"Father!" said a low voice.
My heart leaped, but I did not turn my head. Down the river, manned by warriors armed to the teeth, came more canoes of the war. Behind them were more,—and more,—and still more.
"Come, come, you sniveling parson," Gleazen bellowed, "where are your guns? Where's your powder? Come, arm yourself!"
The man turned on him with a look of scorn that no words of mine can properly describe.
"You have brought your dirty quarrel to my door," he said in a grim, hard voice. "Now do you wish me to fight your battles for you?"
Steadily, silently, the canoes were swinging inshore. I saw negroes running into the clearing. On my left I heard a cry so shrill and full of woe that it stood out, even amid the ungodly clamor of the blacks, and commanded my attention.
The man stepped down from the porch.
"This," he said, turning, "is a house of peace. I order you to leave it. I will go down and talk with these men myself."
"You'll never come back alive!" Matterson cried, and hoarsely laughed.
At that the missionary, John Parmenter, merely smiled, and, afraid of neither man nor devil, walked down toward the river and fell dead with a chance arrow through his heart.
There was something truly magnificent in his cold courage, and Gleazen paid him almost involuntary tribute by crying, "There, by heaven, went a brave man!"
But from the door of the house the girl suddenly ran out. Her face was deathly white and her voice shook, but as yet there were no tears in her eyes.
"Father!" she cried, and ran down the path, where occasional arrows still fell, and bent over the dead man.
"Come up, you little fool," Gleazen shouted. "Come back!" Then he jumped and swore, as an arrow with a longer flight than its fellows passed above his head.
The canoes were drawing in upon the shore, very cautiously, deliberately, grimly, in a great half-moon, and more of them were arriving at every moment.
I leaped from the porch and sped down beside the girl.
"Come," I cried, "you—we—can do nothing for him."
"Is it you?" she said. "You—I—go back!"
"Come," I cried hoarsely.
"Don't leave him here."
I bent over and lifted the body, and staggering under its weight, carried it up into the house and laid it on the couch in the big front room.
All this time the noise within and without the mission was deafening. The blacks on the river were howling with fury, and those ashore, who had not already fled to the woods, were wailing in grief and terror. Gleazen and Arnold Lamont had joined forces to organize a defense, the one raving at the arrant cowards who were fleeing from first sight of an enemy, while the other turned the place upside down in search of arms. And still the blacks on the river held off, probably for fear of firearms, though there were indications that as their numbers grew, they were screwing up their courage to decisive action.
The girl, suddenly realizing the object of Arnold's search, said quietly, "There are no weapons."
Arnold threw his hands out in a gesture of despair.
"If you wish to leave," she coldly said, "there is a boat half a mile downstream. You can reach it by the path that leads from the chapel. No one will notice you if you hurry."
"Then," I cried, "we'll go and you shall come with us."
Gleazen spoke to the trader in Spanish.
Abe Guptil was beside me now and Arnold behind me. We three, come what would, were united.
A louder yell than any before attracted our attention, and Matterson, who stood where he could see out of the window, called, "They're coming! Run, Neil, run!"
At that he turned and fled, with the others after him.
I stopped and looked into the girl's gray eyes.
"Come!" I cried, "in heaven's name, make haste!"
I had clean forgotten that the dead man by whom the girl was standing was her father; but her next words, which were spoken from deepest despair, reminded me of it grimly.
"I will not leave him," she said.
"You must!"
"I cannot."
"What," said I, "would he himself have had you do?"
Her determination faltered.
"Come! You cannot do anything more for him! Come."
She shook her head.
"Then I shall stay," I said.
"No," said she, and I saw that there was a change in her manner toward me. "You will go and I—I—"
Then she whistled and cried, "Paul! Paul!"
The great black Fantee servant whom I had seen with her in the canoe on that day when first we met, appeared suddenly.
"Come," she said.
I now saw that Arnold Lamont was running back to the door of the room.
"Quick!" he called. "Mon dieu, be quick!"
He stepped aside and let her go through the door first.
As we ran down the footpath, we heard them after us like hounds on the trail, and I tell you, it galled me to run from that cowardly pack. Oh, for one good fight, I thought! For a chance to avenge Seth Upham, who lay miles away beside the spring at the king's grave, to avenge the stern man who had fallen so bravely in front of the mission! For a chance to show the black curs that we would and could meet them, though the odds against us were a hundred to one! A chance to hold our own with them in defiance of their arms and numbers!
The hot pride of youth burned in my cheeks, and I was actually tempted to turn on them there and then; but now I thought of something besides myself, of something besides Seth Upham's rights and my own: I thought of the girl who ran ahead of me so lithely and easily. Be the hazards what they might, be the shame of our retreat ever so great, she must not, while one of us lived, be left to that herd at our heels.
So, running thus in headlong flight, out we came on the river bank.
There was a boat on the river, made fast to a peg on the bank, and there was a long canoe drawn up in the bushes. But at a great distance, where a narrow channel led through the mangroves, we saw titanic waves rolling on the bar in shining cascades from which the sun was brightly reflected, and which, one after another, hurled ton upon ton of water into a welter of foaming whirlpools. And over the lifting crests of the surf we saw, standing offshore,the topsails of a brig. The prospect of riding that surf in any boat ever built gave me, I confess without shame, a miserably sick feeling; and as if that were not enough, in through the mangroves to the shore in front of us shot three canoes of the war, and cut us off from the river.
Our time now had come to fight. With blacks behind us and blacks before us, we could no longer double and turn. The river, we knew, was alive with the canoes of the war. Already the black hornets were swarming through the woods and swamps around us. Three times now we had eluded them; this time we must fight. Our guns were lost and only pistols were left. No longer, as in that fatal hut on the king's grave,—in my heart I cursed the bull-headed stupidity of the man who built it and who had paid but a fraction of the price with his own life!—could we hold them at a distance by fear of firearms. Their frenzy by now brooked no such fear. To the brig, whose topsails we could descry miles off shore, we must win our way; there lay our only hope.
I thought of the voice of the wizard—"White man him go Dead Land." Verily to the door of his Dead Land we had come; and it seemed now that we must surely follow Bull and Seth Upham and Bud O'Hara and many another over the threshold.
"Men," said Arnold Lamont,—and his voice, calm, precise, cutting, brought us together,—"stones and clubs are not weapons to be despised in an encounter hand to hand."
"Have into 'em, then!" Gleazen gasped. "All hands together!"
