"Yea, Yacob!"
"Up, you dogs in the steerage! A hall, a hall!"
One fell over on the table in drunken torpor. Another rushed out the door and tumbled over a sleeper at the threshold.
"Up, you dogs! How stands he?"
They poured out of the cabin to the deck.
"He stands on the lee bow!"
"Bear up the helm! A fresh man at the helm!" the Old One thundered. He squinted across the sea. "Come, Harry—here on the poop—and tell me if she be not a ketch. Now she lifts—now she falls. 'Twill be a chase, I take it."
The round little mate came nimbly up the ladder.
"Helm a-luff!" said he in his light, quick voice, which at first the helmsman failed to hear. "Helm a-luff! A-luff, man! Art deaf? The courses hide her. There she lifts! Yea, a ketch. Let us see. It is now an hour to sunset. If we stand across her bows and bear a sharp watch we shall come up with her in early evening and a very proper moment it will be."
His light, incisive speech, so unlike the boisterous ranting of the Old One, in its own way curiously influenced even the Old One himself. A man who has a trick of getting at sound reasons, unmoved by bluster or emotion, can hold his own in any company; and many a quiet voice can fire a ship's crew to action as a slow match fires a cannon.
"Now, young men," Martin roared, "up aloft and loose fore and main topsails. And oh that our stout mizzenmast were standing yet!"
"No, no, no!" cried Harry Malcolm and he almost raised his voice. "Thy haste, thou pop-eyed fool, would work the end of us all. Think you, if they see us fling every sail to the wind, they will abide our coming without charging their guns and stationing every gunner with linstock and lighted match? Nay, though she be but a ketch, let us go limping across her bows as lame as a pipped hen."
"True, and with every man lying by the side of his gun, where they shall not see him until we haul up the ports and show the teeth of the good ship." It was Jacob who spoke thus as he climbed to Harry Malcolm's side.
The Old One, looking down at the deck below, touched his mate's arm.
"Yea, I see them. What do you want?"
"It seems," said the Old One, "that our boatswain hath a liking for the fellow."
"And that the fellow hath a liking for our boatswain, think you?"
"Well?"
Jacob thrust his long nose between them. "'Well,' you say, by which you mean 'not well.' It proves nothing that a man will not drink damnation to a king."
The three heads met, high on the poop, and now and again they glanced down at the two lads who stood by the waist and watched the distant sail, which grew black as the sun set behind it.
The sun set and the sea darkened and a light flamed up on board the chase, which appeared to show her good faith by standing toward the Rose of Devon.
There was a rumble of laughter among the men when they perceived she had changed her course. The sober wrung oaths from the drunk by dashing bucketfuls of cold water in their faces. The gunners moved like shadows among the guns. And high on the poop, three shadows again merged into one.
"Master Boatswain," the Old One called, but softly, "do thou take it upon thyself, although it lies outside thine own province, to make sure that powder and balls and sponges and ladles and rammers are laid ready."
Hunching his bent shoulders, Mate Malcolm came nimbly down the ladder and from the chest of arms drew forth muskets and pistols.
"Come, my bullies below there, knock open your ports!" It was the Old One's voice, but so softly and briskly did he speak that it might have been Harry Malcolm.
As the dim figures on deck moved cautiously about, the subdued voice again floated down to them:—
"Let all the guns be loose in tackles and stand by to run them out when the word is given. Port your helm! Every man to his quarters. Now, my hearts, be ready to show your courage and we'll have this wandering ketch for a consort to our good Rose of Devon."
Then Harry Malcolm came in haste along the deck. "Who's to this gun? And who to this? Nay, you've a man too many there. Here, fellow, come hither! Here a man is lacking. You there, who are playing the part of gunner, have you ever heard these bulldogs bark? And understand you the business? Good, good!" And he passed on up the deck. Nought escaped him. In the silence they heard the sound of his voice and the quick pattering of his feet when they could see no more than that he was still moving among the guns.
They had come so near the stranger that they must soon hail or be hailed, when a figure emerging from the steerage room in the darkness came upon Phil Marsham by the quarter-deck ladder and gave a great start. As Phil turned, the fellow whispered, "God be thanked it is thou! I thought it was another. Come with me to the side—here by the shrouds."
The two stepped lightly under the shadow of the quarter-deck to the waist, where the carpenter had nailed in place new planks not twelve hours since, and together they raised a bundle. It was on the larboard side, and since all had gathered for the moment to starboard to watch the strange ketch, there was no man to observe them. Some one moved above them and they hesitated, then they heard slow steps receding and thick undertones that they recognized as Jacob's. When he had gone, the one who had brought the bundle whispered, "Heave it far out," and together they hove it.
Still in the shadow of the quarter-deck, the two slipped silently back, unseen, and when Harry Malcolm came hurrying from one side, and Jacob from the other, to see what had made the splash, there was no one there nor could any man answer their questions.
"Have you done as you said?" Phil asked in a breathless whisper.
"That I have." And it was Will Canty who spoke.
"Then we shall like enough be hanged; but thou art a tall fellow and I love thee for it."
There came over the water a voice distinctly calling, "Whence your ship?"
"Back to your guns, ye dogs!" cried Mate Malcolm in a voice that could be heard the length of the deck, yet that was not loud enough to be heard on board the stranger.
"Of England," the Old One called from the quarter-deck. "And whence is yours?"
There was a space of silence, in which the two vessels came nearer each other, and I would have you know that hearts ever so courageous were thumping at a lively pace.
"And yours?" the Old One cried the second time.
There came voices and a hoarse laugh from the stranger, then, "Are you merchants or men of war?"
"Of the sea," cried the Old One in a voice so like thunder that a man would not think it could have come from his lean throat. "Run out your guns, O my hearts! Let him have the chase guns first. The chase guns—the chase guns!"
Now one bawled down the main hatch, and another below echoed his cry, then there sounded the quickboom-boomfrom the bows. The guns had spoken and the fight was on.
"Up your helm—up your helm! Hold your fire now, my hearts, and have at them!" the Old One cried.
And now the voice came again over the restless sea. "Our ship is the Porcupine ketch and our quills are set."
The dark sea tossed and rolled between the vessels and little that happened on board either was visible to the other, so black was the night; but the light of the sky, which the water reflected, made of each a black shape clear-cut as of jet but finer than the most cunning hand could carve, in which a man might trace every line and rope.
And now from on board the ketch jets of flame burst out and after them came smartly the crack of muskets.
"Now, lads," the Old One thundered, "give fire and make an end of this petty galling. Give fire!"
