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 theBroken Heartwas 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, blowFor Springer’s Key, ay O.There’s plenty of gold,So I’ve been told,On the banks of the Rio Diablo.
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?”
“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 CaptainHath both a ship and men.”The Sea Voyage.
“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.
TheBroken Heartmade 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 theBroken 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. TheBroken Heartwas 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 theBroken Hearthe 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. TheBroken Heartcrawled 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; theBroken Heartanswered 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 theHappy Returnof 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. TheBroken Heartwould 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.
“Was it not sin enough, and wickedness,Thus like a rotten rascal to abuseThe 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.
“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.
Inthe 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 lumberingBroken 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 theBroken 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.