"Mademoiselle," said Arnold, "keep close at our heels."
The girl was beside me now. Her eyes were wide, but her lips were set with a courage that rose above fear. "Come," she cried, and set my heart beating faster thanever, if it were possible, "they're upon us from the rear!" Then she spoke to her great negro in a language that I had never heard, and came close behind us when we charged down on the blacks ahead.
I fired my pistol and saw that the ball accounted for one of our enemies. I reeled from a glancing blow on the head, which knocked me to my knees; but, rising, I lifted a great rock on the end of a rope, which evidently the girl or her father had used for an anchor,—never negro tied that knot!—and swinging the huge weapon round my head, brought down one assailant with his shoulder and half his ribs broken. Now Arnold fired his pistol; now Matterson pitched, groaning, into the boat. Now, with my bare hand, I parried a spear-thrust and, again swinging my rock, killed a negro in his tracks.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw that the girl had shoved the canoe into the water. She was calling to us eagerly, but neither I nor the others could distinguish her words.
As Gleazen, with an oath, cut the painter of the boat and leaped into her, the impulse of his jump carried her ten feet out from shore; and instantly thrusting out the oars, he started to row away with Matterson and desert us.
"Come back, you yellow cur!" Arnold cried.
The trader, who had fought industriously but to no great purpose, now ran down the bank and, flinging himself full length into the river, caught the stern of the boat, with outstretched fingers, and dragged himself into her, and at the same moment Abe Guptil, obviously with the intention of holding the boat until the rest of us should have a chance to embark, too, not of saving himself, fought his own way aboard and, in spite of violent efforts to lay hands on the oars, was carried, protesting, away.
It is not to be thought that Gleazen had the remotestnotion of savingourlives. Having got rid of Arnold and me, he could, as he very well knew, do what he pleased with the brig when once he had silenced Gideon North. But although he had every desire not to help us, he in truth did help us in very spite of himself: no sooner did he appear to be getting safely out into the river, than the blacks, who had us all but at their mercy, suddenly bent every effort to keep him, too, from escaping.
"Let them go! Let them go! Oh, will you not come this way?"
It was the girl again. There was not a drop of cowardly blood in her veins. She, in the bow of the canoe and her big black servant in the stern, held the craft against the bank.
Taking advantage of the momentary respite that we got while the enemy was putting after Gleazen, Arnold and I fairly trembling in our haste—Arnold missed his footing and plunged waist-deep into the river—climbed in after them.
All this, which has taken a long time to tell, happened like so many cracks of the whip. Each event leaped sharply and suddenly at the heels of another, so that it was really but a few seconds—at all events less than a minute—after our arrival at the shore when we found ourselves gliding swiftly and noiselessly through a tiny channel among the mangroves, of which Gleazen had never dreamed. A turn of the paddle carried us out of sight of the struggle behind us, and it now appeared that, once out of sight, we were likewise out of mind.
"Mademoiselle," said Arnold, with a manner at once so deferential and in itself so proud, that it puzzled me more than a little, "shall we not paddle? Permit me to take your place."
"Thank you, no," she said.
"It is not fitting—" he began.
"I know the canoe, the river and the surf," she said. "It issaferthat I keep the paddle."
And to my surprise, as well as Arnold's, she did keep it and handled it in a way that would have shamed our efforts had we been permitted to try. It was a strange thing in those days, when most women laced tightly, and fainted gracefully if ever occasion required, and played at croquet and battledore and shuttlecock, to see a slender girl swing a paddle with far more than a man's deftness and skill to make up for what she lacked of a man's strength. But though she appeared so slender, so frail, there was that in her bearing which told us that her life in that wild place had given her muscles of steel. The big Fantee, too, drove the long craft ahead with sure, powerful strokes; so we shot out of the mangroves, out of the mouth of the river, into the full glare of the sun.
For a time the sails of the brig had grown small in the distance, but already we saw that she had come about and was standing in again. Why, I wondered, did Gideon North not anchor? Why should he indefinitely stand off and on? How long had he been beating back and forth, and how long would he continue to wait for us if we were not to come? We were long overdue at the meeting-place.
"To think," I said, "that now we can go home to Topham!"
"To Topham?" said Arnold. There was a question in his voice. "I should be surer of going home to Topham if we were rid of Gleazen. Also, my friend, we must ride that surf to the open sea."
The negro in the stern of the canoe now spoke up in gutturals.
"See!" Arnold cried.
Looking back up the river, we saw Gleazen and AbeGuptil, whom we had outdistanced by our short cut, now rowing madly downstream. Big and heavy though the boat was, they rowed with the strength that precedes despair, and sent her ploughing through the river with a wake such as a cutter might have left. In the stern beside the trader lay Matterson; and though his face, we could see, was streaked with blood, he menaced the negroes upstream with a loaded pistol. Arrows flew, and then a long spear hurtled through the air and struck the bow of the boat. But for all that, they bade fair to get clean away, and none of them appeared aware that we had slipped ahead of them in the race for life.
Now we in the canoe had come to the very edge of the surf, where the surge of the breakers swept past us in waves of foam. Beyond that surf was the open sea, the brig and safety. Behind it were more terrors than we had yet endured. For a moment the canoe hung motionless in the boiling surge; then, taking advantage of the outward flow and guided and driven by the hands of the great negro and the white, slender girl, she shot forward like a living creature, rose on the moving wall of an incoming wave, yielded and for a brief space drew back, then shot ahead once more and passed over the crest just before the wave curled and broke.
I heard a cry from behind us and knew that the others had discovered us ahead of them.
Turning, as we pitched on the heavy seas at a safe distance from the breakers, I watched them, too, row into the surf. I faintly heard Matterson's pistol spit, then I saw Gleazen drive the boat forward, saw her hesitate and swing round, lose way and go over as the next wave broke.
Then we saw them swimming and heard their cries.
As a mere matter of cold justice we should, I am convinced, have left that villainous pair, Matterson and Gleazen,to their fate. They had been ready enough to leave us to ours. Their whole career was sown with fraud, cruelty, brazen effrontery, and downright dishonesty. But even Arnold and I could scarcely have borne to do that, for the trader was guiltless enough according to his lights, and Abe Guptil was struggling with them in the water.
The girl, turning and looking back when she heard their shouts, spoke to the great negro in his own language. The canoe came about. Again we paused, waiting for a lull. Then we shot back on the crest of a wave, back down upon the overturned boat, and within gunshot of the flotilla of canoes that were spreading to receive us.
