[pg 105]
"So long, son, and have a care on that open deck."
Harty climbed the iron ladder to the deck, shouldered his way through the wind-pressed door and onto the deck, and started aft.
It was cold. Under his thin suit of dungaree Harty was rolling in sweat. The winter wind whipped him like a cat-o'-nine-tails. He crept aft, coiled his heaving line and waited in the stern for the word. She was jumping so that to hold his feet on her open, icy deck aft, he was compelled to hook one hand to the towing bitts.
"Only time for one try, so don't let nothing go wrong. An' watch out for any of those big fellows comin' aboard, Bud," came Baldwin's last warning.
On Light-ship 67, drifting broad onto the breakers, all hands were perched high in her rigging, safe above any stray seas; all but Nelson and Bowen, who were hanging on to her weather rail forward.
Bowen was the first to realize what the figure on the after end of the tug meant to them. "Heave for here!" he shouted, and Nelson, also awake to the situation, held up one of the torches for a mark.
[pg 106]
Nearer and nearer butted the tug. "Stand by!" they heard the call from the forward end of her. Looking up, they could see the shadow against the pilot-house light. "By!" came the echo, and the man astern stepped on to her open quarter and balanced himself to heave.
A note in that answering voice caught Bowen's ear. "Say, Nelson, that's not one of the tug's regular crew!"
"I don't know. I don't t'ink, but he ban a foolish man," replied Nelson—"he should lash himself."
"Stand by with the line!" came again.
"By!" echoed tensely from astern.
"Ready!"
"All ready!"
"When she lifts! Now—w—"
From the top of a sea the line came whistling down to the light-ship rail. "I'll take it," called Bowen, and, loosing his hold of the stay, he reached out and caught the flying line to his breast. "A good throw," he muttered, and hauled it in.
The hawser followed the heaving line, and Nelson and Bowen, with life-lines about them, bent the stubborn end of it around the windlass. It was heavy work, even for two men, on the tumbling, slippery deck, and, that done, they turned, anxiously, to see how the man in the stern of the tug[pg 107]was making out. He was there, back to, bending the thick stubborn bight about the towing bitts with slow, heavy motions. They saw one great sea break over him; and another: but when the seas were past there he was still working away.
"Won't he never mak' him fast?" wailed Nelson.
"Give him time," snapped Bowen. "He's doing well. He's got to do it right. If his end came loose, where would we be? Give him time."
Nelson looked significantly shoreward. "Time?"
"How's she coming, Bud?" they heard then.
"Bud? And that sounds like his voice, too," muttered Bowen.
"Wa-atch out!" Even with the roar of it Nelson and Bowen could hear the warning from the pilot-house to the man in the stern of the tug. A tremendous sea it was and the littleWhistwent over—over. Over until her side-lights were under. There she held for a moment, started to rise, and then a following sea caught her and overbore her and that time she rolled low enough to take salt water down her funnel.
She came back—after a time. Up, up, nobly; but when they next looked from the light-ship they could see no figure in her stern. Bowen leaned far over the light-ship's rail. Nothing there, but he called to Nelson for the torch, and Nelson let it flare out over the water.
[pg 108]
Then Bowen saw him. Almost under the bow of the light-ship he was, and the big torch was throwing a light like blood on his face. "It is him!" cried Bowen.
"Vat iss?" demanded the puzzled Nelson, and then under the light he, too, saw the face in the tossing waters.
Bowen, with a life-line under his arms was already over the side. But his plunge fell short. Nelson heard a sound as of a man's voice smothering, saw a hand raised and lowered, and then into the tossing blackness the lone figure was swept.
Nelson hauled Bowen aboard. When he recovered his first word was, "God, Nelson, that was Harty!"
"Harty, wass it? I don't know him, but he was one goot man."
The big hawser strained and groaned, chocks and bitts crooned their song of stress, the wind whistled its dirge, while out from the breakers theWhisthauled her tow.
To the wheel of the tug Baldwin glanced ahead and behind, pointed her nose for the breakwater, gave her four bells and the jingle, put his mouth to the tube, and answered, "Yes, Pete, that's right—'twas Bud went. And now it's up to you, son. Keep steam on her, and if the hawser holds and nothing else happens, she oughter stagger home all right."
[pg 109]
Nothing more happened and theWhiststaggered home. The morning light saw her safe to the Navy Yard with the light-ship moored alongside.
