Helen drew a chair to the table and waited with her hands folded before her.
"Dick," said I, turning to the lad, who stood just within the door, "that oath of yours."
"I have broken it already," said he.
"There was never priest in the world who would refuse to absolve you. The virtue of it lies in the forswearing. Now!" and I turned to Helen. "But I must speak frankly," I premised.
She nodded her assent.
"Very well. I can make a consecutive sort of story, but I may well be at fault, for my knowledge is scanty, and if I am in error over the facts, I beg you, Miss Mayle, to correct me. Old Mr. Mayle's talk ran continually about his wild doings on the Guinea coast, in Africa. There can be no doubt that he spent some considerable portion of his life there, and that he managed to scrape together a sufficient fortune. It is likely, therefore, that he was engaged in the slave trade, and, to be quite frank, Miss Helen, from what I have gathered of his manner and style, I am not indisposed to think that he found an occasional diversion from that pursuit in a little opportune piracy."
I made the suggestion with some diffidence, for the old man, whatever his sins, had saved her life, and shown her much affection, of which, moreover, at his death he had given her very tangible proofs. It was necessary for me, however, to say it, for I had nothing but suspicion to go upon, and I looked to her in some way, either by words or manner, to confirm or confute my suspicions. And it seemed to me that she confirmed it, for she simply pressed the palms of her hands to her forehead, and said quietly,
"You are very frank."
"There is no other way but frankness, believe me," I returned. "Now let us come to that Sunday, four years ago, when Cullen Mayle sat in the stocks and George Glen came to Tresco. It was you who took George Glen to St. Mary's Church," I turned to Dick Parmiter.
"Yes," said he. "I was kicking my heels in the sand, close to our cottage, when he came ashore in a boat. He was most anxious to speak with Mr. Mayle."
"So you carried him across to St. Mary's, and he told you, I think, that he had been quartermaster with Adam Mayle at Whydah, on the Guinea coast?"
"Yes."
"Did he name the ship by any chance?"
"No."
"He did once, whilst we were at supper," interrupted Helen, "and I remember the name very well, for my father turned upon him fiercely when he spoke it, and Mr. Glen immediately said that he was mistaken and substituted another name, which I have forgotten. The first name was theRoyal Fortune."
"TheRoyal Fortune," said I, thoughtfully. The name in a measure was familiar to me; it seemed familiar too in precisely this connection with the Guinea coast. But I could not be sure. I was anxious to discover George Glen's business with Adam Mayle, and very likely my anxiety misled me into imagining clues where there were none. I put the name away in my mind and went on with my conjecture.
"Now on that Sunday George Glen met Adam Mayle in the churchyard, you, Miss Mayle, and Lieutenant Clutterbuck were of the party. Together you sailed across to Tresco. So that George Glen could have had no private word with Mr. Mayle."
"No," Helen Mayle agreed. "There was no opportunity."
"Nor was there an opportunity all that afternoon and evening, until Cullen left the house."
"But after Cullen had gone," said she, "they had their opportunity and made use of it. I left them together in my father's room.
"The room fitted up as a cabin, where every word they spoke could be heard though the door was shut and the eavesdropper need not even trouble to lay his ear to the keyhole."
"Yes, that is true," said Helen. "But the servants were in bed, and there was no one to hear."
At that Dick gave a start and a jump, and I cried:
"But there was some one to hear. Tell your story, Dick!" and Dick told how Cullen Mayle had climbed through the window, and how some hours after he had waked him up and sworn him to secrecy.
"Now, do you see?" I continued. "Why should Cullen Mayle have sworn Dick here to silence unless he had discovered some sort of secret which might prove of value to himself, unless he had overhead George Glen talking to Adam Mayle? And there's this besides. Where has Cullen Mayle been these last two years? I can tell you that."
"You can?" said Helen. She was leaning across the table, her face all lighted up with excitement.
"Yes. There's the negro above stairs for one thing, Cullen's servant. For another I met Cullen Mayle on the road as I was travelling here. He counterfeited an ague, which he told me he had caught on the Guinea coast. The ague was counterfeit, but very likely he has been on the Guinea coast."
"Of course," cried Dick.
"Not a doubt of it," said Helen.
"So this is my theory. George Glen came to enlist Adam Mayle's help and Adam Mayle's money, in some voyage to Africa. Cullen Mayle overheard it, and got the start of George Glen. So here's George Glen back again upon Tresco, and watching for Cullen Mayle."
"See!" cried Helen suddenly. "Did I not tell you you were sent here to a good end?"
"But we are not out of the wood yet," I protested. "We have to discover what it was that Glen proposed to Mr. Mayle. How shall we do that?"
"How?" repeated Helen, and she looked to me confidently for the answer.
"I can think of but one way," said I, "to go boldly to George Glen and make terms with him."
"Would he speak, do you think?"
"Most likely not," I answered, and so in spite of my fine conjecture, we did not seem to have come any nearer to an issue. We were both of us silent for some while. The very confidence which Helen displayed stung me into an activity of thought. Helen herself was sunk in an abstraction, and in that abstraction she spoke.
"You are hurt," she said.
My right hand was resting upon the table. It was cut in one or two places, and covered with scratches.
"It is nothing," said I, "I slipped on the hill yesterday night and cut it with the gorse;" and again we fell to silence.
"What I am thinking is this," she said, at length. "You overtook Cullen upon the road, and you reached the islands last night. At any moment then we may expect his coming."