A gun on the maintop-deck boomed and another followed; but there was confusion and stumbling and all were slow for want of practice together, and there was time lost ere the third gun spoke. Then, while Mate Malcolm was storming up the deck and the Old One was storming down, they heard the strange master calling to his gunners; then, to the vast amazement of the men of the Rose of Devon, who had cherished the delusion that their chase was a weak craft and an easy prize, on board the ketch as many as a dozen guns belched flame. Their thunder shook the sea and their balls sang through the rigging, and a lucky shot struck the Rose of Devon in the forecastle and went crashing through the bulkhead.
The ketch then tacked as if to give fire with her other broadside but deftly swung back again and before the Old One or Harry Malcolm had fathomed the meaning of it there rose from on board her, the cries of "Bear up and close with him!"—"Board him on his quarter!" "Have ready your graplins!"
"Sheer off, sheer off!" old Jacob roared. "Our powder is good for nought. Yea, she is in all truth a prickly porcupine."
"If we foul, cut anything to get clear!" cried the Old One. "Put down your helm! Veer out your sheets! Cast off weather sheets and braces! Aloft, there, and clear the main yard where the cut tacklings foul it! Good lad, boatswain, good lad!"
For on the yardarm Phil had drawn dirk and cut at the snarl of ropes, where a chance ball had wrought much mischief. Then, as the two vessels swung side by side he looked squarely into the eyes of a bearded man in the rigging of the ketch.
The Old One—give the Devil his due!—was handling his ship in a proper manner and by luffing he had kept abreast of those guns in the ketch which had spent their charges. But it was plain that the Rose of Devon had caught a tartar. In all truth, she had run upon a porcupine with quills set, for though a smaller vessel, the ketch, it now appeared, carried as many men or more, and every man knew his place and duty. Looking down on her deck, Phil saw her gun crews toiling with sponges and rammers to load anew.
She was herself, it seemed, a sea rover athirst for blood and in those wild, remote seas there was no fraternity among thieves. As the main yardarm of the Rose of Devon swung toward her rigging when the ship rolled, the bearded man ran a rope about the spar and in a moment the vessels were locked abeam and were drifting together till their sides should touch.
Philip Marsham again drew the dirk that Colin Samson had wrought for him and leaning far out struck at the fellow's breast, who swung back to avoid the thrust, which pricked him but did no more. Then the fellow sprang to the attack with his own knife in hand, for he had thrown a knot in the rope, which creaked and tightened; and with a yell of triumph he struck at the lad, who swung to one side and struck back.
It was a brave fight in the empty air, and the two were like warring spiders as they circled and swung in the darkness and thrust each at the other. But the lad was many years the younger, and by so much the more nimble, and his dirk—for which all thanks to Colin Samson!—smote the fellow a slashing blow in the thigh. And while the fellow clung to the shrouds, weak with pain, a second Rose-of-Devon's man came crawling over Phil who hung below from the yard, and slashed the rope.
"We are clear! We are clear! God be thanked!" the Old One yelled.
Meanwhile the men of the Rose of Devon had succeeded in firing three guns of the larboard broadside, which by the grace of Divine Providence wrought such ruin in the stranger's running gear that the one crew of rascals was enabled to escape fit retribution at the hands of the other. The peak of her great foresail fell and in a moment her cut halyards were swept into a snarl that needed time and daylight for untangling.
So the Rose of Devon slipped past the ketch, whose men were striving to clear the rigging and come about in pursuit, and having once evaded her erstwhile chase, the old ship ran away in the night. With her lights out and all the sail spread that she could carry, and favoured by clouds and fog, she made good her escape; but there was grumbling forward and grumbling aft, and there was a dead man to heave over the side.
It served Philip Marsham better than he knew that he had fought a duel on the yardarm; for dark though the night had been, there had happened little that escaped the Old One's eye; and bitter though Tom Jordan's temper and angry his mood, he was always one to give credit where he believed it due.
When he wiped the blood from the dirk, Phil remembered with gratitude the good smith, Colin Samson. Then he thought of the old lady and gentleman at the inn, and of Nell Entick, and bluff Sir John. He would have been glad enough to be out of the Rose of Devon and away, but for better or worse he had cast his lot in the ship, and though he little liked the lawless turn her affairs had taken, a man cannot run away by night from a ship on the high seas.
All hands stood watch till dawn as a tribute to the war of one pirate upon another, and not until the sun had risen and shown no sail in sight did the Old One himself go into the great cabin.
A lad being called into council by such a man as Tom Jordan might well think himself a fine fellow, and rare enough were lads whom Tom Jordan would thus have summoned. But although Philip Marsham, it seemed, had taken the Old One's eye and won his heart long before on the little hill beside the road, when Phil had drawn the wind from Martin's sails, and although it had not escaped Tom Jordan that Phil's hand moved easily toward his weapon, the old proverb has it "a man that flattereth his neighbor, spreadeth a net for his steps"; and "he that whistleth merrily, spreadeth his nets cunningly and hunteth after his prey greedily."
So, "Come, boatswain, and lend us thy wits," cried Tom. "Four heads shall provide more wisdom than three." And with that, he clapped Phil on the back and drew him into the cabin where Jacob and the mate sat deep in talk of the night's adventures.
"A hawk, when she is first dressed and ready to fly," said Jacob, "is sharp set and hath a great will upon her. If the falconer do not then follow it, she will be dulled for ever after. So, master, a man! Yea, and a ship."
"A great will, sayest thou?" quoth the Old One, and his voice revealed his sullen anger. "Why then, in God's name, did ye not rake them with a broadside or twain?" With which he turned on Harry Malcolm, thus to include him in the charge.
"For one thing," replied Malcolm, and testily, for ill temper prevailed both aft and forward, "we gave the gunners no firing to learn them their guns. For another thing, the powder failed us. For yet another, since you say what you say, and be cursed for it, 'twere a mad, foolish notion to run afoul a strange ship, for we have but a half the company we need to work a ship and fight. And finally, to cap our woeful proverbs, we know what we know—yea," and he shot a dark glance from under bent brows, "we know what we know; there be those who come toward us with their feet, but go from us with their hearts." His voice, as always, was light and quick, but there was a rumble in it, such as one may sometimes hear in a dog's throat.
As the three men looked first at one and then at another, there came to Boatswain Marsham, sitting as it were outside their circle, the uneasy throbbing of their suspicion.
"Of the powder," said Jacob coolly, "I have taken a little from each barrel." He laid on the table seven packages wrapped in leaves from an old book. Regarding closely the notes he had written on each package, he opened them one by one and placed them in a row.
"This," said he, "is from the barrel that good Harry Malcolm served out to the men and that doubtless this man Candle hath used from in old days. It hath lost its strength by long lying. Press it with thy fingers and thou shalt feel it soft to the touch. Here upon this white sheet of paper I lay four corns of this powder. This other powder"—and he chose a second package—"is from a barrel new opened. Press it and thou shalt see how firm and hard is each corn. And this, too, is firm and of a fair azure. And so, also, this. But this—" and he first put his eyes close to the notes on each remaining packet, then held them far off, for his sight, although good at a great distance, made out with difficulty things near at hand, "this is from a barrel that hath lost its strength by moisture; and this hath a fault I shall tell you of."