Bowen stepped from the light-ship to the tug. Up in the pilot-house he found Baldwin. The sailor was staring through a window, staring out to sea. Bowen waited.
Baldwin turned inboard at last. "I s'pose you're wonderin' how we knew. Well, 'twas Bud passed me the word, and more than that, 'twas Bud broke me out of as promisin' a little game as ever a man sat into. Chips? Enough to fill my service cap afore me, and not all white chips either. And he comes along and just the same as yanks me up by the collar an' says, 'You got to go!' and I had to. And of course where I go Pete goes."
"And a game thing, Baldwin."
"Game hell. It's our trade—Pete's and mine. But it wasn't Bud's. But he was bound to go. And when he went under, when I woke up to it he was gone, I looked out. The sea was still rolling up to the clouds. I sticks my head out the window to cool it, and to myself I says: If there was only somebody else in this watch so I could take five minutes off somewhere and lie down and cry. That's the way I felt about it. Yes, sir, if it wasn't for you fellows behind and good old Pete below,[pg 110]I believe I'd let everything go. Yes, sir, government property or no, I believe I'd a let the oldWhistroll up on the beach and been glad to roll up with her. And Bud—" Baldwin came suddenly to a full stop and stared out to sea. After a time he turned and asked: "Did you see him when he went?"
"I did. And that time I grabbed for him and missed and he went by me, he half-turned and looked at me, and I thought he said, 'I never meant it.' Just that I heard, when the sea washed over him, and when he came up again he must've thought that I didn't understand, and he waved one arm. It was like he was saying 'Good-by!'—the way he did it. Yes, he was all right—Harty."
"You betcher he was all right. An' more than all right. As for that, it's a damn poor specimen' that ain't all right when it comes to a show-down. I've known Bud—I can't remember when I didn't know Bud Harty. And, Bowen, he was a better man than you or me. Bud always let you see the worst of himself, but you had to guess at the best of him. Bud, he sure could hate a man—but, son, he could like you a lot better than ever he hated you."
The two men sat and looked out to sea in silence. At last Baldwin, with a heavy sigh? stood up, and,[pg 111]reaching into a locker, brought forth a bottle and two glasses. "I s'pose we oughter try to forget it for awhile. This stuff here, it's against regulations havin' it aboard, but lots of things against regulations never hurt anybody. It was against regulations our takin' out theWhistlast night. And when the commandant's back from leave I reckon I'll get mine. For you"—he laid a forefinger against the big rating badge on his coat sleeve—"that I've been shipmates with for fifteen years—off and on—I reckon will be detached. But I've been disrated before and we'll let that pass. But you an' me and Bud, we ain't been the best of friends we used to be since—well, you know when, but you're goin' to drink for him now the toast he wouldn't drink last night, but the toast that if he was here I know he'd drink now, for it's a sure thing that when he went into the breakers he didn't go out of hate. So you drink for Bud, and I'll drink for myself. Here's to you and yours, Bowen, your wife and the baby that's comin'—"
"And that baby—if it's a boy, Baldwin, I'll name after him."
"Will you? God, but he'll like that—Bud'll sure like that. And now, here you go—
"May the wind be always fair for youWhatever the course you sail!
"May the wind be always fair for youWhatever the course you sail!
"May the wind be always fair for you
Whatever the course you sail!
[pg 112]
"An' you an' me and all of us we'll be like we used to be, an' Bud'll like it, I know. An' now one to Bud himself. I know 'twill please him to see us doin' it. Here's to Buddie, Bowen. Is it a go?"
"Let her run!"
"Run it is, and a gale behind her—Christmas to Bud!"
[pg 113]
Two years now since Mr. Villard had come home, and not a soul on the plantation but believed that at last the new master had given up his mysterious voyages and was home to stay. But one day I had business in Savannah, and while there, hearing that the barkNereidwas in from the West African coast, I strolled down to the river front; and presently I was approached and addressed by the master of theNereid, a seaman-like and rather shrewd-looking man who had a message for Mr. Villard, he said—from the West Coast.
"I am charged to ask him to pass the word to Captain Blaise," said theNereid'smaster, "that an old friend of his lies low of fever into Momba. Captain Blaise would know who. We were putting out of Momba lagoon and I was standing by the rail, when a nigger came paddling up and whispered it. Like a breath of night air it was. 'Tell Master Captain that Ubbo bring the word,' said the nigger, and like another breath of wind he passed on. No more than that. A short, very stout, and very black nigger. And I was to pass[pg 116]the word to Mr. Villard, a gentleman of estate near Savannah, Georgia, and if you, sir, will attend to that, my part's done."