As we passed the wallowing boat I leaned out and caught Gleazen's hands and drew him up to the canoe. The negro cried a hoarse warning, and the canoe herself almost went over; but by as clever use of paddles as ever man achieved, the girl and the negro brought us up on an even keel, and Arnold and I lifted Gleazen aboard, half drowned, and gave a hand to Abe Guptil, who had made out to swim to the canoe. Of Matterson and the trader we saw no sign.
Then Abe, himself but newly rescued, gave a lurch to starboard, and with a clutch at something just under water, was whipped, fiercely struggling to prevent it, clean overboard.
We could neither stop nor turn; either would have been suicide. Would we or would we not, we went past him and left him, and drove on in the wash of the breaking waves down upon the grim line of canoes.
To them we must have seemed a visitation. When I sit alone in the dark I can see again in memory, very clearly, that white girl, her eyes flashing, that great, black Fantee, his bared teeth thrust out between his thick lips. The long breakers were roaring as they swept across the barand crashed at slow intervals behind us. In those seething waters the fiercest attack would have been futile; the very tigers of the sea must have lain just beyond the wash of the surf, as did the war. To one who has never seen a Fantee on his native coast, the story that I tell of that wild canoe-ride may seem incredible. It was an appalling, horrifying thing to those of us who were forced passively to endure it, who a dozen times were flung to the very brink of death. And yet every word is true. Though I could scarce draw breath, so swiftly did we escape one danger only to meet another, the big black, trained from childhood to face every peril of the coast, with the white girl paddling in the bow, brought the canoe through the surf and shipped no more than a bucket of water. And then that negro and that slim girl turned in the surge, as coolly as if there were no enemy within a thousand miles, and started back, out again through the surf, to the Adventure.
Were we thus, I thought, to lose Abe Guptil, whom but now we had rescued—good old Abe Guptil, into whose home I had gone long since with the sad news that had forced him to embark with us on Gleazen's mad quest? The thunder of the seas was so loud that I could only wait—no words that I might utter could be heard a hand's-breadth away.
For a moment the canoe hung motionless on the racing waters as a hummingbird hangs in the air, then she shot ahead; and up from the sea, directly in her path, came a tangle of bodies. Leaning out, Arnold and I laid hands on Abe and Matterson; and while the negro held the canoe in place, the girl herself reached back and caught that rascal of a trader by the hair. Now tons of water broke around us and the canoe half filled. Now the big negro, by the might of his single paddle, drove us forward. Thewash of water caught us up and carried us on half a cable's length; the negro again fairly lifted us by his great strength; we went in safety over the crest of the next wave, then as we drew the last of the three into the canoe, we began to pitch in the heavy swell of the open sea.
With our backs turned forever on the war, we paddled out to meet the brig. Our great quest had failed. We had left a trail of dead men, plundered goods, and a broken mission. But though all our hopes had gone wrong, though Gleazen had lost all that he sought, there was that in his face as he lay sick and miserable in the canoe which told me that he had other strings for his bow; and when I looked up at the brig, I vowed to myself that I would defend my own property with as much zeal as I would have defended my uncle's.
"See!" Arnold whispered. "Yonder is a strange ship!"
I saw the sail, but I thought little of it at the time. I had grown surprisingly in many ways, but to this very day I have not acquired Arnold Lamont's wonderful power to appraise seemingly insignificant events at their true value.
I only thought of how glad I was to come at last to the shelter of the brig Adventure, how strangely glad I was to have brought off the girl from the mission.
And when we came up under the side of the brig and saw honest Gideon North and all the others on deck looking down at us, the girl let her paddle slide into the water and bent her head on her hands and cried.
A storm
Matterson, Gleazen and the trader, Arnold, Abe and I, and the white girl and her great black servant, all were crowded into a frail dugout, which must long since have foundered, but for the marvelous skill of the big Fantee canoeman and the sureness and steadiness with which the girl had wielded her paddle. And now the girl sat with her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking as she sobbed; and the big black, awed and frightened by the nearness and strangeness of the good Adventure, was looking up at the men who had crowded to the rail above him. As the brig came into the wind and lay beside the canoe, her yards sharply counter-braced, the long seas rose to the gunwale of our heavily laden and waterlogged little craft, and she slowly filled and settled.
We should have perished there and then, within an arm's length of the solid planks that promised safety, had not Gideon North acted promptly. As the canoe settled and the water rose, I suddenly found myself swimming, and gave the bottom of the canoe a kick and plunged forward through the water to reach the girl and hold her up. At the same moment, indistinctly through the rush of the waves, I heard Captain North giving orders. Then I saw Abe beside me, swimming on the same errand, and heard someone spluttering and choking behind me; then I came up beside the girl and, seizing one slender wrist, drew her arm over my shoulder and swam slowly by the brig.
There was no excitement or clamor. The canoe, havingemerged half full of water from those vast breakers on the bar, yet having made out to ride the seas well enough until the girl and the negro stopped paddling, had then quietly submerged and left us all at once struggling in the ocean.
Blocks creaked above us and oars splashed, and suddenly I felt the girl lifted from my shoulders; then I myself was dragged into a boat. Thus, after ten days on the continent of Africa, ten such days of suffering and danger that they were to live always as terrible nightmares in the memory of those of us who survived them, we came home to the swift vessel that had belonged to poor Seth Upham.
To the story that we told, first one talking, then another, all of us excited and all of us, except Arnold Lamont, who never lost his calm precision and the girl who did not speak at all, fairly incoherent with emotion, Gideon North replied scarcely a word.
"The black beasts!" Gleazen cried in a voice that shook with rage. "I'd give my last chance of salvation to send a broadside among them yonder."
"Ah, that's no great price," Matterson murmured sourly. "I'd give more than that—many times more, my friend. Think you, Captain North, that a man of spirit would soon forget or forgive such a token as this?" And he pointed at the raw wound the spear had left on his face.
Gleazen stepped close beside him. "Hm! It's sloughing," he said.
"It's hot and it throbs like the devil," Matterson replied.
Arnold also came over to Matterson and looked at the wound.
"It needs attention," he commented. "It certainly is not healing as it should."
Matterson raised his brows angrily. "Let it be," he returned.
With a slight lift of his head, Arnold faced about and walked slowly away.