"Why, that's true," said I, springing up to my feet. "And if Dick will sail me across to St. Mary's, we'll make a shift to stop him."
Helen Mayle rose at that moment from her seat. She was wearing a white frock, and upon one side of it I noticed for the first time a red smear or two, as though she had brushed against paint--or blood. I looked at my hand scratched and torn by the gorse bush. It would have been bleeding at the time when a woman, coming swiftly past us in the fog, brushed against it. The woman was certainly hurrying in the direction of this house.
"You have told me everything, I suppose," I said--"everything at all events that it concerns me to know."
"Everything," she replied.
We crossed that afternoon to St. Mary's. There was no sign of Cullen Mayle at Hugh Town. No one had seen him or heard of his coming. He had not landed upon St. Mary's. I thought it possible that he might not have touched St. Mary's at all, but rowed ashore to Tresco even as I had done. But no ship had put into the Road that day but one which brought Castile soap from Marseilles. We sailed back to Tresco, and ran the boat's nose into the sand not twenty yards from the door of the house on Merchant's Point. A man, an oldish, white-haired man, loitering upon the beach very civilly helped us to run the boat up out of the water. We thanked him, and he touched his hat and answered with something of a French accent, which surprised me. But as we walked up to the house,
"That's one of the five," Dick explained. "He came on the boat with the negro to Penzance. Peter Tortue he is called, and he was loitering there on purpose to get a straight look at you."
"Well," said I, "it is at all events known that I am here," and going into the house I found Helen Mayle eagerly waiting for our return. I told her that Cullen Mayle could not by any means have yet reached the Scillies, and that we had left word with the harbour master upon St. Mary's to detain him if he landed; at which she expressed great relief.
"And since it is known I am here," I added, "it will be more suitable if I carry my valise over to New Grimsby and seek a bed at the 'Palace' Inn. I shall besides make the acquaintance of Mr. George Glen. It is evident that he and his fellows intend no hurt to you, so that you may sleep in peace."
"No," said she, bravely enough. "I am not afraid for myself."
"And you will do that?"
"What?" she asked.
"Sleep in peace," said I; and putting my hand into my pocket as if by accident, I let her see again the corner of her white scarf. Her face flushed a little as she saw it.
"Oh, yes," she answered, and to my surprise with the easiest laugh imaginable. "I shall sleep in peace. You need have no fear."
I could not understand her. What a passion of despair it must have needed to string her to that act of death last night! Yet to-day--she could even allude to it with a laugh. I was lost in perplexity, but I had this one sure thing to comfort me. She was to-day hopeful, however much she despaired yesterday. She relied upon me to rescue Cullen from his peril. I was not sure that I should be doing her the service she imagined it to be, even if I succeeded. But she loved him, and looked to me to help her. So that I, too, could sleep in peace without fear that to-night another scarf would be fetched out to do the office this one I kept had failed to do.
I gave Dick my valise to carry across the island, and waited until he was out of sight before I started. Then I walked to the palisade at the end of the house. I found a spot where the palisade was broken; the splintered wood was fresh and clean; it was I who had broken the palisade last night. From that point I marched straight up the hill through the gorse, and when I had walked for about twenty minutes I stopped and looked about me. I struck away to my left, and after a little I stopped again. I marched up and down that hill, to the right, to the left, for perhaps the space of an hour, and at last I came upon that for which I searched--a steep slope where the grass was crushed, and underneath that slope a sheer descent. On the brink of the precipice--for that I judged it to be--I saw a broken gorse-bush. I lay down on my face and carefully crawled down the slope. The roots of the gorse-bush still held firmly in the ground. I clutched it in my left hand, dug the nails of my right through the grass into the soil and leaned over. My precipice was no more than a hollow some twenty feet deep, and had I slipped yesterday night, I should not have fallen even those twenty feet; for a sort of low barn was built in the hollow, with its back leaning against the perpendicular wall. I should have dropped perhaps ten feet on to the roof of this barn.
I drew myself up the hill again and sat down. The evening was very quiet and still. I was near to the summit of the island. Over my left shoulder I could see the sun setting far away in the Atlantic, and the waves rippling gold. Beneath me was the house, a long one-storied building of granite, on the horn of a tiny bay. The windows looked across the bay; behind the house stretched that tangled garden, and at the end of the garden rose the Merchant's Rock. As it stood thus in the evening light, with the smoke curling from its chimneys, and the sea murmuring at its door, it seemed quite impossible to believe that any story of turmoil and strife and tragedy could have locality there. That old buccaneer Adam Mayle, and his soft-voiced son Cullen, whom he had turned adrift, seemed the figures of a dream and my adventure in Cullen's room--a hideous nightmare.
And yet even as I looked footsteps brushed through the grass behind me, and turning I saw a sailor with a brass telescope under one arm and a black patch over one eye; who politely passed me the time of day and went by. He was a big man, with a great beard and hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. He was another of the five no doubt, and though he went by he did not pass out of sight. I waited, hoping that he would go, for I had a great desire to examine the barn beneath me more closely. It was from the barn that the unearthly screeching had risen which had so terrified Dick Parmiter. It was between the barn and the house that a girl had brushed against my wounded hand and taken a stain of blood upon her dress.
The hollow was only a break in the steep slope of the hill. The barn could easily be approached by descending the hill to the right or the left, and then turning in. I was anxious to do it, to try the door, to enter the barn, but I dared not, for the sailor was within sight, and I had no wish to arouse any suspicions. Helen had told me everything, she had said--everything which it concerned me to know. But had she? I found myself asking, as I got to my feet and crossed the hill down towards New Grimsby.