Taking a pinch of each, as he spoke, he had laid the corns, each some three fingers distant from the next, in a circle on the paper. He then struck tinder, and lighting a match made of twisted cords of tow boiled in strong lye-ashes and saltpetre, he held it over a corn of the good powder. There was a flash and puff, and the ring of powder was gone. The corns of good powder had fired speedily and left only a chalky whiteness in their place, nor had they burned the paper or given off smoke; but the corns of poor powder had burned slowly, and some had scorched the paper and some had given forth smoke.
The Old One softly swore. "And have we, then," asked he, "but three barrels of good powder?"
"Nay, there are more than three. This last is weak because they have neglected to turn the barrels upside down, so the petre has settled from top to bottom, as is its way. We shall find the bottom as strong as the top is weak, and by turning the barrel we shall renew its strength evenly."
"As for the powder that hath spoiled by long lying," cried Philip Marsham, "I will undertake to make it as good as new."
"Do you, boatswain, mind your sails and cordage," said old Jacob, with a wry smile. "An you wish to grind it in the mortar, that you may; but it is I who will measure the petre. Nay, I will make you, if you wish it for a wonder to show friends, a powder of any colour you please—white, red, blue, or green."
Of the three who leaned over the packets of powder, old Jacob was the only one who bore with even temper the sad reverse of the night before; for master and mate glared at each other in such wrath as had thrown a shadow over every soul in the ship.
Some had waked with aching heads, for which they had their own folly to thank; some were like men who dream they have got a great treasure but wake to find pebblestones or worse under the pillow: since the Porcupine ketch had yielded them no gold and had stung them instead with her quills. In all truth the ship was by the ears, for in extremities your sea sharks are uncertain friends, as a touch of foul weather will manifest to any man's satisfaction.
"Enough of this," said the Old One, and he pushed aside the packets and folded his arms. "We lose time. There is a thief amongst us."
"A thief, you say?" And the hot red of anger burned its way across the boatswain's face, for the three had turned and looked hard at him.
The Old One and Harry Malcolm then exchanged quick glances, and Jacob shut his small mouth tight and knotted his brows.
"Well," cried Phil, "would you charge me with theft?"
"Some one," said the Old One, lingering over each word, "hath wrought a clever plot against us."
"Say on, say on!"
"He is a man, I make no doubt, whose buttons are breaking with venom."
There was heavy silence in the cabin. Jacob, pursing his lips and knotting his brows, looked from one of them to another, and Phil, vaguely on the defensive, drew back and gave them a gaze as steady as they sent.
"He is doubtless a very cunning rascal," Harry Malcolm put in, "who hath cut his cloth by his wits; but he is making a suit that will throttle him by its narrowness about the neck."
The master and mate once more exchanged glances and the Old One then smiled lightly, as if again there were sunlight rippling over dark water.
"Nay, Philip, we think no ill of thee. But do thou have care to thy company. A foul trick hath been done with a mind to render us helpless at sea, so that we must crawl to the nearest land, where some base dunghill spirit is doubtless of a mind to leave our company. But we have resources; yea, and of thee, Philip, we think no ill."
Despite their fair words, though, they were watching Philip Marsham like three old tomcats watching a sparrow, and he, being no fool, knew the reason why.
Three hard faces they showed: the one, handsome in a devilish way and keen; the second, unassuming, yet deeply astute and marked by a deeper rooted, if less frank, selfishness; the third, older, wiser, more self-centred.
The eyes of master and mate were coldly cruel; but old Jacob was too intent on his own thoughts to be cruel save by indifference.
All that day Jacob squatted on the deck and toiled with tools and wood. From the wood he chose certain long pieces, fine-grained and straight and dry and free from knots, and certain shorter and broader pieces that were suited to his purpose, and bade the carpenter plane them smooth. He laid out scales, working with a small square and a pair of compasses, and engraved them with utmost care. He wrought brass into curious shapes by a plan he made, and from morning till night he kept at the task, frowning and ciphering and sitting deep in thought. He called for charcoal and a mortar, and beat the charcoal to a fine powder and tempered it with linseed oil. This he rubbed into the wood he had shaped to his liking, and watched it a long while, now and again touching it to try it; then with oil from a phial he had found in a chest in the great cabin he rubbed the wood clean, and there were left in the wood, set off neatly in black, the gradations and figures he had so exactly etched.
Taking his work into the great cabin, he toiled on by lanthorn light until a late hour, and there through the open door men as they passed might see him hunched over the table with his medley of tools about him. But when at last he leaned back and drew a long breath of relief, very serious and very wise, his work was done, and curiously and deftly contrived it was.
On the table before him there lay a cross-staff, a nocturnal and a Gunter's scale, "with which," said he, to the Old One, who sat opposite him quietly taking tobacco and sipping wine, "and with what instruments the thief hath left us, a man can navigate a ship where he will."
Examining closely the nocturnal, which was intricately carved and engraved, the Old One muttered, as if ignoring Jacob's words, "I will yet lime that bird."
"Though he be never so mad a callant, I misdoubt he will put his head into a noose," said Jacob in his thick, serious voice.
"Be he the one we think or not the one we think, I will set him such a trap," said the Old One, "as will take the cunningest fox that ever doubled on the hounds." And the thin face smiled in a way that was not pleasant to see.
If an astrologer or an Arabian enchanter could say to a man, "Beware of this or that, for it is a thing conceived of the Devil to work thy ruin," there would be reason for studying the stars or smiting the sand. And this, indeed, they do, according to the old tales. But if a sailor seek out an astrologer to learn things that shall profit him, he is more likely to find a man grown foolish by much study, who will stroke his chin sagely and say, "Come, let us look into this matter. Under Capricorn are all diseases in the knees and hams, leprosies, itch and scales and schirrous tumors, fallow grounds and barren fields, ox-houses and cow-houses, low dark places near the ground, and places where sails and materials for ships be laid." And while he talks of fixed angles and of the Lord of the Ascendant being in the fourth week, some small unsuspected thing may be the very egg on which the Devil is sitting like an old black hen to hatch forth a general calamity.
Thus certain incidents that shortly thereafter happened are to the point, for although they appeared of little moment at the time, they turned the tide of men's lives and made a stir that has to do with the current of my tale.