After my dinner in town was through with, I rode hard; but it was late night by the time I reached the manor-house. I found him sitting out under the moon, smoking a cheroot as usual, and he continued to smoke immovably for some minutes after I had delivered the message; but by and by he stood up and took to pacing the veranda, and presently, after his fashion, to speak his thoughts aloud.
"A hundred thousand acres and a thousand slaves, good, bad, and indifferent—surely a man does owe a little something to his manorial duties. At least, so all my highly respectable and well-established neighbors tell me. What do you say, Guy?"
"I never gave much thought to the matter, sir."
"No? Well, doubtless you will—some day. But d'y' remember Kingston Harbor, where the black boys dive through the green waters for the silver sixpenny pieces, and Kingston port, where the white roads and the white walls throw back the tropic sun so that it seems twice as hot as it really is—Kingston, Guy—in Jamaica, where the sun sets like a blood-orange salad in a purple dish? D'y' remember, Guy, and the day we were lying[pg 117]into Kingston in theBessand the word came that my uncle was dead? Aye, you do; but don't you remember how he used to rail against me? To be sure—you were too young. And yet a good old uncle, who gave me never a mild word in his life but left me his all at death."
"And why shouldn't he, sir?"
"Why not? Aye, that is so. Why not? And yet he could have left it to anybody—to you, say."
"Why to me? Who am I?"
"What? Who are you?" He ceased his pacing. "That is so, Guy—who are you? You with the strange, quick blood writ so plain in your countenance that there—"
"Isn't it good blood, sir?"
"Aye, Guy, be sure it is good blood. But often have I thought how he would have stormed if—" He gazed curiously at me.
"If—"
"Aye, if—but no matter." He resumed his nervous pacing back and forth, back and forth, hands in pockets, head up, chin out, and face turned always toward the river, past the moss-hung cypress trees to the yellow Savannah flowing swiftly beyond. The salt tide-water made as far as Villard Landing, and when it was in full flood, as now, it brought the smell of the sea strongly with it.
"No matter that now, Guy. A good old soul,[pg 118]my uncle, d'y' see; but the blood was everything to him. And he put it in the bond and I am bound by it: that only the lawful issue, a son of the house, shall inherit. 'I'll have no strange derelict child inherit my estate.' His own words. So this fair estate, lacking lawful issue of my body or my old uncle's son—and he is dead—it goes out of the family. Oh, a stormy, intolerant, but well-meaning old uncle, who would have none of his property left to—Oh, but not that, Guy—no, no, lad." He laid a restraining hand on my shoulder. "No, no, lad, you must not take that to yourself; for you are, no fear, honest born."
"I've waited long for you to tell me even that. Won't you tell me more, sir?"
"Enough for now. But whatever my uncle thought or wished, here, Guy, is an estate to your hand to enjoy. What d'y' say, eh, to the life of a Southern gentleman on his plantation? A hundred thousand acres, a thousand slaves, a stable of the horses you love so, upland and river bottom to hunt, dancing, riding, balls, the city in winter. Is not that something better than the hard, uncertain sea, Guy?"
He had paused for my answer, but I made none. He was standing motionless, except for the backward toss of his head and the deep inhalation, three or four times, of the briny air from the flooding[pg 119]river. There was disappointment in his voice when he took up the talk again.
"Oh, Guy, between us two what a difference! I was born ashore, you at sea, and yet
"'It's you for the back of a charging barb,And me for the deck of a heaving brig!'"
"'It's you for the back of a charging barb,And me for the deck of a heaving brig!'"
"'It's you for the back of a charging barb,
And me for the deck of a heaving brig!'"
In a lower voice he repeated the couplet, and was plainly vastly pleased with it. "Faith, and I wonder is that my own, or something I read somewhere. Something of the lilt of a Scotch strathspey to 't, shouldn't you say? You know more of such things. What d'y' say—shall I claim that for my own, Guy?"
"You do, sir, and it's not Homer, nor Dante, nor Keats who will rise up to accuse you of plagiarism."
"Bah! You would no more allow me the merit of a poetic vein than—"
"Poetry, sir?"
"Poetry—why not?" and suddenly bending sidewise and forward, he essayed to obtain a fuller view of my face. And it is true that I was thinking of anything but poetry.
