands walked to and fro about the fo’c’s’le, waiting for the
order. The last bum-boat had shoved off for the shore, having sold her
last onion and last box of red herrings. Snatches of song came aft to
the poop. It was slack water; the sea seemed to be marking time.
Already, further up the harbour, a schooner had swung athwart the
stream. One or two boats were hoisting their foresails, ready to catch
the first ebb. The sun was still strong in the heavens; there was more
than an hour of day to come.

“We may as well up hook,” said Cammock, “if you’ll say the word, sir.”

“All ready, captain,” said Margaret. “We’ll go as soon as you like.”

“Right,” said Cammock, bustling forward to the poop-rail. “Hands up
anchor, bosun.”

The boatswain’s pipe made the call. The fo’c’s’le was thronged with
hurrying sailors. The trumpeter at the gangway blew a flourish, and
sounded his “Loath to depart.” The men cheered as the bars were
shipped. The waisters tended on the messenger with their nippers.
Slowly the pawls began to click as the men strained round, heaving on
tiptoe. The two capstans hove in, moving the cable. All down the
’tween-decks rang the snapping creak of a cable at a shaking strain.
Some one at one of the bars, down in the half-darkness, began to sing.
The crowd made chorus together, lifting the tune. Voice after voice
joined in. Bar after bar sounded and shouted. The ship rang with song.
The music of the tune floated out over the harbour. In the sixth-rate,
the men joined in, till the whole crew were singing. Ashore they heard
it. In the schooners at anchor, in the inns ashore, in the dance-house
up the town, the music made echo, stirring the heart. As the light
wind moved or failed, so died the tune or lifted. With a great sweep
it rose up, towering on many voices, then drooped to the solo, to soar
again when the men sang. They were singing that they would go no more
a-roving. To Margaret and Perrin, standing there at the poop-rail,
hearkening to them, much moved by the splendour of the song, the
coarse old words seemed touching, infinitely sad, the whole of
sea-life set to music.

Now they were moving slowly, making the water talk. Their spritsail
was set. Hands were aloft loosing the topsails. On the fo’c’s’le head
the mate bustled, looking over the rail. Very slowly the ship moved;
but now, as she left her berth, heading for the narrows, past the
breakers, where Ram Rock gleamed in his smother, the song at the
capstan ceased. On deck, a watch gathered at the halliards. The
foretopsail jolted up to the song of “Lowlands.” Sail was being made.
Voices from aloft gave notice to hoist away. In the bustle and
confusion, with coils of rope rattling down, men running here and
there, getting pulls of this and that, and the noise of the sails
slatting, the two friends walked the poop, looking back at the
sixth-rate, dipping their ensign to her. Cammock had come aft, and was
standing by them, looking aloft at the boy on the maintopgallant yard.
He spun round suddenly, hearing a hail from the man-of-war.

“Hullo!” he shouted; adding, under his breath, “Lord, she’s going to
press us.”

He darted to the bulwark, and shouted “Hullo!” again. He saw the mate
of the watch, in a dirty old tarred coat, walking her weather gangway,
where a soldier stood at attention in old red regimentals.

The mate of the watch did not speak to them. He merely lifted his hand
to Cammock, and pointed towards the jetty.

“A boat for us,” said Perrin.

“Very much obliged to you, sir,” cried Cammock to the mate of the
watch.

“Lend me your glass, Captain Cammock,” said Margaret uneasily.

He seized the glass hastily, and looked at the advancing boat. She was
rowing rapidly towards them.

“Who the devil can it be?” said Perrin, as he watched Cammock bring
the ship to the wind. “Lord, captain,” he said, with real anger. “It’s
that woman with her husband.”

“It’s a lady, that’s plain,” said Cammock. “And they’re in a hurry.
The man’s double-banking the stroke oar.”

“They’ve got a lot of gear in the boat,” said Perrin.

“Presents, I guess,” said Cammock. “A present of fowls and that. Or a
case or two of bottles.”

Captain Margaret flushed, walked up and down uneasily, and called to
the steward to open wine.

“There’s something queer,” said Cammock to Perrin. “Hark at all them
shouts. Gad, sir, I believe they’re being chased. There’s two shore
boats after them. Ain’t they smoking, hey?”

Indeed, the pursuing boats were being pulled furiously; their oars
were bending.

“What in James is the rally?” said Cammock. “Is Captain Margaret made
King of England or anything?”

Perrin looked at Cammock with a flush upon his face.

“Captain Cammock,” he said, “they’re coming aboard us. They’re being
chased. I bet they’re flying from their creditors.”

“Lord,” said Cammock.

He watched the chase with deeper interest. Captain Margaret joined
them.

“Charles,” said Perrin, “they’ve come to beg a passage. Stukeley’s
being chased by creditors. Man, for heaven’s sake don’t take them in.
Don’t, man.”

“What nonsense,” said Margaret. “Have you never seen these boatman
race before?”

Cammock spoke. “I suppose you want me to pick them up, sir?”

“Certainly,” said Margaret.

“Very good, sir,” he answered.

He looked at the hurrying boats. Cries came from the pursuers. Men and
women were running down the steps to the pier, now black with people,
excited, shouting people. Olivia and Stukeley were now almost within
fifty yards. Stukeley was standing in the sternsheets, double-banking
the stroke with all his strength.

“There, sir,” said Cammock. “Did you hear that, sir? Those fellows in
the cutter are singing out to them to stop. There. They’re going to
fire.”

Captain Margaret muttered something; his face flushed suddenly, and
then became pale. A gun was fired from the cutter.

“Firing overhead,” said Cammock absently.

“Captain Cammock,” cried Margaret, “lively now; get her off to her
course.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” he cried.

He sprang to the helm, shouting his orders. He was back in a moment.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, as the ship paid off. “Are you not going
to pick them up?”

“Yes, of course I am,” said Margaret.

“And the other boats, too, sir?”

“No,” he answered. “Not yet anyhow.”

A hail came from the pursuing boats. “Ship ahoy! Stop those persons on
your peril.”

“King’s officers, sir,” said Cammock. “They’re fugitives from the law.
It’s transportation to receive fugitives, sir.”

Two more guns were fired in quick succession; a bullet from one of
them struck the bends of the _Broken Heart_.

“Arrest those fugitives. In the name of the King,” came the shout of a
man in the cutter.

The words were clear enough. All that Margaret saw was Olivia’s face,
laughing and happy, her great eyes bright, as the boat swept
alongside.

“It’s a hanging matter, Charles,” said Perrin, biting his thumbs till
the blood came.

“I don’t care if they hang me fifty times,” said Margaret. “They fired
at her.”

“Oh, all right. All right,” said Perrin resignedly. “Now we’re in for
trouble,” he added angrily. “Oh, damn it. Damn it. I knew how it would
be.”

“Hands clear boat,” said Cammock to the boatswain.

Olivia and Stukeley tripped up the gangway to the quarter-deck.

Margaret greeted them; but Stukeley pushed past him to Cammock and
Perrin.

“Here,” he said, drawing them aside. “We’re coming with you. I’m
wanted. And I’m coming with you. She thinks I’m coming to help--to
help the Indians.” He seemed to choke with laughter. He was out of
breath from rowing.

Cammock did not answer, but walked to the rail, and called to the
boatmen in the boat. “Hook on these boxes lively now,” he said. “You’d
best come aboard, all four of you, unless you want a taste of gaol.”

Two of the men hooked on the trunks in one sling; the other two cast
off the boat and dropped astern, as the tackle swept the trunks over
the side. It was all done in a moment.

Perrin found himself with Stukeley, who was talking. “She must never
know it,” he was saying, between gasps. “Oh, Lord, what a joke, eh?”
Perrin heard him absently, for his ears were straining to hear what
his friend said to Olivia. There she was, flushed with the race,
swaying a little as the ship swayed. He heard the words, “We beat
them,” and saw her go to the rail to watch the pursuing boats. Perrin
took off his hat, advanced to her, and bade her welcome. He could have
hurled her overboard willingly. His reason for advancing was to see
what the pursuing boats were doing.

“It was such a race,” said Olivia. “But we beat them. They chased us
all the way from Halwell. It was such fun.” She talked on excitedly;
Perrin had never seen her so radiant. She was delighted to be on
board, going to the New World, in a real ship. And then the suddenness
of it, and the rush of the boat-race.

As for the boats, one of them, the cutter, was a hundred yards or more
astern, pulling hard upon their quarter. The other was rowing up
alongside the sixth-rate. Perrin saw a man in a red coat waving a
paper from her sternsheets. The man-of-war’s deck was full of men, who
had crowded to the side to watch. Cammock was hurrying his hands. His
maintopsail and topgallantsail were mastheaded together, to songs
which made Olivia hasten to the poop-rail to hearken. Loud was the
jolly chorus. The ship felt the sail. Bubbles burst brightly over the
trailing anchor-flakes. Old Harry beacon drove by, rolling in the wash
they made. Cammock walked aft hurriedly to take a bearing. He noticed
then for the first time that the cutter which had fired on them was
the red cutter of the man-of-war. He could now see her broadside. Her
men fired no more. They were stepping the mast, while two of them kept
way upon her. “We’re in for it now,” he thought. He let his helmsman
feel that it would not do to glance astern.

“You mind your eye,” he said fiercely. He took an anxious glance at
the Wolf Rock, and at the toppling seas on the Blackstone. “I never
saw a beastlier place,” he said. “Haul in there, leadsman,” he
shouted. “Another cast, now.”

The ship seemed to pause a moment, like a bird suddenly stricken with
the palsy. A kind of death seemed to lay hold of her, checking all on
board. She dragged a moment, and then drove on, muddying the sea. She
had touched Ripple Sands.

“My God, we’re done if you stick,” said Cammock. “And here’s Splat
Point and the Bass.”

He bent over the binnacle; Stukeley came to him.

“Hello, captain,” he began. “My old sea-dog. Eh? Where can I get a
spot of brandy? Eh?”

Cammock took his cross-bearing without answering. Then he looked
steadily at the harbour-mouth, and at the curved white line of the
bar. He bade his helmsman “come to” a point. He conned the ship,
ordered a small pull of a sheet, and glanced astern at the man-of-war.

Stukeley repeated his question. “Where can I get a spot of brandy?
Eh?”

Cammock glanced at him for a second. “Lots of dirty pubs ashore
there,” he said coldly. He turned to look again at the man-of-war.

He was not too far from her to see that she was casting loose her
forecastle gun. He looked bitterly at Stukeley. “I wonder what you’ve
done, my duck,” he said under his breath. He walked up to the little
group by the mizen shrouds; he wished not to annoy the lady.

“Captain Margaret, sir,” he said. “May I just speak to you a moment?”

His owner stepped aside with him.

“Look here, sir,” he said hurriedly, “the man-of-war’s going to fire
on us. I don’t know what reasons you may have for taking these people
aboard. But the man’s escaping from justice, and the lady’s been
bamboozled. In another ten ticks you’ll have a round-shot into you.
Now, sir, is it fair? A round-shot may kill and maim you a dozen
hands, with the decks so busy as they are. Let me heave her to, sir.
The man’s a damned scum. And it’s hanging if you’re caught.”

Perrin joined them, leaving Olivia alone. Her husband was talking to
the helmsman, getting no answer.

“Charles, for the Lord’s sake, send them in,” said Perrin. “Do, for
the Lord’s sake, think what you’re doing. You’ll ruin yourself. You’ll
wreck the cruise. You simply can’t have them aboard. Look at that
great hulking beast abaft there.”

“Hi, you,” called Cammock angrily. “Clear away from the helm there.”

Stukeley stared at him, much surprised.

“Yes, I mean you,” said Cammock.

“No man must talk to the helmsman,” said Margaret gently.

“Your old sea-dog hasn’t learned manners, eh?” said Stukeley
insolently. “You must teach him.”

He stared at Cammock, who returned the stare, and then spun upon his
heel to con the ship through the channel.

Perrin drew Margaret aside.

“Oh, Charles. For the last time. Think what you’re doing. I must heave
her to. You aren’t fit to decide. Heave to, Captain Cammock.”

“As she goes,” cried Margaret angrily. “No, Edward,” he added quietly;
“I’ll take them. I’ll save her one shock, anyway. And if I must hang
for it, I must. That’s settled.”

“You don’t even know what he’s done,” said Perrin.

“He’s her husband,” said Margaret. “And they fired on her. They fired
on her. Now go and talk to her. No more talk, Ned. They’re coming with
us. Go and talk to her.”

Perrin turned from his friend with a gesture of childish passion. He
took off his hat, ripped the brim from the crown with a single violent
tug, and flung both portions into the sea. Then he walked swiftly down
the ladder (and to his cabin) muttering curses so vehemently that they
seemed to shake him. As he passed under the cabin door a flash came
from the bows of the sixth-rate. A ball from a long nine-pounder hit
up a jet from the sea close alongside, then bounded on, raising
successive jets, till it was spent. Another shot flew over them. A
third, fired after an interval, brought the maintopgallant braceblock
down. A part of the sheave just missed Olivia’s head.

“They ought not to salute with shot,” explained Captain Margaret.
“They always do. And that bit of lignum vitæ--feel it; isn’t it
beautifully smooth and hard--would have given you a nasty bruise. Hold
on,” he called, catching her arm, “she’s rolling. We’re going over the
bar. It’s all very well wishing a ship a pleasant voyage,” he
continued. “But I wonder they don’t kill people.” His thought was,
“Can she be such a fool? Surely she must know.” But at that time he
knew very little of Stukeley.

Olivia answered him. The shot and the rattle of the falling gear had
filled her mood. “Yes,” she said. “But I must be prepared for that. I
must be with Tom, by his side, when we fight the Spaniards. I do think
it’s fine of him to want to help the Indians.”

“Yes,” said Captain Margaret. “But won’t you go below? A braceblock on
the head is a very bad preparation for helping any one.” He glanced
anxiously astern at the man-of-war; he was surprised to see that she
was not in sight. The _Broken Heart_ was clear of the harbour, feeling
the heave outside, hidden from Salcombe by Lambury Point. The pursuing
cutter was sailing back to the sixth-rate. It was a shock to him, for
a moment of time, to think that now he had burned his boats, and that
he was pledged to a very doubtful venture. “There’ll be no more
firing,” he added. “Doesn’t Bolt Head look fine from here? Look at the
breakers on the rocks there. Olivia, you must put on a warm coat or
wrap. The sea-wind is cold.”

“I’d rather be as I am,” she answered. “Tell me, Charles,” she added,
“are you sure that you would like us to come with you? Quite sure? We
could easily go ashore at Plymouth. But my husband is so bent on
coming, and he’ll be so useful to you. You will let us come, won’t
you? You know, all my life has been so empty. And now. Now I’m so
happy, I want every one else to be happy. Oh, I’d love to help the
Indians.”

“You shall come, certainly,” said the captain. “But are you sure
you’re fitted for the voyage? Our venture is not exactly. Ladies are
out of place. You may have to suffer a great deal of very great
hardship. And then you might---- I want you to think, Olivia. You
might--we all might--be captured by the Spaniards.”

“Oh,” she answered, “I went into that with Tom, after you’d gone,
about half an hour after, when I told him of your visit. Directly I
told him of it, he was eager to come with you. The first thing he said
was, ‘Olivia, do you think your friends would take us?’”

“It must have been rather a shock to you. To decide in such a hurry.”

“Oh; but it is so nice to do that. Besides, if we hadn’t decided, we
should have gone to Venice, or somewhere not half so nice.”

“Well. How will you like being at _least_ six months from home? Have
you reckoned on that?”

“Oh, but the only home one has is just one’s self. The only real
home.”

“Now, Olivia. I love to have you with me. You know that of course. But
you don’t realize how disagreeable the life may be.” A thought struck
him. “Yes,” he muttered excitedly. “Nor how dangerous,” he added, “how
frightfully dangerous.”

“One can always be one’s self,” she replied. “And I shan’t be afraid
of danger, with Tom by me.”

“And the danger will threaten him, remember.”

“I shall take care of him.”

Something in her voice, in her manner, made Captain Margaret think
that Olivia’s willingness to come with them was merely a willingness
to please her husband. It seemed to him that her first sight of
England from the sea had come upon her with a shock. He felt that she
only kept from tears by an effort, now that the excitement of the race
had passed. He saw her look at the men who hauled the braces;
following her train of thought, that these were to be her companions
for months to come. He felt instinctively that her mind began to dwell
upon the possible disagreeable closeness of companionship, shut up in
a small ship’s cabin, with three or four men. He wondered whether
Stukeley had bullied her into the venture. He thought not. He had ever
believed a rogue to be plausible, rather than masterful. He promised
himself some little amusement in cross-examining Stukeley, to learn
the history of that day’s work. He remembered then that he was their
host. He called Stukeley. “Won’t you both come below,” he said, “to
see what sort of house you’ve chosen?” He led them down the
poop-ladder to the alley-way door. As he passed the door of Perrin’s
cabin he heard a shaking voice uttering fierce curses. Perrin was
stamping up and down, wholly given over to rage.

Up on deck, Captain Cammock walked the weather-poop, glad at heart
that the wind was freshening. The _Broken Heart_ was lying over a
little, with the wind on her starboard beam. She was under all sail,
going through it at about five knots. “I shall drive you, my duck,” he
said. “You shall groan to-night.” He longed for a whole gale, a
roaring Western Ocean gale, that the passengers might learn their
folly. He eyed the sails, stiff and trembling, with shaking shadows at
their clues. The carpenter was screwing battens behind the gun-trocks;
the boatswain and half the watch were forward, singing out on a rope.
Captain Cammock watched them whenever he turned forward. When he
walked aft, he turned, glanced at the compass, looked aloft at the
maintopgallant sail, and noted the feathers on the wind-vane. He was
reviewing the situation. “It was a good thing for us,” he thought,
“that that duchess lady was aboard that frigate. Otherwise we’d a-been
chased and took. Now how was it her boat gave chase? The duchess lady
arrives from the south; after six days at sea, say. She sends in for
letters and stores, and the boat waits at the pier. Now this Stukeley
fellow came alongside us in a shore boat, from Salcombe. I saw the
word Salcombe on her backboard. Now if I was that Stukeley duck----
How could it have been, I wonder. He couldn’t have come from the pier,
because the man-of-war boat lay there. If he wanted to get away, what
would he have done? He’d have left word for his gear to be brought
down to the water; and then gone off for a walk or drive. Then he’d
have sent a boat for his gear, and got her to pick him up and row him
about, up towards Kingsbridge, say, as soon as ever he decided to come
aboard of us. He knew he was wanted, that duck did. Yes. That was it.
For sure. And them who was laying for him hears of that, and sends up
a boat to look for him; but he gives her the slip. As soon as the ebb
begins, he runs down. And away he comes full tilt for us. Now some one
who was laying for him must have been on the jetty, waiting for him to
land. Soon as ever he come past, they nip into the cutter in the name
of the King and pull after him. A little too far after. One boat pulls
to the frigate, and so we get three nine-pounder shots sent at us,
before the duchess lady tells ’em to stop that horrid firing. I wonder
what that Stukeley duck has done, now.”

He turned over this outline of the Stukeley escape, just as, years
before, he had pieced out evidence, and scouts’ reports, when he was
cruising on the Spanish Main. He had always wished to have a command
on the Main; for he had more than courage to recommend him. He had a
keen intuitive shrewdness and a power of deduction. “They never give
me a chance on the Main,” he thought. “But I was right about them
roasting spuds.” He sighed. That error of his captain had lost them a
pound of gold apiece. “Now,” he thought, “if them two birds is coming
the cruise we shan’t have a very happy ship.”

Bell after bell passed by; the day wore; the sun set. As he had
foretold, the wind drew more to the west; freshening as it shifted.
The _Broken Heart_ was beginning to feel the strain. She was lying
down a little, and whitening a path in the sea. She was full of odd
noises. The breechings on her guns were new, they cracked and creaked
at each roll; her decks groaned as the trocks ground. At two bells,
when the hands came aft to muster, in the summer twilight, having
catted the anchor, she was seven miles from land, driving on in the
dusk, making the seas gleam. Her poop-light, like a burning rose abaft
all, reddened her wake with bloody splashes. She stooped to it and
staggered. Over her bows came the sprays, making the look-outs cower
down in their tarred coats. The water whitened aft in a washing rush,
gleaming and creaming. By the break of the poop the watch lay. A score
of men huddled together in the shade, marshalled by the boatswain in
his old blue cloak, scurfed with salt at the seams. Voices murmured
among them; one lit a pipe, one hummed. The wind in the shrouds
hummed; already the blocks were clacking. Now and then, as they rushed
on, in the gathering darkness, the boy above struck the bell; and from
forward came the answering bell, with the call of the look-outs,
“Weather cathead,” “Lee cathead,” showing that they were alert. The
steward came from the alleyway, snuffing up the strong salt air; he
climbed the lee ladder to the poop. Battling up to windward against
the gale, he halted and uncovered before the captain.

“Well, steward,” said Cammock.

“Captain Margaret sends his compliments to you, seh,” said the old
negro, with the soft “boneless” speech of his kind, “and will you step
below, seh, to speak with him in the cabin.”

“Tell him I’ll be down in a minute,” said Cammock. He glanced at the
compass-card again, and spoke a word with old Mr. Cottrill, the mate,
whose watch it was, according to old sea custom. “Call me if it
freshens,” he said; “but don’t take any sail off.”

Mr. Cottrill murmured that he understood, and bent under his coat to
get a light for his pipe. His thought was, “I’ve shipped with pirates.
With pirates.” The memory of that afternoon gave him bitter thoughts
till midnight, as the ship rushed on, under the stars, carrying her
freight of passion, her freight of souls.

Down below in the cabin the lamp had been lighted. The curtains had
been drawn across the windows, and now swayed a little with the roll,
making a faint click of rings. They were dark green curtains; but on
each of them was worked a blood-red tulip, which glowed out finely in
the lamplight. The windows were open behind the curtains. At times,
when the ship pitched, the cloth sucked in or out, sending the
lamp-flame dancing. At the table were the two Stukeleys and Captain
Margaret. Perrin sat upon the locker by the window, biting his poor
raw thumbs. When Captain Cammock entered, he noticed that Olivia had
been drinking a bowl of soup, and that Stukeley was staring hard in
front of him, clutching his glass of spirits.

“You’re turning sick,” said Cammock to himself. “Wait till we haul our
wind, my duck. Oh, mommer.” A single hard glance at Olivia convinced
him that she felt wretched. “More than you bargained for, ain’t it?”
he thought cheerfully. “You wait till we haul our wind.”

He had the common man’s hatred of strangeness and of strangers. He
loved not to have more folk aboard to interrupt his chats with his
owners, and to sit in the sacred cabin, ordering his steward.

“Captain Cammock,” said Margaret, “let me introduce you to Mrs.
Stukeley. Mr. Stukeley.”

The captain bowed.

“Captain Cammock is our commander, Olivia.”

Olivia smiled at the captain, much as a Christian martyr may have
smiled.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” said the captain, bowing.

He felt a queer gush of pity for her, remembering how he had felt,
years before, on his first night at sea.

“I hope you won’t make my little ship giddy, ma’am,” he said kindly.
“You must wear veils. All ladies has to, when they come on deck. You
know, ma’am----” He sat down at the foot of the table. “I seen a ship
quite lose her head one time. And the girl who done it wasn’t to be
compared, not to you.”

“You see, Olivia,” said Margaret, “a sailor loses no time.”

“You must come on deck and see the moon by and by, ma’am,” said
Cammock kindly. “And bring your husband. It’s nice and fresh up on the
deck. It’ll do you good before turning in, I dare say,” he went on. “I
dare say you’ve never seen the sea at night. Not all round you. No?
Well, you come up.”

Olivia thanked him for his invitation.

“I’ve lived by the sea all my life,” she said; “but I was never on it
in a ship before, except when I went to France.”

The words were very hard to speak; for as she spoke, with a rush, with
a flash, burningly, as tears come, came the memory of her sheltered
life at home, with her old servants, and her garden full of flowers,
over which now, at this moment, the moon was rising, lighting the
moths to their honey. She was homesick; she longed for that old life.
Life had gone very smoothly there; and now she was at sea in a ship,
among rough men, amid noise and bawling and the roaring of wind. She
kept a brave face upon it, but her heart was wretched; she wondered
why her husband did not understand. She longed for the peace of her
quiet room at home, full of the scent of flowers, and of that vague
scent, pleasant, and yet morbid, which hangs about all houses where
there has been a fine tradition of life. Old things, old beautiful
things, seem to give out this scent, the scent of the dead sweet
pea-blossom. Wherever that vague perfume lingers, something of the old
world lives, something beautiful, stately, full of sweet care. Olivia
was made for that life of lovely order. Her life had been passed in
the gathering of flowers, in the playing of music, in dances, in the
reading of poems. All sweet and lovely and gracious things had wrought
her; but they had not fitted her for this. Something was wrong with
the justice of the world; for surely such as she should have been
spared. She was not for the world; not at least for the world of men.
She was the idea of woman; she should have been spared the lot of
women. Her beautiful grace, her beautiful refinement, surely they were
beautiful enough for her to be spared. Now this violence had happened;
this brutal rearrangement of her life, needing further violence to
remedy. At the time she understood nothing of what had happened. She
was stunned and surprised, as a flower dug up and transplanted must be
surprised and stunned. She drooped and pined; this alien soil made her
shrink. As she sat there, ignorant of the world, highly ignorant,
even, of the nature of sea-sickness, she wondered why her husband made
no effort to cheer her, to comfort her, to be about her, like a strong
wall, shutting out the world. In her home by the sea, by lamplight,
over her music, she had often dreamed of the lover who would fill her
life. She had thought of him as of one who would live her life by
imaginative sympathy, thinking her thoughts, feeling with her own
fineness of tact, following each shy, unspoken thought in the passing
of shadow or smile, in the change of the voice, in the gesture, or
even without such help, by an extreme unselfish sensitiveness. She
found comfort in the thought that her husband must be debating the
wisdom of this cruise, which, only a few hours ago, had seemed so
wise, so noble, so right in every way.

Captain Margaret broke the silence which had followed her last words.

“Captain Cammock,” he said, “we’re making a new arrangement in the
cabins. Mr. and Mrs. Stukeley will have my double cabin to starboard
here. I shall have the spare bunk in Mr. Perrin’s cabin. I shall want
you to beat up to Falmouth, captain.”

“You’ll run some risk of gaol, Charles,” said the petulant friend on
the locker-tops. “You’ll probably be wanted by this time to-morrow all
over the west of England.”

“You were always a pessimist,” said Margaret.

“Is the lady to go ashore, then?” said Cammock, looking towards
Olivia.

“I hope not,” said Margaret. “But if she stays she must have a maid.
We shall put her--let me see.”

“Where will you put her?” asked Perrin. “There’s no room. You surely
won’t put her in the ’tween-decks?”

“No,” replied his friend. “We must make up a room in the sail-room.
Captain Cammock must shift his sails into the ’tween-decks.”

“She’ll have the biggest room in the ship,” said Cammock. “She’ll be
able to give a ball to the hands.”

“Charles,” said Olivia, “I don’t think I can possibly come with you.
I’m giving you too much trouble.”

She was hurt, now, that it was Charles, not her husband, who had
thought of her comfort, and shown that he considered her position.

“Nonsense,” said Margaret. “You’re being very nice. You just make all
the difference. Now, you’re both tired out. Your cabin’s quite ready
for you. Suppose we all go on deck to take the air for a while before
we say good-night.”

As they filed on deck, Cammock drew Stukeley aside.

“See here,” he said. “You’re giving way to it. You’ll be as sick as a
dog if you give way to it. What you want to do is to get some nice fat
pork, or a bit of greasy bacon, now. Or lard. The steward ’d lend you
a ball of lard. Or get one of the hands to puff tobacker at yer. Or
take a suck at a little melted butter, or some of that salad oil as
they call it. It’ll fetch you up all standing.”

He turned to his owner as Olivia left the poop.

“And you wish me to beat for Falmouth, sir?”

“If you please,” answered Captain Margaret.

“Very good, sir. I’ll go about at once. I can tack with the watch. Mr.
Cottrill,” he shouted, “Ready oh.”

His advice to Stukeley had the usual results. Olivia’s first night at
sea was passed in the marriage-bed of the state-room by the side of a
sea-sick boor, who groaned and damned and was violently sick all
through the night. He complained of cold before the dawn broke, so she
gave him her share of blankets, tenderly tucking him in. Up on deck
the men passed quietly to relieve the wheel. The main race-block
grunted and rattled; the mizen topsail sheets flogged on the woolding
of the mast, making a noise like drums. Up and down, above her head,
in a soft, never-ending shuffle, went the ship’s boy, keeping the lee
poop. At each bell she heard the hails of the lookouts: “Weather
cathead,” “Lee cathead,” “Gangway,” “Lee poop,” coming in the gusts of
the storm. Often, too, she heard a noise which she had never heard
before, a terrifying noise, the noise of water breaking aboard, the
lash of spray against her scuttle. The wind freshened through the
night, till it blew a fresh gale. The _Broken Heart_ took on strange
antics, which seemed very dreadful to Olivia. Far aft, as she was, the
pitching was violent and broken. Each little sea seemed deep as the
valley of the shadow. The roaring in the shrouds increased. At 4 a.m.,
all hands reefed topsails. Creeping out of bed to the great cabin, she
managed to peep to leeward through the skylight, in a heavy lee-roll,
which made her clutch the table. She saw a wild sky, notched by the
sea; great billows foaming, spray flying down wind, angry gleams in
blown cloud. From just above her head came the bull-roar of Captain
Cammock, who was damning the mizen-top men. “Lay in to the top, you,”
he was shouting. “Lay down a few of you and clue it up.” Then from
just above her head came the thunder of the slatting sail as the
topsail yard came down. “Away. Away. Lee-ay,” came the startling
shouts of the men on the clue-lines. The sail thundered and jangled.
The men roared at the ropes. Captain Cammock, with his head tilted
back, yelled to them to lay out, and hand the leech in. One phrase
struck upon her sharply. He bade them make it fast, letting the bunt
go to a place she had never heard of. “Pass your gaskets. Pass them
yard-arm gaskets. Get on the yard, you. Stamp that damned bunt down.”
The excited angry tone, the noise, the wild sky, all helped her fears.
She crept back to Stukeley’s side sure that the end was coming, that
the gale was increasing to a hurricane, and that, in a little while,
they would all sink together in some wild whirlpool screamed over by
the seagulls.

On the third day of storm, they managed to beat into Falmouth, where
they anchored off Trefusis Point. It was a wild, wet morning when they
anchored. The wooded combe of Trefusis was hidden in cloud, which
continually whirled off in streamers, as new cloud drove along, to
catch in the tree tops. The _Broken Heart_ was the only ship in the
anchorage; though over against Flushing there were a few
fishing-boats, rocking in the tideway. Captain Margaret went into
Falmouth, with Perrin and Olivia, to engage a maid. Stukeley was too
weak from his sickness to leave the ship. To Margaret it was a sign
that his crime was exceedingly foul.

“You have been badly scared, my friend,” he said to himself, as he sat
down beside Olivia in the boat. “If you persist in leaving England,
after being sick like that.”

Olivia had found comfort in what she took to be her husband’s
nobleness. She was proud that her husband had not abandoned his ideas
because of his bodily distress. By this time, too, she had seen the
potency of sea-sickness. She had seen its effect upon a strong man.
She had got over her first homesick terror of the sea. The storm had
exhilarated her. Up on deck, hanging to the mizen rigging, behind the
weather-cloth, she had felt the rapture of the sea. She had gone below
with her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining, cheered and delighted.
She had been touched, too, by the kindness of the three men of the
afterguard. Cammock had given up his cabin to the sick man, so that
she might have the great cabin to herself, in peace and quiet. She had
been very busy in getting her cabin into order, even in the tumble of
the storm. Now that she had made the state-room a home she had less
terror of the sea.

It was not an easy matter to engage a maid for such a voyage. They
tried at many mean houses, using tempting promises; but without
success. At last they called at the poor-house, where they had their
choice of several. An idiot girl, aged twenty, four old women who
remembered King James, and the widow Inigo, a black but comely woman,
in the prime of life, who had gone under after a succession of
disasters beginning with the death of her husband. They struck a hard
bargain with the widow Inigo, and then bore her down the hill to buy
her an outfit for the voyage. At the mercer’s shop, where Olivia and
the widow made their purchases, Captain Margaret, following his
invariable custom, began a conversation with one of the shopmen, a
youth just out of his apprenticeship.

“How long do you have to stay here every day?”

“About twelve hours, sir. From six till six.”

“That’s a very long day’s work, isn’t it? Do you have those hours all
the year round, or only in the summer?”

“All the year round, sir.”

“And what holidays do you have?”

“Holidays, sir? Easter, and Christmas, and Whitsuntide. Of course I’ve
my Sundays.”

“And how do you pass your spare time?”

“I go out with fellows, sir.”

“And what do you do?”

“Sometimes we dub at something.”

“And what is dub?”

“We put up a bottle somewhere, and then we dub at it.”

“Is that all you do?”

“On Thursdays our club meets. Then we have singing.”

“And do you read at all?”

“No, sir, I can’t say as I ever do, sir. I don’t want much reading
after the shutters are up.”

“I should have thought that you’d have been a great reader. Don’t you
find your work very interesting?”

“Oh. It’s all right, sir. Like any other work.”

“Yes. But. Take these woollen things, for instance. Don’t you think of
all the hands it has passed through? Don’t you think of the sheep up
on the hills, and the shepherds piping to them, and the great lonely
downs, eh, with nothing but sheep-bells and the wind?”

“No, sir. Not in that light exactly.”

“And then, don’t you think of the brooks where they wash and shear?
And then the great combs and looms, with so many people combing and
weaving and spinning, all helping to make this?” He picked up the warm
woollen shirt, and handled it. “And don’t you think of the people who
will wear these things?”

“No, sir. You see, I’m only a shopman. Mr. Treloar, the owner, he
thinks of all these things.”

“And will not you be a shop-owner, sometime, if you save and work
hard?”

“No, sir. Oh no, sir. I’m only a shopman.”

“Yes; but could you not become a shop-owner? Would you not like to be
one?”

“No, sir. I can’t say as I should, sir.”

“What would you like to be?”

“Of all things, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know, sir. That’s rather a big order, sir.”

“Think.”

“I think, sir, I’d like to be. Don’t let Mr. Burls hear, sir. He’s
listening. I’d like to be one of these buccaneers, sir. Fellows what
goes about fighting the Spaniards. They live an open-air life. Not
like here, sir. Oh, I’d like to lie by a camp-fire, sir, with a lot of
big bronzed men. And to have a gun, sir. And then to attack a city
full of treasure.”

“But I should think that was very dangerous. Isn’t it?”

“No, sir. Not by all accounts, sir. A poor lot, sir, the Spaniards.
They’re not like us, you know, sir. Our fellows are a bull-dog lot,
sir. The bull-dog breed, sir.”

“Really!”

“Oh yes, sir. Why, sir, only a day or two ago there come the
news-letter from Plymouth. I dare say you saw it, sir. And there was a
Virginia ship at Salcombe, it says. Did you see that bit, sir? And a
forger was escaping from the constables, and he got on board this ship
and bribes the captain, and he carries the man off safe, with the
men-of-war all firing broadsides on him. Oh, it must be fine to hear
the cannon-balls coming whizz.”

“Indeed! A forger, you say?”

“A forger, sir; but he’d done other things as well, sir, of course.
And he’d a lady with him, too, sir.”

“But you wouldn’t like to be that sort of man?”

“No, sir.”

“What would you do to the forger, if you caught him?”

“I should give him up to the constables, sir.”

“And the ship-captain?”

“I don’t know, sir. I haven’t thought about it much, sir.”

“You would support the laws, I hope?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“Even if he were a buccaneer.”

“Oh, now you’re too hard on me, sir.”

“But he was defying the law. And saving a ruffian from it.”

“Yes, sir. Of course I suppose I should support the laws, as you say.”

“It would be rather nice to be a buccaneer, and to obey only those
laws which one is strong enough to make for oneself.”

“Yes, sir?”

“To defend the weak and to make money by it. Isn’t that our maxim?”

The shopman giggled nervously. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m a buccaneer,” said Margaret. “Come with me. Won’t you? You shall
be what you really long to be.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t leave the shop, sir. Mr. Treloar would never----”

“Well, think it over,” said Margaret, rising. “I hope you’ll send all
these things down to the landing-stage within an hour. And send this
woman’s box down with them.”

“Oh, I will, sir. You shall find them there, sir.”

Captain Margaret paid the cost, nodded to the shopman, walked out with
Olivia. Mrs. Inigo resigned her box and followed them. They went to
several other shops, made more purchases, trifled away half an hour at
a pastrycook’s, and then set slowly shorewards, talking little; but
looking at the shops with interest. They would see no more shops for
many days. At the mercer’s shop they paused a moment, for Captain
Margaret had just decided to take several rolls of holland linen, in
order that his hands might make summer shirts for themselves. He left
Olivia at the door for a moment, with Mrs. Inigo, while he hurried
within. His friend the shopman hurried up to him.

“Well, what is it?” said Margaret.

“The goods are gone on board, sir,” said the shopman.

“Yes? Well? What is it?”

“I beg pardon, sir. Don’t wish to offend, sir. But are you the
gentleman, the gentleman, the, er, sea-captain. From Salcombe, sir?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Please, sir, I took the liberty. There was Mr. Russell, the
magistrate, and a gentleman from the fort, sir. They came in about you
just after you’d gone. They were going to inquire about, about the
Salcombe matter, sir.”

“Yes. What did you tell them?”

“I said you’d gone to Penryn, sir, about some beer, sir, for your
sailors.”

“That wasn’t strictly truthful, was it?”

“No, sir. I suppose not, sir. So they went off to Penryn, sir. And I
told your boatmen to take the things aboard, and then wait for you at
the docks.”

“Where are the docks?”

“Nearly a mile down the harbour, sir. Further on along the road here.
I beg your pardon, sir, but the landing-stage has soldiers on it.”

“Thank you. Have they sent to seize the ship?”

“No, sir. Oh no indeed, sir. I think----”

“Why haven’t they? Did you hear?”

“I think I heard them say, sir, that they had only a warrant for--if I
may say so, as they call it, for you, sir.”

“How far is it to Penryn? I suppose they’ll be back soon?”

“Yes, sir. They might be back at any moment.”

“Thanks. Well. Show me where the docks are. Away to the left here?”

“Yes, sir. You can’t miss them. If I might come with you, sir.”

“To the Spanish Main?”

“No, sir. I’m afraid I can’t. But to the docks, sir.”

“Can you leave this?”

“It’s my dinner-time, sir.”

“Come on, then. I shall be very much obliged to you. Isn’t this more
exciting than selling woollen shirts?”

“Yes, sir. Indeed. But shirts are useful things, sir.”

“I deny that. They are pernicious things. They are always getting
dirty, and then some poor wretch with an immortal soul must scrub them
in hot water. They are always losing their buttons, and then other
poor wretches have to make new ones and sew them on again. They are
always wearing out, and then other poor wretches have to begin the
silly game again by penning up a few sheep and cutting their wool
away.”

By this time they were outside the door.

“Come, Olivia,” he said carelessly. “We must walk to the docks. You
will be tired to death before you get there.”

“Oh no I shan’t,” she answered. “I love walking.”

“Give me that package,” he replied.

“Now,” he continued to the shopman, “walk as though we were seeing the
sights. Oh. Here’s a butcher’s shop. Now my captain would never
forgive me if I came aboard without a leg of mutton.”

He bought a leg of mutton, handed it to the shopman to carry, and
sauntered on.

“You must have your jest, I see, sir,” said the shopman.

“Oh yes, if I swing for it,” replied the captain, quoting from a
popular broadside, which had contained the biography of a pirate.

“Hadn’t we better walk a little faster, sir?” said the shopman. He had
no desire to be caught; he was not used to excitements.

“Olivia,” said Captain Margaret, paying no attention to his new
acquaintance, but continuing to saunter leisurely, “when we get on
board I expect you’ll find your husband up and about.”

“Yes,” she answered. “I ought not to have left him for so long. I’ve
hardly seen him for days.”

He had spoken so that the shopman might make no allusions to the
Salcombe affair, casting out a reference to Stukeley’s crime. She had
answered with some little, half-acknowledged wish to pique him.

“To-night,” said Margaret, “in the cabin, we’ll all hold a council of
war to decide our doings on the Main.”

“Yes,” she answered. “And when we get there we shall remember the
council. Things will look very different there.”

“Here. You’ve been talking to Cammock.”

“He’s so amusing,” she answered.

Sauntering in this way, talking nonsense and trifling, they arrived at
the boat-builder’s creek which then did duty for a dock. Their boat
lay off at a little distance; the hands were lying on their oars.
Captain Margaret hailed her; she put in. He handed Olivia into the
sternsheets. Mrs. Inigo, well used to boats from her childhood,
stepped into the bows. The stroke oar arranged the parcels and placed
the leg of mutton behind the backboard. Captain Margaret turned to the
shopman, and walked a few steps with him out of ear-shot of the boat.
He glanced up the anchorage to see if any armed boat was putting off.

“Don’t wait, sir,” said the shopman. “Lord, sir, think of the risk.
Why don’t you go, sir? It’s frightfully dangerous, sir.”

“You exaggerate the risk,” he answered calmly. “Well, you’ve done me a
good turn. Why did you do me a good turn?”

“Oh sir, I’m sure.”

“I shall often think of you,” said Captain Margaret. “Are you sure you
won’t come with me?”

“Oh no, sir. I couldn’t really be persuaded, sir.”

“Well, think of us.”

“I shall think of you always, sir. You _are_ a real buccaneer, sir?”

“Oh yes. Real. In my ship yonder, there’s a man who knew Morgan.”

“I’ve never had anything happen to me, sir, before.”

“Does it make any difference, do you find?”

“Oh, sir.”

“Will you wear this charm of mine to remember me by?” He detached a
small gold jewel, set with symbolical stones. “It is said to bring
success in love. I don’t believe it.”

The man took the symbol as though it were an eggshell.

“Thank you, sir,” he said with fervour. “Thank you very much, sir.”
Then he started violently. “Oh, sir,” he cried, remembering the risk,
“do go, sir. It’s frightfully dangerous, sir.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, “I mustn’t keep the lady waiting. I hope you run
no risk yourself; for warning me?”

“Oh no, sir. I just showed a customer to the docks.”

“And I’m very much obliged. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, sir. Oh, sir, I’m much honoured indeed, sir. I hope we
shall meet again, sir.”

“Well, if we don’t, we shall think of each other, shan’t we?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“And I shall be on the Main, and you’ll be here. Here on this spot.”

“Often, sir, I suppose I shall be.”

“Good-bye. There is your soldier friend, I think.”

He nodded carelessly towards the bend of the road; then made a
half-bow to the shopman, and stepped into the boat.

“Shove off,” he said. “Back a stroke, port oars. Down starboard and
shove her off.” As he placed the boat-rug over his knees, he heard the
hoofs of horses trotting on the road. “Give way together,” he said
coldly, as the boat swung round. He glanced over his shoulder at the
shopman, half expecting to see the officers beside him. Then he turned
to his boat’s crew. “Come. Shake her up. Shake her up,” he said.
“Rally her out. Give way, now. Put your backs into it. Come on, now.
Toss her up.”

The stroke quickened, the boat gathered way; she shot out into the
harbour, spreading a ripple. She was a hundred yards out, keeping a
fine steady stroke, when Captain Margaret turned again. He saw the
figure of the shopman pointing towards him, while a man on horseback
stood at his side looking towards the boat. Another horseman was
galloping fast back to town, evidently to get a boat at the
landing-stage.

“They aren’t very clever, these soldiers,” he thought; “but I’ve had a
little luck to-day. Or was it luck? Who knows? It may not have been
luck, after all. It may have been anything but that.”

He drew from the stern-locker a little flag nailed to a batten. He
tied a knot in the flag.

“What are you doing that for?” said Olivia, as he waved the “weft” in
the air.

“It’s a signal to Cammock,” he said, “to get his anchor up, and to
make sail. He’ll pick us up on his way out. There goes his gun. He’s
seen us.”

“Rather hurried, isn’t it?” said Olivia.

“It makes the hands smart,” he answered evasively. “I wonder if the
fort will salute us as the man-of-war did.”

“I hope not,” said Olivia.

“They very likely will,” he answered. “Come. Toss her up, boys.”

“That was a funny little man from the shop,” said Olivia.

“Yes,” he said. “But he told me some interesting things. Very
interesting.”

They talked no more after that till the _Broken Heart_, under a cloud
of canvas, came reeling down to them, to back her mainyard within
hail, and hoist them all aboard.

“Good-bye, old England,” said Olivia.

“Yes,” said Margaret. “And thank the Lord it is.”




 IV.
 A CABIN COUNCIL


 “Captain Chilver’s gone to sea.
  _Ay, boys, O, boys._
 Captain Chilver’s gone to sea
  _In the brave_ ‘_Benjamin._’”
            _Captain Chilver._


The wind had gone down gradually all through the day. The morning’s
rain had kept down the sea. When the _Broken Heart_ “took her
departure” that evening, from the distant Lizard, Captain Cammock
crossed his main royal, out of lightness of heart. He had a fair wind
and clear weather. He was thankful to have escaped arrest at Falmouth.
“He was within smell of Virginia,” he said; so now he would crack on
and drive her, sending her lee-ports under. The three days of storm
had been of use to him. They had shaken the hands into shape, and had
bettered the ship’s trim. Now, he flattered himself, he knew what his
ship would do, and what his men could do. He was ready for the Western
Ocean. The guns were housed, their breeches down on the carriage-beds,
their tompioned muzzles lashed to the upper port sills. The light
brass quarter-deck guns were covered with tarpaulin. Life-lines were
stretched fore and aft across the waist. Windsails were set. There
were handy-billies hooked along the hammock nettings ready for use.
Forward, on the fo’c’s’le-head, the hands had gathered to dry the
clothes soaked in the storm. Some of the hands, lying to windward,
against the forward guns, began to sing one of their sea ballads, a
dreary old ballad with a chorus, about the bonny coasts of Barbary.
Old Mr. Cottrill had the dogwatch. The other mate, Mr. Iles, a little
“hard case” from the James River, was playing his fiddle on the
booby-hatch, just abaft the main-bitts. He sang a plaintive ditty to
the music; and though he did not sing well he had listeners who
thought his singing beautiful. Several of the hands, as he knew very
well, were skulking as far aft as they dared, to catch his linked
sweetness as it fell from him. Cocking one leg over the other, he
began another song with a happy ending, no particular meaning, and a
certain blitheness:--


 I put it up with a country word.
 Tradoodle.


“There,” he said. “There, steward. Gee. Hey? I can sing all right, all
right. What’s that song youse was singing? You know. That one about
the girl with the wig?”

“Oh, seh,” said the old negro, Mr. Iles’s chief listener. “Oh, seh. I
can’t sing with music. I haven’t had the occasionals to do that, seh.”

“By gee, steward,” said Mr. Iles, turning to go below to his cabin in
the ’tween-decks, “if you can’t sing to music, b’ gee I don’t think
you can sing much.”

Mr. Cottrill turned to Captain Cammock.

“A smart young sailor, sir,” he said. “Mr. Iles keeps ’em going, sir.”

“Yes,” said Cammock. “He knows a lot for his age. A smart young man,
Mr. Iles, as you say, mister. He fiddles pretty, too.”

“I don’t hold with fiddling in a man,” said Mr. Cottrill. “It’s not
natural. But it keeps the mind employed, they say.”

“Yes,” said Cammock, “and so does making up tunes. Did you never make
up tunes, when you was a boy, mister, walking the poop?”

“I come in like a head sea,” said Mr. Cottrill. “The only times I
walked the poop was to relieve the helm, or to take in the mizen.”

“Well. And ain’t you glad?” said Cammock. “It’s the only way to
learn.”

“It is that, sir,” said Cottrill. “I guess, sir,” he added, “if this
wind holds, we’ll be out of sight of land by dawn.”

The boy reported eight bells.

“Make it,” said Cottrill.

The boy struck the bell eight times.

“You boy,” said Cammock, “when you walk the lee poop at night, you’ll
not go clump, clump, the way you done last night. There’s a lady in
the cabin. Let me see what boots you’re wearing. I thought so. They’re
the kind of boots would wear a hole in a wall. Hold up them soles, and
give us the end of the main-brace there. There, my son. I give you the
end this time. You wear them boots after dark again, and you’ll get
the bight, higher up.”

The watch was mustered and set. Captain Cammock went below, pleased to
think that he had saved Olivia from the trouble of complaining about
the boy.

He went direct to the great cabin; for he knew that there was to be a
council of war. There was much to be discussed; there was much for him
to tell them. He hoped very much that his sea-sick friend Tom Stukeley
would be put in a watch. “And then,” he said to himself, “you shall
toe the line.” In the cabin he found Perrin and Margaret playing some
simple card-game with Olivia, for counters. Stukeley lay at
half-length upon the window-seat, sipping brandy. He was evidently
cured of his sickness; though very weak from it.

He looked up as Cammock entered, took a good pull at his drink, and
called to Margaret.

“You were going to have some sort of parish meeting here. Here’s the
beadle. Suppose you begin, and get it over.”

He took another pull at the brandy. “Take a seat, beadle,” he said
insolently.

Perrin and Margaret bit their lips, and slowly, almost fearfully,
lifted their eyes to Cammock’s face. The old pirate had turned purple
beneath his copper; but Olivia’s presence bridled him. He looked at
Stukeley for a moment, then spun round on one heel, in the way he had
learned in some ship’s forecastle, and walked out of the cabin.

“I must get my charts,” he said thickly.

“Stukeley,” said Margaret lightly, “Captain Cammock is the captain of
this ship.”

“Yes,” said Stukeley. “And I wish he knew his place as well as I know
it.”

“I must ask you to remember that he commands here.”

“Of course,” said Olivia, rather nettled.

“I hope, Stukeley,” said Perrin, “I hope you won’t quarrel with him.
We’re going a long voyage together.”

“Lord,” said Stukeley. “What a stew you two make. You might be two old
women.”

“Tom dear,” said Olivia, “is that open window too much for you?”

In the diversion caused by the shutting of the window, Captain Cammock
took his seat, laying a book of charts on the table before him. “Now,
Captain Margaret, sir. Will you begin? I don’t rightly know what it is
you want discussed.”

“Very well,” said Margaret. “I’ll begin.”

He leaned back in his chair, and looked first at Olivia, then at
Stukeley, then at Cammock, who, he thought, looked very splendid, with
his long black hair falling over his shoulders, and his grim beauty,
like a bronze, thrusting from his scarlet scarf.

“I don’t think you know,” he said, “at any rate, not perfectly, what
it is I intend doing. This ship is mine, as I think you all know. But
her cargo--it’s a general cargo, worth a good deal of money where we
are going to--is the property of several London merchants, who expect
me to make a profit for them. I want you to get it out of your heads
that I’m doing this for love, either of adventure, or of my
fellow-men. I believe I shall get adventure, and help my fellow-men.
But the venture is, primarily, a business venture. If the business
part fails, the whole thing will come to nothing. As you know, a part
of the cargo is consigned to Virginia, and we go to Virginia direct.
But we shall only stay there long enough to buy up the pick of the
tobacco crop with our goods, and take in fresh water. Our real
destination is the Isthmus of Darien.”

“What part of the Isthmus, sir?” said Cammock.

“You’ll have to tell us that. Fill Captain Cammock’s glass, Perrin.”

“Thank you, Mr. Perrin,” said Cammock. He bowed to Olivia and drank.
“Go on, sir.”

“You see,” continued Margaret. “Well I must apologize, captain. It was
part of my arrangement with Captain Cammock that he should not be told
about our destination, nor about our plans, till we had left England.
I need hardly say, captain, that that was not, well, not my desire.
The merchants who consigned the cargo insisted on it. To tell the
truth, it was only on the pledge of secrecy that the Board of Trade
and Plantations gave me my commission.”

“Then you’ve got a commission, sir?” said Cammock.

“Yes. A limited one. But still. Had our plans been bruited abroad, we
should have had a lot of opposition.”

“Who’d have taken the sweat to lift a finger to stop you?” said
Stukeley.

“The West Indian merchants,” replied Margaret. “And the Chartered
Brazil Wood Company, and the Spanish ambassador, among others, would
have given us a lot of opposition. In fact, had the Spaniards known of
it, we might have spared ourselves the trouble of sailing.”

“Hear, hear, sir,” said Cammock quietly.

“Our friend the beadle knows his job,” said Stukeley.

“Fill Captain Cammock’s glass, Edward.”

“Fill mine, too, please, waiter,” said Stukeley.

“To continue,” said Margaret. “Had the Spaniards known, we should have
found the place of our intended settlement in the hands of Spanish
troops.”

“Settlement?” said Stukeley.

“Yes. A settlement. To be short, my plan is to land on the Isthmus,
found an English colony, and open up a trade, a real trade, mind you,
with the Indians of Darien. Now that is the rough outline of the
scheme. Now, Captain Cammock. Now comes your part. I’m going to
cross-examine you. You know the Isthmus thoroughly. Have you landed on
the Main? I know you have, of course. But we must begin at the
beginning.”

“I been there a many times, right along. Mostly looking for food,”
said Cammock.

“Did you ever meet the Indians?”

“I’ve been up agin all kinds of Indians.”

“Are there many kinds?”

“There’s three kinds.”

“Three? What are the three?”

“I don’t mind telling you, sir. There’s one kind comes and says, ‘O
Sieur,’ and brings you these great bananas and spears fish for you.
There’s some sense in them ones. Give ’em a handful of beads and
they’ll fill you a pannikin of gold dust. They’re getting spoiled, of
course, like everything else. But where they ain’t been got at they’re
good still. That’s one kind.”

“And the others?”

“There’s another kind no one seen. They say they’re white, this second
kind. They live in the woods; in stone houses, too, for the matter of
that. And they wear gold masks. No one ever seen ’em, mind you. But
you lay out in the woods near ’em, and the first night you’ll hear
like singing all round you.”

“Singing?”

“Like little birds. I never like singing like what that is. You only
get it the first night.”

“Oh. That’s very curious. What happens then?”

“The second night, if you lay out in the woods, you get your ’ed cut
off. You find your corp in the morning, that’s what you find.”

“Why do they cut your head off?” said Perrin.

“Their idea of fun, I s’pose,” said Cammock, with a grin. “Come to
that, a corp is a funny thing with no ’ed. They take the ’eds and
pickle them after: I’ve seen ’em.”

“What do they do with the heads?” asked Perrin, “when they’ve pickled
them?”

“They wear ’em round their necks, for ornament,” said Cammock. “If one
of them ducks gets a reglar necklace, like a dozen ’eds, he thinks
he’s old Sir Henry.”

“Sir Henry?”

“Like a Admiral,” explained the buccaneer.

“Ah. And what’s the third kind?”

“I don’t mind telling you. I was cruising one time. I was with an
English crew, too. And four of our men went ashore there, near Cape
Codera. They didn’t come back, so we went to look for them. We found
ashes, where a fire’d been. And we found hands, lying in the ashes.”

“Hands?” said Perrin.

“With fingers on them, some of them,” said the pirate calmly. “Some of
them was ate all off. And there was a skull lying. And bits of one man
tied to a tree. I’ve never liked Indians from that day, not what you
might call love them.”

“So that’s the third kind,” said Captain Margaret. “I take it that
these two last kinds don’t suffer much from the Spaniards?”

“Not unless sometimes they get a tough one,” said the pirate, “they
don’t.”

“And the other kind, the first kind?”

“They’re melancholy ducks. No use at all,” said Cammock. “Of course
they suffer. It’s a wonder to me they don’t get it worse. They’d ought
to. If it rained soup they’d be going out with forks. They ain’t got
the sense we have, or something. ‘O Sieur,’ they say. The French
taught ’em that. ‘O Sieur.’ ‘Come and kick us,’ that’s what it really
amounts to.” He looked at Olivia, half fearing that she would be
shocked.

“Could they do anything, under a capable man, do you think?” said
Perrin.

“We’d one with us in the _Trinity_,” said Cammock. “William his name
was. Yes, William, after my poor brother. Captain Sharp was capable,
all right, in his limits; William was capable too, I guess; I don’t
remember him gettin’ it. Yes. I think they’d do. Ah, but they ain’t
got the sense. No, I don’t know as they’d ever do very much.”

“Was your brother with you in town?” asked Captain Margaret. “Why
isn’t he here with you?”

“Who? Bill? No, sir. He died. Off of La Serena. Rum did _him_. He’d no
sense to drink rum the way he drank it. I was sorry to lose Bill. I’d
my fair share of trouble that passage.”

“Have some more drink, your glass is empty,” said Perrin.

“It’s thirsty work talking, as the parson said,” answered the pirate,
holding out his glass. He looked at Perrin not unfavourably. Perrin
mixed him another punch, and brought out a clean clay pipe from a
little locker to the left of the fireplace.

“You’re a thoughtful young fellow to me,” said Captain Cammock,
regarding him with favour. His thought was, “You’d make a steward,
perhaps, boiled down a bit”; but this he kept to himself. “Was you
ever at sea before, sir?” he asked politely.

“Only across the Channel,” said Perrin.

“Well, it’s a hard life,” said the pirate. “Salue. Salue.” He jerked
his head towards his hosts, and gulped the liquor. “It’s a hard life.
Ah. You don’t know how hard it is, sitting here by the fire.” He
looked moodily into the little bogey stove, which had been lighted to
air the cabin.

“What made you take to it, Captain Cammock?” said Perrin.

“Just a girl,” said the captain. “I thought I’d make money that way,
so’s we could marry.”

“Are you married, might I ask?” said Captain Margaret.

“No,” he answered surlily. “No. A single man.”

He seemed upset by the question, for he became moody. He glared at the
fire, and drummed with one foot against the leg of his chair.

“Tell me,” said Captain Margaret. “You don’t think that I could do
much among the Indians, do you?”

“You mean, if you settled there?”

“Yes, if I landed, built a fort, and opened a trading station. And got
the Indian chiefs to bring in gold, and cocoa, or whatever else there
is.”