Now the men of the Rose of Devon sighted a sail at high noon when they were a week on their way south, and though she showed her heels and ran, and though the Rose of Devon lacked her mizzenmast, the strange vessel was but a small pink and so slow that they laid her aboard two hours before dark. In her crew she had only a dozen men, and sorely frightened they were, as they tossed in the lee of the dark frigate. So to save themselves from a more cruel fate there was scarcely one of them but leaped at the chance to join the Rose of Devon's crew. They tumbled up their small cargo of salt fish for Bilbao and hoisted it on board the ship, together with their shallop, and casting their pink adrift, they forbore from complaining when their new master and his men stole whatever pleased them, from the new men's rings and knives to the very clothes on their backs. So, with her plunder and her recruits, the Rose of Devon again squared her yards and continued on her course.
There was, to be sure, one fellow of mean spirit who whined dolefully, upon conceiving his present extremity to be distasteful. But another got comfort by knocking him on the head when no one was looking; and finding him dead, the Old One hove him over-board and there was no further trouble from the fishermen.
Yet it was no secret that there was grumbling and complaining forward among the gentlemen of the Rose of Devon, so the Old One sent the boatswain to summon them aft when the watches were changing.
He leaned against the swivel gun on the quarter-deck, and looking down into their faces, smiled disagreeably. "It hath come to my ears," said he, "that one hath a sad tale to tell because we failed to take the Porcupine, which, though a mere ketch, outnumbered us in guns and men. And another hath a sad tale to tell because this pink that late became our prize is small and of little worth, though we got from her eleven brave fellows who shall be worth a store of fine gold." He looked from one of his men to another, for they were all there,—Martin and the cook, and Philip Marsham and Will Canty, and Paul Craig and Joe Kirk, the one-eyed carpenter and the rest,—and his thin face settled into the many wrinkles that had got him his name. There was none of them, unless it might be Harry Malcolm or Old Jacob, who could say surely at one time or another what thoughts were uppermost in Tom Jordan's shrewd head.
"Come, now, my hearts of gold," he cried, "let us have an end of such folly. Said I not that these northern fisheries were meat for crows? And that we must go south to find prey for eagles? We will choose a fine harbour by some green island where there's rich fruit for the picking and fat fish for the catching, and we will build there a town of our own. We will take toll from the King of Spain's ships; we will take us wives and women and gold and wine from the dons of the islands and the main. Yea, we will lay up a great store of riches and live in fullness of bread and abundance of idleness."
Some were pleased, but some doubted still, which the Old One perceiving, for he read their faces, cried, "Nay, speak up, speak up! Let us have no fair-protesting friends with hollow and undermining hearts."
"Yea, it is a fair tale," cried one, in a surly voice, "but thus far we have blows to show for our pains—blows and a kettle of fish."
"And methinks," another growled, "we shall see more of salt fish and buccaned meat, than of fine wines and gold and handsome women."
"'Tis a swinish thought," the Old One retorted; but he smiled when he said it, so that they took no offense, for of such grumbling he had no fear. He was set to catch a bird of quite another feather.
Then old Jacob rose and they were silent to hear him. "Let us make an end of talk," said he slowly. "We are on our way south and to stop or turn aside would be nothing but foolishness." And with that, although they had expected him to say more, he turned away.
Then, of a sudden, "Come, Will," the Old One cried, singling out his man from all the rest, "what say you?"
If Will Canty's face changed at all, it was a whit the paler as he met the Old One's eyes. "I say," he replied, "that since we have fish on board, we are sure of fish and would do well to eat fish ere we lose it."
"There is sooth in thy words," quoth the Old One, and he smiled in friendly wise. (But despite his smile, he liked the words little, as any shrewd man might have known by his eyes, and Will Canty was no fool.) "Come, cook, and boil us a great kettle of fish."
The rumble of low voices changed to laughter and the cook boldly cried, "Yea, yea, master!"
"For our much voyaging and many pains," cried the men, as they went about their work, "we have got a kettle of fish." And they laughed mightily, for though it was the very thing that before had made them grumble, now they saw it as a droll affair and made of it many jests, of which a few were good and more bad, after the manner of jests.
As for the cook, he called his mate and bade him break out a drum of fish and set a kettle to boil, and cuffed him this way and that, till the poor fellow's ears were swollen.
And the Old One said to Harry Malcolm, "Saw you not how deftly the fellow twisted out of the corner, and with a sly remark that no one can take amiss? Oh, he is a slippery dog and I am minded to cut his throat out of hand!"
"Now, that would be very foolish, for where there's one of them, there's always two, and the one will toll the other on until there are two dogs by the heels instead of one."
At that the Old One laughed harshly, and the two, who were after a left-handed fashion uncommonly congenial, went off well pleased with their conceit.
Down in the hold the kettle boiled right merrily, and the cook swelled with pride that he had a mate to carry and fetch. He cuffed the poor fellow this way, and he cuffed him that. He threw a pan at him when the fire smoked worse than common, and he thrust a fistful of flour into his face and down his neck when he let the fire lag. He flung him his length on the floor for spilling a pint of water; and when in despair the lad fled for his life, the cook seized him by the hair and haled him back and put a long knife at his breast and swore to have his heart's blood. Oh, the cook was in a rare and merry mood, for he had drunk more sack than was good for him from the cask he had marked as his own; but as he had waxed exceeding gay and haughty, the sack had dulled his wits and he was drunker than he knew.
"Come, thou pig! Thou son of a swine!" he yelled. "Ladle out the fish and choose of the best for the cabin. Yea, choose in abundance and summon the master's boy and bid him haste. And do thou bestir thyself and carry to the men." And with that, he fetched the poor fellow a blow on his head, which knocked him off his feet.
The fellow ran to do the work and the cook, in vast satisfaction at having so well acquitted himself, sat down with a goblet of sack and tippled and nodded, and kept an ill-tempered eye on the master's boy and his own, as with shrewd fear of broken heads they scurried back and forth.
"It is most wonderful excellent sack," quoth the cook, and with his sleeve he mopped his fiery bald head. "It was by a happy stroke I marked it for my own. Truly, I had rather be cook than master, for here I sit with mine eye upon the cabin stores, from which I can choose and eat at will, and the captain, nay, the Lord High Admiral of England, is himself none the wiser. Fish, sayest thou? Nay, fish is at best a poor man's food. I will have none of it." And thus he ran on foolishly, forgetting as he drank sack, that there was no one to hear him, not even his mate. "Truly, I am a wonderful excellent cook. I may in time become a captain. I may even become the governor of a plantation and take for a wife some handsome Spanish woman with a wonderful rich dowry. She must have an exceeding rich dowry if she will marry me, though. Yea, I am a wonderful excellent cook." And the more he drank the more foolish he became.
After a while, he cocked his head upon one side; and quoth he, "I hear them calling and shouting! It seemeth they are singing huzza for me. I hear them coming down to do me honour. Truly, I am a most wonderful excellent cook and the fish hath pleased them well. Foolish ones that they are to eat it!"