As Matterson angrily glared from one of us to another, the group separated and, turning, I saw our guest standing silently apart.
"Captain North," I said slowly, "this lady—"
He did not wait for me to finish.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," he cried. "You shall have my own stateroom. I should have spoken before, but that sail troubles me."
Thereupon others turned to study the sail, which was bearing down on us, although still some miles away; but I continued to watch the guest whose presence there in the Adventure seemed so strange as almost to savor of magic, as she tried to thank Gideon North.
"Don't say a word," he cried. "Not a word! Remember this: I've a wife and daughters of my own, and I wish they were on board to make things comfortable for you. But all we can do, I'm afraid, is give you a chance to make yourself comfortable. Our cabin boy's gone. He went ashore with those damnable villains yonder and never came back."
"A little boy?" she suddenly asked.
"Aye."
"A wicked little rascal?" A strangely roguish light flashed across her face and she smiled as if in spite of herself.
Gideon North's chuckle grew into a wide grin. "Ma'am, that's Willie MacDougald to a T. But what do you know of him?"
"He ran away from them, and came to us when they had gone up-river, and said that they were going to beathim, and told a terrible story of the wrongs he had suffered. But he could not abide our ways any more than we his,—such a time as he led us with his swearing and thieving and lying!—and when a boat from the American cruiser came ashore while you were gone, he told the men such a story of your search for slaves and of all your gear and goods, they vowed to capture you if they lay off the coast a year and a day, and they laughed at his wretched oaths and made much of him and took him on board. And then—then—" It seemed the thought of all that had happened since swept upon her in a wave almost as overwhelming as one of those breakers through which we had fought our way; for she suddenly turned white and tried to fight back her tears, and for the time could speak no more.
"Come, Joe, look alive now!" Captain North roared, trying to mask his kind heart and lively emotions with a pretense of fierceness. "Fetch hot water from the galley to my stateroom! Have the cook bring aft hot coffee and a square meal. I'll take you below myself, ma'am, to show you the way, and I now order you to help yourself to all you need for comfort. Off with you, Joe!"
All this time the cook had been gaping from the galley door at what had been going on aft; and so eager was he to get a nearer view of the young lady who had come mysteriously out with us from the river, and to gather up new threads of the extraordinary story Abe Guptil had told forward, that, although he was the laziest Yankee who ever commanded a galley stove, he set out at a dead run aft, with a coffee-pot in one hand and a pail of hot water, which at every moment threatened to spill and scald him, in the other.
Captain North at once came on deck again and found the rest of us still intent on the approaching ship, whichwith all her canvas spread was bearing down upon us like a race-horse. The cook, on his way forward, paused to survey her. The watch, now glancing anxiously aft, now studying the stranger, was standing by for whatever orders should be forthcoming.
"Sir," said Arnold, "she means trouble."
"We've waited too long already," Captain North replied. Raising the trumpet he cried, "Call up all hands, there, Mr. Severance!"
A moment later he looked keenly at Matterson. "Mr. Matterson," he said, "you are exhausted."
"Iama little peaked," Matterson said thoughtfully, "a little peaked, but not exhausted."
"Will you take your station, sir?"
"I will." Still in his wet clothes and cautiously touching his inflamed wound, Matterson went forward to the forecastle. There was something soldierly in his promptness. It was so evident that his strength was scarcely equal to his task, that for his hardihood, little as I liked him, I freely gave him credit.
"Mr. Gleazen," said Captain North, "I am afraid we must show her our heels."
"If I could lay my hands on the lean neck of William MacDougald," Gleazen growled, "I'd wring his head clean off."
"She unquestionably is bearing down on us."
"She is."
"And she knows—"
"She knows," cried Gleazen, "all that Willie MacDougald can tell her of casks and farina and shackles and lumber for extra decks."
"And of false papers with which you so carefully provided yourself?"
Gideon North's face all this time was as sober as ajudge's, but now I saw that he was deliberately tormenting Gleazen with the various preparations the man had made for that unholy traffic in slaves.
Although Gleazen himself by now perceived it, his wrath turned on our erstwhile cabin boy rather than on Gideon North. He swore vilely. "Aye," he cried, "we must run—run or hang. And all for the word of a prying, cursing, eavesdropping young rooster that I might have wrung the neck of, any day for months past. If ever I lay hands on his ape's throat—"
"I gather, sir," Captain North dryly interposed, "you'll use him harshly."
With that he turned his back on Gleazen and raised his trumpet:—
"Lay aloft and loose the main to'g'l'ants'l.—Man the to'g'lant sheets and halyards.—Some of you men, there, stand by the clewl'nes and braces." For a moment he stood, trumpet at lips, watching every motion of the men; then, as those on the yards loosened the sail, he thundered, "Let fall!—Lay in!—Sheet home!" Then, "Hoist away!—Belay the halyards!"
As we crowded on sail, the brig leaned before the wind, and for a time we hoped that we were gaining on the stranger; but our hopes were soon dispelled.
It seemed queer to run from our own countrymen, but run we did all that afternoon, through the bluest of blue seas, with white clouds flying overhead and low lands on the horizon.
In another sense I could not help feeling that Gideon North himself showed quite too little anxiety about the outcome of the race. Yet, as time passed, even his face grew more serious, and all that afternoon, as we braced the yards and so made or shortened sail as best to maintain our speed at every change of wind, an anxious groupwatched from the quarter-deck of the Adventure the swift vessel that stood after us and slowly gained on us, with her canvas spread till she looked on the blue sea for all the world like a silver cloud racing in the blue sky.
The nearer she came, the graver grew the faces about me; for, if the full penalty of the law was exacted, to be convicted as a slaver in those days was to be hanged, and in all the world there was no place where a vessel and her men were so sure to be suspected of slaving as in the very waters where we were then sailing. The track of vessels outward bound from America to Good Hope and the Far East ran in general from somewhere about the Cape Verde Islands to the southeastern coast of Brazil; that of vessels homeward bound, from Good Hope northwest past St. Helena and across the Equator. Thus the western coast of Africa formed, with those two lines that vessels followed, a rough triangle; and looking toward the apex, where the two converged, it served as the base. In that triangle of seas, as blue as sapphire and as clear, occurred horrors such as all human history elsewhere can scarcely equal. There a slaver would leave the lanes of commerce, run up to the coast one night, and be gone the next with a cargo of "ebony" under her hatches, to mingle with the ships inward or outward bound; and there the cruisers hunted.