“You could only do that in among the Samballoes.”

“The islands along the Isthmus?”

“Yes. That’s your only place.”

“Would it be possible?”

“I dunno as it would. No, I reckon it wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“You couldn’t. The Dagoes are too strong. They’d send from Porto
Bello, or they’d send overland perhaps, from Panama. They’d get yer.
Then you’d have ginger, working on the forts in Portobel. Lots of ’em
end that way on the Main. Yes, sir, the Main’s a queer place.”

“Queer?”

“We lost a boat’s crew once, east there, by Tolu or that. A handsome
fellow her bow oar was. Bigger’n you he was. Handsome Jim Sanders,
that was him. _He_ worked on the forts in Portobel. We rescued him a
year later, quite by accident. There was red cuts all over him; and
all he could do was sing.”

“Sing?”

“Just sing. This was what he sung. He sung all the time. No. He didn’t
laugh. He just whined a little and sang.”

The pirate dropped his voice to a whimper and sang:--


 “Tom, Tom, the piper’s son,
 Learned to pipe when he was young,
 And all the tunes that he could play
 Was over the hills and far away.


There’s many like handsome Jim. I’ve knowed a many go that way. The
Main’s a hard place, the same as the sea is, if you come to that.”

“Ah,” said Perrin. “How ghastly.”

Captain Margaret said nothing; for in his lively fancy he saw a
half-naked man, lying on the deck, surrounded by pirates, who watched
him with a sort of hard pity. The sun shone strongly upon the picture,
so that the brass cannon gleamed. Out of the wrecked man’s body came a
snatch of a nursery rhyme, with a pathetic tune. He felt the horror of
it; he saw how the pirates shifted on their feet and looked at each
other. He was tempted to ask, “Had one of your men a hare-lip?” for in
the picture which his fancy formed a hare-lipped pirate stood out
strangely, seemingly stirred by that horror on the deck. “Fancy,” he
thought. “Pure fancy.”

“Let me fill your glass, Cammock,” he said. He poured another dose
into the glass.

“Salue,” said the pirate.

A red log, burned through, fell with a crash inside the stove.

“Sparks,” said the pirate. “Sparks. We give the Dagoes sparks for that
lot.” He paused a moment. “Yes, Captain Margaret,” he went on. “And
that’s the way you’d best.”

“What way is that?” asked the captain.

“Well. It’s like this,” said the captain. “Your trading lay--I’m
speaking as a sailor, you understand--is all Barney’s bull. It’s got
more bugs than brains, as you might say. But you don’t want to go
trading. What d’yer want to go trading for? You’d only get et by
sand-flies, even if you did make a profit. What you want to do. You
got a big ship. You’d easy get hands enough. Well, what I say is, why
not go for one of the towns? Morgan done it. Sharp done it. Old John
Coxon done it, for I was with him. And the French and Dutch done it,
too; don’t I know it. If you come on ’em with a sort of a hawky pounce
you get ’em every time. Profit, too. There’s twenty or thirty pound a
man in it. Besides ransoms. There’s no work in it, like in trading. If
you’re trading, you got to watch your stores, you got to watch the
Indians, you got to kowtow to the chiefs. Pah. It’s a poor job, trade
is. It’s not a seaman’s job. But you come down on the towns. Why. Half
your life. I wish I’d been wise when I was a young man. That’s what I
ought to a done, ’stead of logwood cutting.”

“What towns would you advise?” said Captain Margaret, smiling.

“Well. Here’s a map.” Cammock opened his book to show a map of the
Terra Firme from La Vera Cruz to Trinidad. “It’s rough,” he explained.
“But it’ll just show you. All them red dots is towns. And what I say
is, take them. That’s the only way you’ll help the Indians, as you
call it. Help them? You won’t help them much when you get among them,
I’ll tell you that much. The Main alters people.”

“Oh,” said Margaret quietly. “So that’s what you think. Why do you
think that? What reason can you give?”

“Well, take it on military grounds, sir,” said Cammock. “You’ll have
to admit it on military grounds.”

Stukeley pretended to choke with laughter; it was an offensive act.

“Stukeley’s turning sick again,” said Perrin dryly.

“Well. On military grounds then,” said Margaret. “I want to hear your
reason.”

“Look, sir. Look at my two fists. This right fist, here, is
Carta-Yaina. This left fist is Portobel or La Vera Cruz. Now these
here counters. You’ll excuse my taking your counters, Mrs. Stukeley.
These here counters are the Samballoes islands in between. Now. On
military grounds. Suppose I knock my fists together. The counters get
a nasty jounce.”

“I see,” said Margaret. “We should be the nut between two crackers.”

“Yes, sir. You would. And take it as a matter of business. You’d be on
the trade route, or jolly near it, between the crackers; besides being
able to flank the overland route from Panama to Portobel. They’d never
set still to let you establish yourself among them. Why, you’d as well
ask them to cut their own throats. You’d have to destroy their towns
first. Portobel’s nothing very much. It’s been took twice within the
last few years; but you can never really settle Portobel till you
settle Panama; and to do that you’d want a fleet in the South Sea to
settle Lima. To make yourself secure. Quite secure. Secure enough for
the King of England to back you up. You know what that means. The
enemy beat, and the spoils your own, that’s what makes King James your
friend. God save him, I say, and bring him glory. To put yourself in
that position, you’d have to take the two big naval ports on the North
Sea, both of them. Carta-Yaina and La Vera Cruz. For jabbing an
enemy’s no use at all. A prick here and there’s nothing. Nothing at
all. Smash the naval ports first, and then the place is your own. Go
for the main stem and you’ll get the whole tree. Upset Carta-Yaina
alone, and La Vera Cruz wouldn’t bother you very bad; but till
Carta-Yaina’s yours---- Well, honestly, Captain Margaret, you’ll never
be let settle down, not on the Isthmus. But. I don’t know so much. It
might. I’ll think it over.”

During Cammock’s speech, Stukeley had made occasional offensive
interruptions; but he said nothing when Cammock ended. Olivia, being
ignorant of the exact nature of the question discussed, through her
ignorance of geography, waited for her husband to speak. Perrin, who
had gone into the matter thus far with Margaret, to his own boredom,
now waited, half asleep, for his friend to say something more. He
hoped that no one would ask him for an opinion that evening. He knew
nothing much about it, one way or the other, and cared little;
believing only that his friend, who could do no wrong, would be the
man to uphold against all comers. As the active part of him, never
very violent now, was idle to-night, he gave himself up to torpor,
keeping his mind a blank, paying little attention to the words of any
one. To Cammock, whom he liked, he was polite. Indeed, Cammock’s glass
was seldom less than half-full all through the evening. Now and then
he wished that the meeting would end, so that he could turn in. He lay
back in his chair, looking at the faces of the company, wishing that
he had his friend’s charm, and Cammock’s bodily strength, and
Stukeley’s insolent carriage. It must be good, he thought, to be
indifferent, like that, to people’s feelings. And if he had all three
gifts, what would he do with it? He looked at Olivia, as she sat
there, upright in her chair, listening carefully to all that he said.
“Yes,” he thought, “you’re taking it all in, all that you understand,
and thinking what you’ll make your husband do. And you’re beautiful,”
he added to himself. “In that black silk, with the green about your
hair, you’re---- Yes, Charles was right. I never saw it before. You’re
beautiful.”

“Olivia,” he said aloud, “will you let me get you a little wine and
some fruit? This must be so awfully dull for you.”

“Oh, I like it,” she answered quickly. “I like it.”

“Do you, really?” said Margaret. “Well. We’ll go on. Let me see your
map, Captain Cammock.”

He took the dirty piece of vellum from Captain Cammock, and examined
the coast-line. There were manuscript notes written here and there
across the Isthmus. Captain Margaret read: “Don Andrea’s Cuntrey.” “K
Golden Cap went with Capt S from here.” “The Indians washes for Gold
on this Side.” Mountains and forests had been added to the map in
water-colours. A ship or two, under all plain sail, showed upon the
seas. In among the islands a hand had added soundings and anchorages
in red ink. He looked among the network of islands, remembering the
many stories he had read of them, fascinated by the thought that here,
before him, was one who could make that marked piece of vellum
significant.

“Tell me,” he said. “These keys here. La Sound’s Key and Springer’s
Key. Are they well known to your people?”

“Yes,” said the pirate.

“Do the Spaniards ever search among these islands? Do they send
guarda-costas?”

“Not them. Not to hurt. They’ve no really organized force on the Main.
Nor’ve they got any charts to go by. They aren’t hard any longer. Only
soft, the Spaniards. Why, there’s often a matter of a dozen sail of
privateers come to them keys, at the one time.”

“Why do they come there?”

“Water, sir. Then the Indians bring gold dust. Sometimes they land and
go for a cruise ashore. Lots of ’em make money that way, where the
Spaniards don’t expect them.”

“Have they buildings there?”

“No. When they careen their ships, the Indians build huts for them.
Very nice, too, the huts are. Palmeto and that.”

“Then the Indians are friendly?”

“Yes. Sometimes there’s a row, of course.”

“Why don’t the privateers combine, to found a kingdom there? They
could so easily.”

“They never agree among ’emselves,” said the pirate. “Quarrelsome
ducks. That’s what they are.”

“And if a strong man got hold of them and made them agree?”

“Then. Yes. Perhaps. They might be a thundering great nation. But then
there’s the Main. It changes people. It’s hard to say. It’s different
from talking by the fire.”

“Well,” said Captain Margaret. “I shall try it. I believe it could be
done. And it’s worth trying.”

“I believe you’d do it, if any one. Morgan’d ’ave done it perhaps. But
Sir Henry was weak you know. Rum. Well, sir. If you can do it. You’ll
be in the story-books.”

“What is this place here? This Boca del Toro? Away to the west here?
You sometimes meet here, don’t you, in order to plan a raid?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is it a good anchorage? It doesn’t seem to be much of a harbour.”

“No, sir; Toro’s just an anchorage, out of the way, like. We goes to
Toro for turtle. Very good turtle on Toro. Them Mosquito boys gets ’em
with spears. You see ’em paddle out, Mrs. Stukeley, two of these red
Indians in a boat, and they just paddle soft, paddle soft, as still as
still, and they come up to the turtles as they lie asleep in the sea,
and then. Whang. They dart their fizgigs. They never miss.”

Olivia looked at Cammock with quickened interest; but she did not
speak. She was now leaning forward, over the table, resting her chin
upon her hands, probably with some vague belief that her throat was
beautiful and that these stupid men would never notice it. She may
have been conscious of her power. Yet perhaps she was not. She may
have given too much of herself to Stukeley; she may have tuned too
many of her emotional strings to that one note, to feel how other men
regarded her.

“Look, Olivia,” said Margaret. He placed the map before her.

Perrin and Cammock put out each a hand, to hold the curling vellum
flat for her. She looked at the map as a sibyl would have looked at
the golden scroll; she looked rapt; her great eyes shone so. She put
out one hand to flatten the vellum, and to Margaret, watching her, it
seemed that her whole nature was expressed in that one act, and that
her nature was beautiful, too beautiful for this world. Her finger-tip
touched Perrin’s finger-tip, for one instant, as she smoothed the
map’s edge; and to Perrin it seemed that his life would be well passed
in the service of this lady. She was, oh, wonderfully beautiful, he
thought; but not like other women. She was so strange, so mysterious,
and her voice thrilled so. In dreams, in those dreams of beauty which
move us for days together, he had seen that beauty before; she had
come to him, she had saved him; her healing hands had raised him,
bringing him peace. “She says nothing,” he said to himself; “but life
is often like that. I have talked with people sometimes whose bodies
seemed to be corpses. And all the time they were wonderful, possessed
of devils and angels.”

As for Cammock, her beauty moved him, too; her voice moved him. In his
thoughts he called her “my handsome.” He was moved by her as an old
gardener is touched by the beauty of his master’s child. His emotion
was partly awe, partly pity. Pity for himself, partly; because he
could never now be worthy of moving in her company, although he felt
that he would be a better mate for her than the brandy-sipper on the
locker-top. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen; she was
like a spirit; like a holy thing. Looking at her, as she studied the
map, he thought of an image in the cathedral of Panama. He had been
with Morgan in the awful march from Chagres. He had fought in the
morning, outside Panama, till his face, all bloody and powder-burnt,
was black like a devil’s. Then, he remembered, they had stormed old
Panama, fighting in the streets, across barricades, over tables, over
broken chairs, while the women fired from the roofs. Then they had
rushed the Plaza, to see the flames licking at all the glorious city.
They had stormed a last barricade to reach the Plaza. There had been
twenty starving pirates with him, all blind with drink and rage. They
had made a last rush, clubbing and spearing and shooting, killing man,
woman, and child. They swore and shrieked as they stamped them under.
And then he, with two mates, had opened a postern in the cathedral,
and had passed in, from all those shrieks, from all that fire and
blood, to an altar, where an image knelt, full of peace, beautiful
beyond words, in the quiet of the holy place. He remembered the faint
smell of incense, the memory of a scent, which hung about that holy
place. The vague scent which Olivia used reminded him of it. “_She_ is
like that,” he thought, “and I am _that_. That still.”

Margaret glanced at Stukeley, who seemed to be asleep. “I suppose,
captain,” he said, “I suppose, then, that you would recommend one of
these keys in the Samballoes, as you call them?”

“Yes, sir,” said Cammock. “I’ll tell you why. You’re handy for the
Indians, that’s one great point. You’re hidden from to seaward, in
case the Spanish fleet should come near, going to Portobello fair.
You’re within a week’s march of all the big gold mines. You’ve good
wood and water handy. And you could careen a treat, if your ship got
foul. Beside being nice and central.”

“Which of these two keys do you recommend?”

“La Sound’s Key is the most frequented,” answered Cammock. “You often
have a dozen sloops in at La Sound’s. They careen there a lot. You see
there’s mud to lay your ship ashore on. And very good brushwood if you
wish to give her a breaming.”

“I see. And the Indians come there, you say?”

“Oh yes, sir. There’s an Indian village on the Main just opposite.
Full of Indians always. La Sound’s is an exchange, as you might say.”

“If I went there, in this big ship, should I be likely to get into
touch with the privateer captains? I mean, to make friends with them.”

“You’d meet them all there, from time to time, sir--Coxon, Tristian,
Yanky Dutch, Mackett; oh, all of them.”

“All friends of yours?”

“No, sir. Some of them is French and Dutch. They come from Tortuga and
away east by Curaçoa. That’s a point I can tell you about. Don’t you
make too free with the French and Dutch, sir. You stick by your own
countrymen. I’ll tell you why, sir. If you let them ducks in to share,
the first you’ll know is they’ve put in a claim for their own country.
They’ll say that the settlement is theirs; that we’re intruding on
them. Oh, they will. I know ’em. And they’ll trick you, too. They’ll
get their own men-of-war to come and kick you out, like they done at
St. Kitts, and at Tortuga.”

“That would hardly suit. But is La Sound’s more of a French and Dutch
resort than Springer’s?”

“Yes, sir. Since Captain Sharp’s raid. Ever since that, we’ve been as
it were more separated. And then there was trouble at the isle of Ash;
they done us out of a sloop; so we done them in return. Springer’s is
the place the Englishmen goes to, now. Oh, and Golden Island, this
easterly island here. But Springer’s Key is the best of them. Though
we goes to La Sound’s Key, mind you, whenever we’re planning a raid.”

“Then---- By the way. Who is Springer?”

“He was a privateer, sir. He got lost on the Main one time. He was in
Alleston’s ship at that time. He got lost, out hunting for warree. He
wandered around in the woods there, living on sapadilloes, till one
day he come to a river, and floated down it on a log. He’d sense
enough for that. Generally men go mad in the woods at the end of the
first day.”

“Mad,” said Olivia. “But why do they do that?”

“It’s the loneliness, Mrs. Stukeley. You seem shut in, in those woods.
Shut in. A great green wall. It seems to laugh at you. And you get
afraid, and then you get thirsty. Oh, I’ve felt it. You go mad. Lucky
for you, you do, Mrs. Stukeley.”

“How horrible. Isn’t that awful, Charles?”

“Yes. Awful. But Springer kept his head, you say?”

“No, sir. I’m inclined to think Springer got a turn. The sun’ll give
it you. Or that green wall laughing; or just thirst. When I talked
with Springer, he told me as he come to a little stone city on a hill,
all grown over with green. An old ruined city. About a hundred houses.
Quite small. And what d’you think was in it, Mrs. Stukeley?”

“I don’t know at all. Nothing very horrible, I hope. No. Not if it’s
going to be horrible.”

“Well. It was horrible. But there was gold on every one of them. Gold
plates. Gold masks. And gold all over the rooms. Now if that’s true,
it’s mighty queer. But I think he’d got a turn, ma’am. I don’t think
things was right with Springer. Living all alone in the woods, and
then living all alone on the key. It very likely put him off. I was to
have gone with him, searching for it, one time; but I never did.”

Stukeley seemed to wake up suddenly.

“You must have been a fool,” he said.

“Why? Acos I thought of going?” said Cammock.

“No. Because you didn’t go. I suppose you know which river he came
down. And whereabouts he got on the log?”

“Oh yes,” said Cammock; “better than I know you, Mr. Stukeley.”

“What d’you mean?” said Stukeley.

“Nothing,” said Cammock. “The very last time I saw Ed Springer, we
talked it all out. And he told me all he remembered, and we worked it
out together, whereabouts he must have got to. You see, Mrs. Stukeley,
Springer went a long way. He was lost---- And we were going to look
for it together.”

“Why didn’t you?” said Stukeley. “Were you afraid?”

“Yes,” replied Cammock curtly; “I was.”

Thinking that there would be an open quarrel, Captain Margaret
interrupted. “And you think Springer’s Key would be the best for us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here is Springer’s Key on the map. Come here, Stukeley, and just cast
your eye over it.”

Stukeley advanced, and put his hand on Olivia’s shoulder, drawing her
against him, as he leaned over to see the map. She stroked the
caressing hand, only conscious of the pleasure of her husband’s
caress. She had no thought of what the sight meant to Margaret.

Perrin felt for his friend. “Put it to the vote, Charles,” he said
hastily.

“Very well then,” said Margaret. “Shall we decide then? To go to
Springer’s Key?”

“Is it a pleasant place?” said Olivia. “Don’t, Tom.” She gave the hand
a little slap.

“Very pleasant, Mrs. Stukeley. A island with huge big cedars on
it--aromatic cedars--as red as blood; and all green parrots. Wells.
Good drinking wells. Wonderful flowers. If you’re fond of flowers,
ma’am.”

“What sorts are they?”

“Arnotto roses, and yellow violet trees. Oh, lots of them.”

“Oh, then, Springer’s Key, certainly.”

“Springer’s Key,” said Stukeley and Perrin.

“The ayes have it.”

“Very well, then,” said Margaret. “We’ll decide for Springer’s Key.”

“One other thing, sir,” said Cammock. “There’s the difficulty about
men. We’ve forty-five men in the ship here, mustering boys and idlers.
And that’s not enough. It’s not enough to attract allies. Of course,
I quite see, if you’d shipped more in London, in a ship of this size,
it would have looked odd. It might have attracted notice. The
Spaniards watch the Pool a sight more’n you think. But you want more.
And you want choice weapons for them.” He paused for a second to watch
Captain Margaret’s face, then, seeing no change upon it, continued, “I
know you got twenty long brass eighteens among the ballast.”

“How did you know that?” said Margaret.

“Well, you have, sir,” said Cammock, grinning, “and small-arms in
proportion. You can fortify Springer’s with a third of that lot. Now
you want another forty or fifty men, at least, and then you’ll be boss
dog. Every privateer captain will come saying, ‘Oh, Massa’ to you.”

“Yes,” said Perrin. “It seems to me that there’ll be a difficulty in
getting men. You see we want really a drill force.”

“No difficulty about men in Virginia, sir. Lots of good men, regular
old standards, tough as hickory, at Accomac, and along the James
River.”

“What do they do there?” said Perrin.

“Lots of ’em come there,” said Cammock evasively. “They tobacco
plants, and they trap them things with fur on, and some on ’em fishes.
Lots of ’em come there.”

“Where from?” asked Captain Margaret pointedly.

“Most everywhere,” said Cammock, looking on the deck.

“Campeachy?” said the captain.

“Most everywhere, sir,” repeated Cammock.

“Writs hard to serve there?”

“Every one has his misfortunes,” said Cammock hotly. “But they’re a
better lot there than you’d get anywhere in the islands, let me tell
you that. I’ve known a power of men among them, fine men. They might
be a bit rough and that; but they do stand by a fellow.”

“Yes,” said Captain Margaret, “I dare say. But I don’t want them to
stand by a fellow. I want them to stand by an idea.”

“They’ll stand by anything so long as you’ve a commission,” said
Captain Cammock.

“And obey orders?”

“Now, sir. In England, everybody knuckles down to squires and lords.
But among the privateers there aren’t any squires and lords. Nor in
Virginia, where the old privateers tobacco plants. A man stands by
what he is in himself. If you can persuade the privateers that you’re
a better man than their captains; and some of them are clever
generals, mind. They’ve been fighting Spaniards all their lives. Well.
You persuade ’em that you’re a better man. You show ’em that. And
they’ll be your partners. As for hands in the ship here, and ship’s
discipline. They aren’t particularly good at being ordered about.
They’re accustomed to being free, and having their share in the
councils. But you give them some little success on the Main, and
you’ll find they’ll follow you anywhere. You give out that you’re
going against Tolu, say. You take Tolu, say, and give ’em ten pound a
man.”

“Then they’ll want to go ashore to spend it.”

“Not if you give ’em a dice-box or two. You won’t be able to wage
them, like you wage hands, at sixteen shillen a month.”

Olivia, who seemed disconcerted at the thought of sitting down at a
council with a crowd of ragged sailors, now asked if it would not be
possible to wage them, if they explained the circumstances.

“You say they are tobacco-planting in Virginia. Why should they not
plant on the Main and supply all the ships which come to us, besides
fighting the Spaniards when the crops are growing?”

“That’s what you must do,” said Cammock. “Get the steadiest men you
can. Plant your crops, when you’ve cleared a patch of ground. Hit the
Spaniards hard at the first try. That’ll bring all the privateers to
you. Hit ’em again hard at a bigger port; and I do believe, sir,
you’ll have two or three thousand skilled troops flocking to you. Old
Mansvelt, the old Dutchman. You know who I mean. He tried to do what
you are trying. That was at Santa Katalina. But he died, and Morgan
had to do it all over again. Then Morgan had his chance. He’d fifteen
hundred men and a lot of ships. He’d taken Chagres and Porto Bello. He
had the whole thing in his hands. With all the spoil of Panama to back
him up. The Isthmus was ours, sir. The whole of Spanish America was in
that man’s hands. But no. Come-day-go-day. He went off and got drunk
in Port Royal; got a chill the first week; got laid up for a time;
then, when he did get better, he entered Jamaica politics. The new
governor kept him squared. The new governor was afraid of him. But
what he done you can do. You have a little success, and make a name
for yourself, and you’ll have a thousand men in no time. That’s enough
to drive the Spaniards off the North Sea. When you’ve driven ’em all
off, the King’ll step in. The King of England, I mean. He’ll knight
you, and give you a bottle-washing job alongside his kitchen sink.
Your settlement’ll be given to one of these Sirs in Jamaica. There,
sir. I wish you luck.”

The meeting was now broken up. Perrin brought from his cabin a box of
West Indian conserves and a packet of the famous Peruvian sweetmeats.
He offered them to Olivia, then to all the company. The steward
brought round wine and strong waters. Mrs. Inigo, passing through the
cabin with a curtsey, left hot water in Olivia’s state-room. She wore
a black gown and white cap. She looked very handsome. She walked with
the grace of the Cornish women. She reminded Captain Cammock of the
Peruvian ladies whom he had captured before Arica battle. They, too,
had worn black, and had walked like queens. He remembered how
frightened they had been, when they were first brought aboard from the
prize. Olivia followed Mrs. Inigo into the state-room. “I must just
see if she’s got everything she wants,” she murmured. She remained in
the state-room for a few minutes talking with Mrs. Inigo. Perrin
noticed that Stukeley looked very hard at Mrs. Inigo as she passed
through with the jug. He decided that Stukeley would need watching.

“Where are you putting her?” said Stukeley.

“Who? Mrs. Inigo?” said Margaret. “Along the alleyway, to the
starboard, in the big cabin which was once the sail-room.”

“I see,” said Stukeley.

“By the way, Stukeley,” said Margaret. “Now that you’ve got over your
sickness, would you like to be one of us? And will you stand a watch?
I’m going to stand two watches a day with the mate’s watch, and Edward
here will do the same with the starboard watch.”

“I’ll think it over,” said Stukeley, evidently not much pleased. “I’ll
think it over. I think I’ve listened to enough jaw for one night. I’m
going to turn in.”

Margaret, quick to save Olivia from something which he thought might
annoy her, made a neat parry. “Oh, don’t say that, Stukeley. Come on
deck for a blow; then we’ll have a glass of punch apiece.”

“Come on,” said Perrin, attempting, with an ill grace, the manner of a
jovial schoolboy. “Come on, my son. Catch hold of his other arm,
Charles.”

As he seized Stukeley’s arm to give him a heave, Stukeley poked him in
the wind, and tripped him as he stepped backward. “What’re you sitting
down for?” he said, with a rough laugh.

Perrin was up in a second. He seized a heavy decanter, and hove it
into Stukeley’s face. Stukeley in guarding the blow received a sharp
crack upon the elbow. Margaret and Cammock pulled Perrin aside, under
a heavy fire of curses.

“What d’ye mean by losing your temper? Hey?” said Stukeley.

Margaret drew Perrin out of the cabin. “Good night, Stukeley,” he said
as he passed the door.

He left Cammock standing by his chair, looking into Stukeley’s face.
There was a pause for a moment.

Then Stukeley began with, “That damned old woman nearly broke my
elbow. If he’s a friend of yours----”

“He is,” said Cammock.

“Oh, so you’re another of them. Well. Lord. You make a queer crew. Do
you know that?”

Cammock did not answer, but remained standing, like a figure of
bronze, staring into Stukeley’s face. For fully a minute he stood
there silently. Then he spun round swiftly, in his usual way, giving a
little whistle. He paused at the door to stare at Stukeley again.

“I’m glad you admire my beauty,” said Stukeley. “You’re not much used
to seeing gentlemen, are you?”

Still Cammock did not answer. At last he spat through the half-opened
gun-port. “My God,” he said. Then he walked out on deck, leaving
Stukeley rubbing his elbow; but softly chuckling, thinking he had won
the field.




 V.
 STUKELEY


 “Thus can my love excuse the slow offence.”
                         _Sonnet li._

                “I can endure
 All this. Good Gods a blow I can endure.
 But stay not, lest thou draw a timeless death
 Upon thyself.”
                    _The Maid’s Tragedy._


One morning, about six weeks later, when the _Broken Heart_ was near
her port of call, Captain Margaret sat at the cabin table, with a book
of logarithms beside him, a chart before him, and a form for a ship’s
day’s work neatly ruled, lying upon the chart. He made a faint
pencil-line upon the chart, to show the ship’s position by
dead-reckoning. Then, with a pair of compasses, he made a rough
measurement of the distance still to run. Stukeley, lying at length
upon the locker-top, watched him with contempt.

The _Broken Heart_ had had a fair summer passage, with no severe
weather. She had spoken with no ships since leaving Falmouth. Her
little company of souls had been thrown upon themselves, and the six
weeks of close association had tried their nerves. There were tense
nerves among the afterguard, on that sunny morning, just off
Soundings.

“Where are we?” Stukeley asked.

“Just off Soundings,” said Margaret.

“Where the blazes is that?”

“About four hundred miles to the east of Accomac.”

“How soon shall we get to Accomac?”

“A week, perhaps. It depends on the wind.”

“And then we’ll get ashore?”

“Yes. If you think it safe.”

“What the devil d’you mean?”

Captain Margaret sat back in his chair and looked at Stukeley as an
artist looks at his model. Many small, inconsidered, personal acts are
revelations of the entire character; the walk, the smile, the sudden
lifting of the head or hand, are enough, to the imaginative person.
So, now, was Captain Margaret’s look a revelation. One had but to see
him, to know the truth of Perrin’s epigram. Perrin had called him “a
Quixote turned critic.” He looked at Stukeley as though he were above
human anger; his look was almost wistful, but intense. He summed up
the man’s character to himself, weighing each point with a shrewd,
bitter clearness. His thought was of himself as a boy, pinning the
newly killed moth upon the setting-board.

“Look here,” said Stukeley.

“Do you think it safe?”

Stukeley rose from the locker and advanced across the cabin.

“So little Maggy’s going to preach, is he?” he said lightly. “Let me
recommend little Maggy to keep on his own side of the fence.”

Margaret shrugged his shoulders. It seemed to him to be the most
offensive thing he could do, in the circumstances.

“Supposing that it’s not safe?”

Stukeley laughed, and returned to the locker. He pulled out a pipe and
began to fill it.

“Maggy,” he said, “why don’t you get married?”

“My destiny.”

“Marriage goes by destiny. Eh?”

“Marriage. And hanging, Stukeley.”

That brought him from the locker again. “What the hell d’you mean by
that?”

“Oh,” said Margaret. “It’s safe in Accomac, I should think.”

“What is?”

“The evil-doer, Stukeley. The cheat, the ravisher, the---- But I don’t
think you ever committed a murder. Not what is called murder by a
jury.”

“Ah. You cast that at me,” said Stukeley. “Recollect now, Maggy.
That’s enough. I’d be sorry to hit you.”

“Would you?” said Margaret. “Well. Perhaps. But if it’s not safe,
Stukeley, what are you going to do?”

“Stay here, little Maggy. Oh, ducky, you are so charming. I shall stay
on board with my own little Maggy.”

“You’d better remember my name when you speak again, Stukeley. I take
no liberties from a forger.”

“Have you been reading my papers? In my cabin?”

“It _was_ forgery, wasn’t it?”

“Is it any business of yours?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Because, Stukeley, I may have to see the Governor about you. I may be
asked about you when you land. I may even have to hand you over
to--well, disgrace.”

“Rot. How the hell will the Governor know? Don’t talk nonsense.”

“Then it _was_ forgery?”

“Certainly no damn maggot like you’ll call it anything. No man alive.”

“But supposing they try you, my friend. Eh? Suppose, when we land,
when we anchor, you are taken and sent home. What would a jury call
it?”

“We’re not in Falmouth harbour now. Nor in Salcombe.”

Just at this moment Captain Cammock entered, whistling a tune through
his teeth. He glanced at both men, with some suspicion of their
occupation. “Come for the deep-sea lead-line,” he explained. “We’ll be
in soundings by to-night. Getting on nice, ain’t we?” He opened one of
the lockers and took out the lead-line. “You’d ought to come on deck,
sir, to-night, to see how this is done. It’s a queer sight,” he said.
“I’m off to the cook now, to get a bit of tallow for the arming.”

“Stop just a moment, captain,” said Margaret. “I want to ask you
something. How often do letters go to Virginia, from London?”

“I suppose about twice a week, now there’s no war. Almost every day,
in the summer, you might say. Yes. They’re always going.”

“Have we made a good passage?”

“Nothing extra. It’s been done in five weeks by the baccalao
schooners. Less.”

“The baccalao schooners. They’re the cod-boats? Are they very fast?”

“Oh, beauties. But ain’t they wet.”

“Then we might find letters waiting when we arrive?”

“Very likely, sir. I was going to speak to you about that.” He looked
with meaning at Stukeley.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” said Stukeley.

“You might have letters waiting, too,” said Cammock. “Society
invitations and that.” He glanced up at the skylight as he spoke, and
then watched Stukeley’s face to note the effect of his words. Stukeley
turned pale.

“Stukeley,” said Margaret, “don’t you think you ought to tell your
wife?”

“Will you please mind your own business, Maggy. She’s my wife, not
yours.”

“Then I shall tell her. Shall I?”

“Tell her what?”

“I’m going on deck,” said Cammock. “You come on deck, sir, too.” He
passed out of the cabin, carrying his heavy lead. He paused at the
door for a moment to ask his friend again. “Come and see how it’s
done, sir,” he said. He got no instant answer, so he passed out,
wondering how it would end. “It’s none of my job,” he said sadly. “But
I’d give a deal just to hit him once. Once. He’d have a thick ear to
show.”

“Tell her what?” repeated Stukeley, as the door closed.

“That you may be arrested as soon as we arrive. That the case may go
against you.”

“You would tell her, would you?”

“She ought to know. Surely you can see that. Shall I tell her?”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve go---- You lowsy. You’d like to, wouldn’t you?”

“I should very much like to, Stukeley.”

“I don’t doubt. And you’re the one---- That’s like you poets. You’re a
mangy lot, Maggy. I see you so plainly, Maggy, telling my wife. Like a
cat making love. In the twilight. Oh, I’ve seen you.”

“Go on, Stukeley.”

“You come crawling round my wife. I’ve seen you look at her. I’ve seen
you shake hands with her. I’ve seen your eyes. Doesn’t she make your
mouth water? Wouldn’t you like that hair all over your face? Eh? Eh?
And her arms round you. Eh?”

“Stukeley,” said Margaret, “I’d advise you to stop. Stop now.”

“Wouldn’t you like to----?”

“Stop.”

“I know you would. Poems, eh? I’ve read a lot of your poems to her,
Maggy.”

“Were you looking for my purse?”

“No, Maggy. But I thought you needed watching. I don’t want any mangy
poet crawling round my wife. So I just watched you, Maggy.”

“Yes?”

“Oh yes. I don’t think you’ve succeeded yet, Maggy. Even in spite of
your poems.”

“Stukeley,” said Margaret, rising from his chair, “when we get to
Accomac you will come ashore with me. I’ll do my best, when we’re
ashore, to put my sword”--he advanced to Stukeley, bent swiftly over
him, and touched him sharply on the Adam’s apple--“just there,
Stukeley. Right through. To save the hangman the trouble.”

Stukeley watched him with amused contempt; he laughed. “Maggy’s in a
paddy,” he said. “No, Maggy. I’m a married man, now, ducky. What would
my wife do if she woke up one fine morning and found me gone? Eh?”

“Are you afraid to fight?”

“Afraid of a little crawling maggot who comes whining out some measly
poems?”

Margaret took a quick step forward, and shot out a hand to seize
Stukeley by the throat. Stukeley caught him by the wrist.

“Look here, Maggy,” he said.

“Drop my wrist. Drop it.”

“Take your dirty wrist.”

“Take back what you said.”

“You do amuse me, Maggy.”

“Take it back.”

“You ought to have been a woman. Then you could have married that
damned fool Perrin. And you could have----”

“You----”

“Ah no, ah no. No blows, Maggy.”

“Take back what you said.”

“That I was afraid?”

“You’d better, Stukeley.”

“Did I say that I was afraid? I’m not, you know. It’s you who are
afraid.”

“You’ll see.”

“I shall see. You are afraid. You’re in love with Olivia, ducky. D’ye
think you’re going to fight me? Not Maggy. You’d like me away,
wouldn’t you, Maggy. Then perhaps she’d. She’s an awful fool when you
come to know her, Maggy. To know her as I know her. She might be fool
enough to. And then. Oh. Bliss, eh? Bliss. Morning, noon, and night.
Eh?”

“Stukeley, I’ve stood a good deal----”

“Yes, ducky. But don’t be so excited. You won’t fight me. You’ll be
afraid. You’ll lick my boots, like you’ve done all the time, so as to
get a sweet smile from her. Doesn’t she smile sweetly, my little
Maggy? You’ll lick my boots, Maggy. And hers. Lick, lick, lick, like a
little crawling cat. Wouldn’t you like to lick her hand, Maggy? Her
fingers? Don’t go, Maggy. I’m just beginning to love you.”

“We’ll go on with this at Accomac, Stukeley.”

“We shan’t fight, Maggy. If you killed me, she’d never marry you.
Besides, it would kill her, Maggy. She loves me. She wants a man, not
a little licking cat. You’re content to spend your days licking. My
God; you’d die, I believe, if you couldn’t come crawling round her,
sighing, and longing to kiss her. That’s your life. Well. Kill me.
You’ll never see her again. Then what would the little crawler do? Go
and put his arms round Perrin? But d’you know what I should tell
Olivia before going out with you?”

“What would you tell her?”

“I’d tell her that I suspected you of making love to her. Eh? That you
admitted it, and that I gave you this chance of satisfaction out of
consideration, instead of thrashing you. So any way I’ve the whip
hand, Maggy. She’d never look at you again, and you can’t live without
her. Can you?”

“Anything else?”

“Just this. You’ll never see her again if--if anything happens at
Accomac. Through the Governor, you know. We should go home together.
And the shock, eh? Loving husband hanged, eh? So take it from one who
loves little Maggy, that you aren’t going to fight me, and that for
all your gush you’ll help me in Accomac in case there’s trouble. And
Olivia shall let you kiss her hand, shall she. Or no, you shall have
a shoe of hers to slobber over, or a glove. Now go on deck, Maggy, and
cool your angry little brow. A little of you goes a long way, Maggy.
That’s what Olivia told me one night.”

He stopped speaking; for Margaret had left the cabin. “I wonder where
he’s gone,” Stukeley muttered, smiling. Through the half-shut door he
could see Margaret entering the cabin which he shared with Perrin.
“What a rotter he is,” he thought. “I suppose now he’ll have a good
cry. Or tell it all to that dead frog, Perrin.” For a moment, he
thought that he would go on deck to walk with Perrin, not because he
wanted to see the man, but because, by going on deck, he would keep
both Perrin and the captain from talking to Olivia, who was mat-making
on the poop, amid a litter of coloured silks. He thought with some
disgust of Olivia. So that he might not be reminded of her, he drew
the sun-screen across the skylight, shutting out the day. “Oh Lord,”
he said, yawning, “I wish I was back in the inn with that girl,
Jessie. She was some fun. Olivia gets on my nerves. Why the devil
doesn’t she get some blood in her? These pious women are only good to
ravish. Why the devil don’t they enter nunneries? I wish that one of
these three sprightly lads would have a try at Olivia. One never
knows, though. Even Olivia might take it as a compliment.” For a
moment he wondered if there were any chance of trouble at Accomac.
Very little, he concluded. He laughed to think of the strength of his
position. It was a pleasure to him to think that three men hated him,
perhaps longed to kill him, and that one refrained because of Olivia,
while the other two refrained because of the first. “Lord, Lord,” he
murmured, with a smile. “And they’ll all three die to save me. I’d go
to Accomac if there were a dozen governors. I wonder if the Indian
girls are any fun.” He was hardly built for marriage, he thought.
Those old days had been sweet in the mouth. There was that
sleepy-looking girl--Dick Sadler’s wife. She was some fun. How wild
she used to get when she---- He wished that Perrin would come below as
a butt for some of his ill-temper.

It was only four bells; there were at least two hours to wait till
dinner-time. He was sick of sleeping; he was sick of most of his
shipmates; he could not dice “one hand against the other.” Reading
bored him, writing worried him, sketch he could not. He stretched
himself down on the locker-top, and lit his pipe. Tobacco was
forbidden in the cabin for Olivia’s sake; but he argued that he was
the real commander of the ship, the practical owner, since he ruled
her material destiny by ruling Olivia. As he smoked, it occurred to
him that perhaps he had done wrong to anger Captain Margaret. That
Maggy was a sullen devil. He might turn sullen, and give him up in
spite of Olivia. He smoked quietly for a little time, till a scheme
came to him, a scheme which gave him pleasure, so good it seemed.

He lay lazily on the locker-top, looking out over the sea, through the
stern-windows. The sun was shining, making the track of the ship
gleam. Just below Stukeley, sometimes almost within a sword’s thrust,
when the counter squattered down, slapping the sea, were the rudder
eddies, the little twirling threads, the twisted water which spun in
the pale clear green, shot through with bubbles. They rose and whirled
continually, creaming up and bursting, streaking aft in whiteness.
Over them wavered some mewing sea-birds, dipping down with greedy
plunges, anon rising, hovering, swaying up. Stukeley watched them with
the vacant stare of one bored. For a few minutes he amused himself by
spitting at those which came within range; then, proving a poor
marksman, he rummaged for a biscuit, thinking that he would fish for
them. He found a hank of white-line, and tied a bit of biscuit to the
end. He was about to make his first cast when Mrs. Inigo entered,
bearing a buck-basket containing her week’s washing, now ready to be
dried.

When the _Broken Heart_ left Falmouth, Captain Margaret made certain
orders to ensure Olivia’s comfort. He had tried to put himself in her
place, to see with her eyes, to feel with her nerves, knowing that her
position on board, without another lady to bear her company, would not
be a pleasant one. The whole of the ship abaft the forward cabin
bulkhead had been given up to her. The three members of the afterguard
took their meals in the cabin, but seldom entered it at other times,
unless they wished to use the table for chess, cards, or chart-work.
The negro steward, who had once ruled in the cabin, was now little
more than a cabin-cook. Mrs. Inigo did much of his work. She cleaned
the cabin, laid the breakfast, served Olivia’s early chocolate,
letting the negro cook wash up. Cammock and Perrin agreed with Captain
Margaret that the after part of the ship should be left as much as
possible to the two Stukeleys, so that Olivia might feel that she was
living in a private house. After the cabin supper, at the end of the
first dog-watch, no man of the three entered the cabin unless Olivia
invited him. Margaret felt that Olivia was touched by this thought for
her. She was very gracious to him during her first evening party. It
was sweet to hear her thanks, sweet to see her, flushed and laughing,
radiant from the sea air, sitting there at the table, as Cammock dealt
the cards for Pope Joan. That evening had been very dear to him, even
though, across the cabin, on the heaped green cushions, lay Stukeley,
greedy for his wife’s beauty, whetting his swine’s tusk as the colour
came upon her cheek. It would all be for him, he thought, and the
thought, now and then, was almost joyful, that she should be happy. It
was not in his nature to be jealous. The greatest bitterness for him
was to see the desired prize neglected, unappreciated, never really
known; and to apprehend, in a gesture, in a few words, the thought
implied, which the accepted lover failed to catch, or else ignored. He
had tested Stukeley’s imaginative sympathy by the framing of another
rule. In a small ship like the _Broken Heart_ there is little privacy.
To prevent a possible shock to her, he arranged that on washing-days
the clothes of the women should be hung to dry from the cabin windows
(from lines rigged up below the port-sills, where they were out of
view of the crew). Olivia was pleased by this arrangement, without
quite knowing why. Stukeley saw no sense in it. On this particular
morning the arrangement bore peculiar fruit, very grateful to
Stukeley, who had long hungered for a change.

Mrs. Inigo entered with the buck-basket, closing the door behind her.
She dropped the basket on the deck below the window-seat, seized the
clothes-line, and began to stop the linen to it, in the sea-fashion,
with rope-yarns. She was a little flushed with the exertion of
washing, and she was a comely woman at all times.

“I’m going to help you,” said Stukeley.

She smiled, and looked down, as he helped her to tie some clothes to
the line. She blushed and smiled; he took her hand.

“Let go my hand,” she whispered.

He pressed the hand, and though she drew back, a little frightened, he
managed to catch the other. He kissed the hands. They were rough but
warm.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t, Mr. Stukeley.”

“Ah, Bess,” he said, taking her into his arms and kissing her, “why
didn’t you give me a chance before?”

Half an hour later Bessy Inigo went forward to peel potatoes for
dinner, while Stukeley slept upon the locker-top till the steward
roused him at one bell.

He went on deck, when he was called, to get a breath of air before
dinner. He found Olivia at work with her little balls of silk, while
Perrin, on the lee side of the skylight, was drawing for her a ship
upon canvas. Perrin was talking to Olivia, asking her questions about
her work. At the break of the poop Captain Cammock stood, waiting with
his quadrant to take the height of the sun.

Olivia looked up with a smile as Stukeley stepped on deck. She was
still in that rapturous first stage of marriage in which all men, save
the husband, are regarded as hardly living, as being, at best, but
necessary cumberers of the earth, mere lifeless interruptions. In the
early days of the voyage she had learned, from one of Captain
Cammock’s stories, that people shut up in ships together cannot always
bear the strain, but become irritable, quarrelsome, apt to suspect and
slander. She had determined that her married love should not decay
thus, and so, for some weeks past, she had contrived to avoid her
husband for several hours each day, greatly to the delight of Perrin.
On this particular day she felt that Providence had rewarded her but
meanly for her loving self-sacrifice. All men, save Tom, were nothing
to her, but Perrin, in the morning, in one of his dull moods, when
unrelieved by Margaret, was less than nothing. She had always been a
little shy of Perrin, perhaps because Perrin’s shyness was a bar to
equal intercourse. Her own nature was full of shy refinements. She
could give nothing of herself to one who could not win upon her by
some grace or gallantry. Perrin meant well; he was even her devoted
slave; but he was heavy in the hand with ladies, until their sympathy
had raised his spirit. Olivia was not in the mood to give him even
that simulated sympathy by which women extract their knowledge of men.
Her own fine instincts told her, or rather suggested to her, all that
could be known of Perrin. In a vague way she had the idea of Perrin in
her mind, the true idea; but vague, without detail, an instinctive
comprehension. He was a blunted soul to her, broken somehow. She felt
that he had been through something, some vice perhaps, or sickness,
with the result that he was blunted. He was quite harmless, she
thought, even sometimes pleasant, always well-meaning, and yet
dwarfed, made blunt, like his shapeless hands. She never could bring
herself to treat him as a human being. Yet he interested her; he had
the fascination of all mysterious persons; she could never accept her
husband’s contemptuous estimate. Possibly she felt the need for the
society of another lady, and hesitated to condemn Perrin, as being the
nearest thing to a lady in the ship. Thus Robinson Crusoe on his
island unduly valued a parrot.

About half an hour before her husband came on deck, Olivia had seen
Perrin coming down from aloft, where he had been engaged with a seaman
in fitting new spunyarn gaskets to all the yards on the mainmast, so
that the furls might look neat when they made Virginia. He enjoyed his
work aloft until he grew hot, when he soon found a pretext for leaving
it. On reaching the deck, he went aft to Olivia (who smiled her
recognition), and sat down at her side, content to stay still, to
cool. The sight of Olivia’s beauty so near to him filled him with a
kind of awe. Like a schoolboy impressed by some beautiful woman who is
gracious to him, perhaps merely from that love of youth which all
women have, so did Perrin imagine heroisms, rescuing that dear head,
now bent with a shy sweetness over her mat.

“Olivia,” he said at length, about a minute after the proper time for
the request, “will you show me what you have done?”

She looked up from her work with a smile that was half amusement at
his serious tone.

“I’ve not done very much,” she said, showing her canvas, with its
roses, surrounded by a garland of verbena leaves, still little more
than outlined. “Did you ever try to make mats?” she added.

“I can make daisy-mats with wool, on a frame with pins,” he answered.
“Can you make those? You cut them, and they show like a lot of
daisies.”

“I used to make them,” she said, “when I went to stay with my aunt
Pile, at Eltons. You were at Eltons, too, were you not? I think you
stayed there?”

“Yes. I stayed there. What a beautiful old place it is. Have you been
there lately?”

“No. Not for two or three years now. I was very gay the last time I
was there. I think I went to a dance every night. My poor brothers
were alive then. We used to drive off together. I’ve never been there
since.”

“Ah,” said Perrin. He paused for a moment, so that his brain might
make the picture of the woman before him sitting in the gloom of the
carriage, with all her delicate beauty warmly wrapped by the two young
men now dead. “Furs,” he muttered to himself. “Furs, and the lamps
shining on the snow.” Then he looked at Olivia, noting the grey and
black dress, the one gold bracelet round her wrist, and the old pearl
ear-rings against the mass of hair.

“What jolly clothes women wear,” he said, meaning (like most men who
use such phrases) “How beautiful you look there.”

“This?” she asked. “This is my oldest frock.”

“Is it? I didn’t remember it. How do you get your clothes?”

“I tell my dressmaker.”

“I wish you’d let me design you a dress.”

“I should be very pleased. What sort of dress would you design for
me?”

“I would have you in a sort of white satin bodice, all embroidered
with tiny scarlet roses. And then a little black velvet coat over it,
with very full sleeves, slashed, to show an inner sleeve of dark blue
silk. And the lining of the velvet would be dark green; so you would
have green, blue, white, and red all contrasted against the black of
the velvet.”

“That would be costly. And what skirt? A black skirt, I suppose?”

“A very full black skirt. What do you think about a belt? Would you
wear that belt of yours? The one with the Venetian silver-work?”

“I don’t know about a belt. I thought you were going to design
everything?”

“Not a belt, then. And black shoes, with small, oval, cut-steel
buckles.”

“I should think that would be very pretty.” Her thoughts were
wandering in England, down a lane of beech trees within sound of the
sea, to a hillock of short grass, cropped by the sheep, where
sea-pinks and sea-holly sprouted.

“What are the sailors like?” she asked. “I saw you working up aloft
with them. What are they like to talk to?”

“Oh. They’re all right.”

“I think they’re dreadful people.”

“Why?” said Perrin. “What makes you think they’re dreadful?”

“No nice man would take such a life. Oh. It must be dreadful. I
shudder when I see them. What do they talk of, among themselves?”

“They’re not very refined, of course. That man up on the yard there
was once a slave in Virginia. You see he was transported for theft. He
says he used to cry, sometimes, half through the night. He was so
homesick.”

“Oh, that’s terrible. But what home had he to be sick for?”

“The ash-heap near a glass-house furnace. Somewhere in Chelsea, I
think he said.”

“And are the others all thieves, do you suppose?”

“That ugly-looking dark fellow with the crooked eyes was once in a
pirate’s crew, so the man on the yard said.”

“Was he really? I don’t think that man is quite sane. He seems to
glare so. Oh, ships are dreadful, dreadful.”

“They’re beautiful, though. All---- Yes. Don’t you think all beautiful
things seem to gather vileness about them?”

“No, I don’t think so. Vileness? In what way, vileness?”

“I think they do. You see ships with sailors, and pictures with
picture-dealers, and tragedies---- Well. Tragedies with all sorts of
people.” He ran on glibly, though with some confusion. The thought had
occurred to him first in a moment of jealous anger that Olivia, so
beautiful and sweet, should be a prey to the vile Stukeley. He blushed
and stopped, thinking that she would read his thought.

“Oh. But I don’t think that at all,” she said. “You ought to say that
vileness gathers about beautiful things. A beautiful thing is a
vigorous form of life, and all forms of life have parasites. The
parasites don’t attach themselves to the things you speak of because
the things are beautiful.”

“No. I suppose not. Of course not,” he answered, rather puzzled, still
thinking of Stukeley.

“And you wouldn’t say that the really beautiful things, such as love
is, say, to a woman like myself. No vileness gathers about that?”

“N-no,” he answered, with some hesitation, wishing that he had never
started his mild little rabbit of an epigram. He looked away, at the
sky-line, for a moment. Then, with sudden desperation, he charged her
to change the subject, his face still red from his former rout.

“Olivia,” he said. “If I drew you a ship, would you embroider it, or
make a mat of it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Draw the _Broken Heart_. I could work it for Tom’s
birthday. I should be very glad of it, after I’ve finished this.”

Perrin helped her to cut a square of canvas from a little roll she had
obtained from the sailmaker. He settled himself down to draw. Olivia
stitched with her silks.

“It is so curious,” she said at last, “that you should have known my
husband--that you knew him years ago, when we stayed at Eltons
together. Before I knew him.”

“Yes. I’ve thought that, too. And now we’re all here together. And
Eltons is still going on, behind us there. Rooks in the elms. And your
aunt Pile in her chair.”

She seemed to reflect for a moment, as though thinking of the
beautiful house, where life moved so nobly, like a strain of music.
Perrin knew that she was thinking of Stukeley. “Oh, you women,” he
said to himself. “You give everything for a pennyweight of love, and
even that is never paid to you.” He would have given much, poor moth,
to be back at Eltons, young and handsome, with the shy, gauche girl
who had since become Olivia. “I didn’t know then,” he said to himself,
“and you couldn’t guess. And now we’re driving to it. Shipwreck.
Shipwreck. And I should have been so happy with you.”

“What was Tom like then?” said Olivia.

“Who? Oh, your husband. You see I didn’t know him well,” said Perrin
in confusion. “He was--I think he was a lot thinner than he is now.”

“How did he look in his uniform?”

“His uniform?” said Perrin. “You see. I didn’t see him in his uniform.
You see it was after he’d been kicked---- After he’d---- You know
what. What is the word? After he’d been----”

Stammering and blushing, he managed to get out of his difficulty.
Olivia thought that he had been afflicted by that impediment in his
speech, or partial aphasia, which sometimes checked his conversation.
She pitied him, while feeling that his companionship was painful. He
himself turned very red, and bit his tongue. He thought that the six
weeks at sea should have taught him the guard for all such sudden
thrusts.

“After he’d left the army?” she said kindly.

“Yes. Yes. It was,” he answered. He turned again to draw the image of
the _Broken Heart_, as he had seen her from without, some seven long
weeks before. Olivia gave him a moment’s grace to recover his natural
colour. Captain Cammock caught her eye, and saluted as he took his
stand with his quadrant. She was smiling back at him when her
husband’s head appeared on the poop ladder. Perrin looked up quickly.

“I’d better hide this, Olivia,” he said. “If it’s for your husband’s
birthday. Shall I hide it?”

As she nodded a swift answer her husband stepped on to the poop.

Stukeley advanced rapidly and kissed his wife, with some show of
fervour, for policy’s sake. Then with a quick snatch he caught
Perrin’s drawing, lying half hidden upon the skylight seat under one
of Olivia’s wraps.

“Look at little Pilly’s cow,” he said. “Look, Olivia. Did you draw
this, little Pilly?”

“He was drawing it for me,” said Olivia.

“Were you going to teach him to embroider it? Little Pilly, was he
going to have his little needle, then? And his red and blue silk. Eh?
You know, Olivia, I saw little Pilly here, down in the cabin one hit
me, playing with some red and blue silk spools. Ah, little Pilly; it’s
a shame to tease him. He must have his little dollies, then?”

“You put down that drawing,” said Perrin, snatching at it.

Stukeley held him aside with one hand, dangling the drawing from the
other.

“No, no, little Pilly,” he said. “Manners, little boy. Manners before
ladies.”

“Don’t, Tom dear,” said Olivia. “Don’t spoil the drawing.”

“That would be a shame,” he answered. “Little Pilly draws so
beautifully. Which is the tail, Pilly?” he asked. “Which of these
prongy things is the tail?”

Perrin did not answer; but again attempted to snatch the canvas.

“Why don’t you take it, little Pilly?” said Stukeley.

“Damn you, give it,” said Perrin, white with passion. He snatched the
canvas from him, smote him a sharp slash across the eyes with it, and
flung it overboard.

Stukeley made a rush at him, but became involved with one of Olivia’s
wraps. Cammock stepped between the disputants with his quadrant at his
eye.

“Woa, blood,” he said. “Don’t knock my ship overboard. Make eight
bells there, will you, Mr. Perrin? Mr. Stukeley, will you please step
and tell the steward to set the clock right?”

“Do your own dirty work,” said Stukeley.

The helmsman sniggered audibly. Cammock raised his hat about an inch
from his head.

“Quite right, sir,” he said, as Perrin made eight bells. “Quite right
to remind me, sir. I forgot you was only a passenger.”

“Steward,” shouted Perrin. “Oh. Mrs. Inigo. Just tell the steward to
set the clock right.”

“De clock am set, seh,” said the steward, coming to the break of the
poop to ring the bell for dinner.

“Tom dear,” said Olivia, conscious that the man she loved had made but
a poor show. “Tom dear. You weren’t very kind. I mean. I think you
hurt Captain Cammock. And you made Edward angry. He can’t bear to be
teased. He’s not easy-tempered like you, dear. I think sometimes you
forget that, don’t you, Tom? You won’t be cross, Tom?”

“Oh, nonsense, Polly,” he said, as he took her arm to lead her below.
“Nonsense, you old pretty-eyes. I can’t resist teasing Pilly; he’s
such an old hen. As for Cammock, he’s only an old pirate. I’m not
going to be ordered about by a man like that. He’s no right to be at
liberty.”

Olivia was pleased by the reference to her eyes, so she said no more.
She wondered, during dinner, why Captain Margaret ate so little and so
silently, and why Perrin never spoke until addressed. Cammock was
affable and polite. His attention to Stukeley’s needs was almost oily.




 VI.
 A SUPPER PARTY


 “But here comes Glorius, that will plague them both.”
                              John Donne.