The silly fellow sat with his head on one side and smiled when they burst in upon him. "Hast come for more fish?" he cried. "Yonder stands the kettle. Nay, what's that? What's that thou sayest? Nay, fellow, th' art mad? Thou know'st not to whom thou speakest."
"Fool! Knave! Scoundrel! Swine!" they yelled. "Oh, such a beating as thy fat carcase will get. Hear you not the uproar? Think you to cozzen us?"
With that they seized him, two by the head and two by the feet, and dragged him to the ladder. They threw a rope about him and knotted it fast and tossed the ends to men at the hatch above, who hauled him, squealing and kicking like an old hog, up on deck. To the cabin they dragged him, with all the men shrieking curses at him and pelting him with chunks of fish, and in the cabin they stood him before the table where the Old One and Harry Malcolm sat, and very angry were they all.
"Dog of a cook," said the Old One, "for a relish to conclude our meal, we shall see thee eat of this fish that the boy hath brought us." And he thrust before the cook a great dish. "Eat it, every shred, bones and all," said he, "or I'll have thee butchered and boiled in place of it."
"Why, now," said the cook, somewhat sobered by rough handling and a trifle perplexed, but for all that still well pleased with himself, "as for the bones, they are liable to scrape a man's throat going down. I am reluctant to eat bones. But the meat is good. I rejoice to partake of it, for so diligently have I laboured to prepare it that I have denied myself, yea, though I hungered greatly."
"Eat," said the Old One and widely he grinned.
Looking suspiciously about him, for there was something in their manner that he failed to understand, the cook thrust his hand into the dish and took from it a great slice of fish, which he crammed into his mouth.
"Eat," said the Old One, "eat, O thou jewel among cooks!"
A curious look came over the cook's face and he raised his hand as if to take the fish out of his mouth.
"Nay, swallow it down," said the Old One. "Be not sparing. There is abundance in the dish. Yea, thou shalt stand there eating for a long time to come." And though he smiled, his look made it plain that he was in no trifling mood.
The cook turned pale and choked and gasped. "Water!" he cried thickly, for his mouth was too full for easy speech.
"Nay, much drinking hath wrought havoc with thy wits. Eat on, eat on!"
Prodigious were the gulps by which the cook succeeded at last in swallowing his huge mouthful, and great was his distress, for the salt in it nearly choked him. "Water, water!" he weakly cried. "Nay, temper thine heart with mercy, master! I beg for water—I beseech for water."
"Eat on," said the Old One grimly.
Then Harry Malcolm chuckled and the men in the door roared with laughter, but the cook plunked down on his fat knees and thrust out both his hands. "Nay, master, I cannot hold it down!"
"Eat on, O jewel among cooks!"
"Nay, master—"
"Come, then, lads, and cram it down his hungry throat."
Three of them seized him, and one, when he shut tight his mouth, thrust a knife between his teeth.
"Blub-bub-blah!" he yelled. "I'll eat! I'll eat!"
They let him go and he rose and ate. Time and again he gasped for water and they laughed; time and again he lagged and the Old One cried, "Eat on!" When at last he stood miserably in front of the empty dish, the Old One said, "For a day and a night shalt thou sit in bilboes with a dry throat, which will be a lesson to learn thee two things: first, before cooking a kettle of fish, do thou bear it well in mind to soak out the salt so that the fish be fit for food; and second, by way of common prudence, do thou sample for thyself the dishes that are cooked for the cabin."
They haled him forward and locked the shackles on his feet and placed beside him a great dish of the fish, that whoever wished might pelt him with it; and there they left him to repent of his folly and forswear drunkenness and whimper for water.
As the weary hours passed, the sun tormented him in his insufferable thirst; but nightfall in a measure brought relief and he nodded in the darkness and fell asleep.
Waking, he would rub his head, which sadly throbbed and would seek by gulping to ease his parched throat; and sleeping again, he would dream of great buckets of clear water. The voices that he heard buzzed in his ears as if they were the droning of flies, and hunching himself down in his shackles at one end of the iron bar, he forgot the world and was forgotten, since his fat carcase lay inertly in a black shadow and there was nothing to make a man keep him in mind.
He heard at last a voice saying, "But nevertheless it becomes you to walk lightly and carefully," and another replying, "I fear him not, for all his subtle ways. Much that goes on escapes him."
He stirred uneasily, and opening his eyes, saw that there were two men leaning side by side against the forecastle.
"In the matter of wit, you grant him less than his due," said the first speaker. "And in another matter you charge him with a heavier burden than he needs bear."
The cook stirred and groaned and the first speaker chuckled, at which the cook's gorge rose from anger.
"O jewel among cooks!" one of the two called softly, and the unhappy man knew by the voice that the speaker was Philip Marsham.
Naming no names and talking in roundabout phrases as people do when they wish one to know their meaning and another not to, the two continued with no heed at all to the cook, whom they thought a mere drunken lout. And indeed, their undertones were scarcely audible; but anger sharpened the cook's ears and his wits, and he lay and ruminated over such chance sentences as he got.
"It puzzled me from the first," said the other, "to see how easily you bore with your comrade of the road."
"Why, he is a good soul in his way."
The other gave a grunt of disgust.
"Nay, it is a wonder to me that a lad with your nice notions ever found his way to sea," Phil retorted.
"And I might never have gone, had not Captain Francis Candle been my godfather."
"As for me, I have seen both sides of life; and, but for a certain thing that happened, I might be well enough contented where I am."
"And that?"
Phil hesitated, for though they had talked freely, as young men will, the question searched a side of Phil's life to which as yet he had given no clue. "Why," said he, lowering his voice, "for one thing, I saw for the first time my own grandfather; and for another, I saw a certain old knight who quite won my fancy from such a man as a certain one we know. Come, let us stroll together." And as they walked the deck that night, arm in arm, Phil told his companion what his life had been and what it might have been, and mentioned, in passing, the girl at the inn.
Left to his miseries and his thoughts, of which the first were little better company than the second, the woeful cook turned over and over in his fat head such fragments of their talk as he had succeeded in overhearing, and to say truth, he made little more out of it all than the speakers had intended. But his parched throat teased his wits to greater effort, and being come to such a state that he would have bartered his immortal soul for water, had chance offered, he bethought him of a plan by which, if luck held good, he might escape from his shackles.
The moment for which he waited was a long time coming and he suffered a great variety of increasing miseries before it arrived; but when the watches changed, he saw among the men newly arrived on deck his erstwhile dearest friend, and somewhat reluctantly forgiving his dear friend for belabouring him over the head with a whole salt fish, the cook softly called the man by name.
The fellow came snickering, which made it none the easier to bespeak his aid; but the cook nevertheless swallowed his wrath as well as with his dry throat he could, and whispered to the fellow that he must make haste and tell the master there was news to be imparted in secret.