His face darkened as he gazed. "A hundred estates and plantations were nothing to me against—" he burst out passionately, but no further than that. He checked himself and went inside, and with no good-night going.
[pg 120]
In the morning he was gone. I waited—one, two, three days, and then I went also—to Savannah, where I saw theBess, but so altered that it needed a lifetime's intimacy to hail her in the stream. Her spars had been sent down and her name was now theTriton, and to her bow and stern was clamped the false work which left her with no more outward grace than any clumsy coaster; and by these signs I knew that Mr. Villard of Villard Manor would once more disappear and that Captain Blaise would soon again be sailing theDancing Bessoverseas.
Captain Blaise had not yet come aboard; but whatever ship he sailed the full run of that ship was mine, and I went into his cabin to wait for him.
It was after dark when he came over the side. It was always after dark when he boarded theBessin home ports. His words were colder than his expression when he addressed me. "And where are you bound?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"And why not?"
"You have not yet told me, sir, where you are going."
"Suppose it should be the West Coast and the old trade?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but even so I go."
[pg 121]
"And leave all that good life you love so at the Manor?"
On his face was still the stern look. I could not stand it longer and I stepped closer to him. "You have not turned against me, sir?"
He softened at once. "Guy, Guy, don't mind me. I meant well. I thought you might prefer the shore to living on the sea."
"I do, sir, but when you are at sea it's at sea I'd rather be too, sir."
"Ah-h—" and when he looked at me like that it mattered not about his law-breaking—he was the bravest, finest man that ever sailed the trades. "Guy, my boy, if you'll have it so, why come along. And once more we'll cruise together; but you won't judge your commander too harshly, will you, Guy?"
We took the ebb down the river. Our papers read for a West India trading voyage, but we lingered not among the West Indies. Four weeks later we raised the Cape Verdes, and an islet rose like a castle from out of the mists. Abreast of a pebbled beach we came to anchor and waited.
[pg 122]
A boat scraped alongside, and the agent Rimmle came aboard. He came out to have a chat for old time's sake; and yet not so old either, he corrected, and would Captain Blaise come ashore and have a drink or two of good liquor? And Captain Blaise replied that he carried as good liquor in his locker as ever graced any sideboard ashore. And they dropped into the cabin, where I happened to be, and had a glass of wine and a word or two, and another glass and a few more words; and at last Rimmle put the question: Would Captain Blaise run one more draft?
Long ago, Captain Blaise promised me that there was to be no more slave-running, and as he never lied to me, I wondered now why he paused and pondered as if debating with himself. At last he looked up. "It doesn't pay any more, Rimmle."
"Well, in these days," observed Rimmle, "I don't blame you, with the bull-dogs of men-o'-war making it so hot."
We all had to smile at that, and Rimmle, seeing that Captain Blaise was not to be shamed into it, went on. "But suppose there was larger head-money than ever was paid before, Captain? And if half the head-money and the crew's pay were laid down in advance? For it is hard, as you have[pg 123]often said, Captain, that anything should happen to brave and willing men on such a cruise and they have neither profit nor safety of it." It was the old talk all over again, the agent urging him once more to take to slave-running, except that in other days Captain Blaise had displayed less patience.
The wineglasses had already been filled too frequently for me, and, pleading business, I had spread out a coast chart on the other end of the cabin table and was studying it, this by way of removing myself from a conversation which I saw was not to end with trading or slave-running.
This Rimmle was one of those who held Captain Blaise for a sort of idol. I had seen dozens of the kind before. Great hours for them when they could sit in with the famous Captain Blaise, and so now, with the agent bound to talk of the West Coast trade, lawful and otherwise, Captain Blaise was making but slow headway.
I was thinking of stepping up on deck to stretch my legs, when the conversation took a sudden shift. "Captain"—Rimmle put the question hesitatingly—"I thought I had seen the last of you. May I ask what lured you back?"
Captain Blaise had decanted another bottle and was viewing the rich-colored bubbles as he held the carafe up against the light. Such little things afforded him keen pleasure. He set the carafe down—softly—only[pg 124]to ask by way of reply: "Rimmle, what is it always brings men back?"
Rimmle laid his head to one side and nodded shrewdly. "As far as my experience goes, Captain, it is one of three things."
"And which of the three is my failing?" Captain Blaise was absently filling their glasses.