 “I’ll make ’em dance,
 And caper, too, before they get their liberty.
 Unmannerly rude puppies.”
                   _Wit Without Money._


After dinner, Captain Cammock took tobacco on the poop alone. He
liked to be alone after dinner; because his mind was then very
peaceful, so that he could “shift his tides,” as he said, walking up
and down, remembering old days at sea. He had had an adventurous life,
had Captain Cammock. Like most men who had lived hard, he lived very
much in his past, thinking that such a thing, done long ago, was fine,
and that such a man, shot long since, outside some Spanish breastwork,
was a great man, better than the men of these days, braver, kindlier.
So he walked the deck, sucking his clay, blowing out blue smoke in
little quick whiffs, thinking of old times. One thing he was always
proud of: he had sailed with Morgan. He had memories of Morgan on the
green savannah, riding on a little Spanish horse, slunk forward in his
saddle somehow, “a bit swag-bellied, Sir Henry,” with his cigar-end
burning his moustache. And all of those men crowded round him, surging
in on him, plastered with mud, gory with their raw-meat meal; they
were scattered pretty well; they would never come in on the one field
again. On the Keys, it had been fine, too; all of that blue water had
been fine. A sea like blue flame, and islands everywhere, and the sun
over all, making bright, and boles of cedar among the jungle like the
blood-streaks in porphyry. And graceful, modest Indian women,
glistening with oil, crowned with dwarf-roses. And then one or two
nights by the camp-fires, with old Delander standing sentry, and Eddie
Collier singing; it was none of it like this; this was responsible
work; this turned the hair grey. He felt this the more strongly,
because the _Broken Heart_ was not a happy ship; she was wearing him
down. Stukeley made him grit his teeth. He had to sit at table with
him, conscious of the man’s mean malice at every moment. There would
be some slight sound, an intake of the breath, some muttered
exclamation, a request to repeat the offending phrase, when he, a
rough seaman, made some mispronunciation, or slip in grammar. And to
stand that, till one’s veins nearly burst, knowing that the man was a
cast criminal, flying for his life. And to have to pretend that he was
a guest, an honoured guest, a fit mate for the woman there. And to
have to defend him, if need be, in Virginia. It made him check his
walk sometimes to shake a belaying-pin in the fife-rail, till the
passion passed. It was lucky for Stukeley that he was a man with a
pretty tight hold on himself. A lesser man, a man not trained in the
wars, would have laid Stukeley dead, or taken it out of the hands. He
was too just a man to work it off on his hands. At this point he
checked himself, sharply, putting all evil thoughts aside, remembering
how a shipmate, Balsam Dick, the Scholerd, who ladled out soft-polly
of a Sunday, old Balsam Dick it was, had told him that was the thing
to do. “Let it go or make it go,” that was how to work a passion.
There was no sense, only misery, in keeping it by one, poisoning
oneself. Besides, he was glad he’d come this cruise. He had been for
six weeks shut up in a ship with Olivia. He would never be thankful
enough for that. She was so beautiful, so pure, so gentle and kind, so
delicate a lovely thing, he could hardly bear to think of her. When he
thought of Olivia, he would lean over the taffrail, somewhere above
her cabin, wondering at the powers which had made him what he was, a
resolute, rough seaman, beaten into clumsy toughness. And yet those
powers had shaped her, too, making her very beautiful, very wonderful.
And now the powers had shoved her into a ship with him; and he would
never be quite the same towards women, whatever happened. But, then,
there was Stukeley, that intolerable, mean bully, worrying all of them
in the same ways, day after day, with a maddening monotony of insult.
Perrin, who was half Welsh, had once hit off Stukeley in an epigram
upon the English. “Dull,” he had said, goaded by some school-bully
boorishness, repeated for the hundredth time. “The English dull? Of
course they are dull. They’re so dull that they can’t be inventive
even in their cruelty.” Cammock would repeat this phrase, reading
“Stukeley” for “English” so many times daily that “he tokened his
pasture.”

While Cammock walked the deck, thinking and smoking, Olivia sat in her
state-room writing letters, feeling sure that she would be able to
send them home from Virginia in one of the tobacco-ships, and anxious
to be ready in case they should speak one at sea. Margaret and Perrin
sat in Captain Cammock’s cabin together, working out the sights, and
talking in a low voice of Stukeley. The cabin door was open, so that
they could look across the alleyway to the closed door of Mrs. Inigo’s
state-room, once the sail-locker. They noticed that Mrs. Inigo came to
her door every now and then, to glance down the alleyway, with an
anxious face. They supposed that she was waiting for Olivia to call
her. Once, indeed, she asked them if Mrs. Stukeley had called.

“Well, Charles,” said Perrin. “I told you how it would be. You see now
what you’ve done.”

“Yes,” said Margaret. “I admit I was wrong. I made a great mistake.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Perrin. “But what are you going to do when
we land?”

“Call him out.”

“No, sir. I’m going to call him out.”

“Aren’t we both talking nonsense? How can either of us call him out,
with Olivia on board? And then they’re my guests.”

“Well. I think we ought to get rid of them.”

“We can’t, with Olivia.”

“There may be letters ordering us to give him up.”

“Then we shall have to cut and run for it.”

“Now why go in for these heroics?”

“Because--I don’t know. When I was a young man I framed a certain
scheme of life, I suppose. There it is.”

“We’re only putting off the evil day.”

“Why? What makes you think that?”

“Supposing we do cut and run for it. What are you going to do? How
about your merchandise? Where are you going to take them? Olivia must
know some day. They can’t go back to England. It’s only merciful to
tell her.”

“Who is to tell her? Who is to go to her and say, ‘Olivia, your
husband’s a forger.’ It’s impossible, Edward.”

“Well, I think we ought to tell her.”

“Very well then. Go in and tell her. You can’t.”

“I will.”

“No. Sit down. Look here. I used to know Howard, the present Governor,
years ago. Suppose this. Suppose I could get him to waive the arrest.
That is, if we find an arrest has been ordered. And we could persuade.
I want to spare that poor girl. He might get them to settle, give him
an appointment--anything. Make him his secretary.”

“And what sort of life would Olivia have?”

“A better one than on the Main, surely.”

“It’s a difficult row to hoe.”

“It is.”

“Let’s make a sangaree. Will you have some if I make some?”

“No. Let’s go into this with clear heads. It might be better to tell
Olivia. But it’ll break her heart.”

“She’s got to suffer some day. And her heart won’t break.”

“My God, though, Edward, do think what she is, think of her life.
Think what. To have her husband driven in a cart and hanged.”

“Yes. But it’s surely a worse tragedy for him not to be hanged, and to
go on living with her.”

“I know. It is. But she loves him.”

“Comic devils, women. Aren’t they?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Well. Look here. I suppose he would be hanged?”

“I shouldn’t think there’s a doubt of it.”

“And the question is, how to get rid of Stukeley and spare Olivia?”

“No. How to spare Olivia. Settle them in Virginia, I say.”

“In the first place, the Governor might not allow it. And in the
second place, my dear man, you simply can’t leave Olivia in a land
where---- Well. A savage land.”

“What do you know of the land?”

“I don’t know anything of the land.”

“What makes you think it to be savage?”

“It’s common talk. The sailors.”

“What do the sailors say about it?”

“They say it’s ‘the hell of a place.’ ‘The last place God made, and He
forgot to finish it.’”

“What do they know of Virginia?”

“They’ve been there.”

“Yes. But what do sailors know of any country?”

“They go ashore.”

“What for?”

“To load and unload their cargoes.”

“To roll casks in the sun?”

“Well. Yes.”

“Do they like that?”

“No.”

“What else do they do when they go ashore?”

“They go exploring.”

“What? The brothels?”

“Yes. And the country, too.”

“Are there any roads?”

“Well, anyway, they’ve been there, and that’s what they say. And some
of them. That Bill Adams fellow in my watch. He was there for five
years, and he said it was hell.”

“What was he doing?”

“Working in the tobacco fields.”

“As a slave?”

“No. A redemptioner.”

“Kidnapped?”

“No. Transported.”

“I think we’d better wait till we see Virginia for ourselves. This is
my plan, Edward. We had better do this, I think. I’ll explain things
to Howard, and get him to give Stukeley a place.”

“And compromise himself?”

“Not necessarily. Then they had better stay in Virginia. And perhaps
I’ll give up the Darien scheme and go home, find out what sort of a
mess he is in, and see if I can make some sort of a composition with
his prosecutors.”

“You can’t. You’re wanted in England yourself. We’re all outlaws,
Charles. We’re flying with ropes round our necks.”

“Yes. I suppose we are. Well. Shall we all stay in Virginia?”

“Till we’re taken and sent home?”

“Till my committee of merchants procure our pardons.”

“We shall get no pardons till our Darien scheme is a big success.”

“That’s true, too.”

“Old Cammock was saying that Carolina is a good place. They call
Charleston Puerto Franco; everybody’s safe there, he says.”

“God deliver Olivia from a place so lawless that every one is safe
there.”

“Yes. My word, yes.”

“Suppose, now. Suppose there is an arrest. Suppose Howard should be
firm. It seems hard. My God, I know I meant well; but I’ve got her
into a cruel fix. If we let them go. Go back to England, for him to be
tried. D’you know, Edward, I think it would be best.”

“I’m quite sure it would be.”

“But you would have to go with her, Perrin. You would have to go. I’d
go, too. I’d take my chance.”

“No you wouldn’t. You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ve enough trouble
as it stands.”

“Oh, I’d have to go. I couldn’t stay here and eat my heart out for
her.”

“Yes, you will, Charles. Be sensible. I’ll see her safe home, if it
comes to that.”

“And the instant you land, Edward, you’ll go to Flaxley, to her uncle,
and then to her aunt Pile. Get them to come to her. My God, love
blinds a man. I ought to have seen all this. But I could only see what
was pleasant to myself.”

“Ah. Don’t say that, Charles. It’s not true. You didn’t know
Stukeley.”

“No. Stukeley then was the man Olivia loved.”

“And now?”

“Now? Now? We won’t talk about that, Edward. Get your Donne and read
to me.”

“I read so badly.”

“You read excellently. You’re a little slow sometimes.”

“I can’t vary my voice. I could, before it broke. Now I read so
monotonously.”

“Verse ought to be read in a monotone, but there is a passionate
monotone. Read me the Second Anniversary, and we’ll forget our
worries. That sounded rather like a step in the alleyway.”

Perrin leaned out of the door and looked aft.

“It’s no one,” he said. “A beam creaked. Stukeley’s asleep on the
cabin lockers.”

“It sounded like a step.”

“I’ll just make sure. No. It can’t have been anybody.” He tiptoed
lightly to the cabin door, and looked through. Stukeley was asleep on
the locker-tops, his face buried in the cushions. Perrin closed the
door quietly, and took his book from his shelf. “It was no one,” he
said. “No one at all. Only a beam.”

“Begin, then,” said his friend.

Perrin shut the door, sat down, and began to read that glorious elegy,
making a sad business of the changing accents.

While he read, Stukeley sat up and smiled, making rude remarks under
his breath. He had retired to his locker-top after dinner, intending
to visit Mrs. Inigo as soon as the coast was clear. After half an hour
of yawning, he had crept down the alleyway on tiptoe, hoping to find
the door ajar, and the handsome woman waiting for him. He noticed that
Cammock’s door was open, so that it would be dangerous to attempt the
rendezvous; but hearing a murmur of voices he had stolen close to
listen. He had expected nothing interesting to himself. He had
expected some talk of the situation, possibly some invective, such as
he had overheard at other times; but for once he heard something new;
something which (as he foresaw) would test the wonderful new scheme
which he had made that morning. He half doubted if the scheme would
stand the strain; but a little thought convinced him that he ran no
risk. So pleasant was the conversation to him that he lingered rather
too long, mistaking the intentions of the speakers, so that, when he
retreated backwards, he went too swiftly, and made some noise at the
door, enough to give Margaret the impression of a step. He had just
time to bury his head in the cushions, before Perrin entered. “Fancy
old Maggy having the guts,” he said. “We must deal with the little
Pill, too. The little dear gets poisonous.” He thought that he would
go on deck to pass the rest of the afternoon. Mrs. Inigo would have to
be abandoned till the morning.

He rubbed his cheeks vigorously to flush them. With a twist of his
fingers he ruffled his long black hair, as though he had slept. Then
he went yawning down the alleyway, pulling at the skirts of his
waistcoat. He looked in at the door of Cammock’s cabin, pretending to
be but half awakened. “Did one of you come into the cabin just now?”
he asked.

“Yes, I did,” said Perrin. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” he said, gaping. “Only I wondered who it was.”

Mrs. Inigo’s door was shut, so he passed out to the deck. He wished to
avoid Captain Cammock, who walked the poop above him. Mr. Cottrill,
who had the deck at the moment, was forward with the boatswain,
setting up the fore-backstays with the watch. The only person with
whom he could converse was Mr. Iles, the second mate, that smart young
seaman, who now sat on an inverted wash-deck tub, in the lee scuppers,
mending a pair of trousers which he had taken off for the occasion.
Puffs of wind sometimes lifted his shirt skirts, displaying his little
wiry legs. The sailmaker, who sat on the booby-hatch, putting a new
clue into a royal, was telling him, at each puff, to mind the girls
didn’t see.

“By gee,” said Mr. Iles, by no means a bashful man, “I wouldn’t mind
if der girls did see.”

“They don’t come around so much when a man gets married,” said the
sailmaker. “They get shot in the beam with a wet rag.”

“B’gee,” said Mr. Iles, “I don’t know, Sails. B’gee, I seen some
married men as didn’t do much shootin’.”

“It’s the missus does the shooting,” said Sails. “I know there’s not
many girls come whistling after me since I got married. But you young
fellers,” said Sails, “you think of nothing else, I do believe, except
the gells outside Paddy’s.”

“B’gee,” said Mr. Iles. “Dere was one of them girls outside Paddy’s.
She was a bute, all right, all right. She’d got a fine skin on her.
Gee. Hey. Like old sail.”

“They don’t last at it,” said Sails. “Five years, they say. Then they
get froze, down Lavender Pond way. That washes the poor creatures’
rooge off. But there’s not many thinks that when they come ashore, Mr.
Iles. Nor you don’t think it.”

“B’gee,” said Mr. Iles, as he stretched his leg out into the sunlight.
“That’s a leg all right, all right,” he said. “B’gee, Sails, I don’t
t’ink you could show a leg, like what that leg is.”

“I got a leg as I’d show alongside of any man’s,” said Sails.

“Let’s see your leg,” said Mr. Iles. “B’gee, Sails, you’re one of dese
consumptive fellers. You ain’t got no legs.”

“I got a better leg’n you got,” said Sails, very touchy, like all
sailors, on the subject of his physical strength. “You look here,” he
said.

“Mr. Stukeley,” cried Mr. Iles, standing up excitedly. “B’gee, sir, I
want to show legs with Sails here. Will you be the judge between us?”

Stukeley had seen similar contests in his visits to the head to be
pumped on; but he had hardly expected to see an officer’s vanity put
to the touch upon the quarter-deck. “It’ll annoy old Brandyface,” he
thought. “Yes,” he answered, “I’ll be the judge. But don’t shock old
Brandyface on the poop there.” He said this in the hearing of Captain
Cammock, who paused at the poop-rail, looked down on their
preparations with an unmoved face, and then turned to walk aft.

“B’gee,” said Mr. Iles. “It’s a pity our girls ain’t here. Dere’s some
girls’d die laughing to see us. Come on, Sails.”

Sails extended a bared leg beside him, balancing, like a flamingo, on
one foot. The boatswain, coming aft for a sack of paunch-mats, called
on his maker to come aft and watch.

“B’gee, Sails,” said Mr. Iles, looking critically at the contesting
leg. “You got a pretty good calf all right, all right.”

“You’ve been woolded pretty well, too,” said Sails. “You could keep
them going, for a little feller.”

“Them little fellers,” said the boatswain flatteringly. “They do their
piece. I seen little fellers keep them going when the rest is gone
dormy.” He glanced at Stukeley, to see how Paris would decide.

“Boatswain strip, too,” suggested Stukeley. “Now, bose. Cock up your
leg with the others.”

The boatswain shook his head with a laugh, and went back to his work.

“B’gee, sir,” said Mr. Iles, “the old bose is jealous. I’m getting
cold, b’gee.” He danced a little step dance, slapping his feet.

“You’ve both got decent legs,” said Stukeley, taking the hint. “Damn
good legs. But you want a connoisseur to decide. I’ll get Mr. Perrin!”

“Make him measure us,” said Mr. Iles.

“I ain’t going to have no Mr. Perrin,” said Sails, retiring. “My legs
speaks for theirselves. You got no legs, Mr. Iles. You only got
muscles. What a leg wants is pathos in the joints, like what I got.”

“B’gee, Mr. Stukeley,” said Iles, “I think I got old Sails to the
bad.”

“Your legs are like mine, Sails,” said Stukeley. “They show a bit old
alongside a fresh young buck like Mr. Iles here.”

“Ah, go on, sir,” said Sails. “Them legs Mr. Iles got, I wouldn’t be
seen dead with.”

Mr. Iles stuck his needle in his cap. He yawned, and spurned his tub
into the scuppers. “I’m going below now,” he said. “I’ll have a bit of
a fiddle before eight bells.” He glanced at Stukeley, who seemed
willing to talk. “You’ve never been below in the ’tween-decks, have
you, sir?” he said. “You come down and see the sights. I ain’t got
much, but I can give you a chair and a look around. Come on down this
way, sir.” He led the way down the booby-hatch, into the ’tween-decks,
where the light from the boom-gratings and the open hatch-mouths made
sunny places in the gloom. A lamp or two, hung under the quarter-deck,
gave light to the after part, showing a few whitewashed, jalousied
cabins on both sides of the ship. “That’s the round-house,” said Iles,
nodding towards the port side. “The idlers live in the round-house.
Anybody in?” he cried, shaking the door. “There’ll only be the cook in
at this time. Rise and shine there, doctor.” But the doctor was down
in the forepeak grubbing up dunnage for firewood. All that Stukeley
saw of the round-house was the darkness of a vault, through which
gleamed the oil-cloth on a table, and the paint upon a sea-chest. The
clue of a hammock sloped down from the beams just above his head, like
the crow’s-foot on a stay. The place smelt of oil; for the lamp had
been allowed to burn itself out. “Fine dry little house,” said Mr.
Iles. “Dry as a bone. They’ve good times in there, them idlers. This
is where me and Mr. Cottrill bunks. Over here, sir, to starboard. Mind
them bosun’s stores amidships.” He led the way to a couple of dingy
boxes on the starboard side. They were more roomy than the cabins on
the deck above; but they gave one no feeling of comfort. Mr. Iles’s
home was littered with second-mate’s stores. It gave out the
penetrating, homely stink of spunyarn. Spare log-lines and lead lines
were heaped in a spare bunk. From the beams dangled a variety of
lamps, and bunches of thin candles, like corpses’ fingers. His
oilskins swung behind the door, and dripped upon an old swab laid
below, as a sort of doormat. “I been oiling up my skins,” he
explained. “Don’t it stink, hey? Stinks like hell, I call it. Good for
consumptives, stink is, they say. I couldn’t ever see it myself.”

“Do you get your meals in here?” said Stukeley.

“Damn that boy,” replied Mr. Iles, evidently searching for something.
“He hasn’t put my water-carafe back. He’s left it in the wardroom
again. Come on into the wardroom, Mr. Stukeley.”

He led the way aft to the wardroom, which stretched across the breadth
of the ship right aft. The big chase-ports were open, so that the room
was light. One could see the grunting, kicking rudder-head, with its
huge blocks for the relieving-tackles. The long chase-guns were
trained athwartships, and securely housed. A tablecloth of old soft
sail was thrown across one of them. A cleated table stretched
athwartships just forward of it.

The table was rimmed with a batten to keep the plates from falling.
“Here’s my water-carafe,” said Mr. Iles. “Sit down, Mr. Stukeley. I’ll
fetch you the rum and a pannikin. We ain’t got much. But you may as
well have what there is.” From the adjoining wardroom pantry he
produced a bottle of rum, about half full, and a couple of tin
pannikins. Mr. Iles held the bottle against the light to observe the
level of the spirit. He also sniffed at the mouth after removing the
cork. “I have to watch that boy,” he explained. “He likes his little
dollop a bit too well. I don’t think he’s been at this though. Does it
seem to you’s though it been watered?”

“No, sir,” said Stukeley, swallowing his allowance. “It’s very sound
spirit. Wants another year in cask perhaps. How much of this do you
get a day?”

“Half a pint’s the whack,” said Mr. Iles, “but I don’t touch my whack
the first month, till the water slimes. Then I’ve a matter of three
gallons saved, in case I get company come. Have another go, Mr.
Stukeley?”

“Thank you,” said Stukeley, holding out his pannikin. “Here’s to old
Brandyface, our bold commander.”

“Old Cap Hammock,” said Iles, twitching the left side of his upper lip
in the smile peculiar to him.

“What do you think of old Brandyface?” said Stukeley. “Perhaps you’re
used to pirates?”

“What’s pirates got to do with it?” said Mr. Iles. “Drink hearty, sir.
I got a demijohn in the spare bunk there. What’s pirates got to do
with it?”

“Well. There’s old Brandyface in the cabin, isn’t there?”

“Old Cap Hammock ain’t no pirate?”

“Wasn’t he? He was damned near hung for it. Not so long ago, either.”

“Is that so?” said Iles. “Is that so, now? Straight?”

“He’s only an old buccaneer. What d’you think of the old boy?”

“I ain’t paid to think,” said Mr. Iles evasively. “Gee. I didn’t know
he was that sort. I wish I’d known.”

“Why?”

“Here. You ain’t doing your piece. You want to do better’n that. Lay
aft with your pannikin.”

“He was one of the gang which worked in the South Seas,” said
Stukeley. “You know the sort of thing they did. Ruffians. He was at it
all his life.”

“I wish I’d known. Gee. Hey?”

“Why?”

“Here, fill fair. Fill fair.”

“You’ll make me cocked.”

“Cock in your eye, sir. Lap the cream of it.”

“He’s a nice one to have command of a ship. Eh?”

“So he was nothing but an old pirate? Gee.”

“What sort of an old man is he to work with?”

“I wish I’d known. B’gee, sir, I’d have---- What sort is he? He don’t
know nothing. He’s only an old woman. He cain’t knot a rope-yarn. If
I’d known, I’d have----”

“What would you have?”

“He got fresh with me one time. He give me the slack of his old lip,
about leaving the harness-cask unlocked. I’d have called him down if
I’d known. I don’t let any old pirate get gay with me. See?”

“He’s a dirty old swine,” said Stukeley. “He and those damned old
women your owners.”

“That Perrin’s a bute, for fair, hey?”

“They make a nice trio to leave your wife alone with.”

“Your wife’s a peach, I guess. Hey?”

“If she is, she’s a green one. Give us the bottle there.”

“Is it true the Margaret fellow’s sweet on her?”

“Who? Oh, that little crawler. There’s a picture of a man.”

“I never had much truck with him. His look’s enough for me.”

“For me, too. Look here, Iles. I’m sick of the company in the cabin.
That old pirate, and those two twisters, and my wife sitting up like a
cold jelly. Ah. Good luck. Sick of it. You come up and have supper
with us to-night. And bring your fiddle.”

“I guess old Brandyface’d raise a stink.”

“If he does, we’ll call him down. He’s not going to dictate my guests
to me. I’ll have in any one I like.”

“Gee. That would be great. Hey?”

“I’m not going to let an old pirate say who’s to be my friends.”

“He’ll heave me quit of the cabin.”

“I’ll heave him if he does. Pretty quick.”

“Gee. I’d like to come. But he’ll be mad as hell.”

“All the better. And those two twisters, too.”

“That Perrin. Hey? He asked me one time what I did to make my hair
grow.”

“He’s about the damnedest fool I’ve met.”

“Have another ball. There’s one bell. It’ll be my watch in a quarter
of an hour.”

“You’ll come, then?”

“Oh, I’ll come. But gee, Mr. Stukeley, old Brandyco’ll fire me.”

“We’ll have a bit of sport if he does. Bring your fiddle. Oh. Let’s
have a song. Let’s sing ‘Tickle Toby.’”

“No. I don’t know it well enough. Let’s have this one about the
sailor’s wives. D’you know this one?”

Until eight bells were made, Mr. Iles sang to Mr. Stukeley, who joined
in the choruses, and sometimes offered a solo. The songs were all
vile. They were the product of dirty drinking-bars, and dirty young
men. Youth sometimes affects such songs, and such haunts, from that
greed for life which is youth’s great charm and peril. That men of
mature experience should sing them, enjoying them, after tasting of
life’s bounty, was hateful, and also pitiful, as though a dog should
eat a child. The couple went on deck together at eight bells, singing
their scrannel for the mustering crew to hear.

A few minutes before his watch was up, Mr. Iles gave the deck to the
boatswain, and went below to dress. It was not his day for a first
wash, but Mr. Cottrill gave him the first turn of the basin (it
contained about a pint) on promise of a plug of tobacco at the next
issue of slops. Mr. Iles washed himself carefully, in spite of Mr.
Cottrill’s complaint that water so soapy would hardly serve the second
comer, let alone the boy, who had the reversion of it after him. After
washing, he combed his hair, put on his best suit, gave his shoes a
rub of lamp-black, took his fiddle from its case, and went on deck to
muster his watch at four bells. A few moments after four bells, while
the dismissed starboard watch went whooping forward to supper, the
steward rang the cabin bell, and Stukeley met his guest at the
alleyway door.

“Come in,” said Stukeley. “Before old Brandynose comes aft.”

They passed aft into the cabin.

Margaret, Perrin, and Olivia were already seated when they entered.
Mrs. Inigo stood behind Captain Cammock’s empty chair, waiting to take
the covers. She was looking with contempt at the wife she had
supplanted, thinking her a confident, pale, thin-lipped thing, and
wondering what her husband could have seen in her. Captain Cammock had
been delayed for a moment, having cut his chin while shaving. When
Stukeley entered Perrin was talking to Olivia.

“For whom is the place there?” he was saying, nodding towards the
napkin opposite to him.

“Why, we’re laid for six,” she answered.

“Yes,” said Stukeley. “Olivia, let me introduce Mr. Iles. Mr. Iles has
come to give us a little music.”

Olivia, rather startled (for she had seen Mr. Iles about the decks,
dressed like a seaman, and doing seaman’s work, with much foul
language), glanced at the man and made a little cold bow, dropping her
eyes to her plate as Mr. Iles advanced, holding out his hand.

“This is Mr. Iles, Captain Margaret.” Stukeley grinned to see Captain
Margaret’s anger plainly show itself for a moment. But he had
misjudged his victim’s power of self-control. Margaret’s face
instantly became impassive. He stared rather hard at Mr. Iles,
inclined his head in a little cold bow, and wished him “Good evening,”
the only words which occurred to him, in a little cold voice.

“Hell,” said Stukeley to himself, “I ought to have introduced Perrin
first. Now Pilly’ll take his cue from Maggy.”

“Mr. Perrin I think you know,” he continued aloud. “You sit over here,
Mr. Iles, by me.”

Perrin looked at Mr. Iles and blushed, partly with anger at having to
meet the man, partly at the slight put upon them all, upon Olivia
even, by Stukeley’s invitation. Mr. Iles for the moment was dashed by
the chill of his reception, and awed by the circumstance of the cabin
dinner. His thought, for a few chaotic seconds, was what in blazes to
do with the napkin. Did it go round the neck, or how? Olivia felt that
the coldness of Margaret and Perrin was in some sort a reflection upon
her husband; it nettled her to defend Mr. Iles against her will. She
guessed that Mr. Iles must be a fine musician, that her husband had
discovered his talent, and had decided, it was just like her dear Tom,
that his talent made him a fit companion for her. She would talk to
Tom about it that night, however, as there might be unpleasantness to
them all if Mr. Iles were to be admitted to the cabin even
occasionally. Even Mrs. Inigo seemed to be sniffing with contempt. Had
she known it, the negro steward was at that instant spreading the news
in the round-house, where Sails proposed that the company should go on
deck to hear Captain Cammock at the moment of his introduction.
Olivia’s reflections lasted for a few seconds. She seemed to pass over
the whole situation in an instant of time. Mr. Iles had hardly sat
down, hiding his hands below the table, when Olivia, as though
divining his thoughts, came to his rescue, by bending forward
graciously, taking up her napkin (it was folded in the likeness of a
sea-boot), and spreading it, unfolded, upon her lap. Perrin, who was
watching her, guessed her intention. His natural kindness gave him a
sort of pity for Mr. Iles, whom he judged (from his confusion) to be
an unwilling agent. He leaned across towards him, and made some remark
likely to put him at his ease.

“D’you know whether we’re in soundings yet, Mr. Iles?”

“No, sir,” said Mr. Iles. “They won’t make no cast of der lead till
der middle watch.”

“What sort of a run has it been to-day?” asked Olivia.

“It’s been a good run, miss, all right, all right,” he answered,
growing confident. “We done seven knots ever since der forenoon.”

“Just step forward, Mrs. Inigo,” said Margaret, “and ask Captain
Cammock if we shall begin without him?”

“I’ll go,” said Perrin.

“No. I’ll go, sir,” said Mrs. Inigo.

“You look pale, Maggy,” said Stukeley. “Anything wrong?”

“Thanks. I’m particularly well. Are you well?”

“Very, thanks. You look annoyed about something. Doesn’t he, Iles?”

“You don’t look quite right to me, sir,” said Iles.

“Really.”

“Captain Cammock will be here in a minute, sir.”

“Let’s begin,” said Olivia. “I’m hungry.”

“Take the cover,” said Margaret.

“B’gee, sir,” said Iles. “You don’t know sailors, or you wouldn’t do a
ting like that.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” said Margaret, hoping to get some scrap of
knowledge to atone for his irritation. “Tell me what I’ve done wrong,
please?”

“Taken der cover off der soup,” said Mr. Iles.

“Is that a great crime at sea?” said Olivia.

“It’s the old man’s perk,” said Mr. Iles. “B’gee. I was in a turtler
once, off of the Grand Cays there. I done that once. I didn’t do it a
second time. No, sir.”

“What did they do to you?” said Olivia.

“He give me der lid for me supper, lady.”

“How old were you then?” said Perrin.

“A young one,” said Iles. “My old pop was the old man in that ship.”

“Your old----?”

“My pop. The old one. My father.”

“Tell us one of those stories you were spinning me this afternoon,
Iles,” said Stukeley. “That one about the girl. You know. The girl.
The girl who----”

“Which girl?” said Mr. Iles. “I don’t know which girl you mean.”

“The girl outside Paddy’s. Mr. Iles is a wonderful raconteur,” he
explained. “He’s like an old sailor, you know. Excellent. He told me
some this afternoon.”

“What sort of stories do you tell?” Olivia asked.

“Just amusing stories to pass the time, miss,” he answered.

“Do you make them up yourself?”

“Some of them I seen myself, miss,” he answered. “I don’t know who
makes the others up. Some son of a---- Some gentleman’s son with
nothing better to do. But b’gee, I don’t tink I could tell one of them
kind here exactly.”

“Why not?” asked Captain Margaret, looking at him coldly. “Why
couldn’t you?”

“I guess you know, all right, all right.”

“I don’t frequent pothouses. So perhaps I don’t know.”

“That’s where you sentimental prigs go wrong,” said Stukeley, flaring
up. “It’d do you a sight of good if you did frequent pothouses. You
meet better people in a pothouse than you do in one of your Chelsea
twaddle-shops.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Margaret calmly. “What is a Chelsea
twaddle-shop, Olivia? You’ve stayed at Chelsea. What is it? A
book-shop?”

Olivia smiled. Captain Margaret was like her dead brother; he did not
show temper even when people spoke to rouse him. She defined the
offending shop.

“It’s a name Tom gives to houses in Chelsea, like my aunt Pile’s
house. Where the people talk a good deal of poetry and painting. Where
you meet intellectual people.”

“Don’t you like intellectual people, Stukeley?”

“I don’t like prigs, and I don’t like blue-stockings, and I don’t
like----”

“People who care for beautiful things? Is that it?”

“A lot of mewing old women who ought to be in a rook-shop.”

“What’s a rook-shop?” said Olivia.

“A monastery, my dear. A monk or nun house. Somewhere where they could
mew and caw their silly hearts out. Beauty. Eh? Beauty. I’ve heard ’em
talk about beauty. What do they know about beauty?”

“There’s nothing in poetry and that,” said Mr. Iles, rallying to his
patron. “What’s the good of it? It’s unpractical stuff. B’gee, der
poets should come to sea. I’d show ’em what to write about.”

“What would you show them?” said Perrin.

“Show them?” said Mr. Iles. “I’d show them what a man is, for one
thing.”

“And what is a man?” said Margaret.

“He ain’t an old woman, anyway,” said Mr. Iles.

“I don’t want to know what he isn’t. I want to know what he is. What
is a man?”

“A felly what can do his piece, and stick it out. A man who won’t hang
back, or lie up, or give you no lip.”

“You would like the world composed of such men?”

“B’gee I would. You’re right.”

“And you, Stukeley?”

“I’d like my dinner in peace, without a lot of cross-examination. Talk
about beauty with Perrin there. He likes to hear you. I don’t.”

“No,” said Perrin. “No, Stukeley. I shouldn’t think you ever liked to
hear of anything noble.”

“Noble. Good Lord. I hope I spend my time better. You two seem to
think because you read a few half-tipped writers like yourselves,
you’re free to judge everybody else.”

“Well,” said Margaret. “And don’t you judge everybody else? Better
judge, I think, with some knowledge of the law.”

“Don’t lose your temper about it. You’re such a funny devil.”

“Mr. Iles,” said Olivia, in order to create a diversion. “Have you
ever been in Virginia, in any of your voyages?”

“Yes, miss. I been there two or three times.”

“Tell us about it, Mr. Iles,” said Margaret. “Were you there at the
time of the rebellion?”

“I was there just after.”

“What was the cause of the rebellion?” Olivia asked. “It was hushed
up, in England. But a man I once met told me that it was a very
terrible thing. You remember Charles Myngs, Charles? He was one of the
rebels.”

“I know. He was very lucky to get away. The rebellion was caused by
the action of a wise, far-seeing young man, who objected to paying
taxes to, and being governed by, a body of wiseacres three thousand
miles away, who gave nothing in return, except expensive impositions.”

“You talk like a rebel yourself,” said Stukeley. “I suppose you
sympathize with them?”

“Most certainly I do.”

“But to go against the King,” said Olivia. “And to cause all that
bloodshed.”

“The King,” said Iles, with contempt. “I don’t see what you English
fellies want with a king. What good is a king to you, anyway? I seen
him once. I wouldn’t own to a man like the one I seen. King James,
hey?”

At this moment, Captain Cammock entered, stuffing a handkerchief
between his white stock and his neck, to arrest the blood dripping
from the gash. Stukeley grinned, and watched him, waiting for the
explosion. He did not know that Cammock had guessed Stukeley’s plan on
hearing Mr. Iles’s shrill voice when Mrs. Inigo opened the cabin door,
so that she might carry off the soup. He was angry with Stukeley; but
he was far more angry with his little second mate. His first impulse
had been to enter, and fling Mr. Iles through the stern-window. Then
he thought that that was what Stukeley and Iles had planned between
them, and expected. The possibility of the fiddle occurred to him. It
was just possible that Olivia had asked for a tune, not knowing, how
could she know, of the captain’s pride of place in old sea-custom. She
was a fine, delicate lady. He wouldn’t demean himself before her, by
noticing any silly little slight, devised by a crawler and a cur. He
smiled into his shaving-glass, as he dabbed away the blood, thinking
that his old days as a man of war had taught him a little prudence. He
referred most of his daily problems, such as they were, to their
equivalents on the larger stage of war. Once or twice, he thought, the
Spaniards had tempted them, to make them attack, but only the “mad,
swearing, flashy fellows” were caught in that way. It was better to go
by the difficult road; it proved the easier in the end. He would
settle with Mr. Iles later on.

He went to his place at the head of the table, and made some apology
to Olivia.

“I’m sorry to be so late, Mrs. Stukeley.”

“Have you hurt yourself? I hope you’ve not cut yourself badly.”

“No. No. It just bleeds. I upset the alum I had, last week. Good
evening, sir. Good evening, mister. Good evening, Mr. Perrin. May I
give you a bit more beef, Mr. Iles? I won’t have any soup, thank you,
stewardess. Bring me the bread-barge. Well, Mrs. Stukeley. We’ll soon
see Virginia at this rate. Very soon. We might sight the cruiser at
any time.”

“What is the cruiser?” Olivia asked.

“She’s a man-of-war, Mrs. Stukeley. She cruises up and down between
the two Capes.”

“B’gee, Captain Cammock,” said Mr. Iles. “I should a thought you’d a
known better’n to expect to see her for another week.”

“Would you, mister?” he answered. “They make a wide sweep at this time
of year.”

“How do you know?” put in Stukeley.

“They come away out to look for pirates. The pirates come round at
this season, Mr. Stukeley, to look for the English merchantmen.”

“Well. Mr. Iles knows Virginia, and he says they don’t.”

“I can’t help that. Can I?”

“Is there any chance of the pirates attacking us?” Olivia asked.

“I should pity any pirate that tries.”

“Dog doesn’t eat dog,” said Stukeley. “Our captain here’s a pirate
himself. He’ll give his old friends the wink.”

“Was you really a pirate, Captain Cammock?” said Mr. Iles.

Olivia stared at the captain curiously.

“Take away the beef, stewardess,” he said in a natural tone, ignoring
the question. “Steward. Steward there. You may take away. Mrs.
Stukeley, I hope you’ll give us a song afterwards. If you’ll give us a
song, and Mr. Iles a tune on his fiddle, I’ll bring in another treat,
and we’ll all be merry.”

“What treat have you for us, captain?” asked Margaret.

“I’ve got a box of raisin-candy, from Ilo, in Peru,” he answered.
“It’s said to be a great dainty; but some people find it too sweet.
But only if you sing, Mrs. Stukeley.”

“Oh, I’ll sing. I haven’t sung for a week now. I shall be delighted to
sing.”

“And you’ll sing, too, Mr. Stukeley?”

“Oh, I vote we don’t sing. Let’s have cards. There’s no sense in
caterwauling.”

“I got a fine song,” said Mr. Iles, taking a pull at his glass of
spirits.

“What song is that?” said Perrin.

“The lament of the old buccaneer, it’s called. It’s about a pirate who
was hanged. B’gee. He’d been captain in a merchant ship after. But
they hung him.”

Captain Cammock asked the company if they would have any more duff. He
himself had had more than enough.

“Look at him blushing,” said Stukeley, nudging Iles.

At this moment, there came loud cries from the deck, of “Watch there.
Watch,” shouted by many voices cheerily. Then there were cries of
“Haul in. Haul in. Haul in. Snatch it and run her up.” Then a silence,
a sudden stamp of feet, and the voice of some one asking what was on
the arming. “Sand and small shells,” came the answer of the boatswain.
The diners at the cabin table seemed to see the man raising the heavy
plummet to show the spoils stuck upon the grease.

“Land o-o-o-h,” he cried. “Land o-o-o-h. Hooray.” Then the seamen,
gathered in the waist, with the redness of the sunset on them, cast
loose a gun at Mr. Cottrill’s order. As the cook, coming from the
galley with a red-hot poker, called to the men to stand clear of the
breech, Captain Cammock bowed to Olivia, raising his glass.

“Mrs. Stukeley,” he said, “we’re in soundings. Your very good health.
Soundings, gentlemen. You must all drink to soundings. Now then. There
goes the gun. Three cheers.” There were no cheers in Stukeley, though
he drank the toast.

Half an hour later, after hearing a few songs, and a jig upon the
fiddle, Captain Cammock sat smoking in his cabin. He struck his gong
to call the steward. “Ask Mr. Iles to come here, please?” In a few
minutes Mr. Iles appeared, followed by Stukeley, who had expected the
summons. “Mr. Stukeley,” said the captain, “I shall be pleased to see
you later. I wish to talk with Mr. Iles a moment.”

“Thank you,” said Stukeley. “But I wish to hear what you’ve got to say
to Mr. Iles.”

“It doesn’t concern you, Mr. Stukeley.” Mr. Iles tittered.

“Mr. Iles is my friend,” said Stukeley. “I’ll make it concern me.”

“Mr. Stukeley. I don’t wish to be rude. But I command here. There’s
the door.”

“To hell with the door.”

“Go on deck, Mr. Iles, till I send for you.”

“Stay here, Iles. Look here, my old pirate----”

“Did you hear my order, Mr. Iles?”

“No.”

“No, he didn’t hear. He’s accustomed to being ordered by gentlemen.
He’s not used to pirates.”

“I’ll repeat my order. Go on deck, Mr. Iles, and wait there till I
send for you.”

“Don’t you do it, Iles. I’m damned if I’d take an order of that sort.”

“Do you hear me, Mr. Iles?”

“B’gee, cap, you’ll speak to me like you’d speak to any one else. I
ain’t goin’ to be called down by any old pirate.”

Cammock rose, breathing rather hard, but speaking very quietly. “Go on
deck,” he said.

“He’s my guest,” said Stukeley, “and it’s his watch below. I’m damned
if he shall go on deck.”

“Are you going, Mr. Iles?”

“Ah, git ter hell.”

“Don’t you hit him,” said Stukeley, as Captain Cammock picked up his
little gong-hammer.

“Hit me?” said Iles. “Hit me? B’gee, cap, you hit me and I’ll mark you
for life all right, all right.”

“I’m not going to do any hitting, Mr. Stukeley,” said Cammock quietly.
He went to the gong and struck it softly till the steward came.

“Send the boatswain to me,” said Cammock.

“I will, seh.”

“What are you going to do now?” said Stukeley. Captain Cammock relit
his pipe at the lamp, stopping the red fragments with his thumb. The
boatswain knocked at the door, cap in hand.

“Call all hands aft, boatswain.”

“What der hell?” said Mr. Iles, as the call sounded. The men came
hurrying aft, swearing at having their dog-watch spoiled. Some of them
were half clad, just out of their hammocks; others were buttoning
their clothes. In the last of the daylight, in the glow which gives a
holy beauty to all things, they seemed a strange company. Just so will
the assembling souls look, when the heavens crinkle into flame, as the
triumphing clarion shrills, bringing together the awed, the sullen,
the expectant.

“Muster your watch, Mr. Iles.”

“No. We’ll settle it here,” said Stukeley, thinking that the cabin was
safer for his purpose than the deck. “We’ll settle it here, old
Brandyco.”

Cammock brushed past him and went on to the poop, without replying.
Iles, much puzzled, was about to follow.

“Don’t go,” said Stukeley. “I wouldn’t go. Don’t go. I’ll make it
square for you.”

“B’gee. I’d better go,” said Iles. “I don’t know what game he’s up to,
do I hell?”

He went on deck, to the starboard side, where he began to muster his
watch. Mr. Cottrill’s voice, much more slow and grave than his, made a
strange echo with him, each calling a name in turn, each drawing a
response from a voice of different pitch. “Shepherd.” “Here, sir.”
“Arnold.” “Here, sir.” “Richard Arnold.” “Here, sir.” “John Wise.”
“Present, sir.” “Adams.” “At the wheel, sir.” Then the reports: “Port
watch all present, sir, except the wheel and look-outs.” “Starboard
watch all present, sir.” “Idlers and boys all present, sir”; followed
by Captain Cammock’s “Very well,” as he paced to and fro across the
forward end of the poop. Captain Margaret stood with Perrin by the
poop-bell, with their hats off, out of deference to Captain Cammock.
They stood still in their most splendid clothes, just as they had
risen from the feast. They looked down on all the upturned faces a few
feet beneath them, wondering at the beauty of the scene, lit now, by
the dying sun, into a glow, that made each face glorious. Still
Captain Cammock walked to and fro, casting a contemptuous glance as he
turned; his face set and passionless; his eyes taking in each face of
all the crowd. Stukeley, who had followed his friend on deck, asked
Margaret if he was going to lead in prayer; but he got no answer; the
men, impressed and puzzled, did not titter. Cammock stopped in his
walk, and looked over the poop-rail at the crew.

“Thomas Iles,” he said.

“Sir,” said Iles, turning and looking up.

“I break you, for refusing duty.”

“What, sir?”

“Mr. Cottrill.”

“Sir.”

“Put the man Iles in your watch.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Iles, go below and get your chest. Take it forward to the fo’c’s’le.
You belong to Mr. Cottrill’s watch.”

“What the hell”--began Stukeley.

“Silence, please.”

“I ain’t goin’ to take no break from you,” said Iles.

“Mr. Cottrill,” said Cammock, “log that man.”

“Go below and get your chest, Iles,” said Cottrill.

“Get ter hell,” said Iles.

Cottrill walked up to him and smote him in the eye. “Get your chest,
pronto,” he said. “Give me any more of your lip and I’ll lay your
spine bare. Give him a hand you, Wise.”

“You know the rules, men,” said Captain Cammock. “Choose your new
second mate.”

The men shuffled and shifted. One of them, a leader in the fo’c’s’le,
shoved the bosun forward. “What the hell, boys,” said the bosun under
his breath. “We’d rather you chose, sir,” said old Sails, coming from
among the crowd after a moment of busy whispering.

“I choose you, boatswain,” said Cammock. “Ay or no, you?”

“Ay, sir.”

“Mr. Ramage, you’re our second mate. Come to my cabin at eight bells
and sign the articles. You, Griffin Harris, take Mr. Ramage’s call; I
make you boatswain. Mr. Ramage, tell one of the hands to shift your
gear into the second mate’s cabin. Harris, bring your chest aft to the
round-house. Men, remember that Mr. Ramage is Mister Ramage. Take the
call, Harris.”

Griffin Harris, a short, thick-set seaman, hanging his head but
showing no trace of emotion, pulled his forelock and stepped up to Mr.
Ramage.

“Beg pardon, Mr. Ramage,” he said, “might I have the call, sir.” Mr.
Ramage slipped the chain from his neck and handed it to him.

“Pipe down, bosun.”

Harris took the pipe and blew the tremolo of the belay. The men turned
to walk forward, just as Iles and Wise reappeared with the chest and
bag. Captain Cammock’s sternness vanished the moment the pipe down had
sounded.

“You’ll have to pipe better than that, bosun,” he said. “You pipe like
Wally with the stiff neck.” The new bosun laughed. “I’ll pipe fine
against we get there, sir.”

Stukeley walked up to Captain Cammock. “What the hell d’you mean by
insulting my friend?” he said.

Cammock paid no attention to him, but walked up to Margaret to ask if
he would stand the first watch with the new second mate.

“Certainly,” said Margaret.

“I asked you a question,” said Stukeley bitterly, in a loud voice, so
that the men loitering in the waist could hear. “D’ye hear me, Captain
Cammock? What the hell d’you mean by insulting my friend?”

“Stukeley,” said Margaret, “go below.”

“I’m not talking to you,” said Stukeley.

“No,” said Margaret; “but I’m giving you some sound advice. Go below.”

“You’re a funny devil, aren’t you? Now then, Brandyface, you’ll give
me an answer.”

At this moment Iles came up, from his old haunts, in the ’tween-decks,
carrying his demijohn of carefully saved spirits.

“What have you got there, Iles?” said the captain quickly.

“My whack of rum.”

“Take your cap off, or I’ll knock it off. What did you say?”

“My whack of rum, Captain Cammock, sir.”

“Yes. You’d better remember that. Put down that demijohn.”

“Please, sir. It’s mine, sir.”

He laid down the demijohn, fingering his cap.

“Steward, whack that rum out to all hands at eight bells. Allow it to
the man Iles in the savings book.”

“I will, seh.”

“There,” said Cammock, turning to Margaret. “He’s not going to curry
favour forward with a couple of gallons of rum. He’d have had half the
watch blind if I’d not seen him that time.”

Stukeley put his hand on Cammock’s shoulder. “You damned old pirate,”
he said. “Now you’ll settle with me. Your little go’s over. Now it’s
mine.”

Cammock turned to Margaret. “Take his other arm, sir,” he said.

He caught Stukeley by the wrist with his left hand. Margaret tackled
him swiftly on the other side. Together they marched him below to
Cammock’s cabin, which they entered locking the door behind them.

“Now, Mr. Stukeley,” said Cammock, placing his prisoner on the settee.
“I command this ship. Be quiet now. Not a word, sir, till I’m done.
You give me any more trouble. You so much as try to come between me
and my hands, and you’ll go in irons till I can put you ashore.”

“That’s entirely right, Captain Cammock,” said Margaret. “You’d do
well to remember it, Stukeley.”

“I’ll remember it,” said Stukeley. “And I’ll make you two remember
it.”

“Another thing,” said Cammock. “While you live aft, you’ll act aft.
You’ll hold no conversation with any member of my crew, except through
one of my officers. And I shall expect you to keep from the main deck
and the ’tween-decks. I say nothing about your insults. Them’s only
the bubbling in your mind, I guess. I’m sorry for you. But give me no
more, sir. If you do, or if you break the rules I make, you’ll go in
irons till we land.”

“Anything more?” said Stukeley.

“There’ll be more when I see you need it.”

“All right, Maggy. I’ll remember this. Is that all now?”

“Yes. That’s all,” said Margaret.

“Then I advise you to let me go.”

“There’s the door,” said Margaret, turning back the key. “Allow me to
come with you.”

“Thank you. I choose my own company.”

“No, sir,” said Cammock. “We shall do that for you. You ain’t fit to
choose your own company. I’m sorry to have to say it.”

“You wait, Mr. Cammock. You wait.”

“Will you come on deck, Stukeley?” said Margaret. “Or will you join
your wife?”

“You may go to hell,” said Stukeley. With this repartee he walked aft
to vent his spleen upon Olivia. Guessing his intention, Margaret
stayed with him till the bell called the starboard watch on deck.




 VII.
 THE TOBACCO MERCHANT


        “This is all our world;
 We shall know nothing here but one another.”
                 _The Two Noble Kinsmen._


Six days after striking soundings, the _Broken Heart_ sailed up the
James River with the flood, to let go her anchor off Jamestown as the
last gun of her salute was fired. Her colours were dipped to the
colours on the Governor’s flagstaff. Her sails were all clued up
together; the bunts of the furls were tight and shapely, crossed by
the broad black bands of the bunt-gaskets.

Captain Cammock walked the poop with Margaret, pretending to watch the
squaring of the yards. Both were puzzled and ill at ease. They were in
that troublous state of waiting to be assured; their anxiety was such
that a decisive blow, either for or against them, would have seemed
better than the uncertainty which made them hope for one thing while
fearing the other. On entering Chesapeake Bay, they had squared their
yards, intending to run up past Stingray, to Hog Creek on the Accomac
side, where some of Cammock’s friends were planting. But a man-of-war
sloop, flying the ensign, and full of men, had crossed their bows,
bidding them heave-to and send a boat. Cammock had gone aboard her to
find out what she wanted; and had received orders to proceed direct to
Jamestown, to discharge his cargo there. No explanation was given
except that “Those were the orders.” The officer of the watch would
tell him nothing more. He had returned on board after this, feeling
sure that danger threatened them. He was inclined to think that word
had come from England ordering their arrest on arrival. But he was not
sure. The lieutenant had been surly after a drunken night. His remark
of “You’ll find out about that when you get there” might have come
from a momentary irritation at being questioned. Margaret had called
up Stukeley, to tell him his fears, and Stukeley had counselled
putting to sea. This was impossible; for the sloop was almost within
hail; while without Point Comfort, under her whole topsails, her open
port-lids flashing, was one of the two frigates on the station coming
in from her cruise to take fresh water. They were in the trap; they
could only hope for the best. Stukeley took the news badly. He stood
by the mizen rigging, with a white face, licking his lips and making
wild suggestions.

“Couldn’t you put me ashore?” he asked. “Send me in a boat. Until you
leave?”

“How about Olivia? Have you told her yet, what you expect?”

“No, of course I’ve not told her. Can’t you talk sense?”

“Hadn’t you better tell her? I mean, as--in kindness to her.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Shall I tell her?”

“My God, no. Look here, Margaret. I tell you why I can’t tell her. I’m
a blackguard, and all that. Look here. She’s going to have a child.”

“My God. Are you sure, Stukeley?”

“Sure? Damn it, man. It’s serious. For God’s sake talk sense.”

“Well. My God. She must be told, man. It’ll only be worse for her
later.”

“No, it won’t be.”

“But what are you going to do?”

“Do? I tell you it’ll be death for her if she learns.”

“But you must think of her, Stukeley. Man. How. Supposing. She can’t
come to Darien. It’s impossible.”

“It’s not impossible. It’d be all right.”

“Well, Stukeley, I give you up.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Things must take their course. I can’t think what I can do.”

“Are you going to give me up?”

“You must see that you’ll be taken. If there’s a letter.”

“If. If. Oh. Good luck, you.”

“Yes. But think of Olivia. Man. She must go home. You must see that.”

“Yes. But she doesn’t. You know how queer women get at these times.
She insists on coming with me.”

“I don’t know. Go and tell her. Go on and tell her, cost what it may.”

“I’ve got to consider her child.”

“Captain Cammock, you’ve got a clear head. What do you say?”

“You could head me up in a cask,” said Stukeley.

“Well,” said Cammock. “I say, go and eat a good big dinner. We shan’t
be in till afternoon; till two or three, perhaps, if the wind drops.
If there’s to be an arrest, you’ll know of it soon enough. It’ll
settle itself. Don’t cross no river till you come to the water. Why?
Cos you may get drowned anyway.”

“But about my wife?”

“Oh, she’ll be well looked after. We’ll look after her.”

“Damn you.”

“Captain Margaret,” said Cammock, “just come aft with me, while I take
some bearings.”

When they had walked out of earshot of Stukeley, Cammock added that it
would be a good thing to let the man suffer for a spell.

“But how about Mrs. Stukeley, captain? And her little one?”

“I wasn’t thinking of them, sir. I’m thinking of you and Mr. Perrin.
And the ship, too. We may be a political matter, sir. The Lords who
fitted us out; they’ve got enemies--political enemies. They may say,
‘Oh, you’ve sent out a gang of pirates, who rescue escaping felons.’
There may be the devil’s own row at home about us. Law is all right
and fair. But there’s no law nor right in politics.”

“We shall know soon.”

“Yes. Very soon now.”

“It’s anxious work, waiting.”

“Why, yes. Worse than the event.”

“It’ll come hard on that poor girl.”

“She’s better quit of him, sir. Much better.”

“She won’t think that.”

“Not at first. But she will.”

“I wonder what it’s going to be. Pretty, that little cove there, with
the little green boat coming out.”

“Very pretty sights at sea, sir. Nice bit of timber yonder. Good spars
in them red pine. Don’t borrow trouble, sir. We’ll know soon enough.”

Thus they talked together as the ship came slowly to her anchorage.
Perrin joined them, seemingly indifferent to the present trouble.
“Whatever happens,” he said, “we shall be ourselves. It’s no use
worrying.” He smoked more than usual after dinner, and then made
outline draughts of the coast. He was not being brave; but having
little imagination he was indifferent. It was hot, too; and hot
weather always made him dull. The sight of the new land pleased him.
There was forest; miles of forest; forest rising over hills, lapsing
to hollows of marsh, coming down to the sea, fading in a blur of
branches. Here and there were clearings. Here and there, in sandy
bays, the cows came, lowing at the sea. Smoke, in blue spires, rose up
at a planter’s slip where a sloop was building. At times, as they
neared the land, before going about on another reach, they heard the
voices of men, the chop of axes upon timber. A country sloop lay at a
jetty. Her men were hoisting casks aboard, singing at the tackles. A
saw was at work at hand. Men were carrying planks to the jetty end.
One of the men, laying down his load, waved to the ship as Captain
Cammock flung his colours out. Very proudly, with all the dignity of
beauty, the _Broken Heart_ marched to her rest. Her sailors cheered.
They fired their guns, took up their berth and anchored. Jamestown lay
before them; with some twenty of her citizens watching them from the
battery. Already one or two men were putting out in boats towards
them.

“That’s not the whole city,” said Perrin. “There’s only twenty or
thirty houses, beside the fort and the church.”

“That’s Jamestown,” said Cammock. “Now, Captain Margaret. Now for it.”

“Not much longer to wait. We’ll go ashore together.”

“No, sir. I’ll go alone. If anything’s going to happen, I’ll send off
word. Then you can look to the lady.”

“Ah, thank you, Captain.”

“Well. We’ll know soon. I’ll wave my hat from the pier if it’s all
well, sir. Cheer up, sir. Mr. Cottrill, there.”

“Ay, ay, Captain Cammock.”

“My gig’s crew, mister. Are they in their whites?”

“Gig’s crew all dressed, sir.”

“Tell the bosun to pipe them away. No one to come aboard, Mr.
Cottrill.”

“No one to come aboard, sir.”

“You better keep an eye on Mr. Stukeley, Captain Margaret. He may cut
up rash.”

“I will. Good-bye, captain. Good luck.”

“We’ll know soon.”

“Got your papers?”

“All correct, sir. Now.” He passed over the side, and shoved off.

Margaret watched the boat pull past, glad of that small diversion. She
was a six-oar gig, whale-built, painted dark-blue and white, steering,
on state occasions, with a brass-yoked rudder, at other times with an
oar. A boy in a white jacket steered her with the yoke-lines, sitting
behind Cammock’s back-board.

“Look, Edward,” said Margaret. “How character shows in little things.
Look at the style of the rowers. Look at the stroke, bowing his head
as he comes aft, and the two midship oars watching their blades. What
makes men watch their blades?”

“Weak will. Or vanity. I always do it. A sense of beauty, too. Desire
of pleasure. The swirl and the bubbles are beautiful. What do you make
of the bow?”

“He’s not got room to pull. The stern-sheets are too roomy.”

“He’s a coward,” said Perrin. “I should be like that. He shirks each
stroke because he’s afraid of knocking the second bow’s back.”

“Yes. That’s it.”

“The weakest man is always put in the bow. He has to jump out with the
painter.”

“The most intelligent man, probably.”

“No. I shouldn’t say the most intelligent. The most sensitive.”

“What do you make of Cammock’s back?”

“Cammock’s a fine fellow.”

“Isn’t it strange that he should be what he is?”

“After mixing---- Good Lord, what ruffians he’s mixed with.”

“I should like to know how he comes by it. I’m a great believer in
heredity. I wonder what his people were. He’s got refinement, too, in
a curious sort of way.”

“The poor are often very refined,” said Perrin. “The very poor.
Especially in the country.”

“I suppose because they’ve nothing to make them false.”

“Yes.”

“You know, Edward, that Olivia’s going to have a child?”

“No. Good Lord. What in the world? Supposing there’s a letter?”

“That’s the question. There it is. And there goes Cammock up the
stage.”

“But it knocks her coming to Darien?”

“Stukeley says not.”

“Good God, though. It must.”

“We probably shan’t leave here, Edward. And anyway he’s her husband.”

“You must refuse to take her.”

“Yes. But even if we get to Darien--I don’t think it likely--she’s as
well with us as here, Edward.”

“That’s true, too. Well. I told you how it would be, Charles. Didn’t
I?”