At this the fellow held up his hand with thumb thrust between first and second fingers.
"Give me no fico," wailed the most excellent cook. "Nay, I have stumbled upon a black and hidden matter. Go thou, and in haste, and it will pay thee well."
For a time they bickered in the dark, but there was in the cook's despair a sincerity that finally made the fellow believe the tale; and finding, upon stealing aft, that there was still a light in the great cabin, he mustered up his courage and knocked.
"Enter," cried a hard voice.
The fellow opened the door and peeped in and found the Old One sitting alone at the table. Glancing hastily about, and the more alarmed to meet the cold eye of Harry Malcolm who lay on the great bed in the corner of the cabin, he closed the door at his back and whispered, "He swears it's true—that there's foul work afoot. 'Tis the cook who hath told me—yea, and hath bade me tell you. He would say no more—the cook, I mean."
"Oh, my good friend, our most excellent cook!" Meditating, the Old One looked the fellow up and down. "Here," said he, "strike off his shackles and send him in with the key." And he threw the fellow the key to the locks.
After a while the cook came weakly in and shut the door behind him and, throwing the key on the table, fell into a chair.
"Ah," said the Old One, "what is this tale I have heard news of?"
"Water!" gasped the cook. For though he had managed, by pausing at the butt on his way, to drink nearly a quart, he had no mind the Old One should know of it.
The Old One smiled. "Go, drink, if thy tale be worth it; but mind, if I deem thy tale not worth it, thou shalt pay with a drop of blood for every drop of water."
The cook shot a doubting glance at the Old One, but went none the less, and came back wiping his lips.
"Have at thy tale," said the Old One.
There was a quaver in the cook's voice, for he was by no means sure of how great a tale he could make, and the master's face gave him small encouragement, for from the beginning of the tale to the end the Old One never altered his cold, cruel smile.
"It was the boatswain and young Canty," he said.
"Ah!"
"They was leaning on the forecastle and walking the deck arm in arm and talking of one thing and another."
"And what did they say?"
"They talked about some one's slow wit—I could not make sure whose, for they scoffed at me bitterly—and Canty was bepuzzled by the boatswain's ways, and he wanted him to do something or other."
"Go on." The Old One, grinning coldly, leaned back and watched the labouring cook, who wracked his few brains to make a worthier story.
"Nay, but I heard little else. Yet, said I, the master must know at all costs."
"What a thick head is thine and how easily seen through and through!" The Old One laughed. "Think you all this is worth a second thought? I am of the mind to have you skinned and salted. But I forgive you, since I have a milkish heart that is easy moved to pity. Get you down to your berth and sleep."
The cook departed in haste, but with a fleeting glance at Harry Malcolm whom he feared less only than the master. He was aware that for some reason he did not understand, his broken tale had served his purpose.
When he had gone the Old One turned about. "You heard him. What think you?" said he.
From the great bed in the corner, Harry Malcolm raised his head and laughed silently. "Our able cook was hard pressed for an excuse to get out of his ankle rings. Did you hear him slopping at the butt the first time passing? As for his tale, we know what we knew, and no more."
"'Slow wits'! I wonder."
"At Baracao we shall see," said Harry Malcolm. "Neither one nor a dozen can harm us before we raise land."
"And after raising land, which by God's mercy will be soon now, we shall see whose wits will nick first when the edges crack together."
The Old One stretched and yawned and Harry Malcolm softly laughed.
A light seen in the middle watch gave warning of an unexpected landfall, and calling up the Old One, who had a store of knowledge gained by much cruising in those seas, they lay off and on until dawn, when they made out an island of the Bahamas. It seemed, since by their reckoning they were still a day's sail from land, that there was some small fault in their instruments; but to this they gave little heed, and which island it was and what occasioned the light they never knew, though some ventured one guess and some another as they bore past it and lifted isle beyond isle. For two days, with the Old One conning the ship, they worked their way among the islands, and thus at last they came to a deep bay set among hills, which offered a commodious and safe anchorage, notwithstanding that on the point that guarded the bay there was the wreck of a tall ship.
In the shallop they had taken from the fishing pink, the Old One and Jacob, with four men to row them, went out to the wreck and returned well pleased with what they had found.
"God is good to us," cried the Old One, perceiving that Harry Malcolm waited at the waist for their coming. "Though her foremast and mainmast be sprung, yet her mizzen is sound as a nut."
"And is it to be fetched out of her unharmed?"
"Yea, that it is! Come, Master Carpenter, haul out our broken old stump of a mizzen. By this time on the morrow our good Rose of Devon will carry in its place as stout a stick as man can wish. Faith, the ill fortune of them whose ship lies yonder shall serve us well."
There was a great bustle in the old frigate, for work was to be done that needed many hands. Some went to the wreck to save masts and spars, and others, led by the one-eyed carpenter, toiled to haul out the stump. Boatswain Marsham and his mate laid ready ropes and canvas; and the most of the company being thus busied with one task or another, Martin and the cook caught a store of fresh fish, which the cook—who had now become a chastened, careful man—boiled for supper, while Martin went onshore for fruit that grew wild in abundance and for fresh water from a sandy spring. It was three days instead of one before the work was finished; but meanwhile there was fresh food and water aft and forward, and having spent at sea many weary weeks, the men rejoiced to pass time so pleasantly in a snug haven.
Indeed, a man might have passed a long life in comfort on such an island, and there were many who cried yea, when Joseph Kirk declared himself for building a town there, to which they might return with a store of wives and wines, and from which they could sally forth when their supplies of either got low, and get for themselves others out of the King of Spain's ships and plantations. But the Old One laughed and cried nay. "I shall show you a town," said he, "in a land as fair as this, but with houses built and ready for us, and with gold piled up and waiting, and with great cellars of wine and warehouses filled with food."
So they sailed from the island one morning at dawn and for a week they picked their way down the windward passages. At times they lay hidden in deep harbours of which the Old One knew the secret; and again they stood boldly out to sea and put behind them many leagues of their journey. And thus progressing, one night, as they worked south against a warm breeze scented with the odour of flowers, they sighted on the horizon a dark low land above which rose dimly the shape of a distant mountain.
The men gathered about master and mate and Jacob, then Harry Malcolm went swarming up the rigging and from the maintopsail yard studied the dim bulk of the mountain. After a time he cried down to them, "Douse all lights and hold her on her course!"
For an hour they stood toward the land, then Malcolm came down from aloft smiling, and there ran through the ship a great wave of talk. Though a man had never sailed those seas before, he would not have found the reason for their talk hard to guess, since there were few secrets on board. Time and distance had made less the grumbling occasioned by the disastrous brush with the Porcupine and by the littleness of the profit got from the pink, and they had warmed their hearts with the Old One's tales.