The faces of the crew were sober as the man-of-war, cracking on every stitch of canvas, came slowly up to us at the end of the afternoon. We all knew then that even to keep a safe lead until sunset, it would do us precious little good; for in a clear starlight night our pursuer could follow us almost as well as by day. Arnold Lamont was inscrutable; Gideon North was gravely silent; Matterson and Gleazen were angry and sullen; and the luckless trader, who had escaped from his ambushed caravan only to find himself in a doomed vessel, was yellow with fear.There was not a man, forward or aft, who did not know the incalculable stakes for which we were racing. Pedro with his monkey on and off his shoulder as he worked, Abe Guptil with his nervous, eager step, and all the others, each showing the strain after his own manner, leaped to the ropes at the word of command or fidgeted about the decks in the occasional moments of inaction.
Of our passenger I had thought often and with ever keener anxiety. How the fast-approaching end of our race would affect her future I could only guess, and really I was more anxious for her than for myself. But from the moment she went below neither I nor any of the others saw sign or glimpse of her, until, just at sunset, I ran thither to fetch the leather-bound spyglass whose lower power and greater illumination lent itself best to night work.
As I clattered down the companionway, I heard someone dart out of the cabin. But when I entered, the girl, as if she had been waiting to see who it was, came back again, so eager for news from above that she could no longer remain in hiding.
"Tell me, sir," she said, lifting her head proudly, "has the cruiser overhauled us yet?"
"Not yet," I replied.
She stood as if waiting for whatever else I had to say; but my tongue for the moment was tied.
"If they do?" she said as if to question me.
"Heaven help us!"
"Come," she cried with some asperity, "don't stand there staring like a gaby! Tell me everything. Have not I a right to know?"
"If you wish," I replied, stung by the scorn in her voice. "The chances are that, if we are caught, some of us will hang. Which of us and how many, is a debatable question."
She thought it over calmly. "That is probably true. Ithink, however, that I shall have something to say about which ones will hang."
That was a phase of the matter which had not occurred to me. It gave me a good deal of relief, until I met her eyes regarding me still scornfully, and realized what an exhibition of myself I was making. I had been assertive enough hitherto, and I had not lacked confidence where females were concerned; I remembered well the one who so long before had come into my uncle's store in Topham, and how Arnold had smiled at the scorn that I had accorded her. But this young lady somehow was different. She had a fine, quiet dignity that seemed always to appraise me with cool precision. She had shown, once at least, a flash of humor that indicated how lightly, in less tragic circumstances, she could take light things. Now and then she had dealt a keen thrust that cut me by its truth.
And yet she treated me kindly enough, too. She had seemed almost glad to have me at her side when we ran together from the mission.
"Mistress—" I began; then stopped and clumsily stammered, "I—I don't know your name."
"My name?" With the hint of a smile, but with that fine dignity which made me feel my awkwardness many times over, she said, "I am Faith Parmenter."
Another pause followed, which embarrassed me still more; then, awkwardly, I reached for the night glass. Things were not happening at all as I had dreamed.
"You're long enough finding that glass," Captain North growled when I handed it to him. "Aye, and red in the face, too."
I was thankful indeed that the approach of the ship, which had sailed so swiftly as to overhaul even our Baltimore brig, gave him other things to think about.
By now the race was almost over. I heard Gleazentalking of bail—of judges—of bribes. I saw the man Pedro twitching his fingers at his throat. I saw Arnold Lamont and Gideon North watching the stranger intently, minute after minute. Taking in our studding-sails and royals, we braced sharp by the wind with our head to westward. At that our pursuer, which had come up almost abreast of us but a mile away, followed our example, sail for sail and point for point, whereupon we hauled up our courses, took in topgallant sails and jib, and tacked.
When the stranger followed our manœuvre, but with the same sail that she had been carrying, she came near enough for us to see that her lower-deck ports were triced up. When we tacked offshore again, she hauled up her mizzen staysail and stood for us; and fifteen minutes later she hauled her jib down, braced her headsails to the mast, and rounded to about half a cable's length to the windward of us on our weather quarter. We had already heard the roll of drums beating the men to their stations, and now Captain North, his glass leveled at her in the half light, cried gloomily:—
"Aye, the tampions are out of her guns already!"
"Ship ahoy!" came the deep hail. "What ship is that?"
"Train your guns, Captain North!" Gleazen cried fiercely; "train your guns!"
"Mr. Gleazen," Gideon North retorted, with a stern smile, "with one broadside she can blow us into splinters. Our shot would no more than rattle on her planks."
"Ahoy there!" the deep voice roared, now angrily.
"The brig Adventure from Boston, bound on a legitimate trading voyage to the Guinea coast," Captain North replied. "Where are you from?"
To his question they returned no answer. The curt order that the speaking-trumpet sent out to us was:—
"Standby! We're sending a boat aboard."
We were caught by a cruiser, and there was evidence below that would send us, guilty and guiltless alike, to the very gallows if the courts should impose on us the extreme penalty.
Up to this point we had not been certain of the nationality of our pursuers. Too often flags were used to suit the purpose of the moment. But there was now no doubt that the uniforms in the boat were those of our own countrymen.
With long, hasty strides, Gleazen crossed the deck to the captain. In his face defiance and despair were strangely mingled. He was nervously working his hands. "Quick now," he cried. "Haul down the flag, Captain North. Break out the red and yellow. Throw over the papers. Over with them, quick!"
"I am not sure I wish to change my registry," Gideon North quietly returned.
Gleazen swore furiously. "You'll hang with the rest of us," he cried,
"I think, sir, that I canprove myinnocence."
"The casks and shackles will knot the rope round your stiff neck. Aye, Captain North, you'll have a merry time of it, twitching your toes against the sunrise."
In fury Gleazen spun on his heel. For once, as his teeth pulled shreds of skin from his lips, the man was stark white.
We heard the creak of blocks as the ship lowered her boat, heard the splash of oars as the boat came forging toward us, saw in the stern the bright bars of a lieutenant's uniform.