The sun had set by this time, a cool twilight took the colour from the gorse, and numberless small winged things flew and sung about one's face; all round a grey sea went down to a grey sky, and sea and sky were merged; and at my feet the lights began to twinkle in the little fishing village by the sea. I hired a bed at the "Palace" Inn, bade them prepare me supper and then walked on to Parmiter's cottage for my valise.
There was a great hubbub going on within; Dick's voice was explaining, and a woman's shrill voice overtopped his explanation. The cause of his offence was twofold. He had not been near the cottage all day, so that it was thought he had run away again, and the key of the cottage was gone. It had not been seen since yesterday, and Dick had been accused of purloining it. I explained to Mrs. Parmiter that it was my fault Dick had kept away all day, and I made a bargain with her that I should have the lad as my servant while I stayed upon the island. Dick shouldered my valise in a state of considerable indignation.
"What should I steal the key for?" said he. "It only stands in the door for show. No one locks his door in Tresco. What should I steal the key for?" and he was within an ace of whimpering.
"Come, Dick," said I, "you mustn't mind a trifle of a scolding. Why, you are a hero to everybody in these parts, and to one man at all events outside them."
"That doesn't hinder mother from chasing me about with an oar," he answered.
"It is the fate of all heroes," said I, "to be barbarously used by their womenfolk."
"Then I am damned if I want to be a hero," said Dick, violently. "And as for the key--of what consequence is it at all if you never lock your door?"
"Of no more consequence than your bruises, Dick," said I.
But I was wrong. You may do many things with a key besides locking a door. You can slip it down your back to stop your nose bleeding, for instance; if it's a big key you can weigh a line with it, and perhaps catch a mackerel for your breakfast. And there's another use for a key of which I did not at this time know, or I should have been saved from considerable perplexity and not a little danger.
I took my supper in the kitchen of the Palace Inn, with a strong reek of tobacco to season it, and a succession of gruesome stories to make it palatable. The company was made up for the most part of fishermen, who talked always of wrecks upon the western islands and of dead men drowned. But occasionally a different accent and a different anecdote of some other corner of the world would make a variation; and doing my best to pierce the haze of smoke, I recognised the speaker as Peter Tortue, the Frenchman, or the man with the patch on his eye. George Glen was there too, tucked away in a corner by the fireplace, but he said very little. I paid, therefore, but a scanty attention, until, the talk having slid, as it will, from dead men to their funerals, some native began to descant upon the magnificence of Adam Mayle's.
"Ay," said he, drawing a long breath, "therewasa funeral, and all according to orders dictated in writing by the dead man. He was to be buried by torchlight in the Abbey Grounds. I do remember that! Mortal heavy he was, and he needed a big coffin."
"To be sure he would," chimed in another.
"And he had it too," said a third; "a mortal big coffin. We carried him right from his house over the shoulder of the island, and down past the Abbey pond to the graveyard. Five shillings each we had for carrying him--five shillings counted out by torchlight on a gravestone as soon as the grave was filled in. It was all written down before he died."
Then the first speaker took up the tale again.
"A queer, strange man was Adam Mayle, and queer strange sights he had seen. He would sit in that corner just where you be, Mr. Glen, and tell stories to turn a man cold. Crackers they used to call him on board ship, so he told us--'Crackers.'"
"Why Crackers?" asked George Glen.
"'Cause he was that handy with a marlinspike. A queer man! And that was a queer notion of his about that stick"; and then he appealed to his companions, who variously grunted their assent.
"What about the stick?" asked Glen.
"You may well ask, Mr. Glen. It was all written down. The stick was to be buried with him in his coffin. It was an old heavy stick with a great brass handle. Many's the time he has sat on the settle there with that stick atween his knees. 'Twas a stick with a sword in't, but the sword was broken. I remember how he loosened the handle once while he was talking just as you and I are now, and he held the stick upside down and the sword fell out on to the ground, just two or three inches of steel broken off short. He picked it up pretty sharp and rammed it in again. Well, the stick was to be buried with him, so that if he woke up when we were carrying him over the hill to the Abbey he might knock on the lid of his coffin."
"But I doubt if any one would ha' opened the lid if he had knocked," said one, with a chuckle, and another nodded his head to the sentiment. "There was five shillings, you see," he explained, "once the ground was stamped down on top of him. It wasn't quite human to expect a body to open the lid."
"A queer notion--about that stick."
And so the talk drifted away to other matters. The fishermen took their leave one by one and tramped heavily to their homes. Peter Tortue and his companion followed. George Glen alone remained, and he sat so quiet in his corner that I forgot his presence. Adam Mayle was the only occupant of the room for me. I could see him sitting on the settle, with a long pipe between his lips when he was not holding a mug there, his mulberry face dimly glowing through the puffs of tobacco, and his voice roaring out those wild stories of the African coast. That anxiety for a barbaric funeral seemed quite of a piece with the man as my fancies sketched him. Well, he was lying in the Abbey grounds, and George Glen sat in his place.
Mr. Glen came over to me from his corner, and I called for a jug of rum punch, and invited him to share it, which he willingly did. He was a little squabby man, but very broad, with a nervous twitting laugh, and in his manner he was extremely intimate and confidential. He could hardly finish a sentence without plucking you by the sleeve, and every commonplace he uttered was pointed with a wink. He knew that I had been over at the house under Merchant's Rock, and he was clumsily inquisitive about my business upon Tresco.