Bearing to the west, the Rose of Devon skirted the dark shore for miles; but the master and mate were growing anxious lest dawn overtake them before they should reach the hiding-place they sought; and when they rounded a certain wooded point and sailed into a deep, secluded bay where a ship might lie for a year unseen,—which put an end to their fears,—they let go their anchors with all good will and furled their sails; and at break of day they kedged the ship into a cove that might have been a dock, so straight were the shores and so deep the water.
"Mind you, Ned," or "Mind you, Hal, the night we landed on Hispaniola?" the men from the Blue Friggat were saying. And "'Twas thou at my side when we stole down through the palms and bottled the garrison in the little fort." And "Ah, what wine we got that night!"
"Yea, and how drunk we got! So that Martin Barwick was of a mind to go fight a duel with the captain of the soldiers. And then they burst out and drove us all away, and there was an end of our taking towns for a long, long while."
"I will have you know that I was no drunker than any man else," Martin snarled, and they laughed uproariously.
"Come," cried another, "since we have laid our ship in her chosen berth, let us sleep while the idlers watch. We shall be off in the cool of the afternoon."
"Nay, in the morning!"
"Afternoon or morning matters little," said old Jacob thickly, in the corner where he sat watching all the men. "The hour is near when we shall lay in the hold a goodly cargo. I know wellthistown. We need only find two more such towns to get the money to keep us the rest of our lives like so many dukes, each of us in a great house in England, with a park full of deer, and the prettiest tavern wenches from all the country round to serve us in the kitchen."
That day, while the men slept in such cool places as they could find, the cook and the carpenter stood watch; and a very good watch they kept, for they were prudent souls and feared the Old One and dared not steal a wink of sleep. But though there was much need that the men should sleep, there was small need of a watch, for the ship lay in that deep cove in the little round bay, with masses of palms on the high banks, which hid her from waterline to truck.
At mid-afternoon, as the Old One had bade them, the cook and the carpenter called the men, who came tumbling up, quickly awake and breathing heavily, since there was work to be done ere another morning broke, and, like enough, blood to be spilled.
From a chest of arms Harry Malcolm handed out muskets and pistols and pikes. "This for you," he said—"and this for you—and here's a tall gun for Paul Craig. Nay, curse not! Prayers, Paul, shall profit thee more than curses."
"I tell ye what, I'll not carry this great heavy gun," quoth he, and turned a dull red from anger.
"Blubububububub!" one cried, and all laughed.
"'Tis lucky, Paul," retorted Harry Malcolm, "that Tom Jordan is an easy, merciful man, or there's more than one back would bear a merry pattern in welts." He took up another musket—cumbersome, unwieldy weapons they were, which a man must rest for firing—and handed it to another. "And this for you."
Jacob was turning over and over on his palm powder from a newly opened barrel, and the Old One was leaning on the quarter-deck rail, whence he sleepily watched the small groups that were all the time gathering and parting. Will Canty, his face a little whiter than ordinary and his hand holding his firelock upright by the barrel, stood ill at ease by the forecastle. The boys lurked in corners, keeping as much as possible out of the way, but watching with wide eyes the many preparations. And indeed it was a rare sight, for the staunch old ship, her rigging restored and her many leaks stopped, lay in her little cove where a cool breeze stirred the ropes, and the afternoon sun shone through the palms brightly on the deck, and the men moved about bare-armed and stripped to their shirts.
"It would save much labour," said the carpenter, "were we to use this fair breeze to go by sea."
"True, carpenter, but a ship coming in from sea is as easy spied by night as by day, whereas a company of men descending from the hills by night will have the fort before the watchdogs bark. And who is there will grudge labour in such a cause?" The Old One looked about and the carpenter himself nodded assent.
Only Paul Craig grumbled, and at him the others laughed as they ate and drank.
They slept again till just before dawn, then, running a plank to the shore, they gathered under the palms, for there was need of a last council before leaving the ship.
"We are forty men," said the Old One, "and forty men are all too few; but though it is little likely that any will stumble on the ship in our absence, it is a matter of only common prudence that we post a guard ere we go."
"Yea, a guard!" cried Paul Craig. "I, now, am a very watchful man."
"Nay, but think, Paul, how great a meal thou can'st eat when thou hast climbed up hill and down with thy gun, and how much thou can'st drink. 'Twould be no kindness to leave thee. We must leave some lithe, supple lad who hath no need for the tramp." And the Old One chuckled. "Come, Paul and Martin, you shall lead our van."
Harry Malcolm met his eye, and he nodded.
"I name to guard our ship," said he, "the cook and Joe Kirk and Will Canty. Do you, lads, load the swivel guns and keep always at hand two loaded muskets apiece. Fire not unless the need is urgent, and keep the ship with your lives, for who knows but the lives of us all are staked upon your watchfulness and courage? You, Harry, since you know best the road, shall lead, with Paul and Martin upon either hand; the rest shall follow, and Jacob and I will guard the rear." He turned to the three who were to stay. "If there is good news, I will send men to bring the ship round to the harbour where, God willing, we shall load her to the deck with yellow chinks. If bad news,—why, you may see us in one day, or three, or five,—or maybe never."
He arched his brows and tossed his piece to his shoulder, and with Jacob at his side, he followed the others, who were already labouring under the weight of their weapons as they filed up the steep acclivity. The Old One and Jacob slowly climbed the wild, rough hill and paused until the marching column was out of hearing.
"You are a strange man," said Jacob. "I would wring his neck without thought."
"That were a mere brutal jest such as affordeth little joy," the Old One replied. "I will wind him in a tangle of his own working, then I will take the breath from his nostrils deliberately and he will know, when he dies, that I know what I know."
"You are a strange man."
"I can keep order among the gentlemen better than could any captain in the King's service; and such a game as this sharpens a man's wits. We shall see what we shall see."
Jacob slipped away by himself and the Old One followed his men.
All that morning, unseen and unsuspected, Jacob sat behind a rock within earshot of the ship. The palms shielded him and shaded him and he got himself into such a corner that no one could approach him from behind or see him without being seen. And all that morning he neither heard nor saw aught worthy of mark until about noon a voice in the ship cried out so that Jacob could plainly understand the words, "One should watch from land. Now a man on the hilltop could serve us well."
To which a second voice replied, "Go thou up, Will, go thou up! We are of no mind to stir."
There came the sound of steps on a plank, then a rattle of pebbles and a rustle of leaves; and Jacob rose quickly and followed at a safe distance a man who passed his corner on the way up the acclivity.
Reaching the summit, of the hill, where he was safely out of sight from the ship, the fellow—and it was indeed Will Canty—searched the sea from horizon to horizon; but Jacob, hunting deliberately as was his manner, found a seat a great way off, yet so situated among the trees that he could watch without being seen. For an hour he sat thus in a niche in the rocks below and watched Will on the flat ledge above; then he saw him start up of a sudden and look around him very carefully and cautiously, and whip his shirt off his back and wave it in the air.