Cammock was a long time gone; but not such a long time as it seemed.
Margaret, deserted by Perrin, who was called away by Cottrill, paced
the poop moodily, losing, in dejection, the clumsy trick of carriage
which marred his gait. His ordinary walk had a kind of jaunty spring,
which seemed unnatural to the man, improper to his essential
character. There was no jauntiness in him at this moment; for his
trouble was heavy. For possible arrest he cared nothing; for possible
hanging he cared nothing. “I shall still be myself,” he said,
repeating what Perrin had repeated from another. “What does it matter
if I am hanged?” Bells seemed to be ringing in his brain, heavy bells
and dull, with merry impish bells. “Olivia’s going to have a child,”
they said. “Olivia’s going to have a child. Going to have a child. A
child. A child.” Like many lonely men, he desired children. They had
played about him in his dreams of her. Girls mostly, with Olivia’s
eyes, her throat, her voice. Now was come the end of everything. Her
child would be a monster, a goat-footed boy, a Stukeley. He shuddered
to think of the child’s hair, curling and black like the father’s
hair, negro hair; his nerves were shaken. As for his love for Olivia,
that would never be the same; it was changed now, wholly changed. No
man’s love could bear that, could forgive that; though it glorified
her, in a way, and made her very sacred.

He leaned over the taffrail, to watch for Cammock, who had vanished
among the strangers, like a stone cast into water. Something stirred
beside him, and there was Olivia, dressed in clothes which she had
worn long ago at home, looking as she had looked then; but that her
face was paler. He started to see her, thinking for a moment that she
had come to tell him, hoping it with all his heart. It would make
their friendship perfect, he thought, if this might be done together.
She smiled to see him start; but her face instantly grew grave again.

“Charles,” she said, “is anything the matter with Tom?”

“Matter with him?” he repeated. “Is he ill? Has he hurt himself?” For
just one wild second, he wondered, in an agony that was half hope, if
the man had taken poison.

“I can’t get him to speak to me. And he’s so white, Charles, I can’t
help thinking that he is sunstruck.”

“Shall I go down?”

“He won’t see anybody. He won’t---- Oh, Charles, I wish I’d been on
deck with him. Was he in the sun? Are you sure he wasn’t?”

“He wasn’t in the sun, Olivia. He wasn’t on deck for more than a few
minutes.”

“But where was he, then? He must have been forward, where you couldn’t
see him.”

“I do hope he wasn’t,” said Margaret, hating himself for his
deception. The words “Mrs. Inigo” rose to his lips; but he kept from
uttering them. “I ought to have prevented all this. I might have. I
ought to have kept them apart till---- She ought not to be fretting.”
He bit his lips at the thought of his negligence.

“I’ll come down at once, Olivia,” he said. “Oh, Olivia,” he added, his
voice growing tender and moving, “you look so white and worried. I’ll
look after Stukeley. Won’t you lie down and rest? It’s much too hot
for you in the sun here. And then the excitement.”

“Oh, never mind me,” she said hurriedly, almost gaily. “I’m not in the
least ill. It’s Tom.” As women sometimes will, in moments of emotion,
she acted impulsively, laying her hand on his arm, sending the blood
to his temples.

“Come on down, then,” he said thickly. “We’ll see. We’ll see your
husband.” He glanced over the side again, biting his lips, his face
turned away, as she took his arm. In that glance he saw the slip below
the battery, with its green piles, barnacled, clucked about by the
tides, mounted with tarpaulined cannon. Cammock stood upon the slip
end, his gig’s crew, their oars tossed, just below him. Townsmen were
talking to him; but he stood unheeding, looking at the _Broken Heart_,
waving his hat. Margaret waved his hat in answer, to show that he saw;
then, breathing a deep sigh, he led Olivia below.

“Why. What makes you sigh like that?” she asked.

“Why do I sigh? Captain Cammock was signalling to me. I was afraid we
might be quarantined. But it’s all right now. He’s signalled that it’s
all right. I’m relieved.”

“Charles,” she said, pausing in the alleyway, “I sometimes feel that
I’ve given you pain by coming with you like this. Have I?”

“No, Olivia,” he answered. “How could you?”

“But are you sure? I couldn’t bear to think that I had.”

“I am very sure of that, Olivia.”

“You aren’t angry with me for asking?”

“We’re old friends, you and I, Olivia. Old friends like you and I
don’t get angry with each other.”

“Some day I hope you’ll marry, Charles. You’d make the right woman
very happy.”

“Ah no, no. We mustn’t talk of that.”

“You will, Charles. You will. And yet it would be sad to see all one’s
boy and girl friends married. A woman doesn’t like to feel old.”

“Olivia.”

“Now come in and see Tom. Do you think there are good doctors here?”
The question was earnestly asked. It seemed to Margaret that it took
for granted that he knew, that it was the woman’s way of taking him
into her confidence, into the dark, locked cupboard, meagrely
catalogued without, which is a woman’s confidence. It made a strange
jangling of all his strings to hear her. In the dark passage there,
with her great eyes looking into his, and the earrings gleaming palely
against the hair, she moved him, she shook him out of tune.

“Olivia,” he said, stammering. “Olivia. If. When. When your. If you
ever have a child, Olivia. Will you let me--let me---- Let me see it
often. Be its godfather. Be something to it?”

“Yes,” she said softly, pressing the back of his hand quickly. “Yes,
Charles. I promise you that.”

“You aren’t hurt, Olivia?”

“No, Charles. Not hurt.”

“God bless you, Olivia.”

“Come in to Tom, now,” she said in a low voice. She was moved and
touched. They went in.

Stukeley sat at the cabin table, drinking brandy without water. He was
white and sick. Their entrance made him start up with an oath.

“What’s the matter, Stukeley?” said Margaret. “We aren’t going
into--into quarantine. Cammock’s signalled that it’s all right. What’s
the matter with you? Let me feel your pulse.”

“Ah,” he said, gasping. “Ah. This heat’s upset me.”

“How are you, Tom?” Olivia tenderly asked. “How’s your head?”

“Oh, my head’s all right. Don’t bother. Don’t bother.” He rose from
his seat, laughing wildly. “What a turn it gave me,” he said. “I’m
going to see old Brandyco. I’m all right again, Olivia.” He took her
by the shoulders and bent back her head so that he might kiss her.
“Poor little Olive,” he said caressingly, pinching her arms. “She’s
been worrying, ever so. Hasn’t she? Hasn’t she? Eh?” He kissed her
eyes. Margaret turned away, wondering whether the kiss smelt worse of
brandy or tobacco.

“Don’t go on deck,” said Olivia. “Don’t go on deck, Tom dear. The
sun’s so strong.”

“But you’ll want to hear about Jamestown from Cammock.”

“No, Tom dear. I don’t. I want you. I want you to rest and get well.”

“I’d like. I must just see Cammock.”

“But what makes you so eager to see Captain Cammock, Tom?”

“Stukeley looks on the captain as a sort of a show,” said Margaret
quickly. “The captain has just been talking with strangers. Wouldn’t
you like to see a man who’d really seen a new face, Olivia; and heard
a new voice?”

Olivia smiled.

“I don’t think Tom’s strong enough for excitements,” she said.

“No,” said Margaret, leaving the cabin. “But I don’t think there’s
much wrong. I think he’ll soon be all right, Olivia. Make him lie down
and rest. I must just see the captain.” He went on deck hurriedly,
holding his breath till he was in the fresh air. “Poison,” he said to
himself. “Poison. What a life. What squalor. That woman going to have
a child. And Stukeley, pah. Drinking and smoking there, waiting to be
dragged to gaol. She doesn’t see it. One would think he must shock
every fibre of her nature. And he doesn’t. He gives her love, I
suppose. That was the only thing she wanted. And now that beast is her
standard.” In the pure air he blamed himself for thinking ill of her.
“After all,” he thought, “Stukeley isn’t a beast to her. She, with her
much finer sense, sees something in him. Something that is all the
world to her. Something beautiful. She may even be happy with him. She
may be.” He thought pitifully of women and angrily of men. It was all
wrong, he thought. Men and women could never understand each other,
except in rare moments, in love, when the light in each heart burned
clearly. Women were hidden; they were driven to covert, poor trembling
fawns. They were like the nymphs hidden in the reeds by the river.
They took care that men should see only the reeds. He had never really
seen Olivia; he was not sure if he knew her yet; he couldn’t say what
it was that he loved. He did not care; he was not going to ask. She
was beautiful; her beauty moved him to the bone; beauty was in all of
her, in the whole woman, the whole nature, body and spirit, in the
ways of body and spirit. She was going to have a child; Stukeley’s
child; red-cheeked, curly; a little boy-beast, the bully of his
school. Ah, but the child would be hers, too. She would bring it up to
be like her. He would have that refinement of voice, that lovely,
merry, almost timid manner, her eyes, her grace, her shyness. Captain
Cammock, who had been watching him for a full thirty seconds, half
amused, half sad, that his passion had so strong a hold still, even in
a moment of anxiety, now tapped him on the shoulder.

“Ah, captain.”

“It’s all right, sir. Nothing come yet. You can land your goods as
soon as you like. The Governor said he remembered you, and hopes that
you will wait upon him.”

“Good. I will.”

“It is good, sir. Oh, I’ve ordered some fresh meat, sir, and some
fowls.”

“Yes. We must feast to-night. And send the boat in for a cask of fresh
water. Two-month water is poor tipple.”

“Yes. What would you say to six-month water? We must give a free pump
in port. And a cask of rum or beer, sir, on the quarter-deck, would
help our trade. For visitors you know, sir.”

“See to it then, captain. A letter may come while we’re here, though.”

“Then make the Governor and the others your friends. Send ’em a few
cases of wine. Square the man-of-war captains. There’ll be no trouble
if you make them all your friends.”

“It doesn’t sound pretty.”

“Nor a wrung neck don’t look it.”

During the next few days there was bustle in the _Broken Heart_.
Visitors came aboard to look at samples of goods; to talk with the
seamen; and to taste the rum and beer, which was served out, a cup to
each comer, for the first forty-eight hours of her stay in the port.
All sorts came aboard her; traders and planters, oyster and fisher
men, soldiers from the fort, officers of the Governor’s house,
Indians, men from the backwoods, trappers, a sun-burned,
good-humoured, silent company, very sharp at a bargain.

After the first two days, the trade began. The seamen rigged up
trading-booths ashore, with some old sails, stretched upon poles.
Planks were laid upon casks to serve as trade tables. The goods were
arranged at the back of each booth, in the care of trusty hands.
Clothing was more in demand than any other kind of goods; but the only
clothes bought were those of fine quality and beautiful colour. It
puzzled Captain Margaret to see a small planter, owning perhaps only
one white apprenticed servant, or redemptioner, buying clothes of
great price, putting them on in the booth, and riding off, like an
earl, on his little Virginian horse, to his little clearing in the
wilderness. A few planters, especially those who were newly come to
the colony from the islands, where they had been privateering, paid
for their purchases in ounces of silver. It was easy to recognize
these planters. They had not lost their sea-walk, nor that steadfast
anxiety of gaze which marks the sailor. They all carried arms; though
the richer sort of them wore only pistols and a knife, leaving the
carriage of the musket, the bag containing lead, a mould, and some
bullets, and the heavy leather-covered powder-bottle, to a
redemptioner, a Moskito Indian, or, more rarely, to a negro slave.
Cammock had known some of these men in the past. Often, as he sat in
the shade, watching the beauty of the scene, now so glorious with
coming autumn, Captain Margaret would see one of these strangers
approaching, followed by his man. He was always impressed by them,
sometimes by their physical splendour, sometimes by the sense that
they were full of a rather terrible exuberance. As he watched such a
man approaching the booths, puffing at his pipe, dressed in elaborate
clothes, hung about with silver at all points, with silver buttons,
silver brooches, silver discs, buckles of heavy silver, links and
stars of silver, silver chains and necklets, so that the man’s whole
wealth was on his body at one time, Captain Margaret was conscious of
a feeling of envy. His own training, his own beautifully ordered life
in an English college, had shut him off from such a life as this
man’s. This clashing, tinkling pirate--he was nothing more, although
he often looked so fine--was master of his world. Captain Margaret was
the slave of his; the unhappy slave. The pirate could leave his
plantation when he wished, letting the wild bines choke his tobacco.
He could ship himself in any ship in the harbour, and go to any part
of the world which pleased his fancy. If chance flung him down in a
tropical forest, on an island in the sea, in a battle, in a shipwreck,
at a wedding, he would know what to do, what to say, what to propose.
The world had no terrors for such a man. Captain Margaret forgot, when
he thought thus enviously, that he himself was one of the few who had
escaped from the world, escaped from that necessity for tooth and claw
which is nature; and that by being no longer “natural,” instinctive,
common, he had risen to something higher, to a point from which he
could regard the pirate as an interesting work of art. He never
pursued his fancy far enough to ask himself if he would willingly
imitate or possess that work; because the pirate, passing him by with
a hard, shrewd glance, would stride into the booth, taking off his hat
to thrust back his long hair. He would listen then to the
conversation. If the man was known to Cammock, the talk began
promptly.

“Any Don Peraltoes, this trip?”

“What? Peraltoes? You weren’t there?”

“Ain’t you Ned?”

“And you’re Lion. I’d never have known you. Any of ’em with you?”

“No, I quit the trade. Come and have something.”

Then they would mix some rum and sugar, and sprinkle the mixture with
a squeeze of a scrap of lemon-peel. They would drink together, calling
their curious toasts of “Salue,” “Here’s How,” “Happy Days,” and
“Plenty Dollars.” Then, over the trade as the men haggled--

“Got any powder, Lion?”

“I can only sell powder if you’ve a license from the Governor.”

“Any small arms?”

“The same there.”

“Them’s a nice lot of macheats. How do they come?”

“An ounce apiece. Or fifty pound of leaf.”

“Steep. Let’s see one. A good trade knife.”

“What are you doing now?”

“I got about fifty acres burned off. That’s the grant here, Lion,
fifty acres. Tobacco, you know. I do a bit of fishing, whiles. A nice
handy sloop, I got. Small, of course.”

“Crops good?”

“A sight too good, if you ask me. This black soil’ll sprout a coffin.
But tobacco’s away down. We burn half our crops, trying to keep up
prices. It’s only worth about ninepence.”

“Are you going to stick at it?”

“It’s a bit quiet. I lie out in the woods whiles.”

“Anything else doing?”

“You were here yourself?”

“I come here with Crawfot’s party. I was here. Yes. Sure.”

“Crawfot’s dead, if you mean Tom. Did you ever try any running?”

“Running rum from Jamaica?”

“Yes. I do a bit that way. Other things, too. I’m in with some of
Ned’s lot.”

“Ned Davis?”

“Yes. We run blacks sometimes, too. Run ’em into Carolina. New York
sometimes.”

“Ah. How did Tom die?”

“Indians. I done a bit that way, too, Lion. You catch two or three
squaws. They fetch as much as a white woman down to Campeachy. Two or
three of them; it runs into money.”

“I’ve known that done,” said Cammock. “The man done it was Robert
Jolly. He come to a jolly end, what’s more. The braves got him.”

“There’s always a risk of that,” said Ned. “And it’s 10,000 lbs. of
leaf fine, if the Governor gets you.”

“Well, Ned. If you want fun, why don’t you come in with us. And bring
in some of your mates.”

“Is this trade only a blind, then?”

“Not on your life. But we’re in for a big thing. A very big thing. I
wouldn’t mention it. But you see, I know you, Ned; and so, you see,
it’s like this.”

Between them, Margaret and Cammock persuaded some half a dozen
recruits to join during the first few days in port. The new recruits
promised to come aboard when the ship sailed, but not before, lest the
Governor should grow suspicious. They agreed, also, seeing that
Margaret had a commission, to submit to a sharper discipline than was
usual among privateers. Margaret had no intention of admitting these
men into his fo’c’s’le. They were not waged men like the seamen
shipped in London; but volunteers agreeing to serve for shares. To
admit them into the fo’c’s’le, where they would enjoy certain
privileges not shared by the sailors, would cause bad blood, and
bickering for precedence. To avoid this, he planned with Cammock to
create a military company, to be called “the men of war.” The
privateers who joined him were to be enlisted in this company, under
the command (as he suggested) of an old buccaneer (one of the first to
join) who kept an alehouse some miles out of Jamestown. This old man
was named Raphael Gamage. He had served with Cammock many years before
in Morgan’s raid on Porto Bello. As far as Cammock could remember, he
was a trusty old man, well liked. The troop of men of war (when fully
recruited) was to mess in the ’tween-decks; just forward of the
officers’ cabins and the wardroom. At sea, they were to work the
mizen-mast, standing three watches. In battle, half of them were to
man the quarter-deck guns, while the other half walked the poop as
sharp-shooters. But all of them, at all times, were to obey the
officers of the ship like the other members of her crew. It was a
pleasure to Perrin to help in the arrangement of the ’tween-decks for
the reception of these men. He screwed in hammock-hooks and battens,
and designed removable mess-tables which the carpenter, being one of
the politest of men, thought equal to the Navy.

Trade throve beyond their dreams; for the _Broken Heart_ was the first
ship in since the tobacco crop. Her general cargo of hemp and flax
seed, tools, wines, ploughs, linens and woollens, boxes, cart-wheels,
rope, weapons, books, and musical instruments, sold at good rates, for
silver and leaf tobacco.

Captain Margaret had planned to arrive at Jamestown early in the
season, so that he might secure the cream of the tobacco crop before
the summer fleet came in. Now that he was safe for a little while, he
set about his business. At the end of the fifth day he chartered a
couple of swift sloops from a Jamaica merchant, and loaded them, in
one day, under official supervision, with fifty tons of assorted
goods. He kept some twenty seamen at the work, from turn-to time till
sunset, driving them himself. His zeal startled all of them. But
Margaret was working with his whole nature to save the merchants who
had fitted him out. He felt that he had risked their money, by
gratifying a foolish whim; now he was to save them, having seen his
chance. The bales and casks swung up out of the hold into the sloops.
The winches clanked, the ropes creaked, the bosun swore at the
slingmen. The slingmen, dripping in the hot darkness, damned and spat,
and worked their hands full of splinters. A fine dust rose up out of
the hatch to quiver in the sunlight. The slings fell with a rattling
thud on to the boxes below; the block creaked as the fall was
overhauled; a thirsty throat called “Hoist.” The bosun, too hurried to
pipe, bent over the coamings to spit, telling the men on deck to hoist
or sway away. Up came the boxes and casks, swinging to the yard-arm
tackle. The boatswain, bearing them over, swearing, followed them to
the rail, as the yard-arm was rounded in. Then there came the “High
enough. Walk back”; and the sling strained slowly downwards to the
stevedores, whose black skins gleamed in the sun. By sunset the sloops
were cast off from the _Broken Heart_. Cammock and Margaret swung
themselves into the stern of one of them as she sheered out. The
slingmen, relieved from their hell below, stared at them silently over
the rail with grime-ringed eyes. The sweat had streaked the dirt on
their faces, making them look haggard. Like a row of corpses, dug up
after the first day of burial, those silent men stood. Margaret,
looking at them, thought with horror that the lives of some men might
be expressed, defined, summed, in a sort of purser’s tally: so many
boxes hoisted out, so many creatures killed, so many pots drunk, so
many books read: with the sum added, the life extinct, nothing
remaining, nothing for God or the Devil; merely a sum in addition for
the harping quirers.

Sail was packed upon the sloops. All that night they drove, a red lamp
burning astern. At dawn, when the sea below the woods was like steel,
though tremulous in pale light, they were standing in to a jetty on
the Accomac side. It was dusk in the clearing where the house stood;
but the stumps of felled trees stood up black, a troop of dwarfs; and
the cattle moved dimly among them, cropping grass with a wrench. Casks
stood at the edge of the jetty; there was a gleam upon their hoops.
There was a gleam of dew upon the forest, as a little dawn-wind,
stirring the birds, made a patter of dropping. A fire with a waving
flame burned under a pent-house, making a thick, sweet smoke, which
floated everywhere, smelling of burning gum, driving away the
mosquitoes. When the flame leaped up, brightly shaking, it showed a
tilted cart, with a man under a red robe asleep against the wheel.
Quietly, before the light was come, they made the sloops fast and
stepped ashore. They stamped to kill the numbness in their feet; then,
rousing the sleeper, they helped him to prepare a breakfast, of
apples, fish, and new cider, before trading for his tobacco.

All that day they plied along the Accomac coast, Cammock in the
_Peach_, Margaret in the _Daisy_, buying tobacco at every clearing,
paying the planters in goods. When the _Peach_ sloop was full, Cammock
drove her back, with her boom-end under, to sling the tobacco into the
_Broken Heart_ at dawn, and to fill up again with trade. Margaret’s
keenness puzzled him; the man was on fire. “I thought he was one of
these dreamy fellows,” he said to himself. “But he drives a tight
bargain, and he goes at it like a tiger.”

He went aboard the ship, putting all hands to the work of clearing and
reloading the sloop. Mr. Cottrill met him at the gangway with word
that two of their best men had deserted from the trading-booth, taking
with them about fifty pounds’ worth of goods; that they had gone off
at sunset, just as the sloops cast off; and that one of the men aboard
had heard that they were going for a run with a gang of
Indian-snatchers. Worse still. The foretopmast was sprung at the heel,
and the new spar couldn’t be ready for a week. Cammock had been at a
driving strain for a couple of days; but, like most hard cases, he
found the second day a day of exaltation, of nervous excitement. The
news pleased him; it occupied his mind. He bade his men get out trade
from all three hatches as fast as the winches could sway it out, while
he with a dozen men went ashore in the sloop, still half full of
tobacco.

As soon as he got ashore he struck the booth, crammed all the goods
into the sloop, lock, stock, and barrel, and carried them back aboard.
As they were thrust into the sloop he made a rough inventory.

“Now, Mr. Cottrill,” he said, “just take this list and check it as
soon as you’ve got a chance. Then check it with the trade-book, and
find out what’s missing. Then check that with the clerk’s list. Rig up
an awning from the break of the poop to the mast there. That’ll be
your trade booth. Call the trade clerk. Call Mrs. Inigo. Mr. Harthop,
you’ll keep your trade booth here in future. Mrs. Inigo, you’ll have
to give up your berth in the sail-locker. See to that, Mr. Cottrill.
Mrs. Inigo’ll sleep in the steward’s room. The steward’ll have to go
into the round-house. Mr. Harthop, you’ll use the sail-room, where
Mrs. Inigo’s been sleeping, as your sample-room. See that no one goes
up the alleyway to the cabin. Keep a clear gangway from the alley to
the companion there. Mr. Cottrill, give Mr. Harthop three hands and
let him arrange his shop. He’d better stone out the sail-room after
breakfast. Shift your things, Mrs. Inigo. You, too, steward. Mr.
Cottrill, pick out three good hands to be under Mr. Harthop. Quiet,
steady men. Pick one or two of the boys. Mr. Harthop, what were you
doing to let those men away?”

Mr. Harthop, a little, bald jocular man with a pale face and long
drooping moustaches, which gave him a sad, Chinese expression, rolled
slowly forward, peering under his spectacles.

“I’d gone up to the Governor’s house, sir, with some velvets.”

“Why didn’t you send one of the men? Or wait till trade was over for
the day?”

“The Governor’s lady asked me to come, Captain Cammock.”

“Women’ll be the death of this cruise,” said Cammock to himself. “Who
was in charge while you were gone?”

“Smale, the boy, Captain Cammock, sir. I was only gone twenty
minutes.”

“There it is,” said Cammock. “Smale, how did this happen?”

“Please, zur,” said Smale, a short young ploughboy from
Gloucestershire, “I were a-’avin’ my zupper, zur. ’N I seed a owd
feller come up and give ’is fist like to Andrews. And her’d a-done it
avore. Zo they talked, and by’n by, Captain Cammock, zur, another
feller come like. Her said as Mr. Harthop said as I wus to go to
Governor’s house, to fetch a few fowls for th’ ’en-coop. Zo I went.
And her’d all gone avore I’d come back. And her’d took the things.”

Cammock kept back what he thought of the Governor’s wife.

“Mr. Cottrill,” he said. “You, Mr. Ramage, and the bosun, will have to
stand trade watches. No visitor is to talk to any of the hands under
any pretext whatsoever.”

“Ay, ay, sir. I thought I could have trusted Andrews.”

“You may go, Mr. Harthop. It ought never to have been allowed.
Directly my back was turned.” He was blaming himself for having been
so easy of access, and so friendly with old acquaintance. “Naturally,”
he said to himself, “the men got notions. Well, they’ll get no more.”
He walked to the waist, where the work was going busily with songs.
The sloop was being loaded forward as she discharged abaft. His
presence made the men zealous. He had never seen cargo worked so well.

“Bosun,” he called, “who’s night watchman?”

“Pearson, Captain Cammock,” said Harris. He smeared his mouth with the
back of his hand, and left a cask to dangle aloft over the hatch. He
ran towards Cammock in a shambling trot.

“Tell Pearson that I want him. Mr. Cottrill, choose a good man to
stand night watchman with Pearson, to walk round the ship,
harbour-guard, all night long, in opposite directions. No man whatever
to come aboard or to leave the ship after sunset. Pearson, when you
come on duty to-night you’ll apply to Mr. Ramage for a pair of
pistols. You’re to shoot at any man who attempts to desert. You’re to
heave cold shot into any boat which tries to come alongside. Tell the
lamp-man he’s to have lanterns lit abreast the main and fore chains.
Call all hands if any boat comes off to us after two bells. You’re to
shoot at any boat which does not answer to a hail. You understand.”

“Yes, sir. Shoot at any man as tries to desert, and any boat as don’t
reply.”

“H’m,” said Cammock to himself, noting the faces of the crew.
“There’ll be no more deserting from this hooker.”

“Carry on,” he said aloud. “Bosun, call away the gig. Let the gig’s
crew dress. Doctor, there, kill me six fowls. The best we’ve got in
the fattening coop. Steward there. Call the steward you, boy. Tell him
to bring a dozen Burgundy. Now, Mr. Cottrill, a word with you, sir.
Mr. Perrin and the rest, are they all well?”

“As far as I know, they are, sir.”

“Mr. Stukeley?”

“Mr. Stukeley’s like fat Jack of the Boneyard, I guess, sir. He’s
bigger than the admiral.”

“What’s he been doing?”

“He’s been wanting the gig’s crew all day. I told him I needed the men
in the hold. He’d have to use the long-boat, I said, when she goes in
for water.”

“Very right. Yes?”

“So he came and called me down before the men. Said I wasn’t a
gentleman. He said as Captain Margaret had said he and his lady was to
have the gig whenever they wanted her.”

“Was Mrs. Stukeley there?”

“No, sir. So I up and said that I’d had no orders. Then he calls me
down some more; and goes and gets Mr. Perrin to come to me, to say
that Captain Margaret wished to oblige Mr. Stukeley in all things.”

“Yes?”

“So I told Mr. Perrin, pretty quick, I said, I was in command, I said.
It wasn’t for him to tell me my duty. I told him to tell his society
friends they could do the Barney’s Bull act. They’d get no gig out of
me. That’s what I said.”

“Yes?”

“So that Mr. Stukeley, he went ashore in the long-boat, after calling
me down some more before the men. He got a shore-boat to go about in.
After that he said his boatman should have dinner aboard of us. I
stopped that. But Mr. Stukeley was very rude, and then the man got
rude. All hands working the hatch there, hearing it all. Mrs. Stukeley
beside. So that was two blocks, I thought. I give the boatman a thick
ear there and then. I told him if he didn’t sheer off I’d drop a cold
shot into him. And I would have. Mr. Stukeley told me to keep my hands
off the man. Then the man wanted his money. My hat, we had it all up
and down. I thought that Stukeley would hit me, one time. I wish ’e
’ad done. I’d a laid him out.”

“And Mr. Perrin? How did it end?”

“I saw some of the hands knocked off to listen, so I give them a few.
And he stood there telling them not to take no blows. Telling ’em to
down me. And then the long-boat come alongside with water. Mr. Ramage
was in her, of course. He hears the row, and he come over the side
just as quick as cut. He just took that Stukeley by the arm, and
walked him into the alleyway. ‘Don’t you incite no sailors, sir,’ he
says. ‘No more of that, sir. I respects your feelings, sir,’ he says,
‘but for Gord’s and your lady’s sake,’ he says, ‘you quit. You don’t
know what you’re doin’.’ That was the end for that time. I suppose
we’ll ’ave another dollop of it to-day.”

“Put him in irons at once, publicly, if he gives you any more trouble.
And he’s not to talk to any man. That’s another thing. Iron him
directly he gives a back answer. Tell Mr. Ramage, too. Now bring those
fowls along doctor. I’m off to the man-of-war sloop, about them
Indian-snatchers.”

He pulled aboard the man-of-war sloop, with his present of wine and
poultry. As he sat in his gig calling to the men to pull the stroke
out, he wrote descriptions of the missing seamen.

When he returned to the _Broken Heart_, the sloop was nearly full of
trade. It was just half-past seven. He went to his cabin to wash,
walking quickly and quietly, like a forest Indian. There was some
slight noise to his left as he entered the alleyway. He turned
sharply, to look into the sail-room, to see if it were ready for the
samples. The door shut in his face with a bang. He could not swear to
it--the door shut in a fraction of a second--yet it seemed to him that
he had seen Stukeley with Mrs. Inigo, for one bright flash of time. He
would not open to make sure; for it was a woman’s cabin; he might have
been mistaken; but he turned in his tracks and blew his whistle. A man
ran to him.

“Get some dry stone, and stone this door clean,” he said, showing Mrs.
Inigo’s door. “Stone the outside, and keep at it till breakfast.” That
would keep Stukeley within (if he were within) until breakfast, at any
rate. He flung his clothes from him and swilled himself with water;
then dressed rapidly and went to Perrin’s cabin. “Mr. Perrin,” he
said, bursting in after knocking once, “how are you, Mr. Perrin? I
want you to keep your eye on Mrs. Inigo’s door. See who comes out of
it. Is Mrs. Stukeley well?”

“Very well. How are you and the captain?”

“The captain’ll be back later in the day. I’m just off again.”

“We’d a lot of trouble yesterday. I’ll be glad when you’re back for
good.”

“Cheer up, sir,” said Cammock. “Remember. Mrs. Inigo’s door till one
bell. If Mrs. Inigo comes out, open it and search the cabin.” He went
on deck again, where the steward met him with a tray. He sat down on a
coaming and made a hurried breakfast, while the sloop’s crew hoisted
sail. When he had finished his meal, he glanced into the alleyway,
where the man was rubbing holystone across the door. “Anybody in
there?” he said.

“I hear some one shifting around, sir,” said the man. “The woman’s
getting her gear, sir.”

“Right,” said Cammock. “I wish I could stay to see the end,” he said
to himself. “But I must be off.” In a few minutes he was bound again
for Accomac, under a huge square cutter’s foresail, which made the
sloop leap like a flying-fish.

Very late one night, having just arrived aboard after a week of
labour, Captain Margaret sat in his cabin comparing tally-books with
Captain Cammock; but quietly, lest they should wake Perrin. He was
very tired; for the hurry from one clearing to another, and the long
rides into the wilderness to planters who lived far away, had been a
strain. He had endured them only in the fire of his excitement. He had
enjoyed his week of bargaining; the zest of the struggle had been like
wine to him. On the lonely clearings, or drinking with strangers in
woodmen’s shacks, he had forgotten his love, forgotten the torment of
the voyage, Olivia’s child, the settlement on Darien. All had been
forgotten. Now that the struggle was over, he felt the exhaustion; but
nodding as he was, over his tally-book, his whirling brain praised him
with that excited inner voice which talks to the overwrought. “You’ve
got the pick of the crop, the pick of the crop, the cream of the
year’s leaf,” the voice kept telling him. He had bought seven hundred
tons of the best tobacco in the colony; the little that remained to be
sold was the poor, crude leaf from the young plants and the poorly
cured, poorly flavoured leaf from the distant walks in the forest.

“We’ve got the whole trade, sir,” said Cammock. “You needn’t fear for
your owners.”

“No,” said Margaret. “Now to get a bottom to carry it home. Of course,
in a week we ought to have the summer fleet here.”

“They’ll not find much,” said Cammock. “We’ve got it all. But
supposing a letter comes with the fleet. We shall have to sail that
night probably, shan’t we? Supposing we’ve to cut and run, leaving it
all in the warehouse?”

“I’ve thought of that,” said Margaret, “I thought of that, too.
Heigho, captain, I’m tired. This week has been an experience. I shall
leave Mr. Harthop in charge ashore, with powers to deal. He’s shrewd.
He’s got a funny way of getting at the point with that queer humour as
a cloak. And I’ve got Howard, Cammock. Howard’s our agent.”

“You’ve got the Governor, sir?”

“Oh yes. That was my first move. I knew old Howard wanted specie; so I
went to see him and told him my plans. He was expensive, though. He
knew his worth to a penny.”

“What it is to be a gentleman. If I’d gone, he’d have kicked me out.
Well. Birth tells, they say.”

Perrin sat up in his bunk, and looked at them through the curtains.

“A servile, insolent, bribing, tipping race, the English,” he said.
“An Englishman will never do anything for any one without expecting
something.”

“Oh, you’re awake, are you? At it again, too,” said Cammock. “How
about that door, sir?”

“Well, Edward, how are you? What door is this?”

“Oh. Mrs. Inigo’s door,” said Perrin. “Oh yes. Yes. Mrs. Inigo came
out at eight bells, and then I tried to get in. But it was locked on
the inside. So I called Mr. Harthop’s three men, and the man who was
scrubbing it.”

“Good. Good,” said Cammock.

“And I told them ‘the door was jammed.’ So they’d a jemmy there, for
opening cases with, and we burst the door open. We found Stukeley
inside.”

“Stukeley?” said Margaret. “I half suspected that.”

“He was on his knees on the deck, sponging that blue silk dress Olivia
wears.”

“Ha,” said Captain Cammock. “I should never have thought of that.”

“Shrewd these Cornish women are.”

“He was rather red in the face, but he asked us what was the matter.
Then he asked me to give him a hand, as he’d got to get the dress
ready for Olivia, he said. She’d spilt some chocolate down it. It
was----”

“Was he flustered? Hectoring?”

“Afterwards. Not then. He kept saying that Olivia wished to wear the
dress at breakfast.”

“Did she?”

“Yes. Oh yes. I don’t know, Charles. There might have been nothing
wrong.”

“I thought I saw something,” said Cammock.

“Well,” said Margaret. “I suppose we’ll have to discharge Mrs. Inigo,
and pay her passage home. Captain Cammock, what do you think of
Stukeley?”

“I’m like the parrot,” said Cammock, “I think a lot more’n I’ll say.
Now turn in, all hands. A long lie, and pie for dinner. Captain
Margaret, if you don’t turn in, you’ll find you won’t sleep. Oh. Has
Mr. Stukeley been in irons?”

“He’s been threatened with them. He’s been very quiet though lately.
That Inigo time gave him a scare, I think.”

“Well. Good night, gentlemen.”

“Good night.”

As Captain Margaret drew his bunk-curtains and settled himself to
sleep, the voices in his brain took bodies to them, fiery bodies,
which leaned and called to him. “You’ve got the pick of the crop, the
pick of the crop, the pick of the crop,” they called. “Lucky devil.
Lucky devil. Oh, you lucky devil.”




 VIII.
 IN PORT


 “Yet still he stands prefract and insolent.”
               _Charles, Duke of Byron._


After breakfast the next morning the two Stukeleys sat in their
stateroom talking. They had had a week of comparative isolation, of
comparative privacy, very sweet to Olivia, who had learned, during the
voyage, to regret the days at Salcombe, when one had but to close a
door, to shut the world of love from that other world, full of thorns
and thistles, where ordinary mortals walked, not having the key of the
burning imagination. With Margaret and Cammock away, and Perrin seldom
present at meals, owing to his fear of the badgering of Stukeley, the
cabin of the _Broken Heart_ had come to be something of a home to her.
She could feel again that nothing else really existed, that no one
else really lived, that all the world, all the meaning and glory and
life of the world, centred in the two burning mouths, in the two
hearts which divined each other, apprehending all things in
themselves. During that week of privacy she had even learned to think
tenderly again of the three men who had shared the cabin with her. She
found that she no longer resented Cammock’s want of breeding; his want
of culture; his past as explained by Tom; his social position as
compared with her aunt Pile’s coachman. During the voyage she had
grown to dislike Margaret and Perrin, much as one dislikes the guests
who have overstayed their welcome. She had been too much in the
rapture of love to see things clearly, to judge character clearly; she
had taken her judgments ready-made from Tom, who disliked the two men.
She had liked them both as old friends; had liked them much, in the
old days, before she knew life. But, under the strain of the voyage,
ever prompted by Stukeley’s bitterness, while looking on them as her
friends, she had come to resent their continual presence, to be cross
at their conversation, which (as she felt instinctively) was
restrained by their dislike of Tom, through their want of imaginative
sympathy with his point of view. Now that they were no longer ever
present, like spices added to each dish till every dish disgusts, she
thought of them both with pity; feeling that they were growing old in
their ways, narrowed in their sympathies, never knowing the meaning of
life, which is love. Thus thought she, in the confidence of exulting
health, in the rapture of being possessed, with the merciless pity of
a newly married woman. This that she had waited for, this love which
crowned and made her, it cleared the eyes, she thought, it exalted, it
ennobled, it glorified. She would that those two pathetic figures,
Margaret so serious and proud, with his clumsy walk, and halting,
almost affected picked precision of phrase, and Perrin, the forlorn
parasite who looked as though he had been frozen, were married; she
would so gladly see them happy, tasting something of the joy which
made earth heaven to her. Margaret would be a beautiful lover, very
thoughtful and tender, but cold; he was cold-hearted, she thought, and
rather frightening. Perrin would be attracted by some little merry
woman who would laugh at him and twist him round her finger. Perrin,
she confessed to Tom, attracted her more than the other, because he
looked so wretched. Being so happy herself, she wished others to be
happy. Her education, like most women’s education, had been aimed to
make her fear the world, to make her shrink from those characters who
judged the world and sought to direct it. Her own world, beautiful as
it was, existed only by the exclusion of such characters; her nature
could not accept Margaret wholly; she could only respect and vaguely
fear him, as one respects and fears all things which one is not wise
enough to understand. Perrin looked wretched, and having a tenderness
for wretched folk, she thought that she understood him. All the time,
unknown to her, the three men summed her up with pity and reverence
and tender devotion; but mostly with pity, and with a mournful, tender
curiosity. It was perhaps partly that curiosity which had made their
absence pleasant to her. Their absence had been a relief to her, it
had also relieved her husband. And since their arrival at Virginia her
husband had made her anxious; he had behaved very queerly at times,
ever since the first day. She felt that he was keeping something from
her, perhaps some ailment which tortured him and made him irritable.
She had been very thankful to have her dear love so much to herself
during an entire week.

But at breakfast that morning the presence of the three men (and the
prospect of their future presence) had shown her how much she longed
for the quiet retirement of a home, where life could be culled,
chosen, made up as one makes a nosegay, by beautiful friends, art,
music, all the essences of life, all doubly precious to her now that
life had become so precious.

“Tom,” she said, “Tom, dear, I want to talk to you about our life
here. I don’t think it can go on, dear.”

“Why, little Olive, what’s up? What ruffles your serenity?”

“Tom, dear, I cannot bear this ship life. And those three men. At
every meal I feel that one of them is watching me. Oh, and no woman to
talk to. I think of our lovely times at Salcombe, Tom. We could shut
the door; and it would be just our two selves.”

“Jolly times at Salcombe, hadn’t we? But what’s the matter, eh?”

“This ship life, Tom. It’s that. The men are so rude, and so rude to
you, Tom. I can’t go on with it. I want to go back to England.”

“But I’ve promised to go to Darien, Olive.”

“I know, dear. I know. Don’t think me very foolish, Tom. But I don’t
think I’m strong enough. Tom, darling, could not we leave this life?
Think how rude Mr. Cottrill was to you only the other day. I do so
long for our old happy life together. Away from the sea.”

“Look here, Livy. I understand. You’re lonely. Suppose we go and stay
ashore for a while. You would meet ladies ashore. You’ve met them
already.”

“Tom, I can’t meet those ladies. They’re not nice.”

“What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with Mrs. Montague?”

“I feel that she isn’t a nice woman. That she isn’t---- You know I
went to see her the day before yesterday. She was hung about with
silver just like a savage, and all the young officers were there,
playing cards. And Captain Montague had gone to Charlestown, and she
was alone there, with all those men. So I sat down for a moment to
rest after the walk and then came away. That was no place for me.”

“Well, we could stop with the Governor. Maggy knows him. What’s wrong
with old Mrs. Prinsep?”

“I don’t like her, Tom. She’s a bitter woman. Oh, Tom, let’s go home.”

“But I’ve promised, Livy.”

“Yes, dear. I know. But we can’t always keep our promises. We can’t go
to Darien. We can’t.”

“But what else can we do? We must, my dear. I can’t pay our passage
home. I came away in such a rush. I’ve not got five pounds with me.”

“Oh, Tom, Tom. But that doesn’t matter, dear. We could borrow. Charles
or Edward would lend to us.”

“No, thanks, Livy. There are some things I draw the line at. I can’t
take a man’s hospitality and then borrow money from him.”

“But---- I know them better than you do, Tom. I could ask them.”

“Do you suppose, Livy, that I could let you borrow money from any
man?”

“Then we could ask for a passage home in the convoy to the summer
fleet. They would take us.”

Stukeley smiled uneasily, knowing only too well how likely he was to
get a passage home with that convoy in any case.

“Olive,” he said, “do you remember a tale Captain Cammock told us
about a little ruined city full of gold?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“D’you know, Olive, I’ve been half planning with Cammock to go to look
for that ruined city. You see, Livy, we shall only be here probably
till the summer fleet arrives. Ten days, or so. Do you think you could
stand it for another month or two? If we found that city, I could buy
my little Olive that summer cottage we set our hearts on.”

“Oh, take me home, Tom. Never mind the cottage. And I couldn’t have
you going into the forest. I couldn’t be alone in the ship.”

“But then, Olive. Since I married my little Olive here, I’ve been
wanting to do something for others. Living as a bachelor, one gets
selfish. I want very much to help those Indians, Olive. To do
something in return for you, dear.”

“I know, dear. It’s so like you. It’s noble of you. But you could do
something for the people at home: for the poor. You could teach them.
We could teach them together. But oh, don’t let’s go to Darien, Tom.
We shall be separated. Tom, I couldn’t bear to be alone in the ship.
And there may be fighting.”

“Come, come, Livy,” said Stukeley. He was nettled at what he judged to
be her damned female pigheadedness, yet anxious to make his
indignation appear moral. That is the common custom of the wicked, to
the world’s misfortune. “Come, come,” he said, “you mustn’t talk in
that way. We’re going to liberate the Indians. Eh? To show them what
British Freedom means. Eh? We mustn’t think of ourselves, and our
little aches and pains. We must think of the world.” He himself was
ever ready to think of the world, or the flesh, or the devil, or all
three. “We must think of the world, Livy. And if we should succeed. I
think you would be proud of me, Livy.”

“I should be, Tom, dear. Very, very proud. But oh, Tom, do let us go
home. We should be so happy there again. Here, we can’t get away from
strangers. I can’t live among these people. They’re dreadful. And
Darien, Tom. It’s a lawless place, full of the most terrible men.”

“Oh, they’re all right,” he answered. “They’re all right. And I shall
be with you, my dear child. We must go to Darien, Livy. My honour’s
pledged. I can’t draw back in honour. They would call me a coward.
They’d say I was afraid. Besides, I can’t very well pay our way home.
And I can’t borrow. You do realize my position, Livy? We must go on.”

“Oh, Tom,” said Olivia, crying now, in spite of brave efforts. “I
didn’t think--I thought you’d take me when I begged you. We might be
home in three weeks. Oh, Tom, do.” She clung to him, looking up at
him, smiling appeal in spite of tears. Stukeley bit his lips from
annoyance, longing to box her ears, to give her, as he phrased it,
something to cry for. She thought that he was on the rack between his
pledged honour and his love for her.

“No, Livy,” he said, parodying Captain Margaret’s manner towards an
inferior. “No, Livy, dear. Don’t make it hard for me. We must never
draw back from a noble cause, dear.” He thought that this would bring
more tears, and force him to be brutal; he was not going to stand
there while she snivelled on his shoulder. “A snivelling woman,” he
always maintained, “is not a thing to be encouraged.” But to his
surprise his answer checked her tears; she had never loved him more
than when he placed his honour even above his love for her.

“There, Tom,” she said. “Forgive me. I won’t cry any more, dear. My
nerves are upset. I won’t ask again, Tom. Of course, we’ll go to
Darien. But I wasn’t thoughtless of your honour, Tom. You don’t think
that? I wasn’t. I was only fidgety and frightened. Women are so silly.
You don’t know how silly.”

“There, there,” he said. “There, there. What pretty ears you’ve got,
Livy. Why in the world d’you wear earrings with ears like yours?”

“They’re only clip earrings, you old goose.”

“I shall bite them.”

“No, Tom. Not my ears now. My dear Tom. Do forgive me. You know I love
you.”

“You’ve got the reddest lips I ever saw in a woman, Livy.”

“Oh. Do you notice women’s lips?”

“I notice yours. Almost the first thing I noticed of you was how red
your lips were. What do you put on them?”

“Nothing. You put something on them sometimes.”

“What? A gag?”

“No. Your old silly mouth that asks so many questions.”

“I’ll get you some hot water for your eyes. You must bathe them.”

“How good and tender you are to me, Tom.”

As he walked to get a jugful of hot water he muttered to himself about
her. “Bread and butter,” he repeated. “Bread and butter. A life of
bread and butter. Forty years of it, good luck. Forty years of it to
come. Batter pudding.” He met with Cammock in the alleyway; it
occurred to him to be civil. “Captain Cammock,” he said, “will you
join me in my smoking-room after dinner to-day? I’ve some Verinas
tobacco. I’d like your opinion of it.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Cammock, wondering what had caused such sudden
friendliness. “But which do you call your smoking-room?”

“That little tiny cabin just forward of the bath-room. It’s only big
enough for a few chairs and a bookshelf.”

“Oh, the after-hospital,” said Cammock. “I’ll be very pleased, sir.
But where did you speak with Verinas tobacco, Mr. Stukeley?”

“I spoke with it ashore,” said Stukeley, “of a Mr. Davis, whom I think
you know.”

“Ah,” said Cammock. “Indeed? Well. After dinner, sir.”

Later in the morning, Stukeley tried his tobacco alone, on the cabin
cushions, looking through the windows at the town. He added up the
chances for and against himself, smiling with satisfaction at the
kindly aspect of the planets. His chief fear had been an arrest on
arrival. That fear had been proved to be groundless. Then there was
the chance of arrest after the arrival of the summer fleet with the
mails. That chance, though possibly dangerous, was not to be dreaded.
Old Howard, the Governor, was a friend of Maggy’s, and Maggy had
bribed him to obtain illegal rights of trade. He could put the
Governor into some trouble, should he press for an arrest on the
arrival of orders from the Board. But he wasn’t likely to press for an
arrest. He would give a quiet hint for them to go. But even if the
arrest were ordered, he had allies in the _Broken Heart_. He knew that
Margaret and the others would do anything to shield and spare Olivia.
They thought that she was going to have a child. Good Lord, they were
a comical trio. They thought that an arrest would probably kill her.
And Maggy, that stiff, shambling, stuck-up, conceited prig, Maggy who
had been going to fight a duel with him. Swords and pistols, damme;
swords and pistols, damme. Well. What had it all come to? Why, Maggy
would stop him in the alleyway, taking him gently by the arm, as one
takes the doctor by the arm, when he comes out of the sick-room. “How
is Olivia, Stukeley? How is she this morning?” Bated breath, good
Lord. Best doctor’s manner. And Perrin running ashore for fruit and
fresh fish and eggs. And Cammock. Well, Cammock was a bit of a dark
horse; so he would make much of Cammock for some days. Besides, that
little ruined city, full of gold, might turn out to be worth looking
for. As for Olivia, she would have to come to Darien, whether she
cried or not. He rather liked living at free quarters, as cock of the
walk. He wasn’t going to go ashore in Virginia to settle among the
colonists. Besides, in Darien, there would be a bit of sport, by all
accounts. There would be shooting; perhaps a little shooting at
Spaniards; plunder to be made; good living generally. The only bitter
sediment in this cup of pleasure was Mrs. Inigo. He had been very
nearly caught with Mrs. Inigo. He knew that he had raised suspicions,
that he would have to walk warily for some little time. He wished that
he was married to Mrs. Inigo. All this talk of love, such talk as
Olivia loved, this talk of trust and sacrament and the rest of it. He
was sick of it. He thought that men were naturally polygamous. A few
fools and perverts. What right had they to dictate to him? Mrs. Inigo
would be just the sort of wife for him. She would understand. And she
wouldn’t make him sick with talk about Beauty. She hadn’t mixed with
the gang of twisters Olivia had known. Maggy was the boy for Beauty.
There was where Olivia learned her beauty talk. Twisters. That was all
that Maggy’s gang were. He would like to twist their necks. As for the
colonials, the Virginian women didn’t please him. The garrison ladies
were like all the garrison ladies known to him, silly little empty
fools, without enough imagination to be vicious. They could just
chatter, play cards, kiss their beastly lap-dogs, and wear their
English clothes to church, so as to show off before the colonials. The
colonial girls were not like women at all. They were like young
horses, like young men. They would dance and romp, like colts in a
hay-lot. But their idea of an evening’s amusement was to roll a man in
a corn-crib, and smother him with pillows or flour. The colonial men
bored him; he had always thought ill of farmers. Their talk was all of
the tobacco crop, the duty, the burning of half the leaf, and the
destruction of those plantations which were too productive. They had
no wines. Their only drinks were rum and new cider. They did not play
cards. Their chief amusement seemed to be riding to prayer-meetings.
They would often ride forty miles to a prayer-meeting in the woods. He
rather liked them for that. He would have ridden a hundred miles to
avoid a Church service there, under a Virginian parson. “They pay
their parsons in tobacco,” he said to himself. “They get the very
sweepings of the Church. What souls they must have, when you can save
five thousand of them for forty pounds a year.”

Thus his thoughts ran inside his skull, under his curly black hair,
behind that red face so long the adoration of shop-girls. But after
dinner, in the little room known as the after-hospital, when,
stretched at ease in the bunk, he could see Cammock sitting upright in
the chair, through the wavering tobacco-smoke, his thoughts ran upon
other matters. He thought of the coming cruise to Darien.

“Good tobacco, captain?”

“Yes, sir. But it’s not Verinas. It’s too strong. Too red. This is
some of that Mexican tobacco. It leaves that tang, like a metal.
That’s how you can tell, sir. Just puff out, sir, and roll your tongue
round. You taste what I mean?”

“Yes. But I bought it as Verinas. I paid four shillings the Spanish
pound.”

“That gang of Davis’s saw you coming, sir.”

“Really? Well. It’s my turn to laugh next. You tell them that,
captain.”

“They’re no friends of mine, sir,” said Cammock simply.

“Aren’t they? I thought they were particular friends of yours. You
sailed with them?”

“I’ve sailed with a good many as I’m no friends with.”

“Really.”

“I say nothing against them,” said Cammock. “They’re very good seamen.
Doing good as planters, too, sir. They’ve quite a lot of ground burnt
off. I dare say you’ve seen it.”

“Yes. But I thought from what they said that they were particular
friends of yours. Eh?”

“Indeed, sir. When did you see them?”

“I saw them yesterday, Captain Cammock.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“They said that you and Captain Margaret had just arranged to take
about thirty of them, as a sort of company of soldiers. To have them
aboard here. Eh? Men of war. Eh? Pretty nearly the whole village of
them.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“You don’t like your little secrets to be known.”

“Ah? Oh. I forgot to ask, Mr. Stukeley. How is Mrs. Stukeley?”

“She’s very well, thanks. You didn’t think I’d learn your little
secret about the men of war.”

“I didn’t think one way or the other. You’d have known some day sure
enough. I needn’t disguise the fact. Yes. We’ve just got thirty of
them, to join at an hour’s notice.”

“When we sail? When will that be?”

“We ought to a gone to-day. Only our foretopmast’s sprung. We have to
wait for a new one. But you know yourself, sir. We may have to sail at
an hour’s notice, spar or no spar.”

“Thank you for reminding me. You’re a person of great delicacy,
Cammock. For one of your rank in life.”

“I believe I am, sir. Let it go at that.”

“Can we sail at an hour’s notice?”

“If the Governor, and that old frigate, the royal _Nonsuch_, don’t
object. I suppose we could if we had to, even without a topmast. But
if our topmast ain’t aboard, we couldn’t run very fast. I reckon we
could, sir.”

“Leaving all that tobacco ashore?”

“Yes. All except about fifty ton, which we’ve got aboard. That
tobacco’ll go home in the summer fleet, if the fleet don’t want to
cross home light.”

“I hear you’ve got all the pick of the crop.”

“You hear a lot of things, sir. Well-informed man, Ed Davis.”

“He knows what’s going on,” said Stukeley. “When you’re shut up with a
couple of old sheep, like your two owners, you need a change.”

“So I believe, sir.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean just what I said.”

“Ah, yes. A simple, rugged nature. Eh? But how can we put to sea with
so much cargo out of her?”

“We’re not too light, Mr. Stukeley. It ain’t as though we’d emptied
her. We’ve taken in a lot of fresh water. A lot of scantling, too. A
lot of this Virginia cider. Then there’s the new cables we bought from
them Hog Islers. Besides the fifty odd ton of tobacco. Still, I don’t
say but what she’ll cut up a bit of a dance, if she gets any weather
going south.”

“I thought all her cargo was consigned to Virginia.”

“Did you, sir?”

“Surely. What’s the good of fencing? Good luck, captain. I’m not an
old sheep, like your owners.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“You’re getting funny, captain. A wit. You ought to have been at the
University.”

“That’s where they make gentlemen, sir.”

“Oh, you know that?”

“We’d one of them come with us in the _Trinity_. I know all about the
universities.”

“He taught you, eh? Private tuition in the forecastle?”

“Yes. As you might say. One of the things he taught was---- Well. You
were at one yourself. I don’t think he could have learned you much.”

“Don’t you? Could he have learned me (as you call it) that the reason
you’ve not discharged your cargo here is that you’re going to try to
trade along the Main?”

“Ned Davis knows a lot, it seems.”

“Don’t be so confounded smart and hippy. See? I know all your plans. I
know all you can do, and all you’re going to try to do. And I know
exactly where you’ll go wrong.”

“Then we shan’t have the trouble of telling you.”

“What d’you say to going up the river after Springer’s little city?
Eh? There might be something in that.”

“I met a power of clever men in my time,” said Cammock. “I don’t say
men of learning and that. I mean clever fellers. I been up rivers with
’em.”

“Looking for cities?”

“Cities sometimes. Sometimes it was gold mines. Then again it’d be
Indians. Boys to spear fish and that. Or perhaps it was only a
snatching-raid. The clever fellers was never any good at it. But, hear
’em talk. My.”

“I gather your intellect is trying to express the fact that you
dislike me. I think I trace so much. I see your brain floundering
towards it.”

“Huh,” said Cammock, snorting. “I think I see you floundering towards
that little city. Man alive. Good heart alive. D’ye know what sort one
of them rivers is, to go up? You’ve neither skill nor sense of it. You
lie there bilged in your bunk like a barge at low tide, and you come
the funny nigger, trying to get a raise. I’ll tell you what them
rivers is like. See here, now. Listen to me. I’ll perhaps give you
some idea of the land you’re bound for.”

“Really? I don’t know that I want to hear you.”

“No. But I want you to hear me, Mr. Stukeley. I’ll tell you where the
golden city is.”

“Now you’re talking business.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Well. When you come in from the Samballoes,
you’ll see the land ahead of you, like a wall of green. Just like a
wall. Think. Dense. Then you come to two rivers, about thirty yards
across. They’re the two mouths of the Conception River. You try to go
up one of them in your boat. First thing you know is a thundering big
bar. You’d be surprised how ugly them little bars get. Well. Suppose
you get across. What’s next? D’ye know what a snag is?”

“A branch of alder or willow, fallen into the river.”

“Yes. Or a whole whacking big great oak, Mr. Stukeley, fallen right
across, and rotting there. With its branches all jammed up with drift
and drowned things. Hornets’ nests stuck in ’em. Great grey paper
bags. So then you land, and take out your macheat, and cut a path
around that tree, and drag your boat round. May take you an hour or
more. Then into your boat again, after sliding down a mud-bank with
eighteen inch of slime on top. Presently you come to a lot more trees.
Out you get and cut another road. Perhaps you go back a half-mile to
find a place where you can land. Oh. It’s death, going up one of them
brooks. Then, there’s shallows where you wade. Rapids where you wade
and haul, losing your footing and getting soused. By and by comes a
cloud-burst somewhere in the hills above. Or perhaps a jam of logs
bursts, a kind of a natural dam, a mile or two above you. Then. Woosh.
You see a wall of water a yard high coming at you. If you’re slippy on
your oars you get ashore from that. Maybe you hear it coming. It makes
a roar like the tide. You drag your boat ashore.”

“Aren’t you rather laying it on for my benefit?”

“As for laying it on, Mr. Stukeley, I’ll make you judge for yourself
as soon as we come on the coast. I tell you one thing. You’ll sing
mighty small when you come to tackle such a country. That’s something
you won’t have learned, where you learned your manners.”

Stukeley laughed. “Well. Go on with your yarn,” he said. “I like
hearing of foreign parts.”

“No,” said Cammock. “I’m not going on. But there’s your city. It’s
within twenty miles of the sea, and within five of the eastern
Conception.”

“Will you come to look for it with me?”

“No, sir,” said Cammock. “I won’t. I don’t fancy your company.”

“I like you, captain.”

Cammock looked at him steadily for a moment, and then lit his pipe at
the brazier.

“What are the women like in Darien?”

“You’re a married man, Mr. Stukeley.”

“Thank you. I know I’m a married man. I asked you what the women are
like?”

“They’re mostly a rather duskish brown or copper colour.”

“So I think I know. Can a fellow have any fun with them?”

“They’re modest, merry creatures. Very kind, simple creatures. Another
thing. They’re strong as colts. You see, they do most of the work.
They’ll carry a man like you. I guess you’re one and a half
hundred-weight. They’d carry you across a swamp. And they’re only very
small, you know. As for fun, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Cammock, the chaste pirate.”

“Now go easy, Mr. Stukeley. I can take a lot, but I don’t take pirate
of any man.”

“The virgin martyr.”