"Why," said I, indifferently, "I take it that I am pretty much in the same case with you, Mr. Glen."
At that his jaw dropped a little, and he stared at me utterly discountenanced that I should be so plain with him.
"As for me," said he in a little, "it is plain enough. And when you say"--and here he twitched my sleeve as he leaned across the table--"'here's old George Glen, that battered about the world in ships for fifty years, and has come to his moorings in a snug harbor where rum's cheap, being smuggled or stole', says you--well, I am not denying you may be right;" and here he winked prodigiously.
"And that's just what I said," I returned; "for here have I battered about London, that's worse than the sea, and ages a man twice as fast----"
Mr. Glen interrupted me with some astonishment, and, I thought, a little alarm.
"Why," says she, "this is no place for the likes of you--a crazy tumbledown of a tavern. All very well for tarry sailor folk that's never seen nothing better than forecastle. But you'll sicken of it in a week. Sure, you have not dropped your anchor here."
"We'll call it a kedge, Mr. Glen," said I.
"A kedge, you say," answered Mr. Glen, with a titter, "and a kedge we'll make it. It's a handy thing to get on board in a hurry."
He spoke with a wheedling politeness, but very likely a threat underlay his words. I thought it wise to take no notice of them, but, rising from my seat, I wished him good night. And there the conversation would have ended but for a couple of pictures upon the wall which caught my eye.
One was the ordinary picture which you may come upon in a hundred alehouses by the sea: the sailor leaving his cottage for a voyage, his wife and children clinging about his knees, and in the distance an impossible ship unfurling her sails upon an impossible ocean. The second, however, it was, which caught my attention. It was the picture of a sailor's return. His wife and children danced before him, he was clad in magnificent garments, and to prove the prosperity of his voyage he carried in his hand a number of gold watches and chains; and the artist, whether it was that he had a sense of humour or that he merely doubted his talents, instead of painting the watches, had cut holes in the canvas and inserted little discs of bright metal.
"This is a new way of painting pictures, Mr. Glen," said I.
Mr. Glen's taste in pictures was crude, and for these he expressed a quite sentimental admiration.
"But," I objected, "the artist is guilty of a libel, for he makes the sailor out to be a sneak-thief."
Mr. Glen became indignant.
"Because he comes home with wealth untold?" he asked grandly.
"No, but because he comes home with watches," said I.
Whereupon Mr. Glen was at some pains to explain to me that the watches were merely symbolical.
"And the picture's true," he added, and fell to pinching my arm. "There's many a landsman laughs; but sailors, you says, says you, 'comes home with watches in their 'ands more than they can 'old and sets up for gentle-folk,' says you."
"Like old Adam Mayle, I adds," said I; and Mr. Glen dropped my arm and stood a little way off blinking at me.
"You knew Adam?" he said, in a fierce sort of way.
"No," I answered.
"But you know of him?"
"Yes," said I, slowly, "I know of him, but not as much as you do, Mr. Glen, who were quartermaster with him at Whydah on the shipRoyal Fortune."
I spoke at random, wondering how he would take the words, and they had more effect than I had even hoped for. His face turned all of a mottled colour; he banged his fist upon the table and uttered a horrible oath, calling upon God to slay him if he had ever set foot on the deck of a ship named theRoyal Fortune.
"And when you says, says you," he added, sidling up to me, "Old George never see'd aRoyal Fortune, says you--why, you're saying what's right and fair, and I thanks you, sir. I thanks you with a true sailor's 'eart "; at which he would have wrung my hand. But I had no hand ready for him; I barely heard his words. Whydah--the Guinea coast--the shipRoyal Fortune!The truth came so suddenly upon me that I had not the wit to keep silence. I could have bitten off my tongue the next moment. As it was I caught most of the sentence back. But the beginning of it jumped from my mouth.
"At last I know"--I began and stopped.
"What?" said Mr. Glen, with his whole face distorted into an insinuating grin. But he was standing very close to me and a little behind my back.
"That my father thrashed me over twenty years ago," said I, clapping my hand to my coat tails and springing away from him.
"And you have never forgotten it," said he.
"On the contrary," said I, "I have only just remembered it."
Mr. Glen moved away from the table and walked towards the door. Thus he disclosed the table to me, and I laughed very contentedly. Mr. Glen immediately turned. He had reached the door, and he stood in the doorway biting shreds of skin from his thumb.
"You are in good spirits," said he, rather surlily.
"I was never in better," said I. "The motions of inanimate bodies are invariably instructive."