There was not one of us who did not feel keenly the suspense. So surely as the boat came aboard, just so surely would the searchers, primed for their task, no doubt, by that vengeful little wretch, MacDougald, find whateverdamning evidence was stowed in the hold; and I was by no means certain that, in the cold light of open court, we who had fought against every suggestion of illegal traffic could prove our innocence. But to Gleazen and Matterson the boat promised more than search and seizure. Whether or not the rest of us effected our acquittal, for those two a long term in prison was the least that they could expect, and the alternative caused even Gleazen's nonchalance to fail him. It is one thing, and a very creditable thing, to face without fear the prospect of an honest death in a fair fight; it is quite another, calmly to anticipate hanging.
Still Gleazen stood there in the fleeting twilight, opening and closing his hands in indecision. Still Captain North waited with folded arms, determined at any cost to have the truth and the truth only told on board his brig.
The brig slowly rose, and fell, and rose, on the long seas. The men stood singly and in little groups, waiting, breathless with apprehension, for whatever was to happen. A cable's length away, the cruising man-of-war, her ports triced up, her guns run out and trained, rolled on the long seas in time with the brig. We had thought, when we escaped from the enfolding attack of the African war, that all danger was over. Now, it seemed, we must face a new danger, which menaced not only our lives, but our honor.
The boat now lay bumping under the gangway.
"Come, pass us a line!" the lieutenant cried.
Suddenly Gleazen woke from his indecision. Stepping boldly to the rail, he called down in his big, gruff, assertive voice:—
"You men had better not come on board. Mind you, I've given you fair warning."
"What's that you're saying?"
"You better not come on board. We've got four casesof smallpox already, and two more that I think are coming down."
The men in the boat instantly shoved off, and a dozen feet away sat talking in low voices. Obviously they were undecided what to do.
To most of us Gleazen's cool, authoritative statement, that the most dread plague of the African coast, the terror alike of traders, cruisers, and slavers, had appeared among us—a downright lie—was so amazing that we scarcely knew what to make of it. I must confess that, little as I liked the means that he took, I was well pleased at the prospect of his gaining his end. But Gideon North, as he had been prompt to shatter at the start Gleazen's first attempt at fraud, promptly and unexpectedly thrust his oar into this one.
"That, gentlemen, is not so," he called down to the boat. "We have as clean a bill of health as any ship in the service."
"Come, come, now," cried the young officer. "What's all this?"
"I'm telling you the truth, and I'm master of this brig."
With his hands at his mouth Gleazen, half-pretending to whisper, called, "We're humoring him. He won't admit he has it. But what I've told you is God's honest truth."
Captain North started as if about to speak, then seemed to think better of it. Folding his arms, he let the matter stand.
I think he, as much as any of the rest of us, was relieved when the boat, after hesitating a long time, during which we suffered keenest anxiety, made about and returned to the ship. Still we dared not breathe easily, lest the commanding officer, refusing to accept his subordinate's report, order a search at all costs. But five minutes later itappeared that, whatever their suspicions may have been, they had no intention of running needless risks, for they came about and made off up the coast.
Small wonder that they acted thus! The bravest of captains must have stopped three times to think before ordering his men to dare that terrible disease, the worst scourge of those seas, the terror alike of slavers and cruisers, on the bare word of such as Willie MacDougald that he would find contraband.
I have often wondered whether Willie MacDougald was on board the ship, and whether he was responsible for the chase. In the light of all that I heard, I rather think he was, although none of us who searched the decks of the other vessel caught so much as a glimpse of him. But if so, it must have disappointed him deeply that his revenge failed to reach Cornelius Gleazen and Pedro's monkey; and seeing the monkey, which had eluded its owner and strayed aft, perched in the rigging and malevolently eyeing Gleazen himself, I laughed aloud.
Then I saw that it was no time for laughing, for Gleazen and Gideon North were standing grimly face to face, and Arnold and Matterson and the trader were gathering close around them.
Out of the rumble of angry voices, one came to me more distinctly than any of the others:—
"Mr. Gleazen, it is time that we settled this question once and for all. If you will come below with me, we can reach, I am sure, a decision that will be best for all of us in the Adventure."
It was Captain North who spoke. As he moved toward the companionway, I saw that Arnold Lamont was beckoning to me.
Across the cabin table was spread the big, inaccurate chart of the west coast of Africa, on which Captain North had penciled the rat-infested island and the river.
Seeing it now for the first time since he had returned to the brig, Gleazen planted one finger on the picture of the spot where we had found the wrecked ship with the bones of the drowned slaves still chained to her timbers. "Pfaw!" he growled. "If onlyshewas afloat! There was a ship for you! Given her at sea again, handsome and handy, two good men would never 'a' lost their lives. Given that she was not beyond repair, and we might yet kedge her off and plank her and caulk her and rig her anew."
"She's done," said Matterson languidly. "Forget her." He laid his head on the table and closed his eyes.
"Molly!" There was a new note of concern in Gleazen's voice. He leaned over and shook the man.
"Let me be," said Matterson.
"Gentlemen," Gideon North interposed, "we are dodging the issue."
"Well?" Gleazen angrily raised his head. "There is no issue. We'll sail for the Rio Pongo, lay off and on till the first dark night, then take the cargo that a friend of ours will have ready. Thence, Captain North, we'll sail for Cuba.I'llgive the orders now, andyou'llcarry them out."
"How long," I cried hotly, "have you been giving orders on board this vessel?"
He turned and glared at me. "If you want facts, Joe,I'll give them to you: I've been giving orders aboard this vessel from the day we sailed from Boston until now—aye, and seeing that they were obeyed, too, you young cub. But if you want fancies, such as are suitable for the young, I've owned the brig only since Seth Upham went mad and got himself killed."
"You own the brig?"
"Yes, I own the brig."
"You lie!"
That he merely laughed, enraged me more than if he had hit me.
"You lie!" I repeated.
"Next," said he, "you'll be telling me that Seth Upham owned her."
"That I will, indeed, and it is a small part of what I'll be telling you."
"Well, he didn't."
The man's effrontery left me without words to retort.
"He didn't," Gleazen said again. "Him and I went into this deal share alike. Half to him and half to me and my partners. Ain't he dead? Well, then I keep my half and Molly, here, who is all the partner I've got left now, gets the other half. Ain't that plain? Of course it is. It would be plain enough if we'd got clear with the fortune that was ours by rights. And because we lost the fortune, it's all the plainer that we ought to get something for our trouble."
"But, Mr. Gleazen," Arnold interposed, "supposing there were a grain of truth in what you say,—which there isn't,—the rest of us, Joe and Abe and I, still have a sixth part in it all."