“We had one of our men a martyr, Mr. Stukeley. He tried to have a bit
of ‘fun,’ as you call it, with one of the Samballoes women. Lemuel
Bath his name was. They caught him, as it happened. And they done to
him what they do to each other, if they try any ‘fun’ and get caught.
That was ashore on the Main at the back of Sasardi there. I was ashore
the next day, filling water at the ’Seniqua. We seen Bath come
crippling down the beach, with his head back, and his hands tearing
his chest all bloody. Tearing his chest into strips with pain. Naked,
too. He died that evening. No, sir. Don’t you try it.”

“Thanks. Niggers aren’t in my line. I leave them to pirates.”

“That’s you. It’s time I was on deck, Mr. Stukeley. Adios, señor.
Divertiete. That’s what we used to say to the Spaniards when their
ransoms were paid.” He nodded to the head which watched him from the
bunk. Turning on his heel, he passed from the cabin, pressing his
thumb upon his pipe to kill the ember in the bowl. “I wonder if
there’s many like him,” he said to himself. “I wonder what it is makes
him like that. I’d like him in a watch. Oh, mommer.” As he muttered
thus, in passing to the deck, Stukeley turned in his bunk, drawing the
curtain. “Hulking boor,” he said to himself. “Hulking old savage. This
is the sort of company we keep when we come to sea. Crusty he gets,
when you bait him.” He thought of the little golden city and of the
little brown women, with resolve to try them both. “Good luck,” he
said; “I hope we’ll soon get out of here, before Olivia’s nerves go
off again.” As he settled himself down for his nap he was roused by a
noise in the sample-room, where Mr. Harthop broke in a caskhead with a
tomahawk. He went to the alleyway-door to call down the passage to
Margaret’s cabin.

“Margaret,” he cried, “can’t you stop that beastly noise for a bit?
Olivia’s lying down.”

“I am sorry,” said Margaret, coming from his cabin. “I ought to
have---- Mr. Harthop, will you please unhead your casks on deck? The
noise upsets Mrs. Stukeley. Apologize for me, Stukeley.”

The noise ceased, and Stukeley slept like an infant, showing his
strong white teeth in a smile. Harthop muttered and swore, wishing
that a ship with a woman in her might sail the rivers of hell; for
that was all she was fit for. He reproved the man who was working with
him for suggesting the tomahawk. The man sulked and loafed for the
rest of the afternoon, and then told a sympathetic fo’c’s’le that you
got your head bit off if that pale judy in the cabin heard you so much
as “hem.” Harthop, nursing his wrath till knock-off time, took it out
of the boy who kept his cabin clean.

“Can’t you find some other place to stow your brass-rags, without
putting them under my mattress?”

“Please, sir, they’re not the brass-rags. They’re the rags you stuff
in the leaky seam, sir. In wet weather, sir.”

“My bed’s no place for them, you dirty young hound. What have you done
with the molasses that was left?”

“You’d ate all your molasses, sir; from last week.”

“There was some left in the tin. You’ve been at it again.”

“No, sir. I swear I haven’t, sir.”

“How many times have I told you I won’t have you swear? Eh? Give me my
supplejack.”

“Oh, sir, I won’t do it again. I won’t do it again.”

“There, my boy. Perhaps that’ll teach you another time. Now go and lay
my supper. If you don’t stop howling I’ll give you another six.”

The boy went forward howling, to hide in the darkness of the hold,
where he could cry by himself, choking with misery and shame, praying
for death. If he had had a flint and steel he would have burnt the
_Broken Heart_ at her anchor. As he had none, he sobbed himself to
sleep, careless of Mr. Harthop’s supper, full of the bleeding, aching
misery which none save the wronged child can ever taste to the full.
When it was dark and all had gone to bed, he crept aft to the
ward-room, where the bread-barge and the case of spirits stood, just
as the two mates had left them. He helped himself to bread and rum;
for misery had made him reckless. Besides, having defied Mr. Harthop
he might as well defy the two mates. So he ate and drank, looking at
the light on the landing-stage, which made a golden track to dance. It
trembled in yellow flakes on the water, a path of gold, to the
blackness of the rudder eddies below him. He was not very sure if he
could swim so far; but he did not care. He was too wretched to mind
drowning. It was very dark in the wardroom. It was dark above him in
the cabin. Below him, the ship’s shadow was dark. He was sure that the
watchmen would not see him. They never walked on the poop. After a
moment of groping he found the falls of the relieving-tackle, and
unrove the raw hide till he had an end ten feet long. He hitched the
tackle so that the block should not creak, and paid out the end
through the chase-port. Then, as even the most miserable of us will,
he felt the misery of leaving. This ship of wretchedness had been a
home to him. He remembered the singing in the dog-watch. It was awful
to have to go like that. In his wretchedness, a tear or two rolled
down his cheek, to splash on the port-sill. A light footstep moved up
and down above him. One of the stern-windows of the cabin opened with
a little rattle. He heard Stukeley’s voice coming from the state-room
drowsily. Then Mrs. Stukeley spoke from overhead.

“It’s such a beautiful night, Tom. Do come and see the stars. They’re
wonderful. Wonderful. Come and see them, Tom dear.”

“You’ll catch your death of cold.”

“Bow-wow-wow. What an old bear. I shan’t. I’ve got on my
dressing-gown.”

“Thanks. I prefer my bed.”

The listener in the wardroom smiled in spite of his misery; then
trembled lest the lady should stay long. For suppose a watchman crept
below to see if the mates had left any rum behind them? Suppose
anybody came--Mr. Harthop, Mr. Ramage? He peered into the
’tween-decks, where all was dark and still, save for the cat’s eyes
gleaming green, watching for a mouse, and the snores of Mr. Ramage in
his hammock. Then, up above him, moved by the beauty of the night, the
woman began to sing, in a voice of drowsy sweetness, in a little low
voice that made each word a pearl, a round, lustrous pearl, a tiny
globe that glowed in the mind, it was so perfect, so ripe, so tender.
She was singing that old song of Campion’s about the woman who had
played with love in the hour of her beauty. She was a woman who had
played, and been played with; till her beauty withered just as she had
learned the worth of love, just as life had made her worthy of love,
at her coming to wisdom:--


 Where are all thy beauties now, all hearts enchaining?
 Whither are thy flatterers gone, with all their feigning?
 All fled, and thou, alone, still here remaining.
 . . . . . . . . . . .
 When thy story, long time hence, shall be perusèd,
 Let the blemish of thy rule be thus excusèd,
 “None ever lived more just, none more abusèd.”


The window closed amid murmured words; Stukeley, moved by the voice,
had drawn his wife away. The boy sighed that it was over; then corked
the rum-bottle and put it in his pocket. He would have taken some
bread, had he been able to carry it dry. He thought of dashing to his
chest in the half-deck for an extra shirt; but gave up the plan as
being too risky. Very quietly and quickly he slid down the rope into
the water, letting the tide take him, striking out now and again,
towards the landing-stage. He was puzzled by the coming of the
ripples; they hit him in the cheek before he judged that they were
near. He got a mouthful once, and choked; but none heard. Very soon he
was clambering up the landing, gulping rum with shudders. Then, after
wringing out his jacket, he set out to run along the sandy track that
was the street. The dogs barked as they heard his feet beat; but he
kept on, for some three miles, till he dropped tired out among the
wood. There he lay shivering in the scrub till the dawn, when, seeing
a plantation near, he sought shelter of the planter, who hired him
“for his keep,” glad of the chance. In the morning, when hue and cry
was made for him, when boys and men called and crawled for him among
the cargo of the ship, no one suspected that Stukeley was the indirect
cause of his desertion. The mates swore when they found their rum
gone. The other boys swore when they had to do the deserter’s work.
Cammock swore at the watchmen for not barring in the chase-ports,
while the watchmen swore that they had barred them. Mr. Harthop swore
that if ever he caught that boy again he would give him cherriliccum
pie. Thus the matter came to an end.




 IX.
 A FAREWELL DINNER


 The shame and obloquy I leave thine own;
 Inherit those rewards; they’re fitter for thee.
 Your oil’s spent, and your snuff stinks: go out basely.
                               _The False One._


Standing on the poop, looking seaward, the five cabin-dwellers
watched the summer fleet come in. It came in haltingly, a scattered
troop of ships, some with spars gone, one or two, fir-built, streaked
white where a shot had struck; all seaworn. Cammock, watching them,
sent his boat round to the “men of war” to order them aboard at once.
Harthop had already been settled ashore, in charge of the tobacco,
under the Governor’s eye. He would make good terms for the ship’s
owners; the merchants at home could hardly lose on the venture.

“We’re all right, sir,” said Cammock to Margaret. “There’s probably a
letter. But the Governor’s your friend. You needn’t worry.”

“I wish I could see things as you see them, captain,” said Margaret.
“But I can’t. How is it you always have a plan? How do you discipline
yourself? How is it you’re always ready?”

“I dunno, sir. I’ve only got a few things to think of, and I think ’em
out. P’r’aps that’s it. But just step aft, sir. Look here, sir. We’re
ready to sail. The new topmast’s aloft. We’re a little light, perhaps,
but nothing to hurt. The thing is--are you going to give him up? You
got to decide now.”

“I can’t. We must think of her child.”

“She can’t have a child on the Isthmus.”

“There’ll be time enough to arrange something else when we get there.
But she must be spared the shock.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll send the long-boat in for all the fresh meat and
fruit there is.”

“Oh, I know, captain. I know it’s not the rightest thing for her. A
voyage to sea.”

“She’ll get that anyway, sir. Either way. Very good, sir. I’ll have
all ready to sail. I’ve sent for the ‘men of war.’ They’ll join us
either here, or between the Points. Well, Mr. Perrin. We’re off
to-night, sir.”

“But we’re all dining with the Governor. You’ve surely not forgotten
that, Charles.”

“Look there, Edward. There’s the summer fleet.”

“What if it is? We can’t throw the Governor over. We must dine with
the Governor. What? You an Englishman and want not to dine with a
lord?”

“How about our friend there?”

“No Englishman would arrest a guest at dinner. He values his digestion
and his butler’s opinion too much. There’s no risk. Oh, we must go to
the dinner. I’ve got a new American coat to go in.”

“No harm in it, sir,” said Cammock. “It might divert the lady, poor
thing.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, sighing. “If it won’t tire her.” He crossed over
to the Stukeleys. “Olivia,” he said, “Perrin has just reminded me that
we’re dining to-night at the Governor’s. It won’t tire you?”

“Tire me? Of course it won’t.”

“You would like to go?”

“We both want to go. Tom’s going to sing ‘Twankydillo.’ We may have
enough ladies for a dance.”

“We shall probably sail, directly we come aboard to-night.”

“Sail, Charles? Not for Darien?”

“Yes, Olivia. For Darien.”

“Ah-h.” She turned white. Little as she liked Virginia, she knew it,
she had proved it. The unknown was before her now, close at hand,
shapeless yet, ill-defined, a spectral country. For a moment she
stared blankly at Margaret with the eyes of a frightened animal.
“Isn’t it. Isn’t it rather sudden?” she asked.

“Yes. Rather sudden,” he answered in a hard voice. “But, of course, we
may not go. You see, Stukeley. You see, Olivia. The summer fleet there
may have letters for us. May have letters for us.” He groped about for
an excuse. “My owners,” he went on. “My merchants may wish me to
proceed at once. On the other hand, we may be told to trade at
Charleston. Or trade rather longer here. Though we’ve done well here.
It’s possible. You understand, Olivia. I told you the day we left
Falmouth. Our whole aim was to have our work done before the summer
fleet arrived. To buy up the tobacco crop before some of it is fully
cured. And, to tell the truth, we’ve hurried all we could.”

“Don’t worry, old girl,” said Stukeley, drawing his wife aside. “The
sooner we go, the sooner we’ll be back.”

“Oh, Tom. Don’t go. Don’t let us go.”

“Oh, come, come,” he said, biting his lips. “It’ll be all right.
Maggy. Come here, Maggy. If you meet a home-bound English ship on our
way we may ask to be transhipped.”

“Oh,” said Olivia; “then why not go ashore now, Tom? Why go on to
Darien?”

Stukeley muttered to himself about his folly. “Now we’re going all
over it again,” he said to himself. “Remember, I’m pledged in honour,
Livy,” he said.

“Then, Charles, you’ll release him from his pledge, won’t you? Let him
come ashore. I want to go home.”

Margaret flushed, and then turned white. For a moment he wavered; she
saw him waver.

“You will, Charles. Won’t you?”

“Olivia,” he answered. “I cannot. I’d like to. But he’s such a good
Spanish scholar. He’s the only one of us who really knows Spanish. I’d
grown to count on him. We all had.”

“But you could get Spanish talkers here, Charles. Couldn’t he, Captain
Cammock?”

“No, ma’am. You couldn’t get gentlemen, Mrs. Stukeley. And you see the
Dons is particular.”

“Yet you sailed from London without a Spanish talker.”

“Yes,” said Perrin. “But our plans were different then.”

“How were they different then? I’m going to cross-examine you all.”

“We decided to try to trade with some of the Spanish cities, Olivia;
having so good an interpreter.”

“I thought you were going to fight with the Spanish cities. That’s
what we decided in council.”

“My dear Livy,” said Stukeley. “You’re like a justice of the peace.”

“But I want----” She checked herself sharply, and looked at the
incoming ships. The men also turned to look, as she had planned that
they should.

“That’s a nice one, isn’t it, Captain Cammock?”

“The Dutch-built one, Mrs. Stukeley? No.”

“How do you know she’s Dutch-built?”

“How do you know whether to trust a man when you meet him, Mrs.
Stukeley? You don’t rightly know. You have an instinct. I’ve an
instinct for ships. There’s twenty things tells me she’s Dutch, long
before I’ve time to examine them.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, only too glad of the diversion. “But I want you
to tell us now what it is that makes you say she’s Dutch. It’s in her
hull, isn’t it? What is it in her hull?”

“The Dutch, sir,” said Cammock, “are built for the India trade, and
they give their ships a rather high sheer, and not quite so much
camber as an English builder likes. Then they like a very flat floor,
and a tuck that----” He wandered on into a swamp of sea terms, taking
it for granted that his hearers understood him. Margaret and Perrin
plied him close with questions as the ship loitered past them, rolling
in the light wind, her men singing out at her cluelines. While they
talked, Stukeley and Olivia went below to the cabin; Stukeley with the
feeling that Olivia would now make no more fuss; Olivia with the sense
that all was not well, that something was withheld from her.

“Tom,” she said suddenly, as soon as the cabin-door had closed,
“you’re keeping something from me. What is it? Why am I not to know?”

“I’m not keeping anything back.”

“Tom, I think you’re being made a tool of. I think Charles has some
scheme that isn’t quite right. Don’t be dragged into it, Tom.”

“Dragged into it, Livy?”

“You’ve a noble, trusting nature, Tom; and I love you for it. But. Oh,
I feel sure Charles has some deep-laid scheme, that he’s afraid to
tell you of. I don’t think he was telling the truth to me just now.”

“Oh, nonsense, Livy. He couldn’t tell a lie if he tried.”

“No, Tom, dear; but he was trying.”

“When?”

“He was trying to find a reason for the ship’s sailing to-night.”

“But it was the plan, Livy. We expected to sail as soon as the summer
fleet came.”

“Why, Tom? Tell me that.”

“There may be letters ordering us to sail. My dear girl. Maggy’s got a
whole firm of merchants to order him as they please. We had to be
ready in case an order came from them. There may be no order.”

“But we weren’t ready, Tom. When the fleet was signalled we were in
the midst of trading.”

“Yes. But my dear child. If there’s no order, we may trade again
to-morrow.”

“You think it’s all right then, Tom? Do you?”

“Of course I do, Livy. You’ve got fine eyes, Livy. Did you know that?”

“But why should they alter their scheme of fighting the Spaniards? You
promised to help the Indians against the Spaniards. Now you’re
suddenly asked to help Charles’s merchants to make trade with the
Spaniards. You never promised to do that. And I should never have let
you. Never. Never. Oh, Tom, they’ve tricked us cruelly. They aren’t
going to help the Indians, Tom. They’re going to make money, like
common city-merchants. And they want my noble, generous Tom to help
them. Don’t do it, dear. Don’t do it. I can’t bear it.”

“My dear Livy.”

“I can’t have you mixed up with merchants.”

“Look here, old girl. Aren’t you a little unreasonable? We’ve decided
that we can help the Indians best by making some sort of agreement
with the Spaniards.”

“You say _we_ have decided this. When was it decided? Why wasn’t I
told?”

“We haven’t really decided. It was suggested last night. After you’d
gone to bed.”

“Why wasn’t I told? What was suggested?”

“It’s a fine idea, Livy. Cammock suggested our going to one of the
towns and proposing an agreement with the Governor.”

“What sort of an agreement?”

“The Governor to trade with us, just as if we were Spanish. The
English to abstain from hostilities, and the Indians to be accounted
English subjects. And they want me to interview the Governor.”

“It’s only an excuse to make money, Tom. To make money without the
self-sacrifice of fighting. And what if the Spaniards refuse?”

“Then we should have some just excuse for proceeding as we’d planned.”

“Tom, I don’t think they’ve been straightforward with us. There’s
something hidden. I’m sure of it.”

“But what can be hidden, Livy? My darling charmer. Eh? Besides, look
here, my beauty-spot. I’m ambitious. I want to make my Livy proud.
See? If I see these Governors, and bring off some arrangement. You
see? It’s a big matter, Livy. It’s knighthood. It may be a seat on the
Trade and Plantations Board. It may be all sorts of things.”

“Yes,” she said. “Tom, I quite see that. I’m ambitious for you, too.
There, dear, I know you’ve set your heart on it. Oh, Tom, though, I
hate the thought of it all. And I’m sure there’s something hidden. I’m
sure there is. I wish I knew.”

“Nonsense,” he said, taking her in his arms. “Where’d you like to be
kissed? I’m going to kiss your nose because you’ve got it turned up in
the air to-day.”

“I haven’t, Tom.”

“Come here,” he said, catching her as she wriggled free. “None of your
wriggles. Come and be kissed. You’re not going to dress till your nose
is kissed.”

An hour later, they stood in the Governor’s house waiting for the
Governor to receive them. They fidgeted about the large, cool, rather
bare room; now staring through the window at the ships, now fingering
the books, turning up the pictures to the light. Stukeley took a
pistol from the wall, and examined the engraved silver of the butt.
Olivia chatted with Perrin about the rambler roses trailing round the
window.

“We must take some slips to Darien,” said Perrin. “But I don’t much
like this dark red kind.”

“We have them at home,” she answered quietly. “I shall take home some
slips from Darien; for everything will grow with us. I expect lots of
things would transplant.”

“Yes, lots,” he answered.

“Olivia,” said Margaret, “have you seen this Rembrandt?”

“Why,” she said. “It’s the Hundred Guilder Print. It’s like meeting an
old friend.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, peering. “It’s a very beautiful state, too.
What’s the etching beyond you there, Edward?”

“One of Hollar’s.”

“Ah, yes,” said Margaret. “It’s interesting to put a Hollar beside the
real thing. No artist can make a ship wonderful to us. A ship is a
wonderful work of art without him. Just look at them there, Olivia.”

“They’re beautiful,” she said, looking at the ships. “Why. The _Broken
Heart’s_ under sail.”

“Her topsails are on the caps. Ready for us to go.”

“In case we do go?”

“Yes. In case.” Olivia looked at him steadily, noting that, for all
his self-control, he seemed uneasy at her look. The situation was
saved by the entrance of an orderly, in the white coat and blue scarf
of the Virginia troop. He saluted.

“The Governor presents ’s compliments ’n’ ’ll join you d’rec’ly.”

“Thank you,” said Margaret. “I suppose the mails have arrived? Do you
know?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, as he stood in the doorway. “In the summer
fleet, sir.”

“Thank you.”

“What have you got there, Tom?” said Olivia.

“A little pretty pistol,” he said.

“Nice silver chasing,” said Perrin.

“Spanish,” said Margaret. “They make those at Toledo.”

“Let me see,” said Olivia.

“Yes. Spanish,” said Stukeley. “Wheel-lock. Loaded. Priming-cup
lidded. A very nice little gun. See the Spanish motto?”

“What does the Spanish mean?” asked Olivia. “_Se nada, pero._ I can’t
read it.”

“It means, ‘I know nothing. But I talk well.’ I wonder if I’ve
forgotten my pistol shooting. Eh? I used to be able to nail the ace of
diamonds at a dozen yards. Let’s make Pilly back up against the wall,
and do the William Tell act.”

“Tom, dear. Don’t play with that. It’s loaded. You might hurt
somebody.”

“Yes. Put it down, Stukeley,” said Margaret. “It’s one of old Howard’s
treasures. Put it down.”

“Put it down?” said Stukeley. “You’ve got a nerve to tell me to put it
down. I want this little gun. I like it. I’m going to bag it. If
anybody interferes with me at dinner, Livy, I shall just plug him.
Pop. In between the eyes. You see if I don’t.” He slipped the pistol
into his pocket.

Margaret smiled to see Olivia’s face of horror.

“Why,” said Stukeley. “Why, Livy, that’s what they do in this country.
What are old what’s-his-name’s swords like? Look here, for a sword.
Eh? There’s a temper. Look here. See?”

“That’s a fine piece of steel,” said Margaret. “Is it Milanese?”

“Milanese? Milanese? Milanese in your eye. Are you touched? It’s
Spanish. Comes from a place called Toledo, if you’ve ever heard of it.
Spanish motto like the other. Old Howard must collect Spanish things.”

“What is the motto?” Olivia asked.

“_No me saques sin razon_: well. Do not draw me without reason. Unless
he spits in your face, for instance. _No me envaines sin honor_: Nor
sheathe me till. Well. Till you’ve made sure.”

“Made sure?”

“Seen that the other fellow’s juice is pink. Stand still, Maggy, till
I see if you’ve got red blood in you. I could prod you from here just
under your fourth rib. Ping. Eh? This sword just suits me. Look,
Olivia. Look how they’ve inlaid this hilt.”

“What beautiful work, Tom. And what a waste. To put all that beautiful
work on to a sword.”

“A sword’s a knight’s weapon,” said Margaret. “How could we defend
Olivia Stukeley if our swords weren’t worthily made.”

“There’s the question,” said Stukeley. “Look at old Pilly there. What
book have you got there, Pilly? Read it out to us.”

“It’s a book of sick man’s meditations,” said Perrin. “I won’t read it
out. Look at it. It’s all thumbed to dog’s ears.”

“Howard’s,” said Margaret. “What an extraordinary book for him to
have.”

“Oh,” said Perrin, “that’s the secret of an Englishman’s success. He’s
nothing better than a pirate, grabbing all he can get. Oh, I’m not
English, myself. But the secret of his success is in this book here.
He makes his peace with God as he goes on. The other people. I don’t
know about the Dutch. They beat you; so they must be like you, only
better. The other people try to make their peace before or after; and
so they lose, either way. But you know, Olivia, you are----”

“The Dutch didn’t beat us,” said Stukeley. “We beat them. So you’re
out of it there, little Taffy with the Leek.”

“How about the Medway? Look, Olivia. Look at Jamestown. This is the
capital of our chief colony. Would any other nation in the world
produce a capital of twenty wooden houses, a fort, a church, and a
Governor’s mansion? This is the mansion. Look at it.”

“A better mansion than you’ve got at home,” said Stukeley. “What are
you talking of?”

“Suppose the Dutch were here. Think what a city they’d have built.”

“What a hot head it is,” said Margaret gently. “I don’t agree with you
a bit, Edward. You’re all wrong. The Dutch haven’t done much in the
East.”

“At least, they’ve worked; and made the Indians work.”

“And the English here. Have they worked?”

“Not so much.”

“Isn’t that an argument against you? It tells just the other way. Work
is often one of the most degrading things in the world. All work that
gives no rapture of creation is degrading. That is why the merchant is
poor company, and the professional a conservative. The Dutch built
Batavia; but their system has ruined the spice trade. The Spaniards
built San Domingo; but their system ruined the island. They’ve built
Panama and Lima; but they’ve destroyed both Costa Rica and Peru. A
city can only be the growth of a civilization. You can only build a
colonial city by agreeing to ruin the colony. So here. There may be a
time when all the trees in sight will have sailed out to sea. This
harbour may be crowded with ships. Who knows? This place may be
another Athens some day.”

“There’s not much Athens here now. The colonials aren’t much like
Athenians.”

“I think they’re very like, Edward. They’re fond of liberty. They take
a beautiful pride in their bodies. They are attached to the country.
They’re very like Athenians. The world doesn’t alter much.”

“How about Plato and Sophocles?”

“They were not the world. They had wrought themselves to something
finer than the world.”

“The Governor’s got a devil of a lot of letters,” said Stukeley.
“There goes his secretary to him.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I pity the man who tries it,” Stukeley muttered, thinking of an
arrest.

“Is this a very good harbour for ships?” Olivia asked.

“Yes; very good,” said Margaret. “Don’t you love to imagine the river
here full of ships, the biggest and most beautiful kinds of ships? And
then the banks here, and yonder, with a city. A city, built of marble.
Marble cathedrals. And a great citadel on the hill there.”

“A great naval power is always on the brink of ruin,” said Perrin.
“Athens was a great naval power, and had her navy smashed by a power
without a navy. Carthage the same. Spain was greatest at the
eighty-eight. There’s another instance.”

“Naval power is a very fine thing,” said Margaret. “You’re mixing up
greatness, and the weakness which comes of overweening pride, or the
defect of greatness.”

“That’s what you silly Celts are always doing,” said Stukeley.

At this moment the orderly reappeared, saluting.

“Beg pardon, sirs,” he said, “but which of you gents is Captain
Margaret?”

“I am.”

“’Is lordship’s compliments, sir; ’n’ will you step this way?”

Margaret glanced at the faces of his friends. Stukeley sat down,
nursing the sword, looking at the doorway and at the window. Perrin,
who sincerely hoped he was about to see the end of Stukeley, enjoyed a
mental vision of the Ephesian matron. His day-dream was of Olivia in
black, in a darkened London room, and of himself, the comforter, come
to console her, with platitude in low tone, sentiment speaking grief’s
language. Olivia turned to the spinet. She tried one or two notes with
her finger, making little wry mouths at the want of tune. “Is there
any Virginian music, Edward?” she asked. “I heard some negroes singing
in the tobacco fields the other day. It sounded very sweet. It came
home to one strangely. All working songs come home to one, don’t you
think?”

“Yes,” said Perrin. “They are so simple. They’re like a simple person
speaking passionately. They leave the intellect untouched, of course.”

“Yes. But you and Charles are always blaming poultry, shall we say,
for not being golden eagles. Poultry as poultry are very good. Don’t
you think so? Won’t you sit down, Edward? This is the song the negroes
sang. I think it’s so charming.”

While she touched the tune upon the spinet, Margaret stood in the
presence of Howard, the Governor, a heavy-looking, weary-looking man
with dark moustaches. His voice was hard and grating, an official
voice. It jarred on Margaret, who expected bad news from it.

“Sit down, Margaret,” he said, picking up a letter. “I hope you’re
well.”

“Thanks. Yes. You wanted to see me?”

“Do you know that I could lodge you all in prison?”

“So you’ve heard, then?”

“Read this letter.”

He glanced through the letter of instructions from the Board. It set
forth Stukeley’s crime, the details of the escape from Salcombe, the
necessity for the arrest of the whole party; it was not a pleasant
letter. No one had ever before described Margaret as an abettor of
felons; the sensation was new; and oppressive, like some
contaminations.

“Well,” said Howard. “You seem to take it very coolly.”

“I’ve been preparing for this moment for a quarter of a year.”

“What is this Stukeley? He seems a boorish kind of fellow.”

“He’s an unpleasant man. A bad man.”

“I should call him a thorough scoundrel, from that letter.”

“He’s married to a charming woman. A woman I’ve known for years. You
can see for yourself that she’s a lot too good for him.”

“Do you wish him to be arrested? You know the penalty, of course?”

“I suppose I could plead ignorance?”

“You? Yes. But he. _Sus. per col._ Eh?”

“I think, Howard, he ought to be cut off. But his wife’s going to have
a child. I happen to know her, as I said. She believes in him. She
doesn’t suspect. I’m afraid the shock would kill both her and the
child.”

“You’d rather that I didn’t arrest?”

“For her sake, yes. And for the sake of the merchants concerned in the
venture with me.”

“Your tobacco will keep them from loss. They’re all right. Do you know
that your Darien scheme is known in Spain?”

“Ah. Then. Then the Government will curry favour with Spain by
arresting us on this pretext, and claiming to have stopped us on her
account?”

“That is, of course, possible. It depends on party needs at the
moment. I know nothing of that.”

“It is something you ought to reckon, Howard.”

“Well. If I don’t arrest you. You’ve put me in such an awkward
position. I can’t very well arrest my guests. It would bring me into
disfavour, and my office into disrepute. I don’t know what to say. Are
you ready to sail?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you sail two or three days ago? As soon as you’d made your
voyage. Why in the world did you wait for the tobacco fleet?”

“We were kept waiting for our new topmast. We found our foretopmast
sprung. It was only this morning that we finished setting up the
rigging on the new spar.”

“You understand, Margaret, that at this moment you’re Stukeley’s
judge. You’ve got power of life and death over him. You can turn it
over in your mind, and then say, whether you wish me to arrest him, or
not. You wish to spare the girl, his wife. Looking at it impartially,
I should doubt whether you would spare her by sparing him. The man’s a
scoundrel.”

“There’s the child, remember.”

“Yes. I was forgetting the child. Of course. There’s the child.”

“If you arrest us all and send us home, of course her people will look
after her on arrival. Is that a possible solution to you?”

“Between you and me, Margaret, I don’t want to arrest you all. If I
do, why, there’ll be a scandal here. ‘The Governor’s friends proved to
be escaping felons.’ The cry will be everywhere. I don’t want that. On
the other hand, the man’s a scoundrel. H’m. It’s a pretty problem.”

“You can arrest me in mistake for Stukeley. How would that do?”

“No,” said the Governor, shaking his head; “that won’t do. What are
your plans for the lady in case I don’t arrest?”

“I suppose we shall have to leave her at Jamaica after a month or two
in Darien.”

“Perhaps she’ll be better off there than in England. Has she a woman
with her?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t, in your heart, wish me to proceed?”

“No, Howard; I want you to spare her.”

“Very well, then. You must sail this night. Sail directly you get on
board.”

“Thank you, Howard. I will. You won’t get into trouble with the Board
over this?”

“I shall say that you crept away in the night. No singing at the
capstan, remember. No cheering. If you’re not gone by dawn I’ll arrest
the whole pack of you. I can’t do more.”

“I’m very---- This is very kind of you, Howard.”

“Kind? A kind man has no business in politics. I’m shirking my duty.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, with a sigh. “And I’m pleading with you, trying
to make you shirk it.”

“Not a bit of it,” said the Governor. “There’s the gong. We’ll go down
to dinner. By the way, there’s a letter for you. Where did I put it?
Here it is.” He handed a sealed packet to Margaret, who glanced
abstractly at the seal, and then, not recognizing the crest, put it in
his pocket, and followed his host to the door. “Honour,” he repeated
to himself. “Honour. My honour is a smirched rag. A smirched rag.”

The dining-room was a long, low, bare apartment. The whitewashed walls
were hung with one or two prints by Dürer, the “Adam and Eve,” the
“Justice,” and “The Man of Sorrows,” from the “Lesser Passion.” The
table was heaped with a deal of silver, all of it very crudely
designed. The dinner was mostly of fruit and vegetables; it was too
hot for meat. The wine bottles lay outside the window in jackets of
wetted flannel. Each guest had a palm fan at his side, for use between
the courses.

The Governor sat at the end of the table with the door at his back.
Olivia sat next to him, with Margaret beside her. Mrs. Prinsep sat
next to Margaret, with Stukeley on her right, then Perrin, then an
empty seat directly at the Governor’s left. During the dinner Howard
asked the footman if Captain Lewin had arrived. The man told him, no.

“Captain Lewin is in command of the frigate there,” Howard explained
to Olivia. “I asked him to join us, so that you could hear the news.
By the by, I’m sorry to hear you’re sailing.”

Olivia noticed that he, too, looked at her with something of the
shrewd, hard, medical gaze with which Perrin and Cammock sometimes
looked at her. She resented the look as an impertinence, half
wondering if there was something strange about her face--some sudden
growth of eyelid or droop of hair.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry we’re going, too, for several reasons. But
I hope we shall meet again in England. You must come and see us when
we’re settled there.”

“That will be delightful. In what part do you think of settling?”

“In Devon. Near a place called Flaxley.”

“Oh yes. Indeed. Flaxley. That’s near the sea. I know Flaxley, Mrs.
Stukeley. There’s a beautiful old house there. I once stayed a night
there. What was the fellow’s name, now?”

“Then you know my uncle. Do you? Neston Pile.”

“Pile. Yes. Pile. Of course. So he’s your uncle, Mrs. Stukeley? What a
fine old man he is.”

“Yes,” she said, with quiet indifference. “He is very much loved.” She
would have given much to be back at Flaxley sitting in the great hall
there. A Vandyck hung in the hall, the portrait of Sir Nicolas Pile,
her great-uncle, once the king’s standard-bearer, who had been killed
in the fight at Naseby. He looked down upon the hall in melancholy
honour, a noble guardian, full of grave pride, helpful to those who
sat there. Howard’s words gave her a longing to see that austere,
sweet, thoughtful face looking down upon her, a longing all the more
keen for the knowledge that perhaps she would never again see him, now
that her uncle had been so horrid to Tom. The pang of homesickness
went shrewdly to her heart; but she sipped her wine, her face
unchanged, her smile ready.

“What brought you to Flaxley, I wonder?” she added. “I wonder if I was
there then.”

“It was seven or eight years ago,” said Howard. “I had to go there
about some Roman coins. I collect antiques, you know. Rather a dull
subject for you. Your uncle had written a little pamphlet on the coins
dug up at Hurst’s Castle, that old Roman Camp in Somerset.”

“Yes. He used to collect coins then. He’d a few very rare ones. Were
you there in the summer? Did you see the rose-garden?”

“On a slope, somewhere at the back, rather exposed?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve a dim recollection of it. I was only there one night. You
weren’t there then?”

“My brothers were alive then. I expect I was with them.”

“Is that old gate-keeper of yours alive still? An oldish woman. Rather
a character?”

“Old Maggie? Oh, do you remember old Maggie? Poor old Maggie. She’s
dead now. There was a shipwreck on the rocks beyond Flaxley, and she
rowed out to the wreck with her idiot son. She was such a fine old
woman. None of the men would go out; so she said she would go. She
rowed and rowed. There’s a very strong current there, too. When she
got to the wreck her boat was smashed against the side, so she had to
stay there for nearly a day, I think, and she died soon afterwards
from the exposure.”

“Indeed. She impressed me. A fierce old Roman.”

Perrin looked up to remark that the courage of a woman was as it were
complementary to the courage of man. That women did things which men
could not do; and that their courage was on the whole of a finer
quality. Mrs. Prinsep, who may perhaps have thought that the
compliment to her sex was designed subtly to please her, seemed to
bridle.

“I think women would be proud to hear that,” she said contemptuously.
She disliked Perrin; all common natures did.

“Yes,” said Margaret. “A woman’s courage comes from a quality of soul.
A man’s comes more from a faculty of body. You can’t think of the two
without feeling that in the woman you have something far finer.”

“They squeal if they see a mouse,” said Stukeley.

“Yes? If you will name the highest flight of man’s courage, I will
prove to you that at that point woman’s courage begins.”

“A man’s courage is often indifference,” said Perrin. “When I was
nearly drowned once, I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to die. Why am I
not frightened?’ I wasn’t frightened. I was only tired of swimming and
swimming, with the water against me.”

“You skedaddled from that dog the other day,” said Stukeley.

“What dog was that, Mr. Stukeley?” Mrs. Prinsep asked.

“Oh,” said Stukeley, with a chuckle. “A dog that flounced out at him
from one of the houses here. Good luck. To see old Pilly run. Did he
get you, Pilly, or did you get up the tree in time?”

“I was in time,” said Perrin, flushing, looking very uncomfortable.

“Are you very much afraid of dogs, Mr. Perrin?” Mrs. Prinsep asked.

“Yes,” he answered rudely. “So are you.”

At this moment Captain Lewin entered, so that the discussion came to
an end before it had well begun, like most discussions of the kind.

Captain Lewin was a tall, grey, upright man, with a sharp, dictatorial
manner that was somehow not authoritative, and therefore not
offensive. He entered the room with his hands behind his back,
snapping quickly from the nervous strain of being late. Howard greeted
him and introduced him. He sat down nervously on his host’s left,
looked round the room with the quick apprehension of an animal, much
as he would have looked aloft on coming on deck, and began to
apologize for his lateness.

“I dined before I left the ship,” he said. “That rascal, my purser,
kept me. Very good claret, your Excellency. Who’s the man next but one
on my left? I seem to know his face.”

“Stukeley. Thomas Stukeley, husband of the lady here,” the Governor
answered in a low voice.

“I seem to have seen him somewhere. Wasn’t he in the rising in
Beverley’s time?”

“No, captain.”

“Reminds me of that beauty who led us such a dance up the Delaware.”

“Oh, George Bond?”

“Yes. He was a beauty. I wonder what’s become of George Bond?”

“Yes. He kept us all alive here.”

“You have just come from England?” Olivia asked.

“Yes,” said the captain. “We sailed at the end of July. Your
Excellency, I wouldn’t go down the river with such another convoy. Not
if the King knighted me.”

Olivia was not quite sure of the technical terms, so she answered
nothing, but smiled a smile of interested sympathy. She remembered
suddenly that perhaps he had brought mails. She asked him.

“Mails? Yes, madam. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh I’ve brought the mails. They’re
in his Excellency’s hands.”

“None for you, Mrs. Stukeley, I’m afraid,” said Howard. “Captain
Margaret had one.”

“Captain Margaret?” said Lewin quickly. “Do you know a Captain
Margaret here?”

Stukeley pushed back his chair, and seemed to fumble in his pocket.
Margaret looked up quickly from the cracking of a nut.

“I am he,” he said quietly.

“You are he, are you? I missed your name just now,” said Lewin,
putting his hand within his coat.

Perrin pushed back his chair so that his body covered Lewin from
Stukeley.

“Ah,” continued Lewin, in his hard voice with its ring of jocularity,
“I’ve a letter for you. I was to deliver it into your hands. You’ve
got friends at Court, I think, sir. It came to me through the
Secretary.”

Margaret kept a steady face, not daring to glance at Stukeley; for a
wink to a blind horse may be as disastrous as a blow. His first
thought was, “here it ends”; his second thought told him that Perrin
was giving the show away, by pushing back his chair; his third thought
took in the possibilities of the pistol. He filled his wine-glass
composedly, so that he might have a missile handy, then poured a
little claret into Olivia’s glass.

“Friends at Court, Captain Lewin?” he answered. “No. I don’t think so.
Let me see this mysterious letter.” A sudden impulse urged him to keep
Olivia’s eyes from her husband’s face. “Howard,” he added, “you never
showed Mrs. Stukeley those experiments of yours on the maize-ear.
Aren’t those some of the maize-ears just behind you?”

“Ah yes, Mrs. Stukeley,” said Howard, reaching behind him to the jar.
“Let me explain them to you.”

Lewin selected a sealed packet from his pocket-book and handed it
across the table. Olivia, reaching out her hand to pass the letter to
Margaret, saw the superscription.

“Why,” she cried, “it’s from Uncle Nestor. How strange. We were just
now talking of him.”

“So is this Sir Nestor’s hand?” said Margaret, putting the letter to
one side. He asked because the letter in his pocket was addressed in
the same hand.

“Yes,” said Olivia, looking down at it. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“Read it,” said Stukeley in a strange voice.

Howard laid down his maize-cobs. The letter lay at Margaret’s side;
everybody looked at it. Mrs. Prinsep, in her shrewd Scotch way,
glanced at her neighbours, and saw that there was something wrong.
“There is something wrong somewhere,” she said to herself. Olivia,
looking at Perrin and at her husband, wondered if the heat had been
too much for them. Their faces were so very curious. It struck her
that the talk had gone to pieces. The host, waiting for her head to
turn, so that he might expound his new science to her, held his peace.

“Everybody’s waiting for you, Charles,” she added.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Prinsep, guessing that Margaret disliked Olivia’s
prompting. “Captain Margaret will tell us all the news.”

Captain Margaret asked Mrs. Prinsep if he might hand her a sapadillo.

“I’m anxious to hear the news,” she answered. “No, thank you.”

“Oh,” said Margaret lightly, as he put the letter in his pocket, “I
won’t read the letter during dinner. I’ve been meaning to ask you,
Mrs. Prinsep, how you keep domestic servants here, with such a
scarcity of white women.”

“I’d rather hear what the letter says,” she answered, “than talk about
servants. We get so little news here from England.”

“I don’t understand the craving for news,” said Perrin. “One carries
the world in one’s head.”

“You must want a big head to do that,” said Mrs. Prinsep.

“It doesn’t matter what size it is, so long as it’s empty. Why read
letters and gazettes when one can read imaginative work?”

Mrs. Prinsep remarked with bitterness that she knew not what
imaginative work meant, unless it was a kind of thing which she
disliked very much. She half rose, catching Olivia’s eye. The two
ladies left the room--Mrs. Prinsep to abuse Perrin and to apply
crudely an examination; Olivia to suffer from home-sickness, thinking
of her uncle’s letter. Mrs. Prinsep could draw little from her; for
Mrs. Prinsep, while suspecting something wrong, naturally suspected a
woman of finer beauty than her own of being a party to it. Her theory
was that Olivia had run away from her home, and that, being beautiful,
she was possibly not correctly married. She liked Stukeley; but she
had her duty to herself to consider. She put Olivia through a
conventional catechism, in the course of which she asked for
particulars of the wedding. Olivia, seeing her drift, replied coldly,
in monosyllables.

Meanwhile, in the dining-room, over the wine, Stukeley badgered
Margaret to read the letter.

“Read it,” he kept saying. “Read it. Let’s hear what’s in it.”

Howard wondered at his tone; but as he knew something of Stukeley’s
affairs, he drew Lewin out of the room, so that the voyagers might
read the letter together undisturbed. When he had gone, Margaret
opened the packet brought by Lewin. Stukeley picked up his wine-glass
and crossed over towards Margaret, so that he, too, might read.

“What do you want, Stukeley?” Margaret asked him.

“I want to read that letter, of course. It’s about me.”

“Do you generally read the letters of others?”

“I’m going to read this.”

“Are you?” Margaret looked at him coolly, finished his letter, and
started to read the other. As he had expected, the letters were alike.
One had been brought by a merchantman, the other by the man-of-war.
The letter was that saddest of all letters, the letter of the old man
who asks humbly, knowing the selfishness of youth. That the old man
wrote without hope seemed evident to Margaret from the appeal he made
to chivalrous sentiment. “I am confident to write to you,” ran the
un-confident words, “though we are little acquainted. I had the honour
to serve with your father more than forty years ago.” Then there came
a request that Captain Margaret would cause Stukeley to be arrested
and brought home to trial, so that Olivia might again be under his
care. There was also a moving prayer that he, the son of that old
brother-in-arms who had ridden with the writer at Newbury forty odd
years before, would let Olivia know what her husband had done. She was
ignorant of her husband’s nature; but in England it was said that she
was not so ignorant. In England her honour seemed smirched, for there
were some who saw in her flight the ruse of a criminal and his doxy.
It was right that she should know this, and very right that her
husband should stand his trial, so that their honour might be cleared.
The letter was bitter reading to Margaret. It made him feel that he
had stained Olivia’s honour in staining his own, and all for the sake
of a ruffian incapable of feeling the sacrifice. If the letter had
come before his interview with Howard he would have pleaded
differently, child or no child. He looked grave, helped himself to
more wine, and handed a letter to Perrin.

“What’s the old boy say?” said Stukeley.

“That is surely not your business,” Margaret answered.

“I’ll make it my business. It concerns me. Isn’t it all about me? Eh?”

“No.”

“Isn’t it? I’ll soon see. Now then, Pilly. Hand over.”

“Leave Edward alone,” said Margaret. “The letter’s a private letter to
myself. I prefer that you shall not read it, Stukeley.”

“Shall not. Eh? Blood. Eh? Shall not. Give it to me, Pilly.”

“Sit down, Stukeley,” said Margaret.

“Don’t you touch me, Stukeley,” said Perrin.

“Give me that letter.” He was within snatching distance; but Perrin
twisted aside, so that he missed his mark. He sprawled across Perrin
trying to reach his outstretched hand.

“Get out, you beast,” said Perrin, thrusting with his elbow.

“Temper, eh?” said Stukeley. He feinted quickly for Perrin’s nose;
Perrin’s outstretched hand flew back to guard; the letter was seized
with a whoop of triumph. Stukeley glanced contemptuously at Perrin,
and began to read the letter, as Margaret quietly walked round the
table to him.

Stukeley saw him coming, and kicked Mrs. Prinsep’s chair across his
shins, checking his progress for an instant. As he kicked the chair,
Perrin dashed at him, to snatch the paper. Stukeley flung him aside
heavily, laughing at the fun of the tussle.

“You see what you get, little Pilly,” he said. “You see what you get.
Eh?”

Margaret set aside the chair and advanced upon him. “Now, Stukeley,”
he said, “that letter.”

Stukeley backed a pace to avoid him. Perrin, recovering, felt blindly
along the table for a knife. At this moment the door opened, and
Olivia entered.

“I’ve come to ask if I might read the letter. Uncle Nestor’s letter,
Charles,” she said.

Perrin, in a voice which shook with the hysteria of wrath, told her
that she had better ask her husband.

“There it is,” said Margaret quietly, indicating Stukeley.

Olivia glanced at the three men with surprise, even anxiety. Stukeley,
who had not yet read the letter, looked to Margaret for a hint that
the letter might be shown.

“There it is,” Margaret repeated.

“What is the matter with you three men?” Olivia asked. “You were
fighting.”

“Pilly gets so excited,” Stukeley said.

“What were you doing, Tom?”

“Reading the letter,” Perrin said.

“What is in the letter?”

“There it is,” said Margaret.

Olivia walked softly to her husband. “May I see the letter?” she said,
her eyes full of tears. “I may read the letter, Charles?”

“Yes. I wish you to read it.”

“There it is,” said Stukeley, handing it to her. “What did you two
asses make such a fuss for?” He sat down, helped himself to wine, and
lighted a roll of tobacco-leaf, a kind of primitive cigar. Between the
puffs, he glanced at the two men, and at Olivia’s face. Something in
Olivia’s face attracted him: the eyes seemed to burn; the eyes seemed
to be her intelligence, now starting outward. He looked at Margaret,
wondering if he had done rightly to give the letter; but Margaret
stood there, grave, courteous, self-controlled, his face a mask.
Olivia read the letter, turned the sheet to see if a postscript had
been added, then read it through a second time, turning very white.

“I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “Have you read this, Tom?”

“No, Livy. Let’s see it.”

“I suppose I may show it to Tom, Charles?”

“Yes, Olivia.”

“You’ve read the letter, Charles?”

“Yes, Olivia.”

“Well. I don’t understand. What is Uncle Nestor thinking, Tom?”

Stukeley read the letter, with a desire to have Margaret’s throat in
his hands, squeezing the life out of him. He looked savagely at
Margaret. “You swine, to let me in for this,” he thought. Then he
became conscious that Olivia was closely watching him.

“Strange,” he said, puckering his brows. He took a gulp of wine and
looked at Margaret. “Hadn’t we better go aboard?” he added. “It’s not
a thing we can discuss here. Old Howard might come in.”

“But we can’t go aboard, Tom. The ship is sailing.”

“All our things are on board.”

“Yes. But we must get them. We must go home. You see that, Tom, don’t
you? We must go home to clear our names.”

“We can’t go, Livy, for the reason I told you before.”

“They’re saying these things about us, though.”

“Who is? Some tea-drinking old maids who’ve got at your uncle Nestor.
He doesn’t like me, as you know, so naturally he believes them.”

“But, Tom, what could have started the old maids, as you call them?”

“Our hurried leaving, of course. What else?”

“Ah,” she said, turning very pale, as though a bitter thought had come
to her. “Charles, Charles. Oh, why did not Uncle Nestor write to me,
instead of you? He need not have told you the scandal.”

Margaret, who had gone to the window with Perrin, to look out over the
darkened harbour, while the husband and wife talked together, now
turned gravely towards her, too sad to answer.

“I didn’t mean that, Charles.” She looked from one face to another,
searching for a key to the puzzle, for a way back to the peace of ten
minutes ago.

“What were you doing, Charles, when I came in just now?”

“We were struggling for the letter, Olivia.”

“You had snatched the letter, Tom?”

“From me,” said Perrin.

“I did not wish your husband to read it, Olivia,” Margaret added.

“He told me it concerned me,” said Stukeley, “and naturally, in a
playful way, I snatched it. In a playful way.”

“I told you no such thing,” said Margaret.

“And yet, Charles, you say you did not wish Tom, my husband, to read
it?”

“I did not wish it.”

“And you could hand it on to Edward?”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t understand. And you wished me to read it?”

“Yes, Olivia. I wished you to read it.”

“We can’t discuss it here, Livy,” Stukeley said. “Old Howard may come
in. Let’s go on board.”

“Tom, we can’t go on board. I can’t enter that ship again. They’ve
been calling us that for three months. Do think what it means, dear.”

“Only cackle,” he answered sullenly. “I’m not going to alter my plans
for a little old wives’ cackle.”

“You think it’s only that, Tom?”

“Good luck. Yes.”

“But let’s go home and put an end to it. If we don’t it may grow. It
may----”

The door opened. Howard entered. He looked round them with his air of
weary boredom.

“Captain Margaret,” he said coldly, “your boat is waiting. Your
captain is anxious not to lose the tide.”

“Well, we’ll go on board then. Edward, fetch Olivia’s wraps.”

“No,” Olivia said. “No. Not that. We’re not going, Charles. We’re
going home. Oh, this letter is like a fire.”

“Come, Edward,” said Margaret, “we’ll be getting our cloaks.”

“I’ll get Olivia’s things,” Stukeley said.

“Tom,” she cried, “you aren’t going to run away like this, letting
them think you guilty? You can’t, Tom. Go back. No. No. I can’t let
you. Dear, we must face this. We must go home and face this.”

Margaret was at the door again, hooking the heavy silver cloak-clasp
at his throat. He looked at her pitifully, saying nothing. He wished
that he could help her, for the sake of her little one; but the letter
had struck a jangle in him, and Stukeley had made him lose his temper.
He thought that he had gone too far now, that he had shown Stukeley to
be guilty. He could not bring himself to speak. He was worn out with
the long anxiety of love. He was tired. Stukeley must fight his own
battles, tell his own lies, maintain his own deceptions. He was too
weary of it all to be sad, even when, after shaking the Governor’s
hand and thanking him for his kindness, he turned to Olivia, with his
hand outstretched.

“Well, Olivia,” he said.

“Well,” she said. “What d’you want, Charles?”

“Are you going home?” he asked bluntly.

“Of course I’m going home. Do you think that. Do you think I could
live longer in that ship, eating, and lying down, and watching the
sea, with this being said of me?”

“Yes,” said Stukeley, “I think you could. Put on your wraps, Livy, and
come on.”

“Tom. Tom, dear.”

“I would go, Mrs. Stukeley, if I were you,” said the Governor. “You
couldn’t leave the colony here much before November.”

“I am very sorry,” she answered. “But I don’t think you know the
circumstances.”

“I’ve discussed them with Captain Margaret,” he answered.

“You discussed them, Charles?”

“Yes,” Margaret said. “Howard gives good advice, Olivia.”

“I don’t think my wife wants your advice,” said Stukeley. “Come, Livy.
Here are your wraps. Come on. Don’t let’s have a scene.”

“Tom,” she said, holding out her hands, swaying a little, her eyes
blind with tears. “Tom, I beseech you, let’s go home. What is your
pledged word to--to what they are saying?”

“I’m going to keep my word,” he answered brutally. “Good-bye, Howard.
Thanks for the pie-crust. I hope, next time I see you, you’ll have
some decent wine. Your port is---- So long.” He turned to the other
men. “Come on, Pilly. Come, Maggy.” As he walked to the door, he
looked again at Howard. “So long, me lord,” he said.

“Good-bye, Mr. Stukeley,” said Howard.

“Shake hands.”

“No, thank you.”

Stukeley looked at him with some amusement.

“Oxford man. Eh!” he said, and passed out. Olivia stood swaying,
looking after him, calling to him, through her tears.

“Will you come, Olivia?” Margaret asked her gently.

“Come with you, Charles? With you? You believe Tom guilty.”

“Olivia,” Perrin said, “this goes round your throat, doesn’t it? Then,
here’s your glove. You mustn’t forget your glove.” He helped her with
her things, evidently deeply pained.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, speaking as one stunned.

“Take my arm,” Perrin whispered. “Let’s get into the fresh air.”

She took a stumbling step forward, her hand on Perrin’s arm, then
paused, and faced Margaret. “You think, Charles. You think, because.
Because I’m not very happy. That I shall not notice. But I see. Oh, I
see so well. You wish to poison me against Tom. You wish me to think.
That. That. Him guilty.”

“Quiet, Margaret,” said Howard. “Mrs. Stukeley, it’s my duty to tell
you that your husband is guilty. Better now than later,” he added to
Margaret in a low voice. “She can’t have two scenes like this. It’d
kill her. It is true, Mrs. Stukeley,” he continued. “If he returns to
England, he will be hanged. Now you two, take her out. She’s stunned.
Take her out before the flunkies notice. Get to sea. Don’t wait. Into
the boat with her. Get to sea. Get to the devil.”

The two men supported the dazed creature to the boat. Howard watched
them from his pleasaunce, with an air of weary boredom. “Like clubbing
a kitten,” he said to himself. “But nervous women are. They are.”

He watched them pass away into the night, the oars grunting through
the darkness, the voice of the coxswain sounding very clear. He noted
it as a sign of rain. Afterwards he heard the feet tramping round the
capstan, amid yells and screams and pistol-shots. “There are the men
of war. The buccaneers,” he said cynically. “My reputation’s gone. I
forgot them.” He stood amid his flowers, watching the fireflies,
waiting for the end. He saw dimly the jib of the great ship cloaking a
star. Then among the screams of many drunken men, with laughter, and
shots, and oaths, the topsails jolted up, the parrels groaning, to a
ditty about a girl in Paradise Street. The roaring chorus woke the
ships in harbour. The crews answered, cheering, beating their bells.
The bell of the _Broken Heart_ was rung like the alarm of fire. He
smiled to hear them, repeating the phrases he had planned for his
official report. “She stole away, unnoticed, in the night,” he
repeated. “So that I could not give effect to the Honourable Board’s
command.” “It’s getting chilly,” he said. “I must go in. She’s gone.
She’s out of sight.” From very far away came the words of a chorus,
the cat-fall chorus, sung by men so drunk that they had to take the
cat-fall to the capstan:--


 Blow, my bullies, blow
 For Springer’s Key, ay O.
 There’s plenty of gold,
 So I’ve been told,
 On the banks of the Rio Diablo.


It was the last of her farewells. Howard went indoors, to his game of
cribbage with Mrs. Prinsep. “They have gone to found an empire,” he
said to himself. “That song is an imperial hymn. Men of the Breed.
Eh?”




 X.
 THE LANDFALL


 “We are arrived among the blessed islands,
 Where every wind that rises blows perfumes,
 And every breath of air is like an incense;
 The treasure of the sun dwells here.”
                 _The Island Princess._

 “This new come Captain
 Hath both a ship and men.”
        _The Sea Voyage._


The _Broken Heart_ made a poor passage. The eighteen hundred miles
of sea between the Capes and the Samballoes were dragged through
wearily, in calms, in light airs, in head winds, during six weeks of
torment. Through the Florida Channel, across a sea of brass; through
the Yucatan Channel, hugging the Cuban side; then launching out, past
Grand Cayman, past Providence, she rolled and drove, foul with her
months at sea. Her gilt was battered off, her paint peeled; her once
white decks were crossed with tar marks, where the seam-tar, sticking
to shoes, had been impressed crosswise as the seamen walked. An awning
was over her poop. Her boys splashed her decks continually with salt
water. The men about decks did their work languidly. At night they lay
among the booms, sheltered from the dew, sleeping in their watches,
their eyes covered lest the moon should blast them.

A ship driving to the south, with all her sails set, her side a little
bowed, whitening a line along her fo’c’s’le, is beautiful to see,
noble, an image of wonder. She should be allowed to pass, swaying her
beauty in a rhythm; for beauty is enough; one should not question
beauty. If one question, then in that stately ship may be found a
hell. Men mutinous, officers overdriven, boys in misery, the captain
drunk; wasted men forward, flying from justice; broken men aft,
carrying their incompetence to other lands, to breed it there
unchecked; the rigging rotten, the sails threadbare, all the hull of
the ship in outcry, a decay, a fraud; down in the hold a fire
smouldering, a little red glow, a fireball, not flame yet, waiting,
charring the beams, blackening in the bales, till the wind fan it to a
crackling triumph, to a blaze, a mastery, amid the screams of men,
amid death. Even such a ship was the _Broken Heart_, as she drove on
to the south, her sails slatting. Within her were many tortured
hearts, each heart a chamber in hell, in the hell of the wicked or the
weak, where the prisoned soul atoned, or added to the account to be
paid later. At the galley door, waiting for the cook to let them light
their pipes, their one pleasure, the seamen watched the gentry,
envying them, talking bitterly of them, angry at the world’s injustice
to themselves, angry at the ease which they would lack, though they
lived to be old men, always working hard.