I was very willing he should think me half-witted. He went grumbling up the stairs; I turned me again to the picture of the sailor's return. Whydah--the Guinea coast--the shipRoyal Fortune!It may have been in some part the man's eagerness to deny all knowledge of the ship; it was, no doubt, in some part the picture of those gold watches, which awakened my memories. Watches of just such gold were dangling for sale on a pedler's stall when first I heard of the shipRoyal Fortune. The whole scene came back to me most vividly--the market-place of an old country town upon a fair day, the carts, the crowds, the merry-go-rounds, the pedler's stall with the sham gold watches, and close by the stall a ragged hawker singing a ballad of theRoyal Fortune, and selling copies of the ballad--a ballad to which was added the last confessions of four men hung for piracy at Cape Coast Castle within the flood-marks. It was well over twenty years since that day, but I remembered it now with a startling distinctness. There was a rough woodcut upon the title-page of the ballad representing four men hanging in chains upon four gibbets. I had bought one that afternoon, and my father had taken it from me and thrashed me soundly for reading it. But I had read it! My memory was quickened now to an almost supernatural clearness. I could almost turn over the pages in my mind and read it again. All four men--one of them was named Ashplant, a second Moody--went to the gallows without any sign of penitence. There was a third so grossly stupid--yes, his name was Hardy--so stupid that during his last moments he could think of nothing more important than the executioner's tying his wrists behind his back, and his last words were before they swung him off to the effect that he had seen many men hanged, but none with their hands tied in this way. The fourth--I could not recall his name, but he swore very heartily, saying that he would rather go to hell than to heaven, since he would find no pirates in heaven to keep him company, and that he would give Roberts a salute of thirteen guns at entrance. There was the story of a sea-fight, too, besides the ballad and the confessions and it all cost no more than a penny. What a well-spent penny! The fourth man's name, by-the-bye, was Sutton.
But the sea-fight! It was fought not many miles from Whydah between His Majesty's shipSwallowand theRoyal Fortune; for theRoyal Fortunewas sailed by Captain Bartholomew Roberts, the famous pirate who was killed in this very encounter. How did George Glen or Adam Mayle or Peter Tortue (for he alone of Glen's assistants was of an age to have shipped on theRoyal Fortune) escape? I did not care a button. I had my thumb on George Glen, and was very well content.
There was no doubt I had my thumb on the insinuating George. There was Adam Mayle's fortune, in the first place; there was Adam's look when George Glen let slip the name of the ship when he first came to Tresco; there was Glen's consternation this evening when I repeated it to him, and there was something more than his convincing than his consternation--a table-knife.
He had come very close to me when I mentioned theRoyal Fortune, and he had stood a little behind me--against the table at which I had eaten my supper. I had eaten that supper at the opposite side of the table, and how should a table-knife have crawled across the table and be now lying so handily on this nearer edge unless George had doubts of my discretion? Yes, I had my thumb upon him and as I went upstairs to bed I wondered whether after all Helen would be justified of her confidence in believing that I had been sent to Tresco to some good end. Her face was very present to me that night. There was much in her which I could not understand. There was something, too, to trouble one, there were concealments, it almost seemed there was a trace of effrontery--such as Lieutenant Clutterbuck had spoken of; but to-night I was conscious chiefly that she set her faith in me and my endeavours. Does the reed always break if you lean upon it? What if a miracle happened and the reed grew strong because some one--any one--leaned upon it! I kept that trustful face of hers as I had seen it in the sunlight, long before my eyes in the darkness of the room. But it changed, as I knew and feared it would,--it changed to that appalling face which had stared at me out of the dark. I tried to drive that picture of her from my thoughts.
But I could not, until a door creaked gently. I sat up in my bed with a thought of that knife handy on the table edge to the grasp of George Glen. I heard a scuffle of shoeless feet draw towards my door, and I remembered that I had no weapon--not even a knife. The feet stopped at my door, and I seemed to hear the sound of breathing. The moon had already sunk, but the night was clear, and I watched the white door and the white woodwork of the door frame. The door was in the wall on my right; it was about midway between the head and the foot of my bed, and it opened inwards and down towards the foot; so that I should easily see it opening. But suddenly I heard the stair boards creaking. Whoever it was then, had merely stopped to listen at my door. I fell back on my bed with a relief so great as to surprise me. I was surprised, too, to find myself cold with sweat. I determined to buy myself a knife in the morning, for there was the girl over at Merchant's Point who looked to me. I had thus again a picture of her in the sunlight.
And then I began to wonder at that stealthy descent of the stairs. And why should any one wish to assure himself I slept? This was a question to be looked into. I got out of bed very cautiously, as cautiously opened the door and peered out.
There was a light burning in the kitchen--a small yellow light as of a candle, but I could hear no sound. I crept to the head of the stairs which were steep and led directly to the very threshold of the kitchen. I lay down on the boards of the landing and stretching my head down the stairs, looked into the room.
George Glen had taken the sailor with the watches, down from the wall. He was seated with the candle at his elbow, and minutely examining the picture. He looked up towards the stairs, I drew my face quickly back; but he was gazing in a complete abstraction, and biting his thumb, very much puzzled. I crept back to bed and in a little I heard him come shuffling up the stairs. He had been examining that picture to find a reason for my exclamation. It was a dull-witted thing to do and I could have laughed at him heartily, only I had already made a mistake in taking him to be duller-witted than he was. For he was quick enough, at all events, to entertain suspicions.
The next morning, you may be sure, I crossed the hill betimes, and came down to the house under Merchant's Rock with my good news. I told her the news with no small elation, and with a like elation she began to hear it. But as I related what had occurred at the Palace Inn, she fell into thought, and now smiled with a sort of pride, and now checked a sigh; and when I came to the knife upon the table's edge she shuddered.
"But you are in danger!" she cried. "Every minute you are in danger of your life, and on my account!"
"Nay," said I lightly, "you exaggerate. The best of women have that fault."
But she did not smile. She laid a hand upon my arm, and said, very earnestly:
"I cannot have it. I am very proud you count the risk so little, but you must go."
"No," said I, "they must go, and we have the means to make them march. We have but to inform Captain Hathaway at the Garrison that here are some of Bartholomew Robert's fry, and we and the world will soon be quit of them for ever."