For a good half-hour Will waved the shirt, stopping now and then to rest; but it seemed that nothing came of his waving, for with a sad face he put on his shirt and again sat down and presently he returned to the ship.
Jacob dozed a while longer where he was, having seen all that; for he was a man who could put two and two together as well as another, and he had learned what he wished to know. Then he got up, and seeking out the place where the Old One and his men had passed, he followed after them at a serious, steady gait, which seemed not very fast yet which kept plodding so surely up hill and down hill and through gullies and over ledges and along beside the sea, that in two hours he had covered the distance the others, burdened with guns and pikes and swords, had covered in three; and before nightfall, following the marks they had left for him, he overtook them resting in a ravine.
Night, which comes so suddenly in the tropics, was about to darken the world, when Jacob gave them a great start by walking silently in upon them as they sat talking in low voices, with their guns lying by their sides and their minds on the work that was before them. He nodded at the Old One, who knew well enough what his nod meant, and sat quietly down among them.
There was but a small moon, and when at nearly midnight they bestirred themselves and ate the last of the sea bread they had brought, the light was dim. But their plans were laid and the hour was come and the Old One and Harry Malcolm and Jacob knew the ways they were to go.
They were more than thirty, and they straggled out in a long line as they climbed the precipitous hill. But those ahead waited at the top for those behind and together, marching in close array, they crossed a ridge and came into sight of a little town that lay below them among hills and mountains.
It was a dark and silent town, whose houses had a ghostly pallor in the faint light from the crescent moon, and it lay beside a harbour which shone like silver. There were no lights in the houses and in all the place nothing stirred; but in the harbour a ship lay anchored, concerning which they speculated in whispers.
"The road lies yonder under the rock," said Harry Malcolm.
"And one man has strayed," Jacob whispered. "I will fetch him."
He stepped back the way they had come, and returned with Paul Craig who dragged his gun by the muzzle.
The fellow's manner betrayed his cowardice and the Old One pushed the point of a knife against his breast. "If again you stray or loiter," he whispered, "this blade will rip you open like a hog fat for the killing."
Though the words were uttered very softly, others heard them, and Martin Barwick, whose courage was none of the staunchest, rubbed his throat and swallowed hard.
"Gold without stint is ours for the taking," said the Old One.
"I have a misliking of yonder ship."
"Nay, she is but one more prize."
They moved down the mountain path toward the town.
"There are twelve houses," said Jacob. "Two men to a house leaves ten for the fort." In the dim light he had missed his count, for the men as they approached the gate of the village had crowded together.
"No one sleeps in the fort," quoth Harry Malcolm in a low voice. "They go to the fort only when they are attacked by dogs of English or wicked pirates."
Some one laughed softly.
"Two men to a house," the Old One was saying. "Kill, plunder, and burn!" Then as they stood in the very gate a dog barked.
They jumped at the sound, but higher by far did they jump when from the ship lying in the harbour there came a loud hail in Spanish.
"Ha! The dogs are wakeful!" the Old One cried in double meaning, and with that he plunged forward through the shadows. Though for the most part he showed himself a shrewd, cautious man, he was not one to turn back when his blood was up; and quicker than thought he had raised his voice to a yell:—
"Come, my hearts, and burn them in their beds!"
"Nay, nay!" cried Jacob. "Come back while there is yet time! They cannot yet know who we are or from whence we come. Another day, another month, will be best!" But they had gone. With a yell the Old One had led the way, and they had followed at his heels. Jacob was left alone in the dark, and being a rarely prudent man and of no mind to risk his neck lightly, he stayed where he was.
As the Old One stormed the first house, there came a shot from the darkness and he gave a howl of pain and rage. Turning, Phil Marsham saw a stranger cross the road behind him, but he had no time to consider the matter, since the first cries had waked the town. A dozen men were exchanging musket-shots with the fort, wherein they were folly-blind, for their shots went wild in the dark and their guns took a long time loading; and the Old One, thinking to further the attack and not considering that the light would reveal their whereabouts and their weakness, struck fire to dry grass, which blazed up and caught wood, but went out, hissing, under a bucket of water from within a house. Here a Rose-of-Devon's man took the steel and died, and there another went down, hit by a musket-ball. In a lull in the firing—for the charges of their guns were soon spent—they heard plainly the sound of oars and saw that two boats were bringing men from the vessel in the harbour, and from the far side of the place others came charging with pikes and swords. In all truth, the town was aroused and the game was over, so they took to their heels and ran for their lives, since they were outnumbered and outfought and no other course was left them.
All who escaped gathered on the hill, for though a man might wish in his heart to leave the Rose of Devon for ever, he could find no refuge in the nest of hornets they had stirred to fury, since in the eyes of the enemy one must appear as guilty as another. So, leaving ten of their number behind them, dead or wounded or captured, every man who could walk started back for the Rose of Devon with the thought to cheer him on, that after daybreak in all likelihood the howling pack would be at his heels.
They bickered and wrangled and cursed, and one whispered to Philip Marsham that if they had an abler captain their luck would turn, which was a great folly and cost him a broken head.
"That for thy prattle," the Old One cried, for he had been walking just behind. And with a club he struck the fellow a blow that sent him to the ground. Indeed, the Old One had intended to kill him, and had he not been so weary, he would doubtless have stayed to complete his work, for his temper was torn to rags.
Uphill and down they went, through thickets and streams, over ledges and sandy slides, round dank old fallen logs and along firm beaches, back to their dark frigate, with their labour for their pains. And so, by broad daylight, weary and hungry and too angry for civil speech, they came to the Rose of Devon. The younkers trotted along, dog-tired, and the men tramped in as best they could. There were hard words on this side and hard words on that, and hands were clapped on knives for no cause at all.
They thought it queer, when in the gray morning they came sliding down to the ship, with a rattle of pebbles and loose earth, that they found her so still, and only the cook on her deck, and himself in a cold sweat of fear.
"I would have nought to do with it," he cried, and being still mindful of his thirsty hours in bilboes, he shook in his shoes lest they fix upon him a share of the blame for that which had occurred in their absence.
"With what and whom would'st thou have nought to do?" the Old One demanded, and he showed a face that made the cook's teeth rattle.
"With them—they've gone."
"Who hath gone?"
"Will Canty and Joe Kirk. They took the shallop and bread and beer."
"It seems," said the Old One, and in a strangely quiet voice, "that the edge that is nicked is not Will Canty's. Is it thine, Jacob, or mine?"
The cook thought that either he or the Old One had lost his wits, for he made no sense of the words; but Harry Malcolm and Jacob knew what was meant, and Philip Marsham made a sharp guess at it.