Of all the ship’s company, Olivia was the most to be pitied, for she
was in the worst hell. Her soul had been bruised in the stalk; all
that made life for her had been taken from her violently. She could
not think. When she rose up an image rose up with her. If she shut her
eyes, it was there; if she looked out over the sea, it was there
still: the image of the room ashore; the fruit plates, the smell of
wine, the men standing guiltily, the sheet of creased letter, with its
fine, tremulous writing. All of it she saw. It was always with her.
When she lay down it was there; when she slept it was heavy upon her,
like the trance of a sick man. Sometimes, in spite of her will,
against her nature, it played itself over to her in her mind, like a
farce, a stupid farce, ending in tragedy, in one stunning blow,
crushing out sense, as it had crushed her in life. Her husband would
be there, rude and common--rude to her, common before all those
men--stripping away the cloaks her love had wrapped about him. Her
husband, the flaming young love, the man she had chosen, was before
her, acting as she had once seen a drunken man act when dragged by his
wife out of a beer-shop. She had loved that, given herself to that.
Then Howard’s words, clubbing home the meaning of her husband’s
rudeness. That horrible flash of insight, of intuition, which made the
guilt apparent; that was harder to bear than Howard’s words, more
terrible, now that it returned to her. All along the memories of her
married life were headlands, promontories, projecting blacknesses,
unexplained, irritating; the unanswered questions which had puzzled
her. Thus and thus her husband had acted in the past, queerly, she had
thought, even then, not as she would have had him act, not as a knight
would have acted, not as the men she had known would have acted. The
acts had puzzled her, they had frightened her; but she had explained
them, she had told herself that men were different, and that she loved
this man. Now there came a light, a sudden meteor. The black capes and
headlands glared out upon her, lit up, one after the other, in a
baleful vista, a marching, illuminated army of witnesses, glaring out
his guilt, one after the other, day after day, night after night, a
sleepless company. They seemed to shout to her, tossing the words one
from the other, in her disordered mind, “If he returns to England, he
will be hanged.” He had said that he had loved her; but that seemed
ages ago; and he had tricked her into this, deceived her at every
turn, lied to her, cajoled others into lying to her, all the time
amusing himself, laughing, pretending, a common thing, a man with a
mind like a footman’s. At first, nerving herself, she had tried to
talk with him, willing to forgive, only asking, for her own part, an
explanation. She would have been content with that. She would have
been almost happy had he come to her like an erring boy, asking her to
count him merely that. She had spoken to him in her cabin that night,
pleading with him, kneeling to him, while the drunkards on deck made
sail. Her whole world had lain in ruins; she had thought that nothing
more could hurt her; but when she spoke the ruins flew about her,
wounding her, cutting her to the quick. He had answered her brutally.
His answer had come, as it were, set to the music of the drunkards
above. It would not out of her head. All her nerves shook with it, as
though the blow struck her in her face. He had sworn at her, jeered at
her, called her a lump of cold batter, told her to get to the devil,
told her that he was sick of the sight of her, that he had married her
for her money, that if she gave him any more of her canting preaching
he’d hit her one that she’d remember. Later in the night, as she lay
crying at his side, he bade her for God’s sake to stop snivelling, so
that he might get to sleep. As she could not stop, he had arisen,
telling her that she might cry herself sick, but that he was going to
Mrs. Inigo, a woman who wasn’t quite such a cold poultice. She had not
stopped him. She could not stop him. He had gone from her; leaving her
life too empty for her to wish even to kill herself.

Another dreadful thing, still dreadful, although so much was numbed in
her, was the meeting with her husband the next day. She had thought
him some common stranger; that had been the dreadful thing. He had
seemed vulgar to her; a person out of her circle; she could not bring
herself to speak to him. All that she could do was to glance at his
neck continually. It had a horrible fascination for her, this neck
that the rope was laid for. She did not hate him. He was dead to her;
that was all; the worst horror was when she remembered her love-days,
seeing him now as he was. She bore her lot alone, shut up in her
cabin, seldom venturing out. At times she would lie back, in a nervous
crisis, clenching her fingers into her palms, shaking with the hate of
Captain Margaret. He might, she thought, have spared her that scene at
the Governor’s. But no; it was all his plan; all; from the very first;
his plan to have her near him. That was his love for her, to have her
near him, to poison her against her husband, to tempt her husband with
another woman, to heap all these indignities, all these torments, so
that he, the lover, might triumph. All the voyage he had been at it.
Little things came back to her now; little tender, insinuating acts.
They came over her in a shock of shame. She hated him, she hated him.
And yet, for all her hate of him, she could not think of leaving the
ship, nor of what her future was to be; that was all dead and blank to
her. England was dead and blank to her. She could not go back to
England, save as some wounded hare, with the blood glazing on her fur,
limping to her form to die. She was stunned; she could not think. Her
death in life would go on for a little; perhaps for a long while; it
did not matter how. Then it would stop; all that she could ask would
be that it might soon stop. Perrin was the only person whom she could
bear to see, or to speak with. It was through him, she guessed, that
her husband was removed from her sight. He was living now, Perrin told
her, in the ’tween-decks, having his meals in the wardroom. Perrin,
Margaret, and Cammock had taken to living in their cabins, so that she
might not be oppressed with company. She filled in the unsaid portion
of Perrin’s speech with “living with Mrs. Inigo”; and she knew from
Perrin’s face that he understood her thought, and that she was right.
She liked Perrin more and more as the days passed. She understood him
now, she thought. The world had gentled him by some such blow as had
crushed her. She could never think of him as the thoroughly foolish
man he was. She only thought of him as a poor hurt waif, almost a
woman in many ways, who felt for her keenly enough to know that he
must not show his feeling. She liked his shy way of coming into the
cabin in the late afternoon, when the steward served the chocolate. He
would enter shyly, speaking with a false air of jocularity, to propose
chess, poetry, a game at cards, or a little music. The time would pass
quietly. He would lose that false air of his; they would talk together
almost like sisters, until the change of the watch at six o’clock. He
helped her through her worst days, nor did she ever know that the
tales he told her, the little jokes in his conversation, were repeated
from the talk of the man she hated; as the hated man had planned, in
his blind love for her.

Captain Margaret had his little hell about him; the days were bitter
to him. All day long, and through the night, he had the image of his
dishonour with him. All the weeks of deceit, all the acts of deceit,
all the long strain of pretence; they were all over. They had ended in
her hating and suspecting him. He would lie awake in the night, and
the memory of his deceit would eat into him like acid, burning. He
would blush, lying there in his bunk, at the thought of his baseness;
it stuck in his throat, now that he could see things clearly. He had
eaten dirt in a vile cause; all honest men must loathe him, he
thought. Then came another memory, the memory of Olivia, her beauty,
her paleness, her voice, her sorrow. It was bitter to him to feel that
he was the bitterest part of her sorrow, and that he could not help
her, nor comfort her, but only prompt Perrin to help her. He tried to
tell himself that her beauty was an excuse for him. His love had been
noble enough; it had not been selfish; he had had little joy of the
ignoble things he had done for her sake. He wished that some spirit
would surround his tortured head with heavenly essence, so that he
might see clearly, as God sees, all the moral value of his acts, all
the right and the wrong, in fiery letters, easy to read. She was very
beautiful, and still young. Meanwhile he had his life to live, and his
task to do. It was not going to be an easy task. He was coming to it
broken. His only comfort in these days was the knowledge that Stukeley
had lied when he had said that Olivia was going to have a child. That
horror was removed for ever. Stukeley had lied. He prayed that some
day the patient fates would take Stukeley, and show him, for an
instant, before death, the image of himself. He needed not to have
prayed. To most of us the patient fates come, holding up that image.
Besides, Margaret knew well that Stukeley had had his image spoiled
for him by the accident of his birth. The man loved animals; was truly
kind and thoughtful with them. He should have been a groom, a hunt
groom, with an alehouse and ostlers for his evenings. Margaret could
see Stukeley holding up his hands, when his image came to him, saying
that it was not his own work, but the work of the drunken fox-hunter
his father, who came home bloody from the mangling of a fox, to give
his little son drink, and to egg him on to kiss the maids.

Cammock was not free from trouble; he had his own share. The _Broken
Heart_ was no happier to him, though he no longer suffered from
Stukeley. The men of war were the cause of the trouble, even as he had
feared. They were too independent, they resented control, they had a
bad effect upon the ship’s discipline. He had had trouble with them
from the very first, when they came aboard drunk, twenty-seven of
them, bringing with them, as members of their company, the two
deserters from the trading-booth. He had promptly put the two
deserters into irons for a night. He had then turned them forward,
stopped their rum for the voyage, and forced them to work on deck from
eight in the morning till four in the afternoon, on all days, whether
it was their watch or not. This had caused a mutiny among the men of
war. They had come on deck to demand the return of their mates.
Margaret, having called all hands aft, had spoken to them, as Cammock
confessed, “like a father.” He had read his commission to them. He had
promised them that, if they showed any signs of rebellion, he would
land them at an English colony, where they should be drafted into the
Navy without mercy. He had then called out the two men who had been
most noisy in the mutiny, and had put them in the bilboes abaft the
main mast, under a sentry, for the next three days. But though the
mutiny was crushed, the ill-feeling remained. The men of war went
about their duties sullenly, showing that they resented his action.
The fo’c’s’le hands, quick to catch the mutinous temper, became
“soldiers,” who loafed and skulked, till the mates, goaded by their
insolence, made protest, with a bight of the topgallant brace. Cammock
had more than the anxieties of office on his shoulders. He had to walk
the poop, the captain of all on board, in a false position. In a sense
he was a privateer. Had he been, as he once was, a privateer only, he
would have known how to handle the privateers beneath him. He
understood them. He could even feel for them; he knew how they felt
towards him; when he saw them hanging round the hatch, cursing the
cruise and all on board. But in the _Broken Heart_ he was less the
privateer than the merchant captain going trading. He had divided
interests to manage; he had a divided crew under his command. He could
see that the temper of the ship was as bad as it could be. The men
were in that difficult state a little on this side of mutiny, always
on the verge, never quite declaring, but sullen enough to make their
captain’s life an anxious life. He expected that their arrival at
Springer’s Key would put them in a better spirit. He wished that he
could give them some fighting on the way; for it was the belief of his
old commander that there is nothing like the sight of a dead or
wounded comrade to make a man look to his leader with trust and
thankfulness. Meanwhile he drilled all hands daily at the guns,
expecting a refusal of duty at any moment. Thinking of the situation
in the quiet of his cabin, he decided that the crew would not stand
failure. “If we fail,” he said, “this gang will not try twice. No
privateers will. And these aren’t the pick of the Kipe.” He felt that
the cruise would fail. His forebodings obsessed him. When he walked
the poop at nights, walking athwartships now, not fore and aft, lest
the helmsman should attack him from behind, he was sure that he would
never see home again. He was always imagining a place of noise and
smoke, with himself falling forward on the sand, looking his last,
shot in the body. The obsession made him more serious than usual. He
borrowed a Testament from Perrin and read the last chapter. Perrin
angered him by saying that the last chapter bored him to death.

As for Stukeley, his senses were gratified; he asked for nothing more
from the world. He had every reason to feel satisfied. He had not been
arrested in Virginia, that was good; he had broken with his
batter-pudding of a wife, that was better; and he was no longer
tortured by the prigs of the cabin. He was messing now in the
wardroom, with Cottrill and Ramage, visiting Mrs. Inigo openly,
whenever he liked; that was best of all. Neither Margaret nor Perrin
had spoken to him since he had bragged to them of having broken with
Olivia, of having fooled them about her child. Cammock had told him
that he was to leave the cabin precincts and that when they wanted him
as an interpreter they would send for him; but that until then he
would either lie low or go in irons. At the moment he was too pleased
with his successes to regret his loss of power. He was content to lie
low, and to refrain from offering insults to all who irritated him. He
patched up a truce with Mr. Cottrill, whom he found to be good
company. He made friends with Smut, the ship’s cat, and taught one of
her kittens to walk on bottle-mouths. He made friends with several of
the men of war, who had their mess without the wardroom. He would sing
“Old Rose” and “Twankydillo” to them, in the fine bass voice of which
he was so vain. Like most seafaring men, the privateers thought much
of a fine singer. They used to hang about the wardroom door after
supper, to hear him singing quietly to himself, going over his trills
and gurgles. He had but to come out into the ’tween-decks to find
himself a popular idol. Men would rise up from their chests, with real
courtesy, as he came among them. If there were singers there they
became silent suddenly, tale-tellers ceased in their stories. There
came a low murmur of “Good evening, sir. Good evening, Mr. Stukeley.
Will you sit down, sir? Are we past the Serranas yet, d’ye know, sir?”
till he was entrapped among them. As he did not know sailors, he took
all this to be a tribute to his good looks, to his fine physique, to
his manner, to his taking conversation. He used to get them to tell
him of their lives on the coast, believing that it was a kind of life
which might please himself. He inquired also of the life in the
Spanish towns, that lazy, luxurious life, with so many opportunities
for amassing wealth and for self-indulgence. A buccaneer would handle
a guitar, and sing, in a high, false, musical whine, about “my Santa
Marta.” Another buccaneer, drumming on his chest-lid, would begin
about the Spanish girls and the sack of Porto Bello. Listening to
them, down in the half-darkness, Stukeley felt that he, too, would
soon taste of that life. He would lie in a grass hammock, fanned by a
Spanish-Indian girl, whose great eyes would look into his. Eh? He
would eat skewered “soldiers” from the hands of an Indian wife. He
would catch fireflies to stick in her hair. Perhaps he would see the
sack of a town, with the women crouched in their rooms, waiting for
the conquerors. “Brown women; modest, lively little things,” so
Raphael Gamage told him.

The days dragged by slowly. The _Broken Heart_ crawled like a slug,
leaving a slug’s track on the sea. The bells struck, the sails
slatted. The sun arose greyly in mist, then burned the mist away, a
spilling spring of light, in a sky like blue fire. Then in the glare
of noon the chart was marked, the pencilled dot moved forward in its
zigzag, past the Serranas, past Roncif, past the Roncadores. Then the
wind came fair for a few days to help her to the south, her bows in a
heap of smother. Presently, when the first land-wind came to them, in
a faint breath, smelling, as they said, of arnotto roses, there came
drifting butterflies, white and blue, very lovely, settling and dying
on the deck, like petals from a fruit tree in spring. A strange bird
sailed past them, drooping her legs, her wings beating like a
mill-wheel, rhythmically, her fierce eyes looking ahead, searching the
sky. A tree tumbled in their wash, rolling over and over. A creeper
from the branches sank in the wake, its leaves like little green
hands, clutching out, far down, among the globes of the bubbles. Then
when the sun was sinking, when the air was intense and clear, like the
air in a vision, far ahead a bluish mist showed, so dimly, in such
blue faintness, that one could not be sure. Till dark they watched it.
When the dawn made each cloud a scale of scarlet, edged with fire to
the mid-heaven, the mist took outline. Long before sunset the land lay
clear, a long purplish line of land, with a gleaming peak or two round
which the cloud streamed. It stretched away on each side of them, like
an army in rank. Parts of it were dim; its wings were dim; but ahead
the hills were gathered close; one could count each fold in them.
Margaret, loitering on the poop with Perrin, watched them intently,
with emotions which mastered him. A voice seemed to be talking to him.
“What went ye out for to see?” it repeated. He had gone out to see
this land, to hear the multitudes of sea-fowl scream. There lay the
land. Like all lands seen from the sea, it seemed to lure him, to
beckon to him, to be full of mystery, of mystery which he could solve.

“So that’s the land,” he said at length. “What do you make of it,
Edward?”

“I?” said Edward. “It makes me shudder somehow. It’s the end of
something. Change is always horrible to me.”

Cammock joined them, thumbing the leaves of a portolano.

“We’re away to the east, sir,” he said to Margaret. “If you’ll stand
in a bit further, sir, we shall open Golden Island clear, before dark.
That’ll give me a landfall to go by.”

“And when shall we make Springer’s Key, captain?”

“To-morrow, some time, sir. But we’ll stand in further here, if you
don’t mind. There may be some of those friends of ours in the harbour
here. A nice little sandy bay in there, sir.”

Soon the hills drew nearer. The line of land became jagged. What had
seemed to be the main now showed as islands, a long, low island, dark
with mangrove, and to the south of it a sloping peak, wooded to the
top, a cone of green, with rocks about it over which the breakers
toppled. Margaret could see the line of the breakers advancing towards
them, blue and glassy. In the stillness, he could see the curl on the
wave, the slow running curl along the line, then the intense
brightness of the burst, a momentary marvel of white. He looked at
Cammock, who was looking at the wooded hill, full of memories. A few
of the men of war, faking a hawser in the waist, stopped their work to
look with him. One or two of them, raising their caps, waved to the
island. “Good old Golden Island,” they cried. “The good old Golden
Island.”

“Yes,” said Captain Cammock to Margaret. “That’s Golden Island. Last
time I was ashore there we were three hundred strong, going across the
Isthmus. We’d fires on the sands there, I and my brother Bill,
roasting crabs together. I remember we chucked pebbles over that palm
on the spit there. Queer the palm being there and Bill gone, sir. He
could chuck good, too; further’n I could.”

“You were very much attached to your brother, weren’t you?” Margaret
asked him.

“I didn’t set much value by him at the time, sir. It’s afterwards one
feels it. There’s a little black devil of a reef beyond there, two
feet under water at a low spring. You don’t see it, and yet it rips
you across all right. Ready oh, Mr. Cottrill. Haul the foot of the
mainsail up. Hands about ship. Ease down the hellum.”

They sailed past Golden Island, and past Sasardi, watching the colours
of the sunset on the rocks and woods. The brilliant birds flew homing,
screaming. A faint smell, sickly sweet, came to them in puffs from the
shore. Now and then, in the quiet, they heard the wash of breakers
bursting on reefs. The noise kept them company at intervals through
the night, as they drove on, under the stars, past Pinos, past Zambo
Gandi, towards the Point of San Blas. It burst upon them mournfully,
like the blowing of a sea-beast, a wash, a breathing of the sea. When
the dawn broke, flashing the flying-fish into silver arrows, they were
at their hearts’ desire. The palms on Springer’s Key were trembling,
in the light air, before them. The ring of reef on the key’s north
side stood up black amid the surf that toppled tirelessly. Pelicans
flew past to fish. Macaws screamed from the fruit trees. Two Indians,
with gold in their noses, waved to them from their canoe as they
paddled softly, to spear cavally. Beyond them, at anchor off the key,
was a small sloop. Her men were filling water ashore, wading slowly up
the beach with puncheons. The saluting gun, fired by Cammock’s order,
made them gather together in a group. One of them waved. Others, still
in the boat, rowed out to show the channel. The sun shone bright over
the multitude of islands. The sea was so blue that the beauty of her
colour was like a truth apprehended. It was so perfect a beauty that
Margaret, looking on it, felt that he apprehended the truth.

“Perrin,” he said, “Edward, what do you think of our home?”

“I’m not thinking of that,” he answered. “I think that all these
things are images in an intellect. I think, by brooding on them, one
passes into that intellect.”

The colours and house-flag blew out clear as the ship came to her
berth. The sloop fired a salute; the _Broken Heart_ answered her. Soon
she was opposite the little sandy beach in the centre of the key. Her
sails drooped, her way checked; then, at Cammock’s shout, the anchor
dropped, the cable running with a rattle, making the little fish
scurry past, in view, though a fathom down.

“Well, sir,” said Cammock, “we’ve broken the neck of that.”

“Yes, captain. And now?”

“I’ve had the old sail-room turned into a dining-room. It’s laid for
breakfast now, sir. I’ve got to see the captain of that sloop and
learn the news. That’s the first thing. Call my boat away, boatswain.”

The privateer sloop was the _Happy Return_ of Jamaica, Captain Tucket,
bound on a roving cruise with twenty men and a French commission. She
carried six small guns, and her men wore arms, all of the very
choicest make; but her hold was full of goods which Captain Tucket
wished to sell. From Jamaica he had brought beads and coloured cloths,
with which he was buying gold-dust, wax, and bird-peppers from the
Indians. He had also several tons of Guiaquil chocolate and sweetmeats
lately taken on the sea. He had come to Springer’s Key, he said, to
fill water, before going east along the coast, as far as the ’Seniqua,
looking for logwood. Things were quiet, he said, along the Main; there
was nothing doing; only a few barcalongas taken. There had been talk
at La Sound’s Key of combining and going to the Santa Maria
gold-mines, but it had come to nothing. The French and English would
not agree upon a leader. For his own part, he said, he believed there
was logwood along some of these rivers east there, and he was going to
look for it. He was a shrewd, but frank, elderly man.

“Look here,” he said, taking out a handkerchief. “There’s some of it.
I dyed that of a slip I cut. None of your business where. There’s a
pretty red for you. And I got another dodge I’m working at. Here. What
d’you make of these?”

He flung upon the table a few little sticks, some of them crimson,
some blue.

“What are these?” said Margaret, examining them. “Are they wax?”

“Yes, sir. Ordinary beeswax.”

“You’ve got them a very beautiful clear colour. Look, Edward. Did you
learn the secret yourself?”

“You wouldn’t learn to do them at one of your English colleges, sir.”

“No. Will the colour stand fire?”

“They’re very good coloured wax anyway,” said Captain Tucker, putting
them away.

“We was thinking of trying to trade at Tolu,” Cammock said. “Would you
care to stand in with us?”

“At Tolu?”

“They may not trade, of course; but----”

“I’ve come here,” Margaret said, “to establish a trade, Captain
Tucker. If I’m not allowed to trade with the Spanish towns, I shall
trade here, like you, and defend such traders as come to me. All this
coast is going to waste. I want to see all you roving traders banded
together to make use of it. The Spanish can’t work it. Why should not
you join us, with your men, for a beginning?”

“The jackal went a-hunting with the lion, sir. But it wasn’t him got
the tender-loin,” said Tucket.

“You mean you’re afraid that my men might impose on yours?”

“Ah come, come, Abel,” said Cammock. “We’re old hands, you and I. It’s
all a matter of articles.”

“I must talk it over,” said Abel. “I’ll run over to La Sound’s Key and
talk it out with my mates. I won’t say. No, sir. I won’t say. Not one
way or the other.”

He left soon after breakfast, and, having now filled his water, sailed
from the key.

“He’s afraid of me,” said Margaret. “He’s afraid that I come from the
Government, to put down privateering. Isn’t that what’s in his mind?”

“No, sir,” said Cammock. “He’s pleased with the notion. He’s a trader.
He wants to cut logwood without any fear of guarda-costas. He’ll take
all the defence you care to give; but he won’t come cruising with you
till he’s got enough friends to stop you taking the lion’s share.
He’ll be back to-morrow with some friends.”

Margaret went ashore, after this, to view the key. It was one of the
larger keys of the archipelago. It was about a mile long, running east
and west, and about a quarter of a mile across at its broadest part.
In its highest part it was not more than sixty feet above the water;
but the trees rising up above it to great height made it seem hilly. A
sandy beach shelved down into the water on the side facing the
Isthmus. On the north side the shore was rocky and steep-to, and
hemmed about, by a five-mile sweep of reef, in a ring of breakers.
Indeed, the reef ringed the key round; but the rocks about the beach
did not break the seas. The island could only be approached from the
south and east. On the other side neither ship nor boat could come
within great-gun-shot. To the east, for a dozen miles or more, an
array of palm keys stretched, with reefs in tumult round them. To
approach the key from the east one had to sail within these keys, in a
channel or fairway known as Springer’s Drive. This channel was
bordered to the south by the keys fringing the Isthmus. The double
line of keys, separated by three miles of sea, made a sort of palm
hedge, or avenue, up to the anchorage. There was good holding-ground
and riding in every part of the Drive; but ships usually rode near
Springer’s Key, for they could get water there. Unlike most of the
keys, it had a spring, which bubbled up strongly on the beach, through
an old sunk tar-barrel, some yards beyond the tide-marks. The water
was cold and clear, gushing up with a gurgle, making the sand grains
dance. The bottom of the cask was covered with rusty iron, old nails,
old blades of knives, old round-shot, laid there by sailors, long ago,
in the belief that they would make the water medicinal. Some one had
dammed up a pool below the cask, for the easier filling of the
water-breakers. The water gurgled away, over the lip of the pool, amid
a tangle of water plants that bore a profuse sweet blossom, like a
daisy. Margaret had never seen a lovelier place. The brightness of the
sun on the sea, the green of the trees towering up beyond him, the
macaws of all colours, making their mockeries in sweet notes, were
beautiful exceedingly. It was all new and strange to him. He half
wished that he might be left alone there. He had no longer any wish to
succeed. Had Olivia been on the other side of the world, his strength
would have gone to make this spot a home for half the ships in the
world. They would have lain there, with their sails as awnings, at
anchor off the city he had builded. His citizens would have made those
islands another Venice, another Athens, a glorious city, a city of
noble life and law. All that was in his imagination might have
existed, he thought. All the splendour should have come in praise of
her. Nothing would have stopped him. In his heart her face would have
flowered, that beautiful, pale face, the image of the woman he loved;
he would have made his city glorious. Marble bridges should have
spanned the channels. His empire would have spread. It would have
spread over the sea there, over the keys, over the low coast fringed
with mangroves, over the hills, dim in the south, over the crags where
the clouds streamed, beyond the great bay, far into the south, past
Garachina, past Tumbez, beyond Ylo to the Evangelists. He would have
been a king. His ships would have scented all the seas of the world,
bringing balms and spice home. Now all that was over, he saw what
might have been. It would not now be. He had no wish now to see his
city rise. He found his imagination dulled. The woman who had been his
imagination, through whom, alone, he had lived imaginatively, walked,
a tired shadow, with heavy eyes, in the ship beyond the reef. If he
passed her she shuddered, averting her eyes. If he spoke to her--twice
he had tried to speak to her--she drew in her breath, her eyes shut;
she drew away from him as from a snake. He had no heart left to think
of cities. All that he wished now was to do what he could for the
merchants who had risked their money. The city would have to wait till
the other lover came. The city would rise up glorious from the beauty
of some other woman. All his love, and high resolve, and noble effort
had come to this, that Olivia thought him something lower than
Stukeley, something baser than the beasts.

He walked with Cammock to the island’s eastern end, where a rocky
hillock stood out from the trees. He saw that a fort there would
command the channel. Six of his long-range guns planted there under
cover would be enough to defend the anchorage against any probable
attack from guarda-costas. He drew a sketch-plan for a small redoubt,
and ordered half his crew ashore to begin the clearing of the ground.
He would have a wall of unmortared stones, backed by gabions, leaving
embrasures for the six cannon. The outside of the fort would be
covered with earth and sand, so that from a little distance it would
look like a natural hillock. He caused a dozen men to cut down bejuco
cane, and to plait it, while green, into wattle for the gabions. An
Indian prince came to him from the Main that afternoon. He entertained
him with ceremony, giving gifts of beads and petticoats, with the
result that, the next morning, there were fifty natives on the key
helping in the clearing of the ground. They, too, were bribed by
beads. They were kindly, intelligent fellows, accustomed to be
reckoned as the equals of white men, so that Cammock, superintending
the work, had to watch his hands, lest they should treat their guests,
in the English style, as niggers. The fort, such as it was, was
finished on the third day. Its outer face showed from the sea like a
sloping hillock, which in a few days would be again green with
creepers. Within the wall of gabions, backed by wattle-bound piles,
was a gun platform, with dry powder storerooms twenty feet behind each
gun. The guns were mounted on iron carriages, and so arranged that
each of the six could play across some ninety degrees of the compass.
A roof of felt was rigged over each gun to protect the gunners in the
rains. Margaret wished to hoist the colours over the fort; but Perrin
begged that the new republic might be spared, at any rate till it was
worth appropriating. Cammock advised him to refrain, lest the
buccaneers should suspect him of playing for the hand of the Crown. So
no flag was hoisted, though within the fort, daily, military sentries
paced, firing a gun at dawn and sunset.

While the fort was in building some of the Indians cleared a space
among the wood. In the clearing they built a great house for the
workers: a thatched house twelve feet high, with wattle walls made
rainproof. The uprights supported the hammocks at night. Those who
slept ashore built always a fire of aromatic leaves in the house’s
centre. Before turning in they sprinkled this with water to make a
smoke. Those who woke in the night smelt the sweet, strong smoke which
made their eyes smart, and heard without the never-ceasing march of
the surf, the drone of the dew-flies, and the drowsy twang of the
mosquitoes, plagued by the smoke.

Captain Tucket returned after some days with a sample of logwood and a
consort. The consort was that Captain Pain who afterwards made such a
stir in the Western Gulf. He was a prosperous captain even then. His
ship was a fine French-built vessel of great beauty. His crew numbered
ninety-seven hands, the very flower of the trade. He seemed suspicious
of Margaret, who opened a trade with him on liberal terms. The
privateers bought arms and clothes, paying for them with silver and
gold; but there was constraint on both sides. The privateers were
suspicious. At dinner in the trade-room Captain Pain gave voice to his
suspicions.

“You’re a gentleman,” he said. “I don’t know what you want out here.”

“Well,” said Margaret, “I’ve already told you. I’ve a scheme for
breaking the Spanish power here. But before I take any violent action
I wish to try once again to establish a trade on ordinary, peaceful,
European lines. There is no reason why they shouldn’t trade.”

“And if they do,” said Pain, “where do we come in?”

“You will be my partner, I hope,” said Margaret. “We will have all
these islands laid out in vanillas, cacao, indigo, anatta, cochineal,
everything. All the Isthmus there will be our estate. We shall trade
with the Spaniards and the whole of Europe.”

“Very nice, too,” said Pain. “But if the Spaniards won’t trade?”

“Then we shall declare that they’ve no right here, and that we, in the
name of the rest of the world, have a right to assist the rightful
owners of the country, who wish us to trade.”

“And then a governor’ll come, and stop our going on the account,” said
Pain.

“Yes. But if he does,” said Margaret, “you must see that with the
Isthmus in your hands you’ll be better off than you are now. What do
you do now? You pick up a boatful of sugar once a month, and share a
crown a man. Then you run short of food and go to Toro for turtle.”

“That’s it, Pete,” said Cammock.

“Your scheme’s very pretty,” Pain said. “But you’re a gentleman. I
ain’t a gentleman myself, thank God, and I don’t know what your game
is. You’re either a bit off your biscuit, or you’re in with the
Government. That’s my candid opinion.”

“All right,” said Margaret. “We won’t go into that.”

At this moment Stukeley entered, a little flown with rum, from the
ward-room dinner.

“Hello, Maggy,” he said. “I’ve come to talk with Captain Pain here.
Your servant, captain. I suppose these twisters here have been talking
about and about it. Eh? They make a man sick, I say. Eh? Hold your
tongue, Maggy. Wait till you’re spoken to. I’ve got something to say.
The men of war--my friends in the ’tween-decks there--they’ve been
talking with me while you’ve been talking here. You talk all day, and
leave off just where you were.”

“And what have you done?” said Perrin.

“I’m not addressing you, Pilly.”

“Do you come as the spokesman of the men of war?” Margaret asked.

“Yes, I do, my little Maggy.”

“Gamage is a shy, retiring soul,” Perrin said.

“He isn’t a crawler, anyway.”

“Well,” Cammock said, “let’s have the message. Here’s Captain Pete
waiting on us.”

“Right,” Stukeley said, sitting down at the table. “Then I’m to tell
you that the men of war want to know when they’re going to have what
they came for. They’re sick of doing sentry-go in the ant-heap yonder.
They signed for a roving life.”

“They signed to obey our orders,” Cammock said. “They’ll get all the
roving they’ve a need for soon enough.”

“So they say,” Stukeley answered. “If you don’t give it them they’ll
take it, and half your crew besides.”

“I’ll look after my crew,” Cammock said.

“Not with Captain Tucket and Captain Pain here,” said Stukeley,
grinning. “You see. If you cut up nasty, Cammock. Why. You’ve a very
good ship, and a lot of useful weapons in your hold. Long eighteens.
Eh? Carry a mile and a quarter. What’s to stop us putting you ashore.
Eh?”

“That’s what we did to the Frenchman,” Cammock said. “D’you remember,
Pete?”

“At the Isla Vache,” said Pain, looking down modestly. “I remember.”

He spoke with such a strange inflection that none there could guess
his meaning, though all looked at him curiously. He turned to Stukeley
with attention, as though expecting something more.

“So,” Stukeley continued, “your humble servants of the ’tween-decks
ask that you will give them a brush. Or----”

“Or what?”

“They’ll ask Captain Pain here to find them hammock-space.”

Captain Pain seemed to search Stukeley’s face for something further.

“You seem determined to put me in a queer position, mister,” he said.
“But come now, Mr. Margaret. What’s wrong with having a go at Tolu?
We’ve a hundred and ninety men. Why not?”

“I must trade, or try to trade. I’ve told you. I’m a merchant.”

“Quite right, sir,” said Tucket. “I’m a merchant, too. I’d be only too
glad to trade.”

“They won’t let you,” said Stukeley. “So why not look at the position
honestly.”

“Well. Trade. Try it,” said Pain. “If you try it, you’ll get a
sickener. Then you’ll fight all the better, after.”

“They used to trade,” said Cammock. “I’ve known a lot of interloping
done. At Maracaibo they traded.”

“They won’t now,” Pain said. “Any man caught trading without the
King’s license is up for the everlasting prison remediless. You don’t
believe me. You try.”

“I shall try,” Margaret said.

“Right O,” said Pain. “Then we’ll sail to-morrow. Our two ships will
keep out of sight of land. We could lie by among them Bernadoes. You
can send in samples with your interpreter in Captain Tucket’s sloop.
If they see a big ship standing in they’ll fire at her. So send the
sloop. They’ll not listen to you. They’ll likely fire at the sloop. So
the next morning we’ll land and take the town. There’s twenty pound a
man in Tolu. Silver.”

Cammock, to give Margaret the cue, for he knew that Pain held the whip
hand, said that he approved. “That sounds like business,” he said.
“This is Tolu, Captain Margaret.” He pulled out a quarto pocket-book
containing elaborate charts of many places on the Main. The book had
been the work of many days, and of many hands, for some of the charts
had been copied, some made on the spot, some taken in fight, others
bought, or drawn from hearsay, or bequeathed. It contained manuscript
notes worth a lot of money to a good many people. “This is Tolu, sir.
In Morrosquillo Gulf here. This long beach runs twenty miles. It’s all
hard sand, shelving, and shallowish water in the gulf. Then back of
the town there’s forest. But all very flat land, as far as Cispata.
Ain’t that so, Pete?”

“Flat as your palm. Them’s nice maps you got, Lion.”

“Yes. I got some nice ones of these here islands. Every anchorage and
spring marked. Basil done them. You remember Basil, Pete. He was a
very good drawer.”

“Doctor Basil? Yes. He drawed a tooth of mine once.”

“Ah? Now as for Tolu, Captain Margaret. It’s a walled town. But the
only guns are in the sea-wall. And the wall ain’t much more than
gabions. Not much stone about it. If it comes to fighting, we’ll land
on the beach away south here, and creep up, wading, along the beach,
so as to arrive about dawn.”

“Well, Captain Pain,” said Margaret. “We’ll sail to-morrow. We’ll see
which of us is right.”

He smiled pleasantly, but his thoughts were bitter. He saw that to
succeed on the Main one needed to be one of the crowd. Pain there, the
inscrutable, pale man, had long ago decided how to use him. He, a
cultured gentleman, with a King’s commission, was in Pain’s hands. He
must either go with Pain, or lose his crew. His crew would follow Pain
at a nod. If he tried to coerce either Pain or his crew, he saw that
there would be trouble. The _Broken Heart_ would be taken from him. He
had not thought of this chance; but he remembered a word of Cammock’s:
“Give them some little success, and they’ll do anything.” If this
trading venture prospered, he could proceed to Jamaica, he could come
to some treaty with the Spaniards, pledging himself to put down
privateering. If the trading venture failed, then it would rest with
him to make a conquest of the Indies, to gather all these thieves into
a company, and strike at Spain till she tottered. After Tolu, and Tolu
would have to be a success, he would lead them against Cartagena. Then
he might be able to make a head. At present he was a “new standard.”
He understood Pain’s point of view. He knew that he must appear to
Pain as an uppish youth who thought that he knew more than old hands.
He would show them that he did know more.

“By the way, Pete,” Cammock said, “what come of George Bond?”

Pete laughed. “Oh, him,” he said. “He went to Portobel, and joined the
Spaniards.”

“How did the Spaniards treat him?” Perrin asked. He had heard of that
wild spirit from Cammock.

“Dunno,” said Pain carelessly. “Give him a position in the Government,
I heard.” He turned to Cammock. “One of Bill Knight’s lot was in
Panama a year ago,” he continued. “He said he was got to be a big one
there.”

“Ah?” said Cammock. “Well. It’s right, too. There’s very good openings
for a man in a Spanish town here.”

“Indeed,” said Margaret. “I should have thought there was bitter
feeling.”

“Not a bit of it, sir. There’s only the religious trouble.”

“That didn’t worry George much,” Pete said.

After this the conversation died down, till Stukeley asked if a herald
from a landing party ran risk of being shot.

“No,” said Pain. “I done it two or three times. You go ashore under a
white flag, holding up your hands, and then they come and blindfold
you, and take you into the town. Then you say your piece to the
Governor, and then you come back.”

“Then,” said Stukeley, “you’d better prime me now in what you want
said, Maggy. I must have a set speech ready for anything the old cove
asks me.”

“That’s quite true. I’m glad you reminded me. We’ll go into it.
To-morrow morning, then, Captain Pain. But I wish you could have
waited till my ship was scrubbed.”

“Time enough, Mr. Margaret,” Pain answered. “We’ll careen her when we
come back.”

He went on deck with Cammock, leaving Margaret to instruct Stukeley in
the matter of his speech to the Spanish Governor. One speech, which
ran, “Your Excellency, I hold my King’s commission. If you permit me
to trade here I pledge my honour to assist your King against his
enemies in these seas,” seemed to Stukeley to be a pleasant jest. He
repeated it, grinning, till he had it letter perfect. Then he repeated
it in Spanish, and left the cabin, laughing.

“Come back here a moment, Stukeley,” Margaret called. “I’ve got
something I want to say to you.”

“What now?” Stukeley answered.

“Stukeley,” he said, “we’re going on a dangerous business to-morrow. I
want you before we leave the ship to see your wife. Will you do that?
I don’t want to preach. I only ask you to realize what it might be to
her if anything happened to you.”

“I’ll manage my own relations with my wife,” he answered.

“Stukeley, she’s a long way from friends. Life isn’t very sweet to
her.”

“I’ll make it a good deal sourer if you come crawling round. Well,
I’ll see her. Now then. No more. Good night, Captain Maggy.”

The door slammed behind him with a clatter of swinging hooks. Margaret
was alone, his face buried in his hands, with his world tottering
about him, ready to fall.




 XI.
 THE FLAG OF TRUCE


 “Was it not sin enough, and wickedness,
 Thus like a rotten rascal to abuse
 The name of Heav’n, the tie of marriage,
 The honour of thy friends, the expectation,
 Of all that thought thee virtuous, with rebellion,
 After forgiveness, too?”
                       _The Woman’s Prize._


In the morning, when they were under way, with the two little hills
of Pinos astern of them, and the ship’s bows turned towards
Morrosquillo, far to the east, still two days distant, Captain
Margaret sent Perrin to the cabin to request an audience with Olivia.
As he had feared, she refused to see him. She sat, pale and exhausted,
at the table, Perrin said, too weary of life to ask whither they were
bound, or to ask the nature of their consorts, now sailing easily,
under reduced sail, near the lumbering _Broken Heart_, foul with long
weeks at sea. She did not care what happened; but, finding Perrin
importunate, she left the cabin, and for two days saw no one. On the
second day the ships anchored between Ceycen and the Overfalls, in a
harbour shut away by wooden keys, from which the brooks fell
pleasantly, with a rippling chatter, that was drowsy and delightsome,
after the glare of the sun on the sea, in the hot calms. They loaded
the sloop with samples during the afternoon, and chose out hands to go
in her. Stukeley was to go as herald and interpreter, Margaret as
principal, in case the matter came to a conference; while as crew they
picked ten from the _Broken Heart_, five from Pain, five from Tucket,
all good shots, well armed. Perrin was to stay aboard with Cammock, so
that Olivia might have a friend aboard, in case the sloop was lost.

After breakfast, Margaret made a last attempt to speak with her. He
entered the cabin unannounced, to find her sitting alone, in a black
gown, a Bible before her, and her face all pale, her eyes with dark
rings round them. She looked up as he entered, then sank back, closing
her eyes, with a sharp intake of her breath.

“What do you want with me?” she asked in a hard voice. “Have you come
to see if--if----”

“Olivia,” he answered, “I’ve come to tell you that I’m going to a
town, now. There’s danger. I’m going with. I mean. Your husband is
coming. It’s a dangerous service. I want you to try to realize that.
That your husband’s going on a dangerous service. That you might like
to see him.”

“Yes,” she answered. “That I might like to see him. Go on.”

“That is all,” he said. “Except that I may not see you again. That I
wouldn’t like.” The words dragged; his mouth was quite dry. He
stumbled in his speech and began again.

“Olivia,” he said. “My conduct. I thought I acted for the best. I ask
you to forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” she said. “Thank you. But I’ve no wish to. You lied to
me from the moment I came into the ship. You lied at Salcombe. At
Falmouth. All the voyage. In Virginia. And then you thought you had
lied enough for your purpose. You let me learn the truth.”

“Yes,” he answered, “I lied. I lied to save you.”

“Ah,” she said, with disgust. “You lied to save me, till it was too
late for me to hear the truth.”

“Olivia,” he continued, “I won’t speak more of myself. Your husband. I
think he wants. He wants to see you. There may be danger. He wants to
see you. He wants to say good-bye. I am going now,” he added. “Olivia,
we’ve been in each other’s lives a long time. Could you. Could you let
this.” He stumbled in his speech again. She did not help him. His
throat was dry like a kiln; he seemed unable to speak. “I am going
now,” he said again. “I’ll send your husband to you.” He bowed, and
left the cabin. As he closed the door he thought that he could not
remember his last sight of her. He could not remember her face as it
had last looked upon him.

In the alleyway he met Stukeley coming from Cammock’s state-room.

“I was looking for you,” said Stukeley. “We’re waiting for you. It’s
time we went.”

“Your wife’s in the cabin,” he answered. “She’s waiting for you. To
say good-bye.” As he spoke, the cabin door opened, and Olivia came out
into the alley-way.

“Tom,” she said, “where are you going with this man?”

“Hello, Livy,” he answered. “I’m just going ashore, to interview the
Spaniards.”

“He says that there is danger.”

“Danger? Rubbish. You ass, Maggy. Why can’t you keep your head shut?”

“Oh. So perhaps he lied again.”

“I’ll leave you,” Margaret said, turning away.

“No. Do not go,” she answered. “I’ve something to say to you, Tom. I
want you to hear it, Charles. Tom, there’s danger in going ashore
here. Oh, I know it. I know it. Tom, dear, since we came here there’s
been something between us always. Ever since. Tom, dear, you were
afraid that I should be angry. Unforgiving. You might have trusted me,
Tom. You were afraid I should hate you. I wasn’t very wise. It was so
sudden. And I wasn’t myself, Tom. It’s not too late, dear. Don’t let
it be too late, Tom.” She paused, looking to her husband for the
answer she had put into his mouth. Stukeley found it hard to answer.
“Oh, Tom, I want you back. I want you back.”

“There, Livy,” Stukeley said. “There, Livy.” He took her in his arms
and kissed her. “When I come back, dear,” he added. “I must go now.
I’m going ashore.”

“Don’t go, Tom. Oh, Tom, don’t go. There’s danger. You may be hurt.
Charles, tell him.”

“It’s all right, old girl. They all swore there’s not the slightest
danger. We shall be back by four o’clock if the wind holds.”

“There’s danger,” Margaret said.

“Tom, you wouldn’t leave me at a moment like this.”

“I must, Livy.” A thought seemed to strike him. “Look here, Livy. It
must be our first step to--to our new life together. To a new life out
here.”

“Tom, my darling, are you sure there’s no danger?”

“There is no danger. None. How many more times?”

“Charles,” she said, “come here. I’ve been. Been. Not myself. I spoke
cruelly. I want you to forgive me, Charles. Take my hand. And yours,
Tom. This is going to be the beginning of a new life together. Will
you let it be that, Charles? You will, Tom?”

“Yes,” said Tom.

“It shall be that,” Margaret said. They shook hands in the alleyway,
making their bonds of peace.

“You’re my Tom again now,” she said lowly. “I’ve forgotten all the
rest, dear.”

“Right,” he said, kissing her. “I was a beast. Good-bye, dear.”

“Not a beast,” she said. “Never that.”

Margaret turned aside, crushing his hat-brim, wondering what new
misery was in store for her. He walked softly out on deck, leaving the
two to their farewell. Perrin said something to him. Cammock was not
in sight. A little knot of men stood in the waist, idly watching the
sloop.

Presently Stukeley came from the alleyway with a grin upon his face.
“Anything for a quiet life,” he said. “Down into the boat with you,
Maggy.”

As they shoved off from the _Broken Heart_, Olivia waved to them from
her state-room port. Margaret felt a pang of remorse that he had not
shaken hands with Perrin, nor spoken with Cammock, before leaving the
ship. He was nearly alongside the sloop when he saw Cammock’s hat
above the poop nettings.

“He’s hailing you, Captain Margaret,” said the stroke oar.

“Oars a moment.” The men lay on their oars, watching the drops fall
from the blades into the sea. The roar of Cammock sounded.

“What does he say?” said Margaret. “I can’t make out.”

“Something about a map, I think he said, sir.”

“Did you hear, Stukeley?”

“Map or tap, or something. But let’s go on. We’re late.”

“No. I must hear. Back a stroke, port oars. Why, starboard. I’ll pull
back to find out. Way together.”

Fifty yards nearer to the ship they again lay on their oars. This time
the hail was clear.

“Have you seen my book of maps?”

“No,” Margaret shouted. “You had it in your pocket last night.”

“What’s that you say?”

“You had it in your pocket last night.”

“Yes. But I can’t find it.”

“I’ve not had it. Ask Mr. Perrin.” He sat down in his seat, Cammock
shouted a farewell, to which Margaret raised his hand in salute.

“He’s lost his book of maps,” said Margaret to Stukeley.

“Nothing can be lost in a ship,” said Stukeley. “Besides, what’s a
book of maps?”

“That book was worth a good deal. The Spaniards would pay a high price
for it. With all those charts to help them, they could put down
privateering when they pleased.”

“Oh, rubbish,” said Stukeley, swinging himself up the sloop’s side.
“He could easy get duplicates.”

The sloop was already under sail. The men climbed aboard, and let the
boat drag astern. The helm was put up a little, the fore sheet was let
draw. Soon, as the boom swung over, straining the blocks, when the
mainsail filled, they slipped clear the anchorage. Looking over the
rail, they saw the nettings of the two ships lined with men, some of
whom waved caps in farewell.

Captain Tucket came to command his sloop. He talked little; for he was
trying a new dye. He was boiling a handkerchief in a pan of herbs,
over a little brazier fixed on the deck. The experiment made him
silent; but in moments of enthusiasm he spoke a few words, stirring
the mess with a fid.

“What colour are you trying to get?” Margaret asked.

“One of them bright greens the Indians get.”

“You never will, cap,” said the helmsman. “Them Indians use moss; a
kind of tree moss. I’ve seed ’em do it.”

“Well, if this don’t turn out a green, I’ll wash in it.”

“What’s the matter, Stukeley? Is anything the matter?” Stukeley had
burst out laughing without apparent reason.

“Nothing’s the matter,” Stukeley answered. “I was thinking of my
interview with the Governor.”

It was high noon when they arrived at Tolu Road. They hoisted a white
flag, and stood in boldly till they were a mile to the south-west of
the town. Here the sloop was hove-to, while the men prepared for their
journey. The six oarsmen of the whale-boat stuffed loaded pistols
within their shirts, and laid their muskets in oilskin cases below the
thwarts. Margaret and Stukeley sat in the sternsheets, both wearing
their swords. Tucket, who steered with an oar, was armed with pistols.
A flag of truce was hoisted in the boat. Tucket told his mate to keep
a sharp look out in the sloop, and to run in to pick them up “if
anything happened.” Then the little lugsail was hoisted, and the boat
began to move towards the town.

Margaret was disappointed with himself as the boat crept on towards
the town. He had so often lived over this adventure in his fancy that
the reality seemed tame to him. He was disappointed with the look of
the city; it seemed but a mean place; a church, a fort, a few stone
houses, a gleam of red pantiles against the forest, and a mud wall
ringing it in. The bell tinkled in the belfry, tinkled continually,
jerked by a negro who had had no orders to stop. It seemed to Margaret
that a bell was out of place in that half-savage town. It was not a
Christian town. Those were not Christians on the beach. They were
Indians, negroes, convicts, runaways, half-breeds. They needed some
bloodier temple than that old church in the square. They needed a
space in the forest, lit by fires in the night. They needed the reek
of sacrifice and the clang of gongs. And this was the place he had
sailed to. Here his life’s venture was to be put to the touch. Here,
in this place, this little old squalid city between the sea and the
jungle. All the long anxieties were to be resolved there. There on the
sand, beyond the spume of the breakers, the doubts were to end. He
could not bring himself to care. His thoughts ran on the pale face of
Olivia, on her words to him, on the possibility of a new life for her.

“Stukeley,” he said, speaking very quietly in his hearer’s ear, “look
here. I want to say this. After this business, if you care, would you
like to settle in Jamaica or somewhere? Or in France? You and Olivia?
You could draw on me, you know. We could start something together.”

Stukeley seemed to measure the distance between the boat and the
shore. He looked at Margaret with a gleam of humour in his eyes.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll think it over.”

“Very well,” Margaret said. “There comes the captain. What strange
little horses. Are they imported, Captain Tucket?”

“No, sir. This country horses. Imported horses die of the heat, or the
change of grass. Beyond Carta-yaina there’s very good horse country.”

The rabble on the beach drew back now towards the town, handling their
arms. Half a dozen horsemen rode as though to meet the boat, almost to
the lip of the sea. One of them, a negro, who held his stirrups with
his toes, carried a pennon.

“The lad on the pinto’s the capataz,” said Tucket in his beard. “Stand
up with the flag in the bows there. Down sail. Let your oars swing
fore and aft in their grummets, ready to back her off. Wave your flag
of truce, Ed. Don’t shake your pistols out though. Stand by, Captain
Stukeley.”

“Are they friendly, do you think?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, Stukeley,” Margaret said. “This little case contains a ring for
the Governor. Say that you trust that it may have the felicity to
fit.”

“I will,” said Stukeley. “They carry some plate on their headstalls,
don’t they?” He put the case in his pocket.

The bow man waved his flag of truce, then lowered it, and knelt,
waiting for the shock of the grounding. Very gently, in the wash of
little waves and slipping shingle, the boat’s nose took the sand.
Captain Margaret stepped across the thwarts, holding a white cloth in
his hand. Watching his time, he leaped nimbly beyond the water, and
uncovered. Stukeley followed him, jumping clumsily. It seemed to
Margaret, as he turned sharply, thinking that the man had fallen, that
a book in Stukeley’s inner pocket was surely Cammock’s map-book. It
half jolted out as the coat flew open. It was a glimpse, nothing more.
Perhaps he was wrong. The two men stood uncovered before the horsemen,
who watched them with the grave eyes of animals. An elderly man among
the riders rode forward for a pace or two, uncovering with a gesture
full of dignity. He had the bearing of a soldier. It seemed to
Margaret that the gesture explained the might of Spain. Stukeley
advanced towards the horseman with his hat beating against his knee.
He spoke quietly in Spanish. After a few words, the elderly man
dismounted, and the two walked to and fro together, talking with a
grave politeness, which seemed to extend to the listeners, whether
they understood or not.

Presently Stukeley bowed very low to the captain, and walked jauntily
to Margaret. “It’s all right,” he said. “I think they’ll do your
business for you. They’re very friendly. They’re going to take me to
see the Governor.”

“Am I to come?”

“Only one man, he says. I may have to stay to dinner.”

“You think you run no risk? I’m willing to come if you think you run
any. I ought to share it.”

“They’re all right. There’s no risk. But he offers a hostage.”

“One of those cut-throats?”

“It ain’t very polite to accept. Eh? I’ll go alone. He knows you’ve a
commission. I’ve shown him that duplicate. It’s all right. I’ll go off
now. So long, my Maggy. Con Dios, caballero. Try and keep warm on the
sands here.”

He saluted the boat’s crew, gave Margaret a queer glance, and rejoined
the capataz, who bowed to them gravely. The negro with the pennon led
the dismounted horse. The capataz walked with Stukeley, followed by
the other troopers. They went slowly towards the gate of the city. The
troopers made their horses curvet and passage, clashing their silver
gear. Margaret stood at the lip of the water, watching them, till they
had passed within the gate, followed by the rabble.

The boatmen held that it would not be politic to return to the sloop.
“It might seem as we didn’t trust them,” Tucket said. So they rigged
the boat-rug as an awning over the sternsheets, and whiled away the
time, suffering much from the heat. It was a stifling day. The time
passed slowly, with many calls for the water-breaker. They made their
dinner of plantains, then smoked, exchanging stories, longing for
Stukeley’s return. Margaret found the time less irksome than he had
expected; for Tucket began to talk, out of a full heart, about the
subjects dear to him. He had never had such a listener before.
Margaret drew him out, with his usual sympathy, till the man’s inmost
life was bare before him. Such woods would take a polish, and such
other woods would take a stain; and such and such resins, why should
they not stain a wood to all colours of the rainbow, if treated with
care in the right way? It would be fine, Captain Tucket said, to be a
chemist, and have nothing else to do but to watch your dye vats all
day long. Vats of indigo, of anatta, of cochineal, all the lovely
colours, and---- Say. If one could get a green that showed the light
in it, like the water breaking on a reef. The hours passed; it was
nearly three o’clock; but still no Stukeley.

“The Guv’nor dines late,” said one of the men.

“I guess it’s difficult to get away from the donnas,” said another.
The others laughed; for Stukeley’s faults were well known.

“I dunno, sir,” said Tucket. “It seems a bit odd.”

“He seemed very sanguine about it,” Margaret answered.

“I ain’t much charmed with your friend myself,” said Tucket. “I don’t
trust that Master Stukeley.”

“You don’t think he’s deserted? Is that your meaning?”

“Well, I wouldn’t a trusted him to be my interpreter,” Tucket
answered, with the growl of one whose superior wisdom, now proved, is
proved too late. “We could a give you Thomas Gandy. He’d have done as
good. He knows Spanish just like a book, Tom do. And you could a
trusted Tom with your life. Now you ain’t on too good terms with the
Mr. Stukeley feller.”

“Shall I go into the town, then? To see if anything’s wrong?”

“Why, no, sir. That’s putting your joint in the fire to hot your soup.
Stay here, sir.”

“Well, we’ll wait a little longer. What d’you say to bathing?”

“It’s not really safe, sir. There’s cat-fish on this coast. Besides,
we better not get all over the place like shifting backstays. Them
Dagoes might come some of their monkey-tricks.”

“The town is quiet enough.”

“Siesta time,” said one of the men. “They likes a doss in the
afternoon.”

“I dunno what to think,” Tucket said. “But ’t’ain’t too wholesome, to
my mind.”

“He said he might be kept for dinner.”

“He could a sent word. Or they’d a sent dinner here. I’ve knowed
Dagoes do that. You got good eyes, Ed. What d’you make of the woods
there, back of the sand?” He turned to Margaret. “He’d been with the
Indians three or four years, Ed done. He sees things in brush like
that, just like an animal.”

All hands stared into the wall of green, which rose up eighty yards
away, beyond the line of the sand. The trees towered up, notching the
sky with their outlines. The sun blazed down upon them, till they
flashed, as though their leaves were green steel. They made a wall of
forest, linked, tangled, criss-crossed, hiding an inner darkness. A
parrot was tearing at a blossom high up on a creeper, flinging out the
petals with little wicked twists of his head. He showed up clearly
against the sky in that strong light.

“Nothing wrong there,” said Ed. “Look at the parrot.”

They looked at the parrot, and laughed to hear him abuse the flower.

“They’re the kind you can learn to speak, sir,” said a seaman. “I’ve
known some of them birds swear, you would think it was real. Some of
them can do it in Spanish.”

“The Spaniards don’t swear,” said another man.

“They’ve got caramba,” said the first. “Caramba. That’s the same as
God damn is in English.”

“Funny way of saying it,” said the other.

“Some one’s in that brush,” said the man called Ed. “See the paharo?”

Something had startled the parrot. He leaped up with a scream from his
liane, made a half-circle in the air, and flew away, wavering, along
the coast. One or two other birds rose as quietly as moths, and
flitted into the night of the wood. A deer stepped out on to the beach
daintily, picking her steps. She sniffed towards the town, listened,
seemed to hear something, caught sight of the boat, and fled. Then
came a sudden chattering of monkeys, a burst of abusive crying,
lasting only for a moment.

“D’ye see anything, Ed?”

“There’s plenty of ’em, cap, I guess.”

“Can you hear ’em? Lay your head on the ground.”

“The wash of the sea’s too loud. I can’t hear nothing.”

“They’re coming from the town, are they?”

“Sure.”

“Is there a road at the back of that wood?” Margaret asked.

“No, sir. I guess not. The Dagoes use the beach as a road.”

“Yes,” said a seaman. “They go to Covenas. A town along there. They
always go by the beach.”

“Do you know this place, then?”

“I worked on them walls a year, once. I’d ought to know it.”

“D’ye make out anything more, Ed?”

“They’re not far off yet, I guess, cap.”

“Do you think it’s an ambush, Captain Tucket?” Margaret asked.

“No saying, mister. May as well make ready,” he answered. “We’ll lay
out our boat’s kedge to seaward, so as we can warp off in a hurry.”

They rowed the boat out into the bay, dropped their kedge, and backed
her stern-first to the beach. They struck the awning, hoisted sail,
and laid their oars in the thole-pins. They waited for another
half-hour, watching the mysterious forest.

“I guess we’ll go off to the sloop, cap,” said a seaman. “He’s give us
the flying foretopsail.”

“Them paharos is back among them berries,” said Ed. “I guess it was
boys come for plantains.”

“I dunno,” said Tucket. “It’s odd our man ain’t come.”

“I must go up to the town to find out about him,” Margaret said. “I
can’t wait like this.”