"But we cannot," she exclaimed, "for then it would be known that my"--she hesitated for a second, or rather she paused, for there was no hesitation in her voice, as she continued--"my father also was of the band. It may be justice that it should be known. But I cannot help it; I guard his memory. Besides, there is Cullen."
It was to Cullen that she always came in the end, and with such excuses as a girl might make who was loyal to a man whom she must know not to be worth her loyalty. The house in which she lived, the money which she owned were his by right. She dreaded what story these men, if captured, might have to tell of Cullen--she could not be persuaded that Glen and his friends had not a motive of vengeance as well as of gain,--and that story, whatever it was, would never have been enacted, had not Cullen been driven penniless from Tresco. It did not occur to her at all that this house was not Cullen's by any right, but belonged to the scattered sons of many men with whom the shipRoyal Fortunehad fallen in.
She repeated her arguments to me as we walked in the grass-grown garden at the back of the house. A thick shrubbery of trees grew at the end of the garden, and behind the trees rose the Merchant's Rock. On one side the Castle Down rolled up towards the sky, on the other a hedge closed the garden in, and beneath the hedge was the sea. Over the hedge I could see the uninhabited island of St. Helen's and the ruined church upon the summit, and a ship or two in St. Helen's Pool; and this side of the ships the piled boulders of Norwithel. It was at Norwithel that I looked as she spoke, and when she had done I continued:
"I do not propose that we should tell Captain Hathaway, but I can make a bargain with Glen. I can find out what he wants, and strike a bargain with him. We have the upper hand, we can afford to speak freely. I will make a bargain with him to-night, of which one condition shall be that he and his party leave Tresco and nowhere attempt to molest Cullen Mayle."
But she stopped in front of me.
"I cannot have it," she said, with energy. "This means danger to you who propose the bargain."
"I shall propose it in the inn kitchen," said I.
"And the knife on the table's edge?" she asked; "that too was in the inn kitchen. Oh, no! no!" she cried, in a voice of great trouble. There was great trouble too in her eyes.
"Madam," I said, gently, "I never thought that this would prove a schoolboy's game. If I had thought so, I should be this instant walking down St. James's. But you overrate my peril."
I saw her draw herself erect.
"No; it is I who will propose the bargain and make the conditions. It is I who will charge them with their piracy."
"How?" I asked.
"I will go this morning to the Palace Inn."
"George Glen went out this morning before I rose."
She looked over to Norwithel.
"There is no one to-day on Norwithel," said I.
"I shall find Peter Tortue on the Castle Down."
"But I crossed the Castle Down this morning----" and I suddenly stopped. There had been no one watching on the Castle Down. There was no one anywhere upon the watch to-day. The significance of this omission struck me then for the first time.
"What if already we are quit of them!" I cried. "What if that one tiny wordRoyal Fortunehas sent them at a scamper into hiding?"
Helen caught something of my excitement.
"Oh! if it only could be so!" she exclaimed.
"Most like itisso," I returned. "No man cutting ore-weed upon Norwithel! No man lounging on the Castle Down! It must be so!" and we shook hands upon that likelihood as though it was a certainty. We started guiltily apart the next moment, for a servant came into the garden with word that Dick Parmiter had sailed round in a boat from New Grimsby, and was waiting for me.
"There is something new!" said Helen, clasping her hands over her heart, and in a second she was all anxiety. I hastened to reassure her. Dick had come at my bidding, for I was minded to sail over to St. Mary's, and discover if there was anywhere upon that island a record of the doings of theRoyal Fortune. To that end I asked Helen to give me a letter to the chaplain there, who would be likely to know more of what happened up and down the world than the natives of the islands. I was not, however, to allow that I had any particular interest in the matter, lest the Rev. Mr. Milray should smell a rat as they say, and on promising to be very exact in this particular and to return to the house in time for supper, I was graciously given the letter.
I found the Rev. Mr. Milray in his parsonage at Old Town, a small, elderly man, who would talk of nothing but the dampness of his house since the great wave which swept over this neck of land on the day of the earthquake at Lisbon. I left him very soon, therefore, and went about another piece of business.
I had travelled from London with no more clothes and linen than a small valise would hold. On setting out, I had not considered, indeed, that I should be thrown much into the company of a lady, but only that I was journeying into a rough company of fisher-folk. Yesterday, however, it had occurred to me that I must make some addition to my wardrobe and the necessity was yet more apparent to-day. I was pleased, therefore, to find that Hugh Town was of greater importance than I had thought it to be. It is much shrunk and dwindled now, but then ships from all quarters of the world were continually putting in there, so that they made a trade by themselves, and there was always for sale a great store of things which had been salved from wrecks. I was able, therefore, to fit myself out very properly.
I sailed back to the Palace Inn, dressed with some care, and walked over to sup at Merchant's Rock--little later perhaps. Helen Mayle was standing in the hall by the foot of the stairs. I saw her face against the dark panels as I entered, and it looked very white and strained with fear.
"There is no news of Cullen at St. Mary's," I said, to lighten her fears; and she showed an extravagant relief, before, indeed, she could barely have heard the words. Her face coloured brightly and then she began to laugh. Finally she dropped me a curtsey.
"Shall I lend you some hair-powder?" she asked, whimsically; and when we were seated at table, "How old are you?"
"I was thirty and more a month ago," said I, "but I think that I am now only twenty-two."
"As much as that?" said she, with a laugh, and grew serious in an instant. "What did you discover at St. Mary's besides a milliner?"