"M-m—It cannot be money—you never cared for that. You who have made fortunes and spent them as fast as you made them—no, it cannot be money. And then your newly acquired property in the States—"
"Mynewly acquired—What of that?"
"Why, the rumor is out that you fell heir to a great estate in the States—on the banks of the Mississippi or the Ohio, or some outlandish name of a river in the States."
"Oh, a rumor! Go on."
"And as for the drink—it must be a great occasion, indeed, Captain, when you take more than is good for a man. And so—"
"We can never take too much drink in good company, Rimmle. And so drink up—here's health! And so you think it must be—" He smiled faintly at the agent. "And yet who should know better than you that all the gold I ever gave for a woman's favor would not suffice to keep the poorest of them in cambric handkerchiefs."
[pg 125]
"As to that"—the agent pursed up his full moist lips—"it is true; the kind who looked for money were never your kind. And yet that kind sometimes cost men a hundred times more in the end."
Captain Blaise bent deferentially toward the agent. "You think that, Rimmle—truly?"
Rimmle bowed wisely.
Captain Blaise continued to regard him in the most friendly way, and yet with an air of doubt, as if debating how far to discuss matters of this kind with him. And then, leaning yet further forward and speaking rapidly, energetically: "And agreeing that it is so, who is it that ever regrets the price? D'y' think that I, even though I be what I be, that I—Why, Rimmle, even you who live to amass money"—Rimmle flushed—"even you have had your days when—To be sure you have had." Rimmle beamed. "And so, Rimmle, you can believe possibly that Captain Blaise may yet have his immortal hour, and cherish the hope none the less dearly in his heart because his head, from out the experience of bitter years, tells him that it can never be. And it may be that I go this time for neither money nor drink, nor anything else in which traders ashore or aship commonly bargain. But, hah, hah!"—he grinned suddenly, sardonically, at the agent. "Think of us, Rimmle, sitting in the cabin[pg 126]of a West Coast slaver and smuggler discoursing in this fashion—two gallant gentlemen who trade in human misery."
Ten years since Captain Blaise had done any slave-running, and Rimmle, who knew that, was slave-running still, and so he did not quite know how to take this outburst.
Neither did I. Where Captain Blaise was sincere and where talking for effect I could not have said; but surely he was moulding Rimmle like jelly; and now looking out from under his eyebrow at Rimmle, but his lips curved in a smile, he selected a cheroot and lit it, and lit another for Rimmle, who now smiled too. And cheroot followed cheroot, and story story, and drink drink, and the agent gurgled with joy of the intimacy. "What adventures you have had, Captain, and"—he blew a cloud to the cabin roof—"what stories!"
"Adventures? Stories?" Captain Blaise shrugged his shoulders. "Well enough, Rimmle, in their way. 'Tis true I can tell of blockades evaded and corvettes slipped, of customs officers bedevilled, of tricks on slow-tacking junks, and of dancing with creoles under the moon. But what is that? The heedless, unplanned adventuring of an irresponsible American captain. Now you, if you cared to talk, Rimmle, you, I warrant, could tell of big things, things which concern great people—of[pg 127]admirals and governors and what not; for you, it is well known, Rimmle, have your own bureau of information."
Rimmle chuckled. "It is true"—and then he paused. Captain Blaise refilled their glasses. In courtly imitation of the Captain, Rimmle raised his and they drank.
Captain Blaise filled them up again. "Men like myself, Rimmle, are but pawns in this trading game. It is the people on the inside, the Governor of Momba and gentlemen like you, who direct the play."
Rimmle smacked his lips. "M-m—To be sure, the Governor of Momba—"
There was a half-hour of anecdotes of the Governor of Momba and his son before Cunningham's name was even mentioned; and when the question of him was slipped, so casually was it slipped that I, with senses astretch, did not realize that this must be the sick man at Momba—not until the next question was put.
"But there must have been something else, Rimmle, between the Governor and Cunningham?"
Now, had they been drinking ordinary wine or heavy ale, Rimmle might have held his own. But this was a rare vintage, a delicate bouquet meant for a finer breed than Rimmle. His tongue was still[pg 128]limber but his wits were fled. He was vain to display to the famous Captain Blaise his knowledge of secret affairs. "Yes, it is true, Captain, there was more than showed on the surface there. And that insult to Cunningham was no accident. No,"—he winked,—"not at all. He had insulted and shot men before, but he never knew that Cunningham was a professional duellist himself. None of us in Momba knew. Did you, Captain?"