“I wouldn’t, sir,” said Tucket. “What do you say, boys?”

“No,” said the men. “No. It wouldn’t do.”

“But I got him to go. I can’t let him get into trouble through me. I’m
responsible. I must see about him. I can’t go back without him.”

“He’s give you the foresheet, sir,” said one of the men.

“Yes. The son of a gun. I guess he has,” said another.

“There’s some one in that brush,” said Ed. “Them paharos has topped
their booms for keeps.”

“Well,” said Margaret, taking out his white cloth, noting the wild,
frightened flight of a half-dozen parrots, “I’m going to the some one,
to find out.” He leaped from the sternsheets into the shallow water,
and began to wade ashore, holding his cloth.

“Don’t you try it. You come back, sir,” called Tucket.

Margaret heard some one (he thought it was Ed’s voice) saying, “He’s
brave all right,” and then, behind him, came the click of gunlocks. He
glanced back, and saw that two of the men in the sternsheets had taken
out their guns, while a third man laid other loaded guns ready to
their hands. Ed called to him as he turned.

“You come back, sir.” Then, seeing that his words were of no avail, he
leaped into the water and caught him by the arm. “Back to the boat,
sir,” he said. “It’s not you only. It might be us.”

“I must find out about my friend,” said Margaret. “I can’t leave him
as he is.”

“Bring him back, Ed. Make him come back,” called the boatmen.

“Now you go back,” Ed repeated, grinning, “or I’ll have to put you.”
He looked up suddenly at the forest. “My Santa Marta!” he cried. “Into
the boat. Here they are.” He thrust Margaret backwards towards his
fellows, and instantly bent down to shove the boat clear. Both were up
to their knees in water at the boat’s side. Some one, it was the man
who had worked in Tolu, leaned out and grabbed at Margaret’s collar.

“Look out, sons!” cried Tucket.

At the instant a swarm of men burst from the edge of the forest. One
or two of them who were mounted charged in at a gallop. The others ran
down, crying, firing their guns as they ran. The water about the boat
was splashed violently, as though some one flung pebbles edgewise from
a height. Margaret drew his sword and turned. He saw a horse come down
within twenty yards of him. Some one shouted “Crabs” derisively. Half
a dozen fierce faces seemed staring on him, rushing on him, their
mouths open, their eyes wide. There was a crack of guns. Men were
falling. Then the wildness passed; he was calm again. A Spaniard, the
rider of the fallen horse, was in the water, thrusting at him with a
lance, calling him cuckold and bastard in the only English words he
knew. Margaret knocked the lance aside with difficulty, for the man
was strong and wild. His thoughts at the moment, for all the danger,
was “I can’t be both.” He wondered in that flash of time whether a man
could be both. All the beach seemed hidden from him with smoke and
fire and the hurrying of splashing bodies. Where was Ed gone? It was
all smoke and racket. He was being hit. Something struck his left arm.
Striking at random at a voice in the smoke, his sword struck
something. He dragged his sword back, and slipped with the effort. He
was up to his waist in water for an instant, below the smoke. He saw
men’s legs. He saw water splashing. Then there was smoke everywhere.
Smoke of a hundred guns. A racket like the chambers shot off at the
end of _Hamlet_; exactly like. A wave went into his face. Some one
fell across him and knocked him down again. It was Ed.

“Hold up, you fool,” Ed cried. The voice was the high, querulous voice
of the hurt man.

“You’re hit, Ed,” he said, catching him about the body. His arm stung
along its length with the effort. “Where are you hit, Ed?”

“Abajo. Vete al carajo, hijo de la gran puta. Cabron! Mierda!” The
words came out of the smoke like shots. The roar of the battle seemed
to be all about him. He backed, staggering, to get out of the smoke.
A half-tamed horse’s teeth ripped the sleeve from his hurt arm,
knocking them both down again. Some one jabbed him with a lance in the
shoulder. He struck the horse as he rose half choked, still clutching
Ed. The horse leaped with a scream. The smoke lifted. It was all
bright for a moment. A mad horse; a trooper swearing; Ed’s body like a
sack with blood on it; a smoke full of fiery tongues. There was the
boat though. Then the smoke cloaked it. Bullets splashed water in his
face. The butt of a flung lance banged him on the side of the head.
The horse reared above him, screaming, floundering in foam, then
falling heavily. He was almost out of his depth now, half swimming,
half dead, lugging a nether millstone. Blood was in his eyes, his
sword dangled from his wrist, his free hand tried to swim. He clutched
at the boat, missed, went under, gulping salt. He clutched again as
the white side slid away. His fingers caught upon the gunwale, near
the stroke’s thwart. He made the boat sway to one side a little. “Trim
her,” said Tucket, as he hauled, face forward, on the warp. He did not
look round; merely trimmed her mechanically, flinging the warp’s fakes
aft. “Away-hay-hay-i-oh,” he sang. “Lively, Jude,” said another. “If
you fire like you load, your bullets has moss on them.” Two of them
were firing sharply, lying behind the backboard. “Cut,” cried Tucket.
There was a shock of chopping on the gunwale. A hand sculled way upon
her with the steering-oar as the sail filled. The midship oars were
manned.

“Give me a hand here, please,” said Margaret weakly. “Catch Ed.”

“Lord. I thought you were in,” said Tucket. “Up with him. Ed’s gone.
Don’t capsize the ship, you. I’d forgot you two.”

Margaret managed to scramble in, helped by the boatmen. Then he
collapsed in the bottom of the boat over Ed. He had had a moving time.
He came-to quickly, with the taste of rum in his mouth and a feeling
of intense cold. His teeth chattered; he was weak and sick. “Land and
bring off Stukeley,” he said. “I can’t leave Stukeley.”

“We’ll be in the sloop in a minute,” said one of the men. “We’ll shift
him there. He got a prod in the shoulder.”

“How is it, Ed?” said another voice. “You’re all right.”

“What’s wrong with Ed?” said one of the rowers.

“Got a bat with a stone, I guess. I can’t see no shot hole. Hold up,
Ed. You ain’t dead yet.”

“I’m all right,” said Ed weakly. “That Margaret fellow fell all across
me and knocked me down.”

“He pulled you quit of the mix,” said Tucket. “Don’t you forget it.”

“He did, hell,” said Ed.

Margaret rose up in the boat. “I can’t leave Stukeley,” he said. “Pull
in, Captain Tucket, and bring him off.”

“You lie down, sir, and stay quiet,” said Captain Tucket. “We’ll be
there directly.”

One or two of the men tittered. Margaret tried to raise himself to
look at the land. He heard the roar of cannon from somewhere astern.
“That’s a heavy gun,” he said. “Who’s firing a heavy gun?” Then he
felt suddenly very tired, the boat and the guns became blurred to him,
he felt that there were ships sailing into action, firing their guns
in succession, shaking with the shock. An array of ships was sailing.
There were guns, guns. Guns that would never cease firing. There was
water roaring. No. Not water. Horses. Horses and ships. Roaring,
roaring. They were calling some one “Puta.” When he came-to, he was
lying below in the sloop, with a cold mess on his arm and a fiery pain
along his shoulder.

“Is Mr. Stukeley on board?” he asked.

“No, sir,” said Tucket, drying his hands. “Mr. Stukeley’s ashore. It’s
my belief our Mr. Stukeley put that ambush on us. Mr. Stukeley’ll stay
ashore.”

“I must bring him off. Land me, captain. There’s his wife.”

“You just have a lap of this lemon-drink,” said Tucket. “We had about
as near a call as may be. Ed got a bat on the head. You been pretty
near killed. There’s a pound’s worth of paint knocked off the boat.
Jude’s got a slug in his pants. The sail’s like a nutmeg-grater. If
we’d not laid that warp out, the land-crabs would be eating us at this
present. There’s a couple of hundred soldiers on the beach; besides
the guns.”

“They came at us in a rush,” said Margaret. The words seemed not to
come from him. His meaning had been to ask Tucket what had happened.

“That’s why they fired so wild,” said Tucket. “They rushed. They saw
you and Ed, and thought they’d take you.”

“But Stukeley. We must get Stukeley. They may have killed him.”

“He’s all right. You settle off.”

After some hours of quiet, Margaret rose up, feeling very weak. The
cabin was hot and foul, so he dressed, and went on deck for the
freshness. The boat’s crew were telling the sloop hands exactly what
had happened. Margaret knew from the way in which they spoke to him,
from the plain words of “Good evening, sir,” and “I hope you’re
better, sir,” that he was, for some reason, the hero of the moment.
His shoulder pained him, so he sat down, with his back against the
taffrail. A sailor placed a coat behind him, so that his rest might be
easy. Tucket was steering. The lights of the _Broken Heart_ were
visible a couple of miles ahead, against the mass of Ceycen, which hid
the stars to the north-eastward.

“Are you dead yet?” said Tucket.

“I’m well, thanks. I’m thinking of Mr. Stukeley.”

There came a sort of growl of “Stukeley” from the seamen about him.
“Stukeley,” they said. “He’s a mother’s joy, the Portuguese drummer’s
get.”

“Stukeley,” said Tucket. “He put that little quiff on us on the beach.
I ain’t goin’ to drown no one, shedding tears for Stukeley.”

“Nor I,” said the man called Jude. “I’d only bought them pants a
week.”

“Pants,” said Tucket. “You’d not a wanted many pants if Ed and Mr.
Margaret hadn’t been in the water. Them two in the water made ’em
rush. If they’d come slow, you’d a been a hit in the neck with that
chewed slug, my son. Don’t you forget it.”

“Did anybody see Mr. Stukeley?” Margaret asked. “Was he in the rush?
Could anybody see in the smoke?”

“No, sir. No one saw him.”

“Then why do you think he, he prompted the raid? What makes you think
that?”

“They’ve always received flags of truce before,” he answered. “And
you’d a commission besides. You aren’t like one of us. Why didn’t they
shoot when we put the son-of-a-gun ashore? I’ll tell you. They thought
we were ordinary flag of truce. That curly-headed gentleman’s son put
’em up to it, after dinner. Why? I know. That’s why.”

“I can’t see your point,” Margaret answered. His thought was that he
would have a bad hour with Olivia. The thought had no bitterness; it
occurred to him simply, as a necessary part of the pain of moving from
the sloop. His shoulder gave him pain; the thought of climbing his
ship’s side gave him pain. He had a blurred feeling that he would have
to stand painfully, explaining to a nervous woman. He would never be
able to do it, he thought. He was too stupid with pain. He was
feverish. He was tired. He would have to stand there, trying to be
tender and sympathetic, yet failing, stupid, blunt. They would have to
rescue Stukeley. Rescue him. “Yes,” he said to himself, “I’ll rescue
him for you. I’ll bring him back to you from Tolu, Olivia.” He mumbled
and muttered as the fever grew upon him. “I wish all this had never
happened,” he said aloud.

“You’re goin’ off into the shakes,” said one of the men, putting a
blanket round him. “You want to take bark in a sup of rum, sir, and
then turn in.”

“Every one with a green wound gets the shakes in this country,” said
another man. “Now up in Virginia you can go from September to May and
never have ’em once.”

“There’s a light in the cabin,” said Margaret, with his teeth
chattering.

“That’s your ship all right, sir. Ahoy, you! _Broken Heart_ ahoy-ah!”

“Ahoy, you!” came out of the night. “Is that the _Happy Return_?”

“We’re the jolly come-backs.”

Bells were beaten from somewhere in the darkness. To Margaret’s
throbbing brain the strokes seemed to be violent lights. He thought in
his fever that all physical objects were interchangeable, that they
all, however indifferent, expressed with equal value (though perhaps
to different senses) the infinite intellect that was always One. He
thought that the boat was a thought of a thought; and that a ship and
a house were much alike, very worthless the pair of them. One should
get away from these thoughts of thoughts to thought itself. The
_Broken Heart_ loomed large above him.

“Send down a chair, Lion,” some one said. “Mr. Margaret’s had a nasty
clip.”

“Easy now with the chair,” said Cammock’s voice. “Is Mr. Stukeley
there?”

“He’s swallowed the killick,” said Tucket, with a hard laugh.

“He’s got my map-book, then,” said Cammock. “He’s gone with my
map-book.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, getting out of the chair. “Your map-book. It’s
in his pocket. I think I saw it there.”

“Lean on me, sir,” said Cammock. “The lady’s expecting you. She’s
sitting up in the cabin.”

“Let me go. You turn in. I’ll break it to her,” Perrin said.

“No. I must go,” Margaret answered. “How has it been here, captain?”
Feverish as he was, he felt that he had been away for many days. The
ship was strange to him.

“I’ve been throwing the ship overboard, looking for my maps,” Cammock
answered. “How is your hurt, sir? When you talk to the lady, you had
better have a drop of something. Just stop at my cabin for a moment.”

He fetched wine and bark from his cupboard. Then the three men entered
the cabin, where Olivia stood expectantly, her cheeks flushed, waiting
for her husband’s return. She had made the most of her beauty for him.
She had decked herself out with an art that brought tears to Perrin’s
eyes. She had done her best, poor beauty, to keep the heart which, as
she thought, she had won back again. Looking at her, as she stood
there, Perrin learned that Stukeley had commended a slip of black
velvet round her throat, that he had praised her arms, that he liked
the hair heaped in such a fashion, with a ribbon of such a tone of
green. He guessed all this at a glance, telling himself that he must
never again speak of these things to her. And the poor girl had rouged
her cheeks, to hide the paleness. She had pencilled her eyebrows. She
had drunken some drug to make her eyes bright. In the soft light of
the lamp she looked very beautiful. She stood there, half-way to the
door, waiting for the lover of her love-days to take her to his heart
again.

“Where is Tom?” she said. “You’re hurt, Charles. Where’s Tom? He isn’t
killed? He isn’t killed?”

“He went into the city,” said Margaret dully.

“He went into the city.” His teeth chattered and clicked; he seemed to
have been repeating his phrase for hours. “Into the city,” he
repeated. He was ill, really ill. He was in a dream of fever. He was
dreaming, he was in a nightmare, giving a message in that dream-speech
which none comprehend save the speaker.

“He went into the city,” said Olivia slowly. She sank backwards, till
she leaned against the bulkhead, her arms straying out along the
beading. “But he came back. He came back.”

“No, ma’am,” said Cammock gently. “He didn’t come back.”

“He’s not killed? Not dead? Oh, can’t one of you speak?”

“I don’t know,” said Margaret. “We waited. He went into the city with
them.”

“They made friends,” said Perrin. “Your husband went with the
Spaniards.”

“Oh, won’t you tell me what has happened?”

“They waited in the boat, ma’am,” said Cammock. “But your husband
didn’t come back. And then the Spaniards attacked the boat. Captain
Margaret was wounded.”

“And you came away without him?”

“Yes, Olivia. He’s in the city.”

“Oh, my God, my God. But don’t you know if he is dead or alive?”

“No, Olivia,” said Margaret.

“Charles was landing to find him when the Spaniards attacked,” said
Perrin. “He was wounded. They wounded him, Olivia.”

“You left him, alone, Charles. Alone. To be killed.”

“We’ll bring him back, Olivia. We can win him back.”

“Oh, but he may be killed. He may be killed. He may be dead now.”

“Beg pardon, ma’am,” said Cammock. “We think he’s gone over to the
Spaniards, with my book of charts as Basil draw.”

“You think he’s left, left us. You think, Charles. Do tell me. Tell
me.”

“They think he’s gone into the city, Olivia,” Margaret said, “to tell
the Spaniards of our plans. Into the city, Olivia. We saw him go into
the city a long time before. They think he caused the attack on us. In
the water. It was like a bad dream. Don’t. Don’t. I’ll bring him back,
Olivia. We’ll bring him back to-morrow.”

“I’m quite calm, Charles,” said Olivia in a shaking voice. “I’m quite
calm. Look at my hand here. You see.”

“Sit down, Olivia,” Margaret said. “There. In this chair. I want to
say this. He went into the city walking with the captain of the
garrison. The negro had his stirrup in his toes. They were to dine
with the Governor. They were friends. He told me himself. Your husband
told me they were friends. After the siesta they ambushed us. Oh, my
God. They offered a hostage even. And your husband advised me to
refuse it.”

“And you think,” Olivia said, “that Tom, my husband----” She paused.
Then gave way to the running gamut of shaking sobs, her head on the
table. “Oh, Tom, Tom, come back to me. Come back to me.”

“It was after he had dined with the Governor that they ambushed us,”
Margaret repeated. “And I saw Cammock’s map-book in his pocket.”

“But he’d no thought of it,” she cried. “Only this morning. Only this
morning. It was so sweet. Oh, he’d no thought of it this morning.
None. You know he had none.”

“Of course, no one knows,” said Perrin. “He may be only a prisoner.”

“They never kill prisoners,” said Cammock. “Be easy as to that.”

“And he’s left me,” she sobbed. “Oh, but I know he loves me. It’s not
that. I know he does. I know he does. Oh, Charles. What makes you
think. I’m quite calm again. I can bear it all. I’m calm. What makes
you think that he’s gone?”

“One or two things he asked. He was asking about life with the
Spaniards. And his manner.”

“Charles, did you suspect him? Did you expect this when you chose him?
Chose him yesterday?”

Margaret sat down at the table, looking at her stupidly, his face all
drawn.

“Charles, you didn’t suspect him? You thought of this.”

Margaret burst out crying, with the tearless grief of an overwrought
man. “I wish all this had never happened,” he said. “I wish it had all
never happened. Never happened.” He checked himself, half aware, in
the misery of his fever, that he had to answer Olivia. “I don’t know
what’s the matter with me to-night,” he said. “I’ve got such white
hands. Such white hands, like a girl.” He laughed in a shrill, silly
cackle. “You must think me a silly girl,” he said.

“Charles,” Olivia cried.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right.” He pulled himself together
with an effort. “Look here,” he said. “Here. I oughtn’t to have let
him go alone. It was my fault. All my fault. Into the city alone. You
say I thought of this. Never entered my head. Never. I’m talking like
a drunk man. What’s the matter with you? No. It was my fault. But.
Olivia. Olivia. Don’t. Don’t cry. We’ll get him back. We’ll take Tolu.
I swear I’ll take Tolu. I’ll bring him back to you, Olivia. Only. You
don’t mean what you said then.” He sank back in his chair. “I think
I’m tired,” he added weakly.

Olivia was on her knees at his side, pressing his hand to her heart.

“Charles,” she said. “Charles, you’re hurt. You’re hurt. Wounded. I
didn’t mean that, Charles. I was upset. But. Oh, you’ll bring him
back. Bring him back to me.”

“I’ll bring him back to you, Olivia,” he answered, stroking her hand.
“I’ll bring him back.” He raised her from the deck. “And I’ll help him
to that. To what you talked of. This morning.”

“To?”

“The new life together,” he whispered. “Oh, Lord, Olivia. Stop those
guns. Stop those guns. They’re red-hot.”

From very far away, in the heat of the battle, in the smoke and
trampling, where the triumphing horses laughed, he seemed to hear
Olivia’s voice.

“My God. I’ve kept him here. And he’s wounded. Edward. Edward. Is he
dead?”

“Help me, captain,” said Perrin’s voice. “You’ve kept him on the rack,
Olivia.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “Lay him on my bed. That’ll be quieter. I
must nurse him. Let me have some bark and limes, Captain Cammock. Lay
him down there. Now some cold water.”

He was half conscious of being lifted out of the light, while a
multitude of Spaniards charged him. He saw the faces, he saw the
horses’ heads flung back, and the foam spatting their bit-cups. He was
slashing at spear-heads, which pressed in a crown of points about his
skull. After that, he fell into the wildness of fever, seeing that
endless vision in his brain, the endless, disordered procession of
soldiers, and guns, and ships, which shouted crabbed poetry, poetry of
Donne, difficult to scan, exasperating:--


 “Men of France,”


the procession shouted,


      “changeable chameleons,
 Spitals of diseases, shops of fashions.”


So he lay, for many hours, feverish and sick, rambling and incoherent.

He was ill for some days, during which Olivia nursed him tenderly. She
found in the vigil a balm for her own sorrow, a respite from the
anxieties which ate her heart. The uncertainty made it worse for her.
She would fall asleep, sitting uneasily in the chair by the bed, to
dream of her husband lying in the earth, among the roots of the
creepers, the mould in his eyes. Or she would see him chained to a
log, working in the gang, carrying mud bricks to the walls, or
singing, like the man in Cammock’s tale, with whip-cuts on his body.
Sometimes, in the worst dreams, she saw him with the veiled figure of
a woman, and woke crying to him to come back to her, knowing herself
deserted. She had at first prayed that the men would attack Tolu at
once, to bring him back to her. The point had been debated among the
captains. But Perrin, at his best now, with his quiet, clumsy
sympathy, had shown her that this was not possible.

“And see, Olivia,” he said, “they must expect us. And we must run no
risk of failure. You see, don’t you, what a danger it would be to him
if we tried and failed? And the town will be full of troops for the
next week or two, expecting an attack.”

There were other good reasons against instant action. Cammock was sure
that the Spaniards would send a force against the lurking-places along
the Main, now that they had his charts as guides. Other captains
thought this possible; so the word was given to return to Springer’s
Key. After their arrival, they prepared the fort against attack, and
warned all privateers at the frequented anchorages. Then, having time,
they careened the _Broken Heart_, washing her with lime till she had
something of her old speed again. Other privateers joined them when
they heard that they intended to take Tolu. Margaret, sitting in the
cabin, a convalescent, talked of his plans with Olivia. Many of the
buccaneers were employed ashore, making long “dug-out” canoas for the
attack. He pointed to one of these, as it lay bottom up on the sand,
while the seamen tarred it against the worm.

“I expect we shall bring your husband off in that one,” he said.

“Yes?” she answered. “But I’ve been thinking, Charles, that I shall
never see Tom again.”

“What reasons have you?” he asked. “Look, Olivia, I’ve been thinking
it over. There is so much possible to you. Your husband would be happy
at a kind of life I’ve planned for him. On a sugar estancia in
Jamaica. Or one of the big plantations here, as soon as the ground is
cleared.”

“Charles,” she said, “the plantations here will never be cleared.
You’ve been dreaming. I’ve been dreaming. And I shall never see Tom
again.”

“You were always the despondent one in the old days,” he said lightly;
then, growing grave, he added, “Olivia, all the voyage, I helped your
dreams. I lied to you. All the voyage long, I lied. I longed to spare
you. I could see no better way.”

“I was a great fool, you thought.”

“No love is folly,” he answered. “But now I see what is possible.
After a wreck one finds the planks loose for a raft.”

“You think that, Charles? A woman finds no planks, as you call them.
Do you think my life can be patched up by planks? Do you know why I
pray for you to go to Tolu?”

“To restore your husband to you.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve been thinking, Charles. I want you to go to Tolu
to restore Captain Cammock’s book. That is the first thing. And to
make you sure that he isn’t--that he wasn’t killed in your service. I
know what you will find at Tolu, Charles. He’s not my husband now. I
see him too clearly. He’s forgotten us all by this time. Oh, you know
he has.”

“One has no right to say that.”

“It’s strange how a ship alters one’s judgments,” she said, with a
little laugh. “I used to be afraid of you. I couldn’t bear----”

“We were in the way,” he answered.

“I was in a dream. A bad dream. Now it’s over.” She shuddered, turning
her head aside.

“No, Olivia. Not that,” he said. “Life isn’t over. I can’t talk to you
as I should. My wound makes me stupid. You don’t know men, Olivia. Men
are selfish, brutal, greedy. You were never told that. You never saw
that side of them. It’s only one side. I’ve no right to talk to you
like this; but I’m your guardian here. Now suppose. Men, even lovers,
aren’t single-natured, like women. Suppose a man saw a woman in his
better moment, saw how beautiful and far above him she was, and loved
her for that moment, truly, before falling back to his old greeds.”

“Love is not like that.”

“We’re talking about life, Olivia. The moment of love was worth while
to both of them.”

“To myself and to my husband?”

“Yes. If you care to put it that way.”

“And now? What now?”

“Now that you know, Olivia, you know that it’s not all greed, any more
than it is all love. You’ve seen a man’s weakness. His sin, even.
You’ve seen the part of him he hid from you. We all have a skeleton to
hide.”

“I’m not to be moved by sophistry, Charles.”

“Ship life tries the nerves, Olivia.”

“Are you pleading for him now, Charles?”

“Olivia, don’t let me hurt you by discussing your husband. But did you
ever realize him?”

“Yes. I suppose I did.”

“He was unlike any man you had ever seen. Ah. Don’t answer. I know you
too well, Olivia. I know all this.”

“It seems a long time ago,” she said coldly. She was pulling a little
arnotto rose to pieces, petal by petal, crushing the petals till her
finger-tips were stained and scented.

“You never realized him, Olivia. I never realized him. I did not know
in Salcombe that day that he is a man with a frightful physical
energy. On shore he could work it off. It’s not easy to say this. But
at sea, in a ship, shut up here, it turned inward. Do you see,
Olivia?”

“Does that excuse a man? That he has a frightful physical energy, and
that it turns inward?”

“I’ve nothing to do with excuses. But, suppose that that was the case.
Suppose, too, that he had but a moment to decide in Salcombe, between
a lie, you, and the possibility of a new life, and the truth, arrest,
and the certainty of disgrace. He chose you, the lie, and the
possibility. He lied to you. The moment he told the first lie, you
became, in his eyes in a sense, an enemy to beware of, an enemy who
must be kept from the truth at all costs.”

“Yes. I have seen that, of course. And the lie grew all through the
voyage.”

“He was afraid to run the risk of losing you, by telling you the
truth.”

“That was not much of a compliment to me, was it?”

“All through that voyage, Olivia, we were in terror of being arrested
on arrival. It was in our thoughts night and day. We used to sit in my
cabin there, planning what we could do, if we found a warrant waiting
for us. The strain made him reckless.”

“Why should it have made him reckless?”

“Because there was no one on board, except a few inferiors, who could
console him. He could not confide in you. He had lied to you. We were
not his sort. There was no one else to whom he could turn.”

“Except some inferiors, to whom he turned.”

“Yes, Olivia.”

“And you could watch this, without a word, without attempting to put
the matter right.”

“Your husband wished to spare you, Olivia. We could not speak. We
thought. We thought you were going to have a child.”

“Ah,” she said, breathing hard, “I understand now.”

“All through the voyage, your husband was probably thinking that you
would soon learn, and that when you learned you would have nothing
more to do with him. Imagination is rare in men. He could think of no
other possibility. He made up his mind that you would cast him off,
and therefore he cast you on without giving you a chance to do
otherwise. Imagination is rare in women, Olivia, and you could not see
his point of view, any more than he could see yours.”

“You think I was proud and unforgiving. I have. It. If he’d turned to
me. And he left me that morning with a stolen book in his pocket,
intending to see us no more.”

“Ah. We see now all that can come of a hasty moment.” He rose from his
seat and stood before her. “Olivia,” he said, “I don’t extenuate. I’ve
tried to explain. Perhaps neither of you saw very clearly. After Tolu,
Olivia, there’s a life possible for you. You haven’t plumbed each
other’s natures. You haven’t really lived yet. A fool’s paradise isn’t
life. You don’t know what you may make of each other’s lives. He had
not much chance, with that ghastly business hanging over him. You had
none. Could you not start fair, after Tolu?” She pulled the remaining
rose leaves from the arnotto, one by one. “It’s worth it, Olivia.”

“Thank you, Charles,” she said quietly. She walked slowly to her
state-room.

“Yes,” he said to himself, after she had gone. “Yes. It’s the best
thing.”




 XII.
 THE END


 “The rust of arms, the blushing shame of soldiers.”
                       _The Tragedy of Bonduca._

 “Let’s sit together thus, and, as we sit,
 Feed on the sweets of one another’s souls.”
                _A Wife for a Month._

     “A fair end
 Of our fair loves.”
    _The Elder Brother._


Ten weeks passed before they felt the time ripe for their attack. By
that time Margaret had made a good recovery; his wound was well healed
over; he could even use the arm a little. Before leaving the
anchorage, he put more guns in the fort, and chose out a garrison to
fight them. He had every reason to be pleased with his success. A
large part of Springer’s Key had been cleared, under his direction,
for plantain-walks and vanilla-patches, as well as for Indian corn.
More than a hundred more privateers had come to him, and he had
planned with Tucket to load the _Broken Heart_, on his return from
Tolu, at a new logwood forest, never yet cut, on the banks of the
Azucar. He felt happier than he had felt since leaving England; for
now his way seemed clear. His old suspicion of Pain had gone. Pain’s
men had worked like slaves to clear the key for culture. It seemed to
him that he was going to succeed after all, and that he would, as he
had planned, make something of the wasted energies of the men of the
account. He had even started Tucket on a dye-works, with half a dozen
cauldrons, and a bale of cotton for experiments. The huts of the
Indians had been altered and enlarged. Springer’s Key Town was now a
walled city, with a few wooden shops, where the _Broken Heart’s_ goods
were sold for gold-dust. His thoughts ran much upon gold-dust; for the
rivers were full of it, according to the privateers. He went up the
Conception River with some Indians and a party of Pain’s men, during
the last of the weeks of waiting, to look for gold-dust in the sands.
They washed with sieves in several likely places, finding about six
ounces in all. The Indians said that there was more higher up, in the
rapid upper reaches, in the torrents of the Six Mile Hills, away to
the south. On the way downstream, he cut a bundle of mangrove,
thinking that the bark might be of use to tanners in Europe, since the
Indians dressed hides with it. The damp heat of the Isthmus overcame
him. He saw that nothing could be done there. No Europeans would ever
do much in such a climate. But at sea in the bright Samballoes, where
the winds blew steadily, never dying to a calm, he felt that much
could be done. He offered bounties to all who would clear patches for
tobacco, arnotto, cochineal, and indigo. Tucket, a steady, shrewd man,
who saw a chance of doing what he had always longed to do, helped him
ably. The dye-works occupied their mornings together. The rest of the
day, after the noon heat, was passed in the supervision and
encouragement of the citizens. The brush at Tolu, and the bringing off
of Ed, had made him popular. He found that the privateers were fairly
well disposed towards him. Even the inscrutable Pain seemed friendly.

It was not an easy matter to rule such citizens. He began by making a
rough division of labour. Those who loved hunting went in parties
daily to the Main to hunt. Those who liked to work in the islands cut
and cleared jungle, planted plantains, tobacco, or arnotto. Others
took boats and fished. Some built huts or canoas. Some dug wells and
trenches to supply the plantations. Many Indians came to them.
Springer’s Key knew a few weeks of bustling prosperity. Margaret began
to worry about another problem--the sex problem, the problem of wives
for his settlers. Where was he to get white wives for three hundred
men? How was he to avoid the horrors of the mixed races? He remembered
in Virginia the strange and horrible colonial mixtures, the mixtures
of white with red, white with black, black with red, red with all the
mixtures, black with all the mixtures, creatures of no known race, of
no traditions, horrible sports, the results of momentary lusts,
temporary arrangements. One could buy white transported women in
Jamaica at thirty pounds apiece. One could buy redemptioners in
Virginia for the same sum. Many of the men at work about him had done
so, during their lives in the colonies. But how was a nation to be
born from convicted thieves, petty larcenists, bawds, procuresses,
women burnt in the hand, branded women? He resolved to hurry home as
soon as the plantations began to bear, as soon as the Spaniards began
to recognize his rights. He must get settlers, honest, reputable
settlers. He would have to search England for them, hundreds of them,
so that the bright Samballoes might become the world’s garden. He
began to know the islands now. He saw them in all their beauty,
Venices not yet glorious, sites for the city of his dream. They shone
in their blossoms, hedged by the surf, splendid in their beauty. Among
these hundreds of islands, these sparkling keys, were homes for the
poor of the world, food for the hungry, beauty for the abased, work
for the stinted, rest for the exhausted. For an army could feed from
them in the morning, and pass on, yet in the evening there would be
food for another army. The earth brought forth in bounty. All the
fruits of the world grew there. The trade winds smelt of fruit. The
bats from the Isthmus darkened the stars at twilight as they came to
gorge the fruit; yet in the morning, when they flew screaming to their
caves, it was as though they had scattered but a husk or two,
scattered a few seeds, a few sucked skins. The sea gave a multitude of
fish. The woods were full of game. It was an earthly paradise. It went
to his heart to think that he was almost a king here. To the Indians
he was more than a king: he was a god.

He loved the Indians. He loved their dignity, their pride in the white
man’s friendship, their devoted service. It reminded him of his life
at school and of the devotion of small boys to their captain. During
his convalescence he had had many talks with an Indian prince, whom
the seamen called Don Toro. He had learned from this man to speak a
little in the Indian tongue, enough to draw from him something of the
Isthmus. He wished to clear the Isthmus of its poisonous tangle of
forest, so that the shore might become savannah land, as at Panama. He
longed to see the jungle go up in a blaze, in a roaring, marching army
of fire, that would cut a blackened swath to the hills, leaping over
tree-tops, charring the undergrowth, making good pasture for cattle,
for the great, pale Campeachy cattle which his ships should bring
there from Sisal. He tried to make Don Toro understand his wish, but
failed; for Don Toro was a woodland Indian; the forest was his home.
That stroke of policy, the bonfire, would have to wait till he could
bring the Indians to help him, and till the logwood on the banks of
the rivers had all been cut and shipped. But he wished that all those
miles of wood were lying in blackened ashes. It was now the bright,
dry season, when the woods were pleasant, musical with bell-birds,
sweet with blossoms. In a few weeks there would come the rains, the
months of rain, the streaming months, when the trees would rise up
from a marsh, when the sound of dropping would become a burden, the
months of the white-ribbed mosquito and the yellow fever.

He loved Olivia still. His passion was his life, his imagination.
While that fire burned in him the world was a metal from which he
could beat brave sparks. He was not sure how she felt towards her
husband. He had done his best for her husband. He could not say that
there was much chance of a happy life for her. It had been hard to
counsel her, doubly hard, for when she spoke gravely her voice
thrilled, the tone burned through him like a flame. A little more, and
honour would be thrown aside like a rag; the words would come in a
rush, sweeping him away. She had never seemed more beautiful than now.
She was pale, still; her eyes had dark rings; but she had never seemed
more beautiful. She was still mysterious to him, though he knew her
better than he had ever known her. She was an exquisite mystery,
beautiful, sacred, unthinkable; but not for him, never for him. She
would only be a shy friend to him, giving a little, hiding much, never
truly herself before him. So much he could see, hating himself for his
clumsy walk, for his gravity, for whatever it was, in him, which kept
her away. He saw that she was timid, fearful of all rough and rude
things, a shy soul, refined, delicate. He guessed that his love for
her made her timid of him. Then came the thought of Stukeley, the
torment and hate of the thought of Stukeley. He was to restore
Stukeley to her, after all these agonizing weeks. They had been bad
weeks, weeks of doubt, weeks of wicked opportunity. Had he followed
his own heart, during those weeks, he might have wrought upon her,
till the thought of Stukeley was loathsome to her. He could see no
possible happiness for her in a life with Stukeley, if Stukeley were
restored. She might find peace of mind in having him again beside her;
but never happiness. He remembered an old phrase of Perrin’s, that
women did not wish to be made happy, but to have the men they loved.
It seemed true; possibly it explained many horrible tales of
faithfulness. It had been a bitter task to plead for Stukeley. It
would be bitter to bring him back, and to watch the new peace broken,
as he knew it would be, himself making time and place. Still, it had
been the right thing; the right was a better thing than love. He bit
his lips for loathing when he thought how very far from the right his
love for this woman had led him.

Was he right, he wondered, in attacking Tolu, in an attempt to win
back Stukeley? The ambush on the beach had been sufficient declaration
of war. They had shown that they wished for war. He had put his hand
to the plough; it must drive on to the furrow’s end. But how many of
his men would fight for a righteous cause when the issue was tried? To
help the Indians, ancient lords of America, was a righteous cause,
though the ancient lords lay in bones in the caves, dead long ago.
Only their grandsons, servile degenerates, or men not yet
dispossessed, now lived. And if he helped the Indians, beating the
Spaniards, was his colony to sail away, or to have the fruit of their
toil? If they were to stay, how soon would the clash come? How soon
would the white men burn the forest, so that they might possess the
land? When he asked himself this question, he could not honestly say
that he was fighting for the Indians’ sake. His men were fighting for
loot, like a gang of robbers on a road. And yet. If by their means he
broke a corrupt power, so that the islands might become the world’s
garden and granary, another Venice, a home of glory and honour, as he
prayed, as he truly believed, it was right, the end justified him.
Only he must see to it that the Venice rose from all this noisomeness.
That was his task. That alone could keep his sword bright. This must
be no colony, no refuse heap, where younger sons might work with their
hands unseen, and the detected family knave escape his punishment. It
must be other than that. When they sailed home from Tolu he would
proclaim the republic of the keys; they would agree upon laws
together; they would send their first-fruits home. He used to lie in
his bunk at night in a trance of prayer that he might make these
islands all that he had hoped. It might be, he thought. But there was
much to do, and little could be done at once. When they came home from
Tolu; perhaps, then, he would see his dream made real. Now and then,
in the night watches, he asked himself whether his men would stand
success. He remembered how Cammock had said that they would not stand
failure. Thinking of Olivia, he knew which was the real test. He began
to tremble for the moment of power. St. George became John Bull
directly he had killed the dragon. His fine standard in the arts of
life made him pray that he might never succeed in that way. Better
fail. Failure is spiritual success. What is heaven to those who have
the earth.

They sailed from Springer’s Key three hundred strong, packed in the
two ships and three sloops. Fifty men remained behind to garrison the
key. A party of Indians, under Don Toro, followed the fleet in a large
periagua. Each ship in the fleet towed a bunch of canoas in which the
attacking force would go ashore. They were very gay with flags when
they left the anchorage. They fired guns, and sang, glad of the
battle. In a few days a score at least of the singers would be dead in
the sand, others would be stricken down, perhaps maimed. Margaret
asked Cammock if they ever thought of this before a fight; but he
answered, “No.”

“No one would ever fight if he thought,” he said. “I’ve been, now
(with other fellows), in three big fights. We’d not got a chance in
any one of ’em, if you’d asked before. I was at Panama, where we were
all starved and worn, while they’d a fresh army, with a city to fall
back on. I was at Perico, and five or six boats of us fought three big
ships full of troops. I was at Arica, where about a hundred of us
fought what was really a brigade of an army. I don’t think once I
heard any say, or even think, as some would be killed and shot.”

“I was in the Low Countries,” said Margaret. “It was the same there.
Each man thinks and hopes that it will be the other fellow. Sometimes
I feel that if a man thinks with sufficient strength he really makes a
sort of intellectual guard about himself. I mean, as faith saved the
men in the furnace. What do you think?”

“Yes?” said Cammock. “A man who goes in thinking about himself like
that isn’t going to do much with his gun. Besides, he couldn’t.”

“You see them sometimes.”

“Ay,” said Cammock. “You see ’em swaying from side to side to touch
their next-hand man. For company. You see ’em all swaying in a row.
Like this. Side to side. But the first shot locks the ranks. When they
begin to fire they forget it all. They’ve got to manage their guns.
And they get all hid in smoke. That’s another comfort. And they can
shout, ‘Give ’em hell. Give ’em hell. Give it the hijos del horos.’
But afterwards. What about afterwards?”

“The dead and wounded? Yes,” said Margaret. “Poor wretches lying out
without water. Ammunition carts going over them. Camp followers. The
night after a battle. I remember my first. It was all still after the
firing. Then one heard cries in the stillness, from all round one.
Awful cries. Like wild beasts.”

“I never heard that, sir. But I’ve seen blood really running out of a
ship’s scuppers. That gives you a turn. That was at Perico. She was
coming past us full tilt, under all sail. Her decks were full of men;
full. We were only eighteen of us in the long-boat. So we gave her one
volley. It was like a deer dropping dead, sir. The ship broached to.
There was scarcely a man left standing in her. Their matches set her
on fire. I was aboard her afterwards. I never see such a sight.”

“And how many are over there, now, going about the town, to be killed
in a few days, not seeing their slayer? Have you ever thought of the
soul, captain? It must be startled to be driven from the body like
that.”

“The faces are peaceful, sir.”

“Yes. Many are. But the faces one sees in a fight. I never saw a noble
expression on a man’s face in a battle. I’ve seen fear, and sickness,
and madness. I always feel a compound of all three. What do you feel?
I don’t believe you do feel. You are always so wonderful. I wish I had
your self-control.”

“I don’t know what I feel, sir. Fear of having my retreat cut off.
That’s the thing I worry over. I tell you, sir, frankly. I don’t want
that ever to happen to me. I don’t care who knows it.”

“About our battle, captain. We shall land in force to south of the
town, while Tucket’s party makes a strong feint on the north wall. We
shall creep up along the beach, and attack the south wall as soon as
Tucket’s party draws their fire. We ought to be in the town by the
time the sun’s at all strong. The canoas will follow us up, and lie
below the sea-wall, ready for us. The ships will anchor within gunshot
of the town as soon as we hoist English colours.”

“It’d be well to get all hands off soon, sir. They’ll get straggled,
looking for loot, and there’s three garrisons--Lobos, Covenas, and
Cispata--within an hour or two’s ride of the place. Another thing,
they’ll likely take to drinking.”

“We’re not in the town yet, captain.”

“That’ll come, sir.”

“You know, captain, we may be taking our friend back.”

“Yes, sir. The lady, poor thing. She must be suffering now, sir. We’re
anxious. But nothing to her, poor thing, wondering if that man’s
alive.”

“I’m wondering if we are making more trouble for her by bringing him
back to her.”

“He’s not been brought yet, sir.”

“In three days, captain.”

“Maybe so, sir. If you ask me, I say no. She’ll never see him again. I
ask Mr. Perrin that. One always comes back to Mr. Perrin. They call
him a fool, forward there; but he sees things shrewder than some of
these wise ones that tried to drown the duck. He said, ‘No. You’ll
never see him again. He’s married to a Spanish girl, and changed his
religion, by this time.’ One never believes Mr. Perrin till one finds
he was right after all. Then it’s too late.”

“Perhaps,” Margaret said. “He may be right. That may be it. He may be
killed in the assault. He may have left the town. We may never see him
again. It may be the end. I wonder what sort of life it is going to be
for her if it is the end.”

“Life goes on much the same way, sir. Women feel it more than men;
they live so cramped. But I always say a man’s a bigger thing than
anything he makes. If he makes trouble he’d ought to be big enough to
bear it.”

“And if the trouble’s made for him?”

“There’s always more than yourself in the world. Come, sir.”

“I think, captain,” said Margaret, “you’re the only one of us all who
comes up prepared and calm, ready for everything. I ought to have been
on the Main with you and Morgan, instead of learning Latin at a
university. If I ever have a son, I shall send him abroad with you to
be a buccaneer.”

They entered the gulf in the darkness of the new moon. They sailed in
a clump together, Tucket leading. They sailed without lights, but for
the night-lights in the binnacles. They moved in blackness on the sea,
great fish making fire-streaks, lumbering whales with their brood. The
men aboard them, waiting in the darkness for the word, struck their
shins on guns and longed to be off. Few of them took their hammocks
from the nettings that night. They passed the hours talking and
smoking, in slow sea-walks to and fro, humming old tunes over their
pipestems. They had made themselves ready many hours before. Their
guns had been oiled and loaded, and their belts filled with
cartridges, during the afternoon. All that they had to do now was to
buckle on their water-bottles and snapsacks, and get into their boats.
They heard the surf tumbling on the Mestizos. Setting stars, like
ships’ lights, burned out into the sea. The seamen watched them as
they shifted their tides, talking of the past, with its memories, of
ships and women, its memories of life and the sun.

The word was given some four miles from the city, lest the Indian
sentinels should sight the ships from the walls. The land was like a
cloud at that distance, like a sharply defined blackness on the sky,
shutting off the rising stars. It was a dark morning; but to the
seamen’s eyes it was light enough. They had been on deck since the
setting of the watch. They had grown accustomed to the darkness. It
was now an hour before the dawn. It was to be a red dawn above Tolu.

Captain Margaret stood with Cammock at the gangway watching his men go
over the side to the canoas. All the men of war, twenty of his crew,
and a few Indians, fifty men in all, were coming with him from the
ship. They loitered about the gangway like sheep at a gap, they seemed
a great company. They did not talk much among themselves. One or two,
the wags of the fo’c’s’le, made jests about “Tolu soup”; and the
laughter spread in the canoas, where the men were packed tightly, like
lovers on a bench. One or two of the men, the most intelligent among
them, asked to shake hands with Captain Margaret as they passed him at
the gangway side. Perrin touched him on the shoulder when about half
of them had gone.

“Charles,” he said, “Olivia wants to see you. She’s in the alleyway.”

“In a minute,” he answered. “Good-bye, West.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

“Look after them, captain. Don’t let them shove off without me.”

In the darkness of the alleyway he found Olivia. He could see her
great eyes in the oval of her face. She was trembling.

“Well, Olivia,” he said gravely. He took her hands in his, wondering,
dully, if he would ever see her again. “I’m just off, Olivia.”

“I wanted to see you,” she said, in a shaking little voice. “I know
I’ve only a minute. I tried last night. I want to thank you, Charles.
You’ve been good. You’ve been very good to me. Whether you succeed. Or
don’t succeed. I mean now. On shore. I. I thank you. Thank you. God
keep you.”

“You, too, Olivia.”

He felt that this was the supreme moment of his life, this moment in
the dark, with the forms of seamen passing across the door, and the
white, beloved face half seen, strained up towards him. He knew that
he might kiss her face. Their souls were very near together, nearer,
he knew, than they would ever again be. There was the beloved face
near his; there was his reward, after all these days, after all this
wandering the world.

“Good-bye, Olivia.”

She did not answer, but her hands pressed his hands to her side for a
moment.

“We shall be back in a few hours, Olivia.”

“Ah, not that. Not that,” she said, shuddering. “Never that again.”

“Perhaps, Olivia, he may be with us.”

“No,” she said faintly.

“I must go now, Olivia. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” she murmured. “God keep you, Charles.”

He knew that he might kiss her face; but would not. He knew that it
was the mood and the moment which brought them thus together. She
should never reproach herself. He did not love for pay. He pressed her
hands for an instant. “Good-bye then,” he said lightly.

“Thank you,” she said, so lowly that he could hardly hear her.

He knew that she stood there, leaning against the bulkhead in the
dark, long after he had reached the deck. It was like waking from a
dream to come on deck again.

“Good-bye, Cammock,” he said, putting his emotion from him. “We’ve got
our bearings. Don’t stand further in for half an hour. If anything
happens. Well. We’ve talked that out. Haven’t we? Good-bye, Edward.”

“Good-bye. Look here, Charles. Here are my pistols. I should like you
to have them.”

“Very well,” he said. “Thanks. How do you put them on?” He slung the
pistol-belt over his shoulder, in the sea-style. “Good-bye,” he said
again. “Look after her.”

He passed quickly down the ladder to the waiting canoas, which still
dragged at the gangway with their freights of armed men. A canoa was
pulling towards them out of the night; her oars stroked the sea into
flame. Gleams of flame broadened at her bows. Little bright sparks
scattered from the oar-blades as the rowers feathered.

“Is that you, Captain Margaret?” said Pain’s voice. “I’ve sent
Tucket’s party on ahead. They’ve got a mile further to pull than we
got. We’re all ready ahead there. You’re all ready and loaded, and
your guns flinted?”

“Yes. All ready here, Captain Pain.”

“Your oars are in grummets, ain’t they?”

“Yes, all of them.”

“And you’ve all got white scarves on your arms? Right. The word is ‘Up
with her.’”

“‘Up with her.’ You hear that, all of you? The word is ‘Up with her.’”

“Up with her,” the men repeated. “We’ll rally her up for a full due.”

“We’ll shove ahead, then, cap,” said Captain Pain. “If any man speaks
above a whisper, mind, we’ll deal with him after.”

“Silence in the boats,” said Margaret. “On a morning so still as this
we may be heard a couple of miles off. Sound goes a long way over
water. Remember, all hands. No looting. There’s to be no looting.
After the city’s taken, we shall hold it to ransom. After the fight,
the trumpeter here will sound the assembly in the Plaza. You will all
fall in there. Understand?”

“Are you ready in the bows there?”

“All ready, sir.”

“Shove off. Give way together. Make it long, stroke oars.”

“Long and lairy, sir.”

“We’ll follow you, Captain Pain.”

“Right,” came the voice out of the darkness. The hulk of the _Broken
Heart_ fell away into the night. The ripple of flame at her bows died
astern. The boats drew up into order, Pain’s canoa leading, the other
fourteen following close behind, two and two together. There was
silence in all the boats, a silence like the hush in a theatre. The
wash of the hundred oars, and the slow breathing of the rowers, was
all that could be heard. All that could be seen was the advancing oily
swell of the water, the gleam where the oars dipped, the track of the
great stars dancing on the swell. Dimly one could see the other boats.
One could see the transom of Pain’s boat, a ghostly oval, dying away
ahead, but never quite gone. Far in front, seeming slowly to climb
higher, was the blackness of the shore, from which, very faintly, came
the roll of the surf. So they rowed on, in the darkness, pausing
sometimes to change their rowers, two hundred men, going to the
presence of death.

Their first real sight of the shore was a twinkle of fire upon the
beach, below the city. Some infected clothes had been set on fire
there the night before. The fire had smouldered all night, and had
then broken out, in little leaping tongues, lighting the town’s south
gate. Those in the boat wondered when they saw it, thinking that
Indians must be camped there, or travellers from Covenas, perhaps,
arrived after the shutting of the gates. There was some anxiety lest
it should be a signal; but the flames, lighting up the beach, showed
them no watchers, and no answering signal shone in the south-west,
either from shore or sea. They learned from the fire that they were
pointing too near to the city. They swung off four points, and rowed
to the south-east, into the shallow water off the mouth of the
Pesquero.

They landed about three miles from the town, and at once formed for
action. Some Indian scouts led the party, then came Margaret with a
dozen axemen, all carrying powder-kegs, for the destruction of the
gate. The _Broken Heart_ men formed the vanguard. Pain’s men followed,
in rough order. The boats, with a boat-guard of thirty or forty men,
some of whom were leeches, pulled out into the gulf, to prepare lint
and salves for the hurt. The landing party looked to their firearms.
There was a little confusion and splashing, owing to the narrowness of
the beach, which forced some of them to stand in the sea. In a few
minutes they were all ready. They set forward, as silently as they
could, keeping a fast walk, lest Tucket’s men, now hidden among rocks
a mile to the north of the town, should grow weary of waiting. It was
still dark night about them; but they knew from the faintness of the
wind that it was near dawn. The macaws were waking in the forest.
Strange cries, strange primeval noises, sounded in the forest. There
were stealthy patterings, quick scuttering droppings, as some animal
brushed among the scrub, knocking off the dew. The Indian who walked
by Margaret knew what these noises meant. He paused at each sound, as
though to make sure that they were really what they seemed. A
chicaly-chicaly made her sweet, sharp cry, from somewhere ahead. It
touched Margaret to the heart; it was so like the tolling of a cuckoo.
The Indian bent his head back and replied, so exactly that the bird
answered. Margaret had never before heard this done; though he had
read of it. He wondered, as he marched, if all knowledge ranked alike,
if all power, all imagination, ranked alike, and whether this Indian,
who could apprehend the natures of all these creatures in the wood,
were not really a finer product than himself. He could not imitate a
chicaly-chicaly, he could not raise the devil, he could not see a
three-days’-old track on stones. He wished that in the march to a full
life one had not to forget so much. One should have all the powers,
all the savage powers even, one should be a divine spirit of
apprehension, one should inform the whole world, feeling the pismire’s
want as keenly as the saint’s ecstasy. One should be able to apprehend
the wild things, the things of the wood, as well as the spirit of a
poet in his divine moment. True life is to be alive in every fibre to
the divine in all things. He wondered whether the Indians communed
with the beasts, getting from them something which the white men
ignored; coming, through them, to secrets unknown to white men,
secrets of nature, of the universal spirit, of the spirit which binds
the herds of peccary, and slinks in the wild cat, and sings in the
bell-voiced golden-comb. He thought little of the business in hand.
His mind was blank about it. All that he could think of the coming
struggle was that he must bring back Stukeley, find him and bring him
back, or never go back himself. The men were all round him, some of
them even ahead of him by this time, for, going fast as they were,
often up to their knees in the sea, it was impossible to keep good
order.

After half an hour’s march they forded the Arroyo Francesco and came
to the broader sands. Here they all marched in the wash; for now they
were within twelve minutes of the town. They could see the dark mass
of the town ahead of them, a city of sleepers, no light burning, no
one stirring, only a little fire near the gate, and a dog baying in
the Plaza. The dawn was beginning to change the darkness; it was
growing lighter. The screams of the macaws set the monkeys swearing.
The men halted, formed into order, and hurried on for another
half-mile. They paused again, only four hundred yards from the walls.
The pioneers with the powder-kegs made ready for their dash to the
gate. The fusemen, carrying many yards of match, now lit their fuses
in the scrub. The army marked time, feeling the chill of the dawn,
waiting for Tucket to begin. Margaret could feel that many of his men
were nervous, waiting like that, with the light growing above them.
They had timed the attack well; but to stand, waiting, while the
precious moments passed, was hard. Very soon the sentinels would see
them. A low growl of discontent muttered up and down the ranks. Voices
urged Margaret to attack at once, without waiting for Tucket. “We
shall be seen.” “What’s the good of waiting here?” “Why, Lord love us,
we could have took the town by this time.” “Shove ahead.” “This is a
bit of ‘up with her,’ I don’t think, waiting ’ere.” There was a
tendency to edge forward, to press towards the front, to see what was
going on. Margaret urged them back, and passed word to Pain to keep
his rear ranks from firing into the backs of the storming party. The
rear ranks were the eager ranks, as they always are. The front ranks
are nearest to the bullets; they have their minds engaged.

Lighter it grew. There was colour in the sky now; the men were surging
forward, swearing that they would wait no more. Then from far away, on
the farther wall of the town, a cry arose, a cry like a death cry, a
cry of alarm. Two shots followed; then yells, shrieks, oaths, the roar
of many guns. “Up with her, Tucket,” said the waiting men. Cries
sounded within the town, dogs yelped, one or two women screamed, as
the firing increased. “Come on,” Margaret called to the pioneers. They
splashed out of the water on to the sands, and started towards the
city at a run. As they ran, they heard Pain keeping back the ranks
till the charge should have been fired. The feet splashed behind them
slowly, growing fainter. The fire on the beach grew brighter, they
were passing it; the walls were before them, only a hundred yards
away. “Against the door,” he said, panting. “Against the hinges. One
keg spilled below.” The town was aroused now. They could hear the
cries and hurry. Still no sign came from the walls. “Sentinel’s
asleep,” said one of the men. “There,” said another. “Up with her. Up
with her. We’re seen.” A man showed upon the wall by the gate. “Ahi,”
he screamed. “Piratas. Piratas. Piratas. Cuidado. Cuidado.” He fired
his gun into the air; the flash shot up like the flash of a
blast-charge. There came cries and a noise of running. A few heads
showed. The wall spouted fire in a volley. They were up against the
wall, against the iron-plated door, piling the kegs against the
hinges, tamping them down with sods and stones. Margaret snatched one
keg and spilled it along the door-sill. “There,” he said. “There. Now
your fuse, fuseman.” The quick-match was thrust into a keg. “Up along
the walls, boys. Quick. Scatter. Pronto.” He thrust them sideways.
They saw what he wanted. When the imaginations are alert there is
little need for speech. No man could have heard him. The racket in the
town was uproar like earthquake. The whole wall above them was lit
with fire spurts. Mud and plaster were tinkling in a rain upon them.
They ran fifty yards like hares, paying out the quick-match. “Now,”
said Margaret. The match flashed. A snake of fire rippled from them.
They saw the shards of pots gleam, then vanish. They saw old bones,
old kettles, all the refuse below the walls. “Down,” he shouted.
“Down.” They flung themselves down. The beach to their left flashed,
as the pirates fired at the wall.

There came a roar, a rush of fire, a shaking of the land. Mud, brick,
stone, shards of iron and wood, all the ruin of the gate, crashed
among them, flying far among the trees, thumping them on their backs
as they lay. After the roar there was a dismayed silence. A wail of a
hurt man sounded, as though the wrecked gate cried. Then with a volley
the privateers stormed in. From where he lay, Margaret could watch
them plainly; the dawn had broken. He saw them charging, tripping in
the sand, their gun-barrels glinting. An Indian led them, a screaming
Indian, who danced and spun round, waving his machete. “Lie still,” he
shouted to his pioneers. “Let them pass. They’ll shoot you down. Lie
still.” With yells and shots the storming party swept up the ruin. “Up
with her,” they shouted. “Up with her.” They were clambering over the
wreck, tripping, stumbling, kneeling, to fire, clubbing at the guard.
“Now,” said Margaret, drawing his sword. They rose up from their nest
among the tip. They were with their fellows, they were climbing the
heaped stone, amid smoke and oaths and fire-lit faces. Margaret was
inside Tolu. The south wall was won.

The land-breeze, very faint now, drifted the smoke slowly. He could
see little. He could see in glimpses the whitewashed houses, the line
of the south road, a man with his back to a wall, a woman fallen,
figures rushing. He could see enough to know that the enemy were
making no stand. He ran on up the road to the Plaza, one of a mob.
Windows opened above him. People fired from the windows. Women were
flinging pots, tiles, braziers. Some one had begun to ring the alarm
bell in the church. The broken clang sounded out above the screams and
the firing. Now it was all clear before him. He was in the Plaza,
shouting to his mob to form. There in front of him the troops were
mustering. They were running from their quarters, half clad, in rags,
just as they had started from sleep. Heavy fire was rolling at the
north wall. Troops were running thither. In the centre of the Plaza,
about a cotton tree, a score of Spaniards were forming in line. A
halberdier was dressing them. They stood firm, handling their guns,
hearkening to their capitan. Margaret saw them clearly, and praised
them in his heart for the flower of soldiery. They were of the old
Spanish foot, the finest troops in the world. Even as he looked he saw
them falling forward. He was among them. His sword jarred him to the
shoulder as it struck on a gun-barrel. He saw them about him. They
were breaking. They were gathering into clumps. They were being swept
into the mob of citizens flying to the east gate.