"Nothing," said I, "except that the Rev. Milray suffers from the rheumatics."
She remained in the same variable disposition during the whole of that supper, at one moment buoyant on a crest of light-heartedness and her eyes sparkling like stars, at another sunk into despondency and her white brows all wrinkled with frowns. But when supper was over she went to a cabinet, and taking from it a violin, said:
"Now, I will play to you."
And she did--out in that tangled garden over the sea.
"The violin came to the Scillies in a ship that was wrecked upon the Stevel Rock one Christmas. But the violin will tell you," she said, with a smile. "My father bought it at St. Mary's and gave it to me, and an old pilot now dead taught me;" and she swept the bow across the strings and the music trembled across the water, through the lucent night, up to the stars, a voice vibrating with infinite wisdom and infinite passion.
It seemed to me that I had at last got the truth of her. All my guesses, my suspicions of something like duplicity, even my recollection of our first meeting were swept out of my mind. She sat, her white face gleaming strangely solemn under her black wealth of hair, her white hand flashing backwards and forwards, and she made the violin speak. It spoke of all things, things most sad and things most joyous; it spoke with complete knowledge of the heights and the depths; it woke new, vague, uncomprehended hungers in one's heart; it called and called till all one's most sacred memories rose up, as it were from graves, to answer the summons. It told me, I know, all my life, from my childhood in the country to the day when I set out with my cadet's portion to London. It sang with almost a pæan of those first arduous years--set them to a march,--and then with a great pity told of those eight wasted years that followed--years littered with cards, stained with drink; years in which, and there was the humiliation of it, my fellow-drunkards, my fellow-gamblers had all been younger than myself--years in which I grew a million years old. That violin told it all out to me, until I twisted in my chair through sheer shame, and I looked up and the girl's eyes were fixed upon me. What it was that compelled me to speak I could never tell, unless it was the violin. But as she looked at me, and as that violin sobbed out its notes, I cried in a passionate excuse:
"You asked me how old I was. Do you know I never was young--I never had the chance of youth! When the chance came, I had forgotten what youth can do. That accounts, surely, for those eight years. I was tired then, and I was never young."
"Until to-night," she said quietly, and the music quickened. I suppose that she was right, for I had never spoken so intimately to any one, whether man or woman; and I cursed myself for a fool, as one does when one is first betrayed into speaking of one's secret self.
She took the violin from her shoulder, and the glory of the music died off the sea, but lingered for a little faintly upon the hills. I rose up to go and Helen drew a breath and shivered.
"This afternoon," said I, "a brig went out from the islands through Crow Sound, bound for Milford. I'll wager the five were on it."
"But if not?"
"There's the 'Palace' kitchen."
"Speak when there are others by, not within hearing, but within reach! You will? Promise me!"
I promised readily enough, thinking that I could keep the promise, and she walked back with me through the house to the door. There is a little porch at the door, four wooden beams and a slate roof on the top, and half a dozen stone steps from the porch to the garden. Helen Mayle stood in the porch, with her violin still in her hand. She wished me "Good-night" when I was at the bottom of the steps, but a little afterwards, when I had passed through the gateway of the palisade and had begun to ascend the hill, she drew the bow sharply across one of the strings and sent a little chirp of music after me, which came to my ears, with an extraordinarily friendly sound. The air was still hereabouts, though from the motion of the clouds there was some wind in the sky, and the chirp came very clear and pretty.
It was a few minutes short of ten when I left the house, and I set off at a good pace, for I was anxious to keep my promise and make my bargain with George Glen, quietly in a corner, before the fishing-folk had gone home to bed. A young moon hung above the crest of the hill, a few white clouds were gathering towards it, and the gorse at my feet was black as ink. I walked upwards then steadily. I had walked for perhaps a quarter of an hour, when I heard a low, soft whistle. It came to me quite as clearly as the chirp of the violin, but it had not the same friendly sound. It sounded very lonesome, it set my heart jumping, it brought me to a stop. For I had heard precisely that whistle on one occasion before, on the night when I first crossed this hill with Dick Parmiter down to Merchant's Rock.
The whistle had sounded from below me and from no great distance away. I turned and looked down the slope, but I could see no one. It was very lonely and very still. Whoever had whistled lay crouched on the gorse. And then the whistle sounded again, but this time it came from above me, higher up the slope. Immediately I dropped to the ground. The gorse which hid them from me might well hide me from them. A few paces above me the gorse seemed thicker than it was where I lay. I crawled laboriously, flat upon my face, till I reached this patch. I forced myself into it, holding my face well down to keep the thorns out of my eyes, until the bushes were so close I could crawl no further. Then I lay still as a mouse, holding my breath, listening with every nerve. I had eluded them before in just this way, but I got little comfort from that reflection. There had been a fog on that night, whereas to-night it was clear. Moreover, they had a more urgent reason now for persevering in their search. I possessed some dangerous knowledge about them as they were aware--knowledge, too dangerous; knowledge which would harden into a weapon in my hand if--if I reached the Palace Inn alive.
I lay very still, and in a little I heard the brushing of their feet through the grass. They were closing down from above, they were closing up from below; but they did not speak or so much as whisper. I turned my head sideways, ever so gently, and looked up to the sky. I saw to my delight that the clouds were over the moon. I buried my face again in the grass, lest they should detect me by its pallor against the black gorse. I was very thankful indeed that I had not accepted that proffered loan of hair-powder--I was dressed in black, too, from head to foot; I blessed the good fortune which had led me to buy black stockings at St. Mary's, and, in a word, my hopes began to revive.