"That," cried Matterson, bursting into the controversy before Gleazen could find words to meet this new argument, "that is stuff. The sixth part was to come outof Seth Upham's lay; and Seth Upham is dead, so he gets no lay. Therefore you get not a bit more than the wages you signed on for; and if you signed on for no wages, you get nothing."
"I can promise you, Matterson," Gideon North said with a smile, "that nothing of that kind goes down under my command."
"Then you're likely not to keep your command."
The trader, glancing shrewdly from one to another, had edged over beside Gleazen, but now Arnold spoke, as ever, calmly and precisely:—
"Let all that go. About that we do not as yet care. It is a matter to be argued when the time comes. But—what will you take on board for a cargo at Rio Pongo?"
As if Arnold's question implied permission for him also to have his say, the trader spread both hands in a gesture of despair at such ignorance as it manifested.
"'What weel you get?' Ah, me—"
"Yes, what will you get?" Arnold reiterated, quietly smiling at the irony of his question.
"We'll get a cargo all right when we get there," Gleazen asserted. "We'll let it go at that. Captain North, bring the brig about on a course, say, of approximately west by north." He bent over the chart. "That will be about right. As for the wind—"
"Captain North," said I, "you will do nothing of the kind. Unless we can get an honest cargo, you will head straight back to Boston and sell the Adventure for what she'll bring."
"'What weel you get?'" the still amazed trader cried again. "You weel get—"
"As for you, Joe,—" Gleazen momentarily drowned out the man's voice,—"you'll get into trouble if you're not careful."
"For you, Mr. Gleazen, I don't care the snap of my finger. I'll have my property handled in the way I choose."
For a moment Gleazen glared at me in angry silence, and in that moment, the trader found opportunity to finish his sentence, which he did with an air of such pleasure in the tidings he gave, and all the time so completely unconscious of the subtler undercurrents of our quarrel, that to an unprejudiced observer it would have been ludicrous in the extreme.
"You weel get—niggers! Such prime, stout, strong niggers! It ees a pleasure always to buy niggers at Rio Pongo. Such barracoons! Such niggers!"
Although for a long time we had very well known the hidden real object of Gleazen's return to Topham and of the mad quest on which he had led us, this was the first time that anyone had frankly put it into so many words. The anger and defiance with which our two parties eyed each other seemed moment by moment to grow more intense.
"Well, there's no need to look so glum about it," said Gleazen at last. "Half the deacons in New England live on the proceeds of rum and notions, and they know well enough what trade their goods are sold in. You may talk all you will of the gospel; they take their dollars, when their ships come home. Your Englishman may talk of his cruisers on the coast and his laws that Parliament made for him; but when the bills come back on London for his Birmingham muskets and Liverpool lead and Manchester cotton, he don't cry bad money and turn 'em down. Why, then, should we? Where there's niggers, there'll be slaves. It's in the blood of them."
"Be that as it may," I retorted, "not a slave shall board this vessel."
"It appears," Gleazen slowly returned, "that this brig, which is a small craft at best, is not big enough for both of us."
"Not if you think you can give yourself the airs of an owner."
"Hear that, you! 'Airs of an owner!' Well, I am owner, I think—yes, I will give you a greater honor than you deserve." Suddenly he leaned over and roared at me, "Get down on your knees and apologize, or, so help me, I'll strike you dead on the spot."
Quicker than a flash I reached out and slapped him on the face—and as I did so I remembered the time when O'Hara had slapped Seth Upham.
With his hand half drawn back as if to seize a chair for a cudgel, he stopped, smiled, spun round and reached for the pair of swords on the bulkhead. Extending the two hilts, he smiled and said, "I shall take pleasure in running you through, my friend."
"Not so fast!" It was Arnold who spoke. "I, sir, will take first a turn at the swords with you."
"Inyour turn, Mr. Lamont," Gleazen retorted with an exaggerated bow. "Meanwhile, if you please, you may act as second to Mr. Woods."
"Come, enough of this nonsense," cried honest Gideon North, "or I'll clap you both into irons. Dueling aboard my vessel, indeed!" He looked appraisingly from one of us to the other.
"I will fight him," I coolly replied.
"You will, will you?"
"I will."
Soberly Gideon North looked me in the eye. Already Gleazen, Matterson, Arnold, and the others were moving toward the companionway. This happened, you must remember, in '27; dueling was not regarded then as it is now.
"I am afraid, my boy, it will not be a fair fight."
"It will be fair enough," I replied.
Rising, Captain North brought out his medicine chest.
I followed the others on deck, as if the little world in which I was moving were a world of unreality. All that I knew of swordsmanship, I had learned from Cornelius Gleazen himself; and though I felt that at the end of our lessons I had learned enough to give him a hard fight, it was quite another matter to cross swords that carried no buttons, and to believe that one of us was to die.
There was only starlight on deck, and Captain North stepped briskly forward to Arnold and Matterson, who were standing together by a clear space that they had paced off.
"Gentlemen," said he, "if they were to wait until morning—"
"There would be more light, to be sure," Arnold returned, "but the disadvantage is common to both."
Gleazen grumbled something far down in his throat, and I cried out that I would fight him then as well as any time.
"If a couple of lanterns were slung from the rigging," Matterson suggested. He moved slowly and now and then touched the hot skin around his wound; but although it still troubled him, he appeared to be gaining strength.
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when two men came running aft in response to Captain North's sharp order. Lanterns were lighted and slung, and Cornelius Gleazen and I, with sword in hand, faced each other across a length of clean white deck.
It was a long way from friendly combat on the village green at Topham to the bout I now waited to begin, and both for Cornelius Gleazen and for myself the interveningmonths had piled up a formidable score to be settled. Waiting in silence for our seconds, Arnold and Matterson, to clear away some coiled ropes, we watched each other with a bitter hate that had been growing on his part, I am convinced, since the days when first he had seen me working in my uncle's store, and on mine, certainly, ever since I had become aware of the growing conviction that the friendship he had so loudly professed for me was absolutely insincere.
He had cheated, robbed, browbeaten, and, to all practical ends, killed, my uncle. He stood there now, scheming by every means in his power to kill and rob me in my turn. And if he succeeded!—I thought of the girl to whom Gideon North had given up his stateroom. How much did she know of all that was going forward? There had been only one door between her and the quarrel in the cabin. And what fate would be left for her, if I should fall—if Gleazen should override Gideon North and Arnold Lamont? Truly, I thought, I must fight my best.