Half an hour later the newly risen sun showed him a captured town. In
the streets, in the Plaza, everywhere, lay the dead and dying. They
lay in heaps in some parts. All the clutter and wreck of war, the
clouts, the cast arms, the gear flung away by the fleeing, lay
littered in the sands. The walls were chipped and starred with bullet
marks. The stink of powder was everywhere. Women still screamed.
Wounded men wailed where they lay, with the pitiful whimpering cry,
like that of a beaten hound, which sickens all who hear it of the
glory of war. Firing was still going on; but the fight was over; the
town was in the hands of the privateers.

Margaret found himself at the east gate with Pain. About a dozen of
the crew of the _Broken Heart_ stood by him, waiting for orders. He
took their names, and told them off to look out at the city gates, and
to spike the guns on the sea-wall.

“I’m going to the Governor’s house there, to look for my friend,” he
said. “Where’s my trumpeter? Sound the assembly, trumpet. Muster your
men, will you, Captain Pain?”

The assembly sounded. The men fell in, answering to their names. The
boat-guard with the doctors landed. The captains checked off their
lists, scanning the ranks closely whenever a man failed to answer. The
men were powder-blackened; some of them were wounded, many were cut
about the head. They sent the boat-guard with the doctors to search
the streets for the dead and hurt. Thirty-three men were missing, all
of them, save one, from the party which had stormed the south wall.

“Strengthen the guards at the gates,” Margaret said. “Captain Tucket,
you take the north gate. I’ll see to the east. Captain Pain, will you
send a dozen to the south? Keep a sharp look out.”

He picked his own guard and sent them off to their duty. The other
gate-guards fell out unwillingly. Some of the privateers were eating
their breakfasts in the ranks.

“I’m going to the Governor’s house now,” he said to Pain. “Call me at
once if the Spaniards send a trumpet. No straggling. No looting,
mind.” As he turned towards the Governor’s house he heard the men
behind him snigger. He heard a voice ask Pain if this was to be the
new rule, now that Springer’s Key was full of college gents. Pain told
the man to take a severe turn.

Margaret drew his pistols as he came near the house; for though most
of the inhabitants had fled, a few poor men and slaves still lounged
in the streets, having nothing to lose. A single man, richly dressed,
might tempt these gangrels. He hailed a negro, who sat in the sun in
the Plaza, sucking a wound in his wrist.

“Ho muchacho,” he said in his schoolboy Spanish. “Donde esta la casa
del Gobernador?”

The negro waved his unhurt hand towards the house with a gesture full
of dignity. Then he continued to suck his wound, like a dog licking a
hurt paw.

“Gracias,” Margaret answered. “Pero el hombre Inglès. Donde esta?”

Again the negro waved his hand towards the house, pausing in his
suction exactly like a dog. “He,” he said; then bent to suck again.

The house of the Governor fronted the Plaza. It was a big house, with
a patio. The lower story had no outer windows, no door. Margaret had
to climb the stone steps to the balcony, where a chained monkey leaped
up and down in the sun, between bites at a plantain. The door leading
to the inner part of the house lay open, just as the fugitives had
left it. A woman’s shawl was on the floor. One runner had upset the
monkey’s saucer of water. A chair had been upset. As Margaret entered
the house, with his pistols cocked, he saw something beneath the
chair, something bright, which he took to be a snake. It was the
scabbard of a sword, flung aside in a soldier’s hurry. Margaret,
pausing on the threshold to listen, wondered if Stukeley had flung it
there. He listened intently, expecting to see Stukeley coming from the
darkness of the corridor. His mind was busy with the thought of
Stukeley. What was he to say to him? What was he to do to him? Suppose
Stukeley came out fighting? “I must bring him back,” he repeated. “I
must bring him back. He must be brought back.” A step sounded on the
stairs behind him. It was West, one of the _Broken Heart’s_ seamen.

“Beg pardon, sir,” the man said, “may I come with you? There’s maybe
some of these Dons in the house.”

“Yes,” Margaret answered. “Listen.”

They listened in the doorway for a moment; but the house was still,
save for the chinking of the monkey’s chain.

“Gone, sir, I guess,” said West.

“Come on, then,” Margaret said. “Cock your pistols and come on.”

They passed through the littered hall into the left-hand corridor. The
jalousied shutters were shut on the patio side; but the doors of some
of the rooms were open, giving light to the passage. It was a barely
furnished house, hung with very old Spanish leather, ant-eaten and
mothed and mouldy, falling to pieces. In the first room, a
sleeping-room, the mosquito-nets had been torn from the cots, and lay
wrecked on the floor with a silver chocolate service. In another, a
chair stood against the wall, where a man had stood to snatch arms
from a trophy. In another sleeping-room they found the clothes of a
man and woman by the cot-sides just as they had been laid the night
before, when the couple retired. It was like being in the presence of
death to walk that house. It was as though they were looking on the
corpse of a house, on a house dug up from the sands, the life of it
gone and forgotten, only the pathetic husks left, that had once been
helps to men. They opened a shutter and looked out upon the patio. A
goat was tethered there, crying to be milked. They heard the stamping
of horses. One horse was scraping with his forefeet against the floor
of his stall. There was no sign of Stukeley there, no trace of him,
nothing to mark his presence.

“Now the other corridor,” Margaret said. They retraced their steps,
walking on tiptoe, listening intently. The first room in the other
corridor was a dining-room, furnished with heavy Spanish furniture of
the great period. A lute lay on the table, among wineglasses half full
of wine, a box of Peruvian suckets, a box of candied quinces, a dish
of avocat pears. Some one had been playing the lute, the night before.
The unknown player had fitted a new string. The broken string lay
among the litter where it had been thrown. Flies were black among the
suckets. The air smelt of the stale gums which had burnt out before a
crucifix on the wall. A shaft of sunlight came through a broken
shutter. The dust quivered in it. On the floor, in its road of glory,
a column of ants marched, stumbling over crumbs. There was much silver
in the room. Over the side-board was a Zurbaran, too full of
personality to be religious. Margaret looked at it, sighing, thinking
that only lesser artists could save their souls. There was no trace of
Stukeley here. “Let’s get out,” he said. “He’s not here.”

“There’s three more rooms,” said West. They entered the Governor’s
office.

It was a barer room than the others. It contained a table and a few
chairs. There were papers on the table; a locked account book, a list
of resident Indians, a list of citizens capable of bearing arms, a
diary in cipher. Under the table, in a coffer, were more account
books, Cammock’s portolano, and a copy of the same, traced from the
originals, now nearly finished.

“You see, West,” said Margaret. “You bear witness that I take these
two books?”

“Yes, sir,” said West. He walked over to a corner and picked something
up from a chair.

“Isn’t this Mr. Stukeley’s, sir?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, crossing over swiftly. “It’s his hat. And
there’s his sword-belt.”

They stood together, looking at the things, wondering how lately the
owner had flung them there, as he came in, hot, for the onzas. They
felt him to be very near them there. It was as though he were coming
sneering towards them, his fine teeth showing. His very words came
into Margaret’s mind, with their exact inflections. “Found much? Eh?”
Those were the words he would use.

“Hark,” said West suddenly. They listened.

“What did you think you heard?”

“There’s some one speaking in the next room, sir.”

“Listen.”

In the hush, they heard a sound like a sob, a low murmur of words;
then a rustling, chinking sound.

“Like some one praying,” West said.

“Careful now,” said Margaret. “Come on after me.” They crept from the
office on tiptoe, their pistols ready. In the corridor a board creaked
beneath them. They paused guiltily, straining their ears to listen.
They heard some one cross the room quietly. Then the door was flung
open, letting a glare of light into the corridor. A priest stood
before them, holding up a crucifix. Within was a bed. A woman knelt by
the bed. Some one lay on the bed, covered with a cloth. Margaret
raised his hand, and the priest stepped back, looking at their faces
curiously.

“Donde esta el caballero inglès?” Margaret asked. “El señor
Stukeley?”

A faint smile showed upon the priest’s mouth.

“Here,” he said in good English. He twitched back the bed-cloth
reverently, to show the body of Stukeley lying dead. The face was a
dull yellow, the mouth was inflamed. There was no need for further
words.

“Vomito,” said the priest.

“Yes,” Margaret said, uncovering. “Vomito.”

“This morning,” the priest said.

The woman rose from the bedside, as though to drive them away. She was
a black-eyed, hawk-nosed woman, of a crude and evil beauty. She was
dressed in red and brown, in an outlandish style. She spoke in gasps,
dreadful to hear; using broken English, laced with oaths and Spanish
words. “Damn,” she said. “Damn perros. Cabrones de piratas.”

“De quién es?” Margaret stammered, meaning “Who are you?” He had no
gift of tongues.

“Mrs. Stukeley,” the priest said. “The widow. His wife.”

“Me Anna,” said the woman. “Me ’is wife.”

Margaret bowed; words seemed useless. He was only conscious of the
horror of it. He had not been prepared for this. He had sat at meat so
many times with this corpse. He had seen him so often, full of life
and health, going with a laugh to sin, in the pride of the flesh. Now
a little thing, the bite of a fly, no more, had brought him to a death
among strangers, in this low cot in the wilds, with his beauty turned
to horror, and his strength, if anything, a fiery chain upon his soul.
There he lay, under an Indian cotton, gone to his reward so soon.
Margaret had hated him. He shuddered now to think how he had hated
him. Looking at him as he lay there, in all the hideousness of death,
he felt the remorse which a death brings. He felt ashamed, as though
he had struck the corpse by hating him whom it had covered. “It was my
fault,” he said to himself. “It should have been otherwise. One ought
to live with this before one.” He saw where he had acted hastily,
where he had failed. He knew all that he might have done. What moved
him most was the thought that Olivia had loved this man, had loved him
tenderly, and that he, Olivia’s lover had never known his character,
had never guessed what it was in him which was beautiful to her. Now
he would never know. Standing by the side of the corpse, he tasted all
the bitterness of one who has failed to apprehend another, and learns
of his failure too late. Stukeley was dead now, the old life was dead
now. He would to God that he were dead in Stukeley’s place, and that
the old life might be lived again. He would to God that this man’s
passage to death had been made pleasanter. He blamed himself. He was
touched and humbled almost to tears. “If I had only understood,” he
thought, “you would not have cast yourself away thus.” Now he had this
to tell Olivia.

“You were not what I thought, Stukeley,” he murmured aloud, looking
down at the face. “You were not what I thought. You won her love. You
were her chosen.

“My God,” he added to himself, “you won her by that very quality of
certainty which made you cast her aside.” He stood there trying to
create, in his moment of tenderness, fit words with which to tell her,
words which might comfort her, staying in her heart. The words which
came to him seemed blunt and cold. The only help that he could give to
her was to bury this part of her with all reverent and noble rites.

“He was the Governor’s secretary,” said the priest. “He was not here
long. Not long in the country. The vomito takes the new-comers.”

“Ah,” said Margaret, starting. “How well you talk English. Look here.
Come aside here. We must bury him at once?”

“Before the sun,” the priest said, with a shudder.

“Where is the burial ground?”

He raised his hand in benediction over the corpse, then led Margaret
out of the room. West followed them, reverent and awed, speaking in a
hushed voice. The priest led them by a back way to the patio, thence
by a postern to a side street, a good two hundred yards from the
house. The burial-ground was hedged with stone, over which some
creepers had grown. Little green lizards were darting among the
creepers. They glittered like cut glass. The gate of the cemetery
swung open on hinges of raw hide. When they entered, some large rats
scuttled to their burrows among the graves.

“Much sickness here,” said the priest. “It is not good to dig deep in
the ground.”

“I must dig this grave deep,” Margaret answered. “Look at the rats.”

“They are large,” the priest said. “Much sickness in this poor town.”

“Where can I find a spade?” Margaret asked.

“Who knows?” said the priest. “You will tell your men to find one?
Ah?”

“I must do this myself,” he answered.

“But your men on the wall,” said the priest. “And your ship there.
Ah?”

Margaret looked towards the west, over the low sea-wall. Some of his
men were spiking the guns on the platform. He could hear the click of
the malls upon the spikes, as they snapped the soft iron flush with
the gun. Beyond them, very far away, were the ships; the tide and the
land-wind had set them out to sea again.

“They are waiting for the sea-breeze,” said the priest. “No getting in
till chocolate.”

“No,” said Margaret. “Now take me, please, to find a spade.”

“You are not a privateer?” the priest asked. “You do not sack us?”

“No,” he answered. “I am not a pirate. I demand the right to trade,
and the recognition of Andria, King of Darien.”

“Don Andria,” the priest said. “Ah? Don Andria, the King. And so we
are not sacked.”

“Now let us find a spade.”

They searched for half an hour before they found a spade.

“We do not use spades,” the priest said. “We tickle the earth with our
toes and it laughs fruits for us.”

“I will lay him here, West,” Margaret said. “Looking towards England.”

“Sir,” the priest said, “he was a good Catholic. He must look towards
the east.”

“Ah,” said Margaret. “And his wife would like that?”

“Yes. Ah, his wife, sir. Poor child. She was only married six weeks.”

“It is sad for her. He did not suffer much, father?”

“Ill for four days. But yesterday he was better. Then the fever grew
again. As it does, sir, in some cases. The blood was before the dawn.
Like a child, sir. And his eyes turned upon the Cross.”

“Then I will dig the grave here,” Margaret said. “This will be east
and west by my watch.” He scratched a narrow oblong with the point of
the spade.

“I’ll dig the grave here,” he said.

“Not you. Not in the sun,” the priest said. “There is very much
sickness. Your men will dig.”

“I shall dig,” he answered. He felt that he was burying a part of
Olivia. He would do her that service. He would make a grave for that
unworthy part of her. That act of his should be a part of his penance
towards the dead man’s ghost.

“It is very bad to dig this ground,” the priest said. “It is dust of
the dead. We do not dig deep except for an Excellency. You see. The
rats. Why toil, since God will bring them together at the
Resurrection?”

“This is an evil country,” Margaret answered, driving the spade into
the earth.

“There is fever and death. Very evil,” said the priest. “It is not
wholesome to be in the sun, turning the earth, before chocolate. I
will go to the widow.”

He left the cemetery, holding a handkerchief across his nose. The rats
in their burrow-mouths watched him. One or two of them scuttled to
other burrows. They seemed to play a game of general post, with
Margaret as the “he.”

“Let me have a go at that spade, Captain Margaret, sir,” said West.

“No. I must do this,” he answered. “It is dangerous at the top.
Perhaps deeper down you shall give me a hand. Gather stones from the
wall. I want you to keep away from me, West. This soil is full of
infection. Here is some tobacco. I want you to smoke, all the time you
are here.”

“No, sir,” said West, looking uncomfortable. “Not just now, thank you,
sir.”

“It will keep away the infection. You do smoke?”

“Yes, sir. But it wouldn’t be right, sir, nor respectful to Mrs.
Stukeley.”

“Ah,” said Margaret, feeling himself rebuked. He dug for a few minutes
in silence; it was light, sandy earth, easily shovelled.

“I wish you’d let me do that, sir,” said West.

“No. Not yet, West.”

“He was a big man, too, sir. He’d ’ave been a fine big man if he’d
taken care of himself.”

“Yes,” Margaret answered. “He was a beautiful figure.”

“There’s a lot of poor fellows killed, sir,” said West. “But somehow
it don’t come ’ome like this one does. That yellow look, after what he
was. And the Spanish lady. She wasn’t his real lady, sir.”

“No. She wasn’t his real lady.”

So they talked as they dug turn and turn about for an hour and a half,
when they had to stop digging. They were coming to water. The bottom
of the grave was an inch or two deep in water.

“We can go no further,” Margaret said. “Now we’ll get stones.” They
lined the bed of the grave with stones, and turned to the house for
the body.

The priest and the woman had laid the body out. Margaret ripped down
one of the long, jalousied shutters for a bier, while West searched in
the patio for rope. An old Spanish tapestry of the death of Absalom
served as a pall. They carried Stukeley to the grave, the priest
preceding them, intoning the burial service. Then, very reverently,
they lowered him. West and Margaret went aside after this and gathered
a heap of lilies while the woman and priest prayed together.

“Take her away, father,” Margaret whispered. The priest led the woman
to the house. She walked like one stunned. Margaret and West leaned
over the grave, to look their last on Stukeley. They could see the
water soaking into the linen, and above that the frayed body of
Absalom, the handsome youth, caught in the thicket, as he rode. The
town was noisy beyond them, two hundred yards away. Singing and
shouting came from the Plaza. It seemed to Margaret to be the dirge
the man would have chosen, this singing and shouting of men.

“Is that gentleman’s service enough, sir?” West asked.

“Quite enough,” he answered. “You heard him say that Mr. Stukeley had
changed his religion?”

“I’d feel easier if you’d say a few words, sir.”

He spoke the few words. Then with the shovel he began to fill in the
grave, from the foot. He placed many heavy stones among the earth, so
that the rats might be foiled. When he had levelled the surface he
heaped a cairn of stones at the head, and laid the lilies there. He
went to a neighbouring garden, and dug up an arnotto rose-bush, to
plant upon the grave. When this had been planted, the rites were over,
he could do no more. They stood looking down at the grave for a
moment, before they left the graveyard. The singing was loud behind
them. In front of them, darkening under the breeze, was the bay, with
the ships and sloops running in, distant some two or three miles.

“Come, West,” Margaret said. “I must see after the wounded.” He took a
last look at the grave, at the already drooping lilies and dejected
rose-bush. “Good-bye, Stukeley,” he murmured. He stooped, and picked
some rose-buds, and a little scrap of stone from the grave, putting
them carefully in a pocket-case. “Now smoke, West,” he said. “And rub
tobacco on your hands.”

He reproached himself for having neglected his wounded for so long;
but he knew that Tucket and Pain would look to them. He wished that
the singing and shouting would stop. “Old Rose” and “The green grass
grew” were not songs which the army in his mind had sung. Thermopylæ
was not possible to an army which sang such songs. Pistol-shots marked
the singing of each stanza; there were yells and cries. He thought he
heard the screams of women. He saw two men come from a house with
their arms full of plunder. “My God,” he said to himself bitterly. “Is
Stukeley to check me even in death?” He drew his pistols again. “Come
on, West,” he cried. He ran to the two looters.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Take that stuff back where you got
it.”

“Get ter hell,” said the men. “You ain’t our captain. Who in hell are
yer talking to?” Both men were drunk. One of them had been wounded in
the head.

“I been doing your dirty work all morning,” said the wounded man, with
drunken gravity. “I’m a free man, and I’m getting a little for myself.
You ain’t my cap. Wot d’yer talk to us for? Go and see ’em in the
Plaza,” said the other man. “Git ter the swamps and shove yer ’ed in.”
They rolled off shouting. The noise in the Plaza became louder at each
moment. It was useless to shoot the looters; two-thirds of the whole
force were looting. Pain himself was looting.

Indeed, the sight of the Plaza haunted Margaret like a nightmare till
he died. Of the two hundred men gathered there, hardly thirty were
sober. These stood aloof under Tucket, guarding the wounded and
laughing at the antics of the rest. A heap of loot was piled under the
cotton tree. At every moment a buccaneer added to the pile. Wine casks
lay open about the square, with drunken men lying near them, in the
sun, too drunk to stir. Other drunkards, with linked arms, danced and
sang, making catcalls and obscene noises. A half-conscious girl lay
against a wall, gasping, shaken by hysteria. Her wild eyes were hard
and dry, her hands clutched the dress across her bosom. Parties of
drunken men hacked at doors with axes, and tossed household gear
through the windows on to the heads of other drunkards beneath. Some
had been torturing a Spaniard with woolding. The man lay dead with the
cords about him, his face in the sands. Others, in wantonness, were
now firing the church, dancing obscenely about in the priests’ robes.
Women were screaming in an upper room. A dozen savages pursued one
shrieking woman. They bawled filthy jests to each other as they ran.
Margaret stood over her, as she fell, moaning, unable to run further.
He drove the ruffians back, threatening them with his sword.

“It’s the cap,” they said. “If the cap wants ’er he must ’ave ’er.” He
placed the woman in a house which had been sacked; it seemed the
safest place in that lost city. Pain came by him, drunk, dragging a
silver tray.

“No looting,” the drunkard called. “Strictly college gents. No looting
’tall. None. Won’t have it. No.” He passed on, crying drunken
catcalls. The eastern side of the town, fanned by the breeze, was fast
spreading to a blaze. The dry wood crackled as the flame caught. The
church roof was pouring smoke. Little flames were licking out from the
eaves. “My God. My God,” said Margaret. “And this is my act and deed.
My act and deed.” He went to Tucket, who stood with the wounded,
grimly watching it all. He could not speak. He could only shake his
head, white to the lips.

“How’s this for hell?” said Tucket. “This is Captain Pain.”

“Are the guards at the gates still?” Margaret answered.

“Some of ’em are. Your own men are. Mine are. I never saw men like
these, though.”

“Let’s get the wounded to the boats. How many have we? How many men
are steady still?”

“Sir,” Tucket answered, “I’ve twenty-five men by me. We lost fourteen
killed. There’s nineteen hurt here. That’s fifty-eight. Say there’s
twenty at the gates still. That leaves a matter of a hundred and
seventy like what you see. Get them hurt into the carts, boys, and
start ’em to the boats. Gently does it. That’s you.”

They laid the wounded men in litters and carts, and wheeled them down
gently to the canoas. Margaret walked by the side of the carts,
talking to the men about their wounds, fanning them with his
handkerchief, getting drink for them, wetting their brows with water
whenever they passed a cistern. The ships were then coming to anchor
within half a mile of the town.

“You won’t be long in the boats,” he told the wounded men. “You’ll
soon be in bed on board. You can see the ships. There they are. Do you
see?”

He spoke to Tucket, urging that they should withdraw the guards from
the east and north gates, lest the Spaniards, guessing what had
happened, should attack suddenly, and overpower them.

“I’ve already sent,” said Tucket. “I ain’t goin’ to lose good men
because these swine choose to raise hell. This was Captain Pain’s
piece. The sooner we’re off the better.”

“I’d sound the assembly,” Margaret said. “But the trumpeter’s drunk.”

“Could we ring the church bell or something, sir?” said one of the
men.

“The church is on fire.”

“Beg pardon, sir. But we’d oughtn’t to wait,” said Tucket. “We’d ought
to get these fellers on board. The sun’s strong. And we got to make
two journeys as it is.”

At the boats they were joined by the north-gate guards, about a dozen
men in all.

“We can only send away six canoas at a time,” Margaret said. “That’ll
mean twenty-four oars. Two wounded men in each canoa. You can’t put
more, comfortably.”

“That’s so,” said Tucket. “Get ’em in, sons. Ask Captain Cammock to
fire guns.”

They manned six canoas, and laid the worst cases in the sternsheets.
The one sober doctor went with them. He was a clever surgeon, pretty
well known all over the Indies as Doctor Glass Case. He had left
England under a cloud; it was not known why. No man knew his real
name.

“Take them aboard the _Broken Heart_,” Margaret said. “And then come
back for the rest. Tell Captain Cammock how things stand here.”

The boats shoved off from the shore below the water-gate. Boat-covers
propped on oars made awnings for the wounded. Margaret and Tucket
watched them quartering on each other, stringing out into line, some
of the stroke oars splashing, so as to spatter water, by request, into
the faces of the wounded.

“Gully-shooting,” Tucket said.

“They’re racing,” said Margaret. He thought how strongly these men
resembled boys. They never lost a chance of competing. Now, in that
hot sun, after seven hours of exertion, they were making the broad
oars bend, driving the canoas through it, racing to the ship.

Men came straggling to the water-gate, asking if they were to go
aboard. Margaret and Tucket told them to tend the wounded, while they
returned to the Plaza to try to bring off the rest of the hands. There
was no question of holding the town. The east side was a roaring
bonfire. All that they could hope was that the Spaniards would not
attack.

“There are three garrisons only twelve miles away,” Margaret said.

“Yes,” Tucket answered. “And them we fit this morning must be in the
woods.”

“I thought I could have trusted Pain,” said Margaret. “They would have
ransomed the town. It’s a merchant town. Look at all the balsam sheds.
And now they’ve thrown it away.”

“That was Captain Pain,” said Tucket. “He said as all he wanted was
for you to help him take the town. He’d do the rest, he said. He’s
deceived you, sir. Deceived you all along. He was telling his hands
just now, he was going to seize your ship, as soon as he got the stuff
aboard.”

They were entering the Plaza as Tucket said this. They were just in
time to see the church roof fall in, with a sudden uprush of fire.
Many of Pain’s men were dragging the loot out of the heat. They were
stripped nearly naked. They tossed the heavy silver from hand to hand.
Sometimes a piece was flung at a man’s head, and then a fight would
begin. At least thirty men lay drunk about the square, too drunk to
move. About thirty others formed a rank across the eastern side,
firing and clubbing at the rats which ran from the burning houses.
They turned and fired at the rats which broke through them. The Plaza
hummed with flying bullets. Bullets were chipping the adobe walls.
Splintered tiles of a soft warm redness lay in flakes below each
house. Whenever a rat was killed, the slayers yelled and screamed,
swinging the corpse by the tail, hitting each other in the face. Tears
ran down Margaret’s cheeks. He had never before seen a sight like
this. He had never seen a mob at work. And these were the men he had
led; these were the men who were to found a new nation with him.

A sudden roar of cannon made them turn to look seaward. The _Broken
Heart_ was wreathed in smoke from a broadside; but as the smoke blew
clear they could see the danger signal; the foretopsail dropping to
the cap, and a red weft dipped at the peak. Two musket-shots followed
from the fo’c’s’le.

“Danger from the south,” said Margaret. “Here are the garrisons.”

Pain lay in the sand, propped against a wine cask, with his hat tilted
over his eyes. Margaret ran to him and shook him. “Up,” he cried.
“Wake up, man.”

A man came running from the south gate shouting, “The Dagoes. The
Dagoes.” He was bleeding from his mouth. He was gasping his life out
as he ran. “Dagoes,” he gurgled. “Dagoes, you.” He stood for a moment,
swaying, pointing half round the compass behind him.

“Right, son,” said Tucket. “Take a rest. You’re hit. Lie down.”

The man stared at him stupidly, groping with his hands. “Take. These
feathers. Off my teeth,” he gasped, and sank forward gently from his
knees, dead.

Tucket kicked Pain savagely.

“Wha’s a marrer? Wharrer hell’s the marrer?” said Pain, struggling to
his feet.

“We’re attacked,” said Margaret, shaking him. “Get your men. Lord,
man, get your men to the south gate.”

“Hands off, you damcarajo,” he answered angrily. “Why the hell
couldn’t you look out? Hadn’t you sense enough to set a sentry? I’m
awake. You Port Mahon fiddler. What in hell are you looking at me for?
Get the men.”

The guns of the _Broken Heart_ opened fire in succession, blowing
white rings over the trucks. Heavy musket-fire was breaking out at the
south gate. Some of the rat-catchers ran towards it.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” said Margaret. “You drunken little boor.
See what you’ve done. You and your gang of thieves. Look at your work.
Look at it. Answer me again and I’ll run you through.”

“Lord’s sake,” Tucket cried. “They’re on to us. Here they are.
Cuidado, sons.”

“I’ll talk t’you later,” Pain said. “Up with her, sons. Rally an’ bust
’em.” He unslung his piece, and ran, followed by the others, to the
south road. They reached the mouth of it in time to see their fellows
scattering towards them from the breach. All the wall was covered with
clambering Spaniards, hundreds of them. They came swarming on like a
wave of bodies, firing and dropping down to load, firing again, ever
firing, till the air was full of fire. Margaret saw privateers running
up to support him. They came from all sides, fifty or sixty men in
all, enough to make a rough double rank across the street. They made a
stand here, at the corner of the Plaza, fighting steadily and well,
but losing heavily. Margaret picked up a gun and fired with them,
praying only that a bullet might find him soon. He had no thought of
anything save that. He had failed. Now he would die unpitied in a
hopeless fight against odds. There were several hundreds of Spaniards
coming up, and the privateers’ ammunition failed. They were searching
the dead for cartridges. Men were running back to the Plaza to search
the drunkards for cartridges. A few men climbed to the roof of a
house, and fired above the smoke into the enemy. Margaret climbed up
with them, so that he might order the battle. He lay on the tiles with
the rest, firing and cheering. For ten minutes they lay there, firing
till they had no more powder. Then, as the smoke cleared away, he saw
that a troop of horse was coming up. He saw the Indian lances swaying
like boat-masts in a sea. He climbed down from his perch, at that, and
gave the word to retire, fighting, to the boats. He knew that the
fight now was only a matter of moments.

The men fell back, losing heavily. The Spaniards pressed on, cheering,
trying to flank them. At the boats was a mob of flying drunkards,
struggling with the boat-guard. They were trying to get the canoas for
the loot. The beach was littered with loot. A couple of thousand
pounds’ worth of plate was lying in the sands. Seventy or eighty men
were fighting in the water, shouting and damning, tugging the canoas
to and fro. They left the canoas when the fight ranged down to the
beach. They ran to save the plate from the sands, to snatch the loot
from under the feet of the fighters. They shrieked, with tears in
their eyes, to the fighters. They struck at them with fists and guns
and candlesticks, telling them to save the loot, damn them, save this
precious gear, never mind the Dagoes. The fighters struck back at
them, clubbing their guns. That was the end of the fighting. The ranks
broke. Fighters, drunkards, boat-guard, all the wreck of the force,
were jumbled in a mob among the boats, knee-deep in water. Margaret,
Tucket, and a few more, managed to keep clear of the mob, and fired at
the sallyport as the Spaniards pressed through to end them. Tucket’s
mate cooly filled their pockets with cartridges, helping himself from
the men about him. Two canoas upset; a third, with only three men in
her, drew clear and pulled for the ships. Spaniards were on the walls
above them, firing into them from the platform. The dead and dying men
were beaten down and stamped on by the herd of wild beasts in the
water. Margaret was careless how it ended for him. He had no wish to
live. He felt only the horror of having mixed with men like these, of
having led them, of having soiled his honour for ever with them. His
gun was shattered with a bullet; the wound in his shoulder had broken
out again; he could feel his shirt, sized with blood gluing to his
skin. He drew his sword, and waited, looking at the walls, watching
the heads of the Spaniards showing in glimpses among the smoke. As he
looked there came a rush above him. A yard of the wall shattered into
dust with a burst. Cammock had opened on the town with his broadside.
That saved them.

He was in the water still. Some loaded canoas were pulling clear. The
last canoas were loading. A dozen steady men, calmed by the gun-fire,
were covering the retreat. One by one they climbed into the canoas,
firing over the gunwales, standing up to fire, anxious to have the
last word. A canoa which had pulled clear backed up to Margaret, and a
voice shouted in his ear. Looking round, he saw that it was Pain, a
grimed and bloody scarecrow, still savage with drink.

“You Portuguese get,” the drunkard screamed. “You called me down just
now. Did you, by God. You junk-laid carajo. Now I’m even. See?” He
swung his knobbed pistol on to Margaret’s brow with a smash, knocking
him senseless. “Give way,” he shouted. “Give way. That’s what I give
to college gents what gets gay with Captain Pain.”

When Margaret recovered consciousness he was in the last canoa, a
hundred yards from the shore. One of the Indians was mopping his brow
with water. Tucket, who was steering, was uncorking a rum-flask with
his teeth.

“You’ll be all right,” Tucket said. “Take a rinse of this.”

“I’m all right,” he answered, with a little, hysterical laugh. “Where
is that man? The man who hit me?”

“Gone aboard your ship,” said Tucket.

“My God,” he answered. “Give way then, quick.”

He sat up, fully roused, splashing water over his head. He felt ill
and stupid; but the thought of possible danger to Olivia roused him.
Looking back, he saw Tolu blazing above the palm-tree tops, the flames
sucking at the forest, scorching the boughs. Looking forward, he saw
the _Broken Heart_, with men struggling on her gangway amid the flash
of pistols.

“Captain Pain,” Tucket said. “Up with her, boys.”

“I cain’t row no harder,” said one of the men petulantly, like a child
about to cry. “I see old Jimmy shot, as I owed the dollar to. It ain’t
my fault, cap.”

“If I put any more weight on,” said another rower, “this oar’ll go in
the slings. It’s got a chewed slug through the service.”

Margaret noticed then, for the first time, that the canoa had a foot
of water in her. There were seven men in her. Tucket, himself, an
Indian, and four rowers, all of them wounded.

“Let me take an oar,” he said. “Give me your oar, bowman. You’re hit.”

“I ain’t goin’ to lay up,” the bowman answered. “A sailor don’t lay
up, nor he don’t take medicine, not till he’s dying, and then he don’t
need to.”

“Let me double-bank the stroke then.”

“You stay still,” Tucket said. “You been as near it as most. We’re the
last canoa. D’ye know what that means? We five got an upset boat and
righted her. The Spaniards were riding after us finishing the wounded.
Robin there, the Indian, saved you. He swam a matter of thirty yards
with you before we picked him up. Then we’d to lie-to and bale her out
before she sank, with the Dagoes blazing hell at us. As it is, we’re
only crawling.”

“Robin,” said Margaret, “I shall tell Don Toro to call you by my
name.”

The Indian sucked in his golden nose-plate, and cringed upon his hams,
grinning. He was the only happy man in the force, this Indian “sin
razon.” Tucket added to his happiness by hailing him with his new
name, in his own speech of San Blas pigeon, a jumble of Spanish and
Indian, spoken as English.

“You Captain Margaret now, Robin. Sabe? You Capitano. Capitano sobre
tula guannah anivego. Mamaubah. Eh? Shennorung Capitano. Muchas
mujercillas. Eh?”

Five hundred yards further on the rowers had to rest. They splashed
themselves with water, took a drink of spirits, and lay back in the
stern-sheets. They were worn out. Margaret was worn out, too. He had
no strength left in him. He lay back, dully, watching the ship;
noting, though with no intellectual comprehension, an array of men
passing down the gangway, making a great noise. It was still, after
the roar of the battle. The cries and oaths came down the wind to him,
clearly, across the water. He saw three long canoas, full of men, pull
clear from the ship’s side, with one man, not very big, standing in
the sternsheets of the largest, shrilly cursing at the ship. “That’s
my note,” were the only words which he could catch. “That’s my note.”
He wondered whose note and what note it could be. But his head was
reeling; he didn’t really care.

“There’s a woman in the canoa there,” said one of the rowers.

“My God,” he said, rousing up, as the beaten boxer rises, though
spent, at his second’s cheer. “It’s not Mrs. Stukeley? It’s not Mrs.
Stukeley?”

“No, sir,” said a rower. “The other lady.”

“Yes,” he said, looking intently. “The other. Mrs. Inigo. What’s
happened?”

“Pain’s got your crew,” Tucket answered. “He’s leaving you to the
Spaniards.”

Dully, as they passed about the rum-flask, they saw the boats draw up
to Pain’s ship. They saw sail made upon her, the sprit-sail for
casting, the topgallant-sails in the buntlines. Soon she was under
way, lying over to the breeze, sailing a point or two free, bound past
the Mestizos to the southward. Her men, gathered on her poop to hoist
the mizen, cursed the _Broken Heart_ from the taffrail, firing a
volley of pistols at her in farewell. Two of the three sloops sailed
at the same time. As they passed away, crowding all sail, foaming at
the bows with their eight-knot rush, Margaret heard the chanties at
the halliards, a broken music, coming in the gusts of the wind.

Tucket took one of the oars, and sat at the thwart wearily, searching
for a helper among the sternsheets. Captain Margaret, the Indian,
could not row. The other five were exhausted. “Boys,” he said, “if we
don’t get a gait on us, we’ll be sunstruck. We’re losing way, too. The
breeze is setting us ashore.”

Margaret rose up wearily, like a man in a dream, and sat down to row
at the thwart. They pulled a ragged stroke together. They were too
tired to do much. They pulled a few strokes, and paused, to look
round. Then pulled again painfully and again paused. One of the men
took up a pistol and fired into the air. “We’ll never make it,” he
said. He fired again and again, till some one in the ship caught sight
of them and fired in reply. A boat manned by half a dozen men put off
to them, veering out line astern, so that those aboard might heave
them in at the capstan. Cammock and Perrin were two of the rowers, the
only two who could pull an oar; the negro steward steered. The rest of
them rowed like marines on pay-day going through the platoon. The
wounded and weary smiled to see them; they had never seen such rowing.
Slowly they drew up. Margaret saw Perrin and Cammock glancing over
their shoulders at him. They cheered and waved when they saw him. He
waved his unhurt arm to them. The canoa swung round and backed
alongside. Cammock, laying in his oar, shifted his towing-line to the
bow, and bent to it the painter of Tucket’s canoa, so that the boats
might tow together. “Let your oars swing fore and aft, boys,” he said.
He lifted his voice, and yelled to the ship to heave in. “Well, sir,”
he said, coming aft alongside Margaret. “And how are you? I’m glad to
see you alive. The men said you were killed.”

“I’m all right,” he said. “But we had. We had enough, over there. What
has happened in the ship?”

“Well, sir,” said Cammock. “Pain’s gone off with most of what were
left to us. That’s what happened.”

“Tell me,” Margaret said. “How was it?”

“I was on deck with Mr. Perrin till the last canoas were putting off,”
Cammock answered. “We’d been working the guns. We saw there was rather
a mess. Then the doctor sends for us two to help him take off Jowett’s
leg. So we went into the wardroom, where he was working. We heard the
boats come alongside, and Pain lashing out like a chocalatto-north; so
when we got the arteries fast, and Jowett in a cot, we ran on deck to
see if you were safe and to see what the row was. They’d been making
enough row to caulk a flagship. That was too late, then. Pain had been
saying that you were dead, that you’d spoiled the show and got a
hundred of ’em killed. God knows what he hadn’t said. More’n half of
them were drunk. Our lot had been up all night. So by the time we got
on deck they were bundling their bags into the canoas. There was that
Fraser fellow going down the gangway with one of our guns. I knocked
him back where he belonged. Then they began to fire. I’ll show you my
hat when we get aboard. Then they tried to rush the gangway. So I cut
the fall, and spilled ’em off it. We’d a lively fight for a few
minutes. Pain and Ackett’s lots (Ackett’s lot weren’t so bad) went off
then. It was them really kept Pain back a bit. They said they’d play
hell with Springer’s Key for me. Ackett’s lot said I’d better stand in
with them. They said they’d seen you corpsed on the beach.”

“He wasn’t far off it,” Tucket said. “But for this capitano here.”

“Mrs. Inigo went off with Iles,” said Perrin. “They’ve gone with Pain
and the rest.”

“The rest. The rest. What rest? We must have lost. Oh, my God,” said
Margaret weakly. “We must have lost half. Was any roll called?”

“No,” said Perrin. “Twelve of your men went to your sloop, Captain
Tucket, after bringing off some wounded. They said there was hell to
pay ashore, so they stayed here. That was before the attack. And
you’ve five more here; seventeen that makes, besides your
ship-keepers.”

“We’ve got eleven left,” Cammock said, “besides nineteen wounded and
the doctor. Not counting them. Tucket, we got thirty-nine able-bodied
between us. Twenty-four of them yours.”

“By the way, I’ve got your maps, Cammock,” Margaret said. “Here they
are. I’m sorry they’re so wet. I fell in the sea coming off.”

Cammock took the maps with a groan. “Thank you very much, sir,” he
said. “But I don’t much value the maps, though, when I think of what’s
happened.”

“It must have been hell,” said Perrin.

“Yes,” Margaret answered. “It was hell.”

“Why didn’t Pain take the ship?” Perrin asked. “That’s what puzzles
me.”

“Afraid you’d government friends, sir. Besides. He thought if he took
your men the Dagoes’d get you.”

Very slowly the men at the capstan walked the canoas to the side.
Margaret stood on his own deck again, asking himself how many years
had gone since he last stood there. The guns were cast loose. Round
shot, fallen from the garlands, rolled to and fro as the ship rolled.
The decks were littered with wads. Smears, as of lamp-black, showed
where the gun-sponges had been dropped. The hammock-nettings were
fire-pocked and filthy. There were marks of blood on the coamings,
where wounded men had lain, waiting to be carried below.

“Charles,” said Perrin, “you come to the cabin and lie down. I’ll
fetch Olivia to you. She’s with the wounded. What about Stukeley?”

“He’s dead, Edward. He died of yellow fever this morning. I buried
him.”

“My God. Dead?”

“Yes. He was married there.”

“He deserted then, that time?”

“Yes.”

“And so he’s dead. The dead are.”

“The dead are our only links with God, I think,” Margaret said
gravely. “I’ve been in hell to-day, Edward. In hell. In hell.”

He lay down on the window-seat in the cabin, where Stukeley had so
often lain. The breeze had swung the ship head to sea. He had only to
turn his head to see the fire of Tolu, burning below its pillar of
cloud. The sea-wall spurted with smoke at intervals. The flashes were
very white and bright, not like the smoke of firelocks. Cammock came
in to him with a mess of cold poultice for his head.

“We’re getting under way, sir,” he said. “The Dagoes are blowing the
spikes out of their guns. They’ll be firing soon. We’re cutting our
cable, sir. We haven’t strength to weigh. Tucket the same. Mrs.
Stukeley is coming to you, sir. I told her you were hurt. She wants
you not to get up, sir.”

He then went away. By and by Olivia entered.

“Don’t get up, Charles,” she said. “Oh. Don’t get up.”

He raised himself to greet her, looking at her sadly. She came up to
him and took his hand, and sat at his side.

“Olivia,” he said gently. “Olivia, I bring another sorrow for you.
Your husband is dead, Olivia. He died this morning.”

“Yes,” she answered quietly. “I knew he would be dead.”

He tried to read her thought; but his head was stupid with pain; he
could not. He saw only the calm, pale face with that quality of
mystery upon it which is upon all beauty.

“I feel for your sorrow,” he stammered.

“Yes, Charles,” she answered. “You feel for my sorrow, I know.”

“Olivia,” he said, “would it pain you too much to hear. To hear about
it?”

“You ought not to be talking with your wound, Charles.”

“I must tell you, Olivia. If you can bear it. It may be harder
to-morrow.”

“Tell me then,” she said. “If you feel. If you wish. I am quite calm,
Charles. Tell me everything.”

“He died of yellow fever, Olivia. In the Governor’s house there. The
tall house above the bastion there.”

“I can’t look, Charles. Don’t tell me where. I’m. Yes?”

“He was ill for four days,” Margaret continued. “They thought he was
getting better yesterday.”

“They, Charles? Who were ‘they’?”

“The Governor and a priest, Olivia.”

“He was in the Governor’s house,” she said. “As a friend?”

“A secretary there.” His mouth had grown very dry; it was hard to
answer these questions.

“Then he stole the book of maps, Charles?”

“Yes.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes. I found it.”

“Was there fighting? Fighting in the town? Was he alone when he died?”

“He died before the fighting began. An hour or two before.”

“Who was with him, Charles?”

“A priest was with him.”

“A Roman Catholic priest?”

“Yes. I found the priest in the room with him. The priest had attended
him. At the end.”

“He had become a Roman Catholic?”

“Yes, Olivia.”

“I want to picture it, Charles. Was there fighting in the town when
you. When you found him?”

“There was a little firing. But the men were at breakfast. I heard a
few shots. Distant shots. So. So I left the men. And West and I made a
grave. We buried him there, Olivia. The priest. There was a service.”

“And then. What happened then, Charles?”

“I picked these rosebuds, and this pebble, Olivia. From the grave. For
you.”

The rosebuds were crushed and dropping. She took them in the hollow of
her hand. There was a grace in all that she did. The holding out of
her delicate palm was beautiful; the movement showed curiously her
exquisite refinement; it was as though she had said some beautiful
thing; her mind showed in it. She took the relics, looking not at
them, but at Charles, her eyes swimming with tears, her dear mind wild
with tears.

“Thank you,” she said, on a sob. “You planted the roses, Charles? You
thought of it.”

He did not answer. He turned his head, to look out over Tolu. The ship
was moving slowly, heading out over the gulf; the fiery town was
dwindling; the wake whirled pale bubbles about the rudder.

“I think no other man would have thought of it,” she said quietly.

“Ah,” he said, sighing.

“Charles,” she said, “tell me now, will you. That’s over. That part.
What happened in the town?”

“The men got drunk, Olivia, and set the town on fire. They sacked the
place. When I came back to the Plaza. Oh, I can’t. I can’t.”

“You sent off the wounded, then, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“I helped them, down in the ward-room. Oh, poor fellows. I asked them
about the battle. I think I’ve. I think, Charles, I’ve come very near
to the world in these last days. They told me a little. Then I heard
firing. We were busy below, with a sheet over the ports to keep out
the sun. Some of them are dreadfully hurt. I couldn’t see what was
happening. But I knew you were attacked. Then the cannon overhead
began. The ship shook. Then a wounded man came down. He said you were
dead, Charles. It was like the end of everything.”

“It was, Olivia,” he said.

“I know now, Charles, what war is.”

“You didn’t see that water,” he answered. “Oh, not that water. My act
and deed. All of it. All of it by me. And there was a girl in the
Plaza. I’m disgraced. Oh, I shall never. It’s all over. All over after
to-day.”

“No, Charles. Don’t say that. You. At Springer’s Key. You can begin
again there. With better men.”

“Springer’s Key will be a failure, too,” he said bitterly. “Oh,
Olivia,” he added, going off into an hysterical laugh, “that water
gets on my nerves. There were two upset boats, and they can’t right
them.”

“Charles,” she said, frightened. “You’re hurt. You’re hit again.”

“I think my old wound has broken out,” he said.

“Lie down,” she answered, rising swiftly, to lay the relics on the
table. “I’ll see to it at once. Why didn’t I think?”

“I’ll get Perrin,” he said. “Don’t you. You mustn’t. Oh, Olivia,
you’ve enough without me.”

She ripped the coat of soiled linen with the scissors in her
chatelaine. The old negro, coming in with chocolate, brought hot water
for her. Together they dressed the wound with balsam and pitoma leaf,
binding it with Indian cotton. The steward brought in fruit and bread.
They ate and drank together, mechanically, not as though they wanted
food.

“Olivia,” Margaret said, “you are in great sorrow. Some of it, Olivia,
perhaps all of it, is due to me. I want you. I want you to feel that I
feel for you. Feel deeply. Oh, my God. I’m sorry for you. You poor
woman.”

“Charles,” she said, “you mustn’t think. You’ve no right. You mustn’t
think that. That what has happened was due to you. Don’t, Charles. You
won’t, I know. I see too clearly what happened. I see your mind,
Charles, all along. I understand.” She knelt very swiftly and kissed
his hand. “There,” she said, very white. “I understand.”

Margaret closed his eyes, then looked at a gleam of flame far distant,
and at the blue band on the bows of Tucket’s sloop, plunging the sea
into milk within hail of him.

“You were right, Olivia,” he said, in a shaking voice. “I shall never
reap my plantations yonder.”

“No,” she answered. “Nor I.”

There was silence between them for a little while.

“Charles,” she added, “we both had Darien schemes.”

“Yes, Olivia.”

“They came to nothing. Because. There. We were too wild to see what,
what we were building with.”

“Yes, Olivia. And you reap sorrow. And I dishonour.”

“Not that, Charles. We reap the world.”

“Ah no, Olivia. This is the end of everything. For me it is.”

“No, Charles,” she said. “We were living in one little corner of our
hearts, you and I. In fool’s paradises. We were prisoners. This is not
the end. We only begin here.”

He sighed, thinking of the shame of the morning’s work in Tolu. “My
father’s sword,” he thought. “In that cause.”

“Charles,” she asked, “haven’t you. Something more to tell me?”

He thought for a moment, dully, wondering in his blurred brain if she
wished to hear more of the battle.

“No,” he said. “No. That is the end.”

She stood up, facing him, her great eyes looking down on him.

“I must go now to the wounded,” she said softly. “Edward and the
doctor will be wanting me. God bless you, Charles.”

“God bless you, Olivia. And comfort you.”

Before she left the cabin she turned and spoke again.

“He was married, Charles,” she said. “You never told me that.”

“Yes, Olivia, he was married.”

“I knew that, Charles. I saw him so clearly. With a woman with a cruel
face. Oh, I knew it. It was generous of you not to tell me. But I knew
all the time.”

Late that night, in the darkened cabin, Olivia leaned upon the
port-sill, looking out over the rudder eddies, as they spun away in
fire rings, brightening and dying. She propped the cushions at her
back, so that she might rest her head. The nightmare of the past was
ashes to her. That evil fire had burned out, as Tolu had burned out.
The past and Tolu lay smouldering together somewhere, beyond Fuerte
there, beyond the Mestizos. The embers lay red there, crusted in ash.

She had come to see clearly in the pain of her sorrow. She saw her
life laid bare and judged. She saw the moral values of things. Great
emotions are our high tides. They brim our natures, as a tide brims
the flood-marks, bringing strangeness out of the sea, wild birds and
amber. She had relics in her hand; rosebuds and a pebble, “feathers
and dust.” The rosebuds had spilled their petals. She looked at them
there, turning them over with her fingers, holding them to the open
port to see them. There was no moon; but the great stars gave the
night a kind of glimmering clearness. The sea heaved silvery with
star-tracks. Fish broke the water to flame. The scutter of a settling
sea-bird made a path of bright scales a few yards from her. She laid
the relics on the port-sill, near the open window. Very gently she
pushed the pebble into the water, leaning forward to see the gleam of
its fall. One by one she pushed the rosebuds over, till they were all
gone too. She watched the petals float away into the wake, chased by
the sea-birds. They were out of sight in a moment, but the gulls mewed
as they quarrelled over them, voices in the darkness, crying in the
air aloft. Olivia leaned there, looking after them, for many minutes.
Then she drew close the window and covered her eyes with her hands.

It took them five days to win back to the Samballoes. They entered
Springer’s Drive a little before noon, eagerly looking out towards the
anchorage. No ships lay there, no guns greeted them from the fort.
Margaret and Cammock, walking the poop together, knew that Pain had
been before them. A thin expanse of smoke wavered and drifted in films
among the trees. When it drove down into the palms, after rising above
their level, it scattered the macaws, making them cry out. The
flagstaff lay prone, like a painted finger, pointing down the spit to
the sea. Tucket’s sloop was fifty yards ahead of the ship, plunging in
a smother. There was a cockling sea that morning, the reefs were
running white, they gleamed milky for fifty yards about them. There
was no other sign of life about the island. The smoke was so thin that
it was like mist. The beach, which had so lately been thronged, was
busy now with crabs, which scuttled and sidled, tearing at the
manchineel trees. A wounded man limped down the sand and waved to
them. Margaret, going in in his boat, saw that it was the seaman West.

“I been here two days, sir,” he said, “waiting for you. I been living
on sapadillies. There been awful times, sir.”

“What has happened, man?”

“I came from the town, Tolu town, in one of the sloops, sir,” the man
answered. “The _Lively_, as they called her. When we come here,
Captain Pain got all the men you left, all the guard like, to sign on
with him. Then he set the town on fire, and scoffed all your gear, the
guns and powder and that. So I got away and hid in the wood. I was
afraid they want me to join ’em, or put a knife into me. Then I saw
’em flog that Don Toro, and two other Indians. He flog ’em on the
beach, and sent ’em back to the Main, sir. He said that would put all
them Indians off giving you a hand in the future.”

“What a devil the man must be,” Margaret said.

“So I stayed hidden, sir, ever since, hoping no Indians would come
over and find me.”

“So that’s the end,” said Margaret to himself. He would not go ashore
there. He could see the ruins of his city, a mass of fallen earth, a
heap of ashes, a sprouting crop blasted. He would never set foot there
again. That dream had ended like the other, in savagery, in waste, in
cruelty. He would let it end. The fallen gabions of the fort would
soon be tangled with grasses. In three months there would be shrubs on
the city site. The key would be jungle again, the Indians would be
savage again, the privateers would be plundering vagabonds again. The
dream was over. All that he could do now was to proceed to Jamaica, to
sell his goods there, before sailing for England, a beaten man,
threatened by the law.

Tucket’s men helped his crew to fill fresh water. Tucket offered to
take seven of the slightly wounded men in his ship in exchange for
five unhurt men from his own crew. As the men were willing to
exchange, this brought the _Broken Heart’s_ complement to twenty men;
enough, at a strain, for the passage to Jamaica, if no enemy
threatened and no storm arose. When the water had been filled, and the
manger stacked with wood, the men gathered stores of fruit. They were
ready to sail then. Margaret gave the Indian Robin enough goods to
make him a chief in his own land. He made gifts to all of Tucket’s
crew. To Tucket himself he gave a pair of pistols, choice weapons,
made by the best artist in Paris. Tucket asked for his address, in
writing.

“I shall come and look you up, one day,” he said, as he put the paper
in his pocket. “I shall be coming home to set up dyer. We’ll have a
great yarn, that day.”

“I shall expect you,” Margaret said. “You shall dye for me. But won’t
you come home now, captain? With me?”

“No, sir,” he answered. “I want to get that green the Indians get.
Then I’ll come home.”

“I’m sorry,” Margaret said. “Good-bye, then, Captain Tucket. I wonder
if we shall ever meet again.”

“Well. We met. Haven’t we? We neither of us expected to.”

“Good-bye, then. Let me hear from you, if a ship is going home from
here?”

“I will, indeed, sir. So long. So long, Lion.”

“So long,” said Cammock.

They were under way again, close-hauled to the breeze, going out of
Springer’s Drive to the east of Caobos. All the Holandès keys were
roaring with surf. The palms were bending. The smoke from the key
astern trailed in a faint streamer towards the Grullos. That was the
last picture which Margaret formed of the keys. The sun bright, the
palms lashing, the noise of the surf like a battle, the welter of the
surf like milk on the reefs. Tucket was in his sloop now, with all
hands gathered on deck, their faces turned to him. The men of the
_Broken Heart_ were gathered at the hammock nettings. Margaret thought
of the sadness of parting. Two men had shaken hands only a moment
before. Now there was this gulf of sea between them. To-morrow they
would be many miles apart; and who knew whether they would ever meet
again, for all their wandering.

The bells of the ships rang out together, a furious peal. Cammock,
standing on a gun, took off his hat, and called for three cheers for
the sloop. The sloop’s men cheered the ship. The men of the _Broken
Heart_ answered with a single cheer. The bells rang out again, the
colours dipped, the guns thundered, startling the pelicans. Tucket had
turned away now, to help to secure his guns. His helmsman let the
sloop go off three points. She was slipping fast away now, bound
towards Zambo-Gandi. Now the figures of the men could no longer be
recognized. She was hidden behind the palms of Puyadas. Tucket was
gone. Margaret never saw him again.

“That breaks the neck of that,” said Cammock. “All gone,
main-topgallant yard?”

“All gone, main-topgallant yard, sir.”

“Then hoist away.”

Under all sail the _Broken Heart_ swayed seawards, treading down the
rollers, creaming a track across the sea, dark now in its blueness,
with crinkling wind-ruffles. When the night fell, shutting out the
Main, and the stars climbed out, solemn and golden, she was in the
strength of the trade, rolling to the northward, circled by the gleams
of dolphins, hurrying in sudden fires.

After dark that night Margaret sat on the locker-top, looking at the
wake, as it shone below him about the rudder. He was thinking over his
manifold failure, feeling disgraced and stained, a defeated, broken
man. Olivia entered quietly from the alleyway. He only felt her enter.
There was no light in the cabin. The steward was busy with the
wounded.

“Is that you, Olivia?” he asked, knowing that it was she. He felt in
his heart the gladness which her presence always gave to him. Life
could always be noble, he thought, with that beautiful woman in the
world.

“Yes, Charles,” she answered. “I’ve been with the wounded. They’re
better. How are your wounds?”

“Better, thanks. They’re always better at night.”

She drew up a chair and sat down beside him.

“Charles,” she said, “I want you not to brood. Not to grieve. That’s
all over, Charles.”

“Not the dishonour,” he said. “That will never be over.”

“There is no dishonour, Charles. You failed. The only glory is
failure. All artists fail. But one sees what they saw. You see that in
their failure.”

“Ah. Sometimes.”

“I see that in yours, Charles.”

“Thank you, Olivia.”

“I shall always see that, Charles, when I see you.”

“My city.”

“Yes. Your city, Charles.”

“It was for you, Olivia. My city.”

“I am proud,” she said humbly.

“It failed, Olivia. It’s in ruins. Yonder.”

“Charles,” she said, kneeling, taking both his hands, hiding her face
against him, “it is in my heart. That city. Our city.”

She trembled against him, drawing her breath. He held her with his
unhurt arm, waiting till the dear face would lift, pale in that
darkness, to the laying of the gold foundation.

 THE END




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The Grant Richards edition (London, 1908) was consulted for most of
the changes listed below.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ alleyway/alley-way, gold
dust/gold-dust, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Formatting: abandon the use of drop-caps.

Punctuation: quotation mark pairings/nestings and missing commas.

[Chapter III]

Change “Hands up anchor, _bosum_.” to _bosun_.

“looking aloft at the boy on the _maintopgallantyard_” to
_maintopgallant yard_.

“_Whereever_ that vague perfume lingers, something of the old” to
_Wherever_.

[Chapter V]

“We’ll, go on with this at Accomac, Stukeley.” delete first comma.

“That man up on the yard there was once a slave in _Virgina_” to
_Virginia_.

[Chapter VI]

(“It’ll annoy old _Brandy-face_,” he thought.) to _Brandyface_.

“The long chase-guns were trained _athwart-ships_” to _athwartships_.

“The table was rimmed with a _patten_ to keep the plates from falling”
to _batten_.

[Chapter IX]

“and so they lose, either way, But you know, Olivia, you are” change
second comma to a period.

“so that the _dicussion_ came to an end before it had well begun” to
_discussion_.

[Chapter XI]

“Margaret knocked the lance aside with _difficultly_” to _difficulty_.

[Chapter XII]

(said another rower, “this _oar’l_ go in the slings.) to _oar’ll_.

“As they _pased_ away, crowding all sail, foaming at the bows” to
_passed_.

 [End of text]