The feet came nearer, and I heard a voice whisper:
"It was here." The voice was Peter Tortue's, as I knew from the French accent, and the next instant a stick fell with a heavy thud not a foot from my head. If only the clouds hung in front of the moon! Round and about they tramped--the whole five of them. For in a little they began in low tones to curse, first of all me, and afterwards Peter Tortue, who had whistled from below. Let them only quarrel amongst themselves, I thought, and there's a good chance they will forget the reason of their quarrel. It seemed that they were well on the road to a quarrel at last; a man, quite young as I judged from his voice, flung himself down on the grass with an oath.
"But he is here, close to us," said Peter. "I heard the girl thrum good-night to him on her fiddle, and then I saw him, and followed him, and whistled."
"Well, it is your business, not mine. Yours and George Glen's," the other returned. I learned later that his name was Nathaniel Roper. "I was never on noRoyal Fortune, devil damn me."
"Whist, you lousy fool"--and this was George Glen speaking. I am sure he was winking and pinching the fellow's arm,--"we are all in the same boat whether we've sailed in theRoyal----" and he stopped.
All at once there was a dead silence. I have never in my life experienced anything so horrible as that sudden, complete silence. I could not see what caused it, for my face was buried in the grass, and I dared not move. One moment I had a sensation that they were gazing at my back, and I felt--it is the only way I can express it--I feltnaked. Another moment I imagined it to be a ruse to beguile me into stirring; and it lasted for ever and ever.
At length one sound--not a voice--broke the silence: the man who had thrown himself down was getting to his feet. But when he had stood up he made no further movement; he stood motionless, like the others, and the silence began again and again it lasted for ever and ever.
All sorts of tremors began to creep over my body; the muscles of my back jerked of their own accord. The suspense was driving me mad. I had to move, I had to see, if only to hinder myself from leaping to my feet and making a headlong rush. Very slowly I turned my head sideways; I looked backwards along the ground, until I saw. The moon had swum out from the clouds, and the five men were standing in arrested attitudes with their eyes fixed upon something that glittered very bright upon the ground. I could see it myself through the gorse glittering and burning white, like a delicate flame, and my heart gave a great leap within me as I understood what it was. It was a big silver shoe-buckle that shone in the moonlight, and the shoe-buckle was on my foot.
The game was up. I thought that I might as well make a fight of it at the last, and I jumped to my feet suddenly, with a faint hope that the suddenness of the movement might startle them and let me through. But there was to be no fighting for me that night. It is true that the men all scattered from about me, but a voice a few yards to my right thundered, "Stand!" and I stood stock-still, obedient as a charity-school boy.
For Peter Tortue was standing stock still too, with his right arm stretched out in a line with his shoulder and the palm of his hand upturned. On the palm of that hand was balanced a long knife with an open blade, and the moonlight streaked along that blade in flame, just as it had burned upon my shoe-buckle.
George Glen rubbed his hands together.
"You will lie down, Mr. Berkeley," said he, with his most insinuating smile. "You will down, 'flat on my face,' says you."
"But I have only just got up," said I.
Glen tittered nervously, but no one else showed any appreciation of my sally. I thought it best to lie down flat on my face.
"Cross your hands behind your back," said George Glen, and I knew he was winking.
"Any little thing like that, I am sure," I murmured, as I obeyed. "Only too happy," and in a trice I was nothing more than a coil of rope. It cut into my wrists, it crushed my chest, it snaked round my legs, it bit my ankles.
"To be sure," said I, "they mean to send me somewhere by the post."
Mr. George Glen sniggered and mentioned my destination, which was impolite, though he mentioned it politely; but Roper thumped me in the small of the back, and thrust my handkerchief into my mouth. So I had done better to have kept silence.
Two of the men lifted me up on their shoulders and staggered up hill. In a moment or two they descended a small incline, and I saw that I was being carried into the hollow where the shed stood. Glen pushed at the door of the shed and it fell open inwards. A great cavern of blackness gaped at us, and they carried me in and set me down unceremoniously on the floor.
"Brisk along with that lantern, Nat Roper," said Glen, and the young fellow who had flung himself down on the grass struck a light and set fire to the candle. The shed was divided by a wooden partition, in which was a rickety door hardly hanging on its hinges.
"In there!" said Glen, swinging the lantern towards the inner room. My bearers picked me up again and carried me to the door. One of them kicked at the door, but it did not yield.
"It's jammed," said the other, "there's some-thing 'twixt it and the floor," and raising a great sea boot, he kicked with all his might.
I heard a metallic clinking, as though a piece of iron was hopping across the stone floor, and the door flew open.
They carried me into the inner room and set me down against the partition. There was no furniture of any sort, not even a bucket to sit upon; there was no window either, a thatched roof rested upon heavy beams over my head. They placed the lantern at my feet, four of them squatted down about me, the fifth went out of the shed to keep watch.
It was, after all, not in the inn kitchen of the Palace Inn that any bargain was to be struck. I could not deny that they had chosen their place very well. Not a man in Tresco but would give this shed the widest of berths, and if he saw the glint of this lantern through a chink, or heard, perhaps, as he was like to do, one loud cry--why, he would only take to his heels the faster. The ropes, too, made my bones ache.
I would have preferred the kitchen at the Palace Inn.