"And, sir," I heard Arnold saying, "if you are able to bear arms after your bout with Mr. Woods, it is to be my turn and you shall so favor me."
"That I will," Gleazen replied with a wry smile.
I know truly, although I do not understand the reason for it, that after an unusually dramatic experience it is likely to be some trifling, irrelevant little thing that one remembers most vividly. And singularly enough it is a tiny patch on Arnold's coat that I now most clearly recall of all that happened then. I noticed it for the first time when Arnold was speaking; I do not remember that I ever noticed it again. Yet to this day I can see it as clearly as if I had only to turn my head to find it once more before my eyes, slightly darker than the body of the coat and sewed on with small neat stitches.
Now Arnold was beside me. "Steady your blade, my boy," he said. "Fence lightly and cautiously."
The two swords circled, flashing in the lantern-light, and we came on guard in a duel such as few men have fought. The rolling deck at best gave us unsteady footing. As the lantern swung, the shadows changed in a way that was most confusing. Now we were all but in darkness; now the light was fairly in our eyes.
This, I thought, can never be the old Neil Gleazen with whom I used to fence. He was craftier, warier, more cautious now than I had ever seen him, and I took a lesson from him and restrained the impetuousness of the attack I should have launched had foils been our weapons. Now he lunged out like a flash, and all but came in past my guard. I instantly replied by a riposte, but failed to catch him napping. Again he lunged and yet again, and for the third time I succeeded in parrying, but all to no purpose so far as opening the way for a counter-attack was concerned.
Now I saw the spectators only as black shadows standing just out of the range of my vision. With every sense I was alert to parry and lunge. Now it seemed very dark except for the light of the lanterns, although before we began to fence, the starlight had seemed uncommonly bright and clear. The whole world appeared to grow dark around me as I fought, until only Cornelius Gleazen was to be seen, as if in the heart of a light cloud. Now I all but eluded his guard. Now I drew blood from his arm—I was convinced of it. I pressed him closer and closer and got new confidence from seeing that he was breathing harder than I.
For a moment,—it is a thing that happens when one has concentrated his whole attention on a certain object for so long a time that at last it inevitably wavers,—fora moment I was aware of those around me as well as of the man in front of me. I even heard their hard breathing, their whispered encouragement. I saw that Matterson was standing on my right, midway between me and Gleazen. I saw a sudden opening, and thrusting out my arm, drove my blade for it with all the speed and strength of my body. That thrust, too, drew blood; there was no doubt of it, for Gleazen gave a quick gasp and let his guard fall. Victory was mine; I had beaten him. My heart leaped, and lifting my sword-hand to turn off his blade, I attempted a reprise. I knew by the frantic jerk of Gleazen's guard that he was aware that I had beaten him. I was absolutely sure of myself. But when I attempted to spring back and launch the doubled attack something held my foot.
I gave a quick jerk,—literally my foot was held,—I lost my balance and all but went over. Then I felt a burning in the back of my shoulder and sat down on deck with the feeling that the lanterns were now expanding into strange wide circles of light, now concentrating into tiny coals of fire.
First I knew that Gideon North was bending over me with his medicine chest; then I took a big swallow of brandy and had hard work to keep from choking over it; then I felt cool hands, so firm and small that I knew they could belong to only one person in the Adventure; then I saw Arnold Lamont, sword in hand, facing Cornelius Gleazen.
Now why, I wondered, had I been unable to withdraw my foot. Matterson had been all but in my way. He must have thrust out his own foot!
"Arnold," I cried incoherently, "beware of Matterson! He tripped me!"
Arnold looked down at me and smiled and nodded.
"Sir," I heard him saying, as if miles away, "you have beaten a man years younger than yourself by a foul and treacherous trick. I shall kill you."
"Kill me?" Gleazen arrogantly roared. "It would take a swordsman to do it."
To that Arnold replied in a foreign tongue, which even then I knew must be Spanish. I was no competent witness of what was taking place; but cloudy though my mind was, I did not fail to see that Arnold's taunt struck home, for both Gleazen and Matterson angrily swore.
"In Spanish, eh?" Gleazen sneered. "So this is the leaky spigot! No more tales, my fine fellow, shall trickle out through your round mouth, once I have measured your vitals with cold steel."
Into my spinning brain there now came a sudden memory of my bout with Arnold long, long ago, when I had gone at him just as arrogantly as ever Neil Gleazen was doing now. I tried to cry out again and could not. I laughed, which was all my strength permitted, and wearily leaned back, and through eyes that would almost close in spite of me, saw Arnold advance under the swinging lantern so swiftly that his sword was like a beam of light flashed by a mirror.
His blade sped through Gleazen's guard: Gleazen dropped his sword, staggered, and fell with a crash.
I heard Arnold say, "Sir, I am more clumsy than I knew. The rolling deck has saved your miserable life, since I cannot kill a wounded man. But if my hand were in practice, no ship that ever rolled would have turned that thrust."
Then a great uproar ensued, and I knew nothing more until I opened my eyes in the cabin, where a hot argument was evidently in progress, since oaths were bandied back and forth and there were hard words on all sides.
"As representatives of Josiah Woods, who owns this brig," I heard Arnold say, "Gideon North and I will not permit you, sir, or any other man, to ship such a cargo."
The reply I did not understand, but I again heard Arnold's voice, hot with anger.
"We willnotsail again to that den of pirates and slavers and the iniquitous of all the nations of the world, Havana. If you do not wish to go to Boston,—" he hesitated,—"we will use you better than you deserve. For a profitable voyage, we might compromise, say, on South America."
Of what followed I have no memory, for I was weaker than I realized, from loss of blood. The cabin went white before my eyes. The voices all dwindled away to remote threads of sound. I seemed to feel myself sway with the motion of the ship, and opened my eyes again and saw that I was being carried. Then I once more felt cool hands on my forehead, and leaning back, seemed to sink into endless space. I forgot Topham and all that had happened there; I forgot Africa and every event of our ill-fated venture; I even forgot the brig and the duel, and I almost forgot my own identity. But as I existed in a sort of dream-land or fairyland somewhere between waking and sleeping, I did not forget the girl who had come with me out of Africa; and even when I could not remember my own name, I would find myself struggling in a curiously detached way to connect the name Faith, which persisted in my memory, with a personality that likewise persisted, yet that seemed a thing apart from all the world and not even to be given a name.