"He was not." Captain Blaise banged his hand on the table. "He killed three men, yes; but bad men, and killed them in fair combat."
"Hm-m. A man to let alone that; but nothing of that was known—not then. However, he took the Governor's professional duellist out behind a row of palms one sunny morning and shot him—a beautiful bit of work. It was the vastest surprise—a shock. But a duel, lawful possibly in your country is not so in ours, Captain, and—"
"And is his daughter with him?"
"When she is not at the Governor's house—yes."
"What! Why there?"
"I don't know, unless it is the only house in that country where a young lady of her position—and then her beauty—"
"Under that old satrap's roof? But here, Rimmle, what is the Governor going to do with Cunningham?"
[pg 129]
"Well, Captain, if it should happen that she will marry the Governor's son, why Cunningham might be allowed—you know how, Captain, ho! ho!—surely, to escape. Especially as nobody seems to mourn the man he shot. But when she seemed slow to fall in with their wishes, and as Cunningham had converted all his property into gold and diamonds and shipped them or hid them—though no search has unearthed them—preparatory to shooting the Governor's friend, why they grew suspicious and threatened to push matters. Cunningham was nominally under arrest always. And then he fell sick. How sick? Hard to say. But should he die, or be punished—imprisoned, say—for the duel, consider it. She is a beautiful girl, true, but human, and in time in that lonesome country where white gentlemen of social position are so scarce—! And, after all—the Governor of Momba's son and—"
"Rimmle"—Captain Blaise had stood up to look through an air port—"it's a fair wind for me. Shall I put you ashore?"
"Ashore? Why, yes, yes! Bless me, I've had quite a stay, haven't I? But if you care to try again, Captain, my friend Hassan is into Momba. He will be aboard, no fear. If you do business with him, Captain, why, draw on me, and it's money in my pocket."
[pg 130]
"If I do business of that kind this cruise, Rimmle, I promise you I'll do it with Hassan."
"Thank you, Captain. Speedy voyage to you, and don't forget Hassan. Good-by, sir, to you."
Within the hour we sailed for Momba.
A squadron of corvettes and sloops o' war put their glasses on us lazily as we neared Momba; but with our Dutch bow and stern, our stumpy spars, no self-respecting war-ship was bothering theTriton. They let us pass without so much as a hail.
Captain Blaise planned to cross Momba Bar that night, all the more surely to cross because the watchers ashore, seeing us hang on and off in the late afternoon, would probably report that we were waiting for morning. So we hauled her to in the dusk where, were it light, we would have seen, under its three fathom of water, Momba Bar lying white and smooth and quiet as a sanded deck as we passed on. With the wind coming low and light from the land that was; but were it a high wind and from the sea, there would be no going over that bar at night or any other time.
We slipped silently up the inside, the northerly passage, to the lagoon, and crept up the lagoon just[pg 131]as silently, but even as we were mooring theBessin a nook at the head of the lagoon, a tall Arab was alongside. With him Captain Blaise and I went ashore in the ship's long-boat, and to avoid suspicion we took no arms. An hour of camp-fires and shadows under the trees we wasted then with this sharp trader Hassan. No printed calicoes, or brass rings, or looking-glasses for him, nor rum, he being a true believer. Nothing of that; but of gold paid into hand, and plenty of it there must be. And Captain Blaise, to allay suspicion, discussed matters hotly. Finally he agreed to the Arab's terms, and Hassan salaamed, and out under the open sky we went again.
"A proper villain, Guy, is that fellow. Did you ever see so wonderfully cunning a smile? And in the morning I am to give him a draft on Rimmle! Sometimes I think there must be something infantile about me, strangers do pick me up for such an innocent at times. But in the morning, my shrewd Hassan—"
Naked feet padded beside us. "O Marster Carpt'n, Marster Carpt'n, suh—"
"You, Ubbo!"
"Yes, suh, Marster Carpt'n." It was a short, very stout, and very black negro who stood at attention before Captain Blaise.
"Where's your master?"
[pg 132]
"Waitin', Carpt'n, suh. He sick, suh, but not so he die, he say, suh."
"And Miss Shiela?"
"Missy Shiela at de Governor's, suh. An' de missy know you come too, suh. I been watchin', suh, for long time. I see de ship, suh, an' I know you come over de bar, suh, to-night. An' I tell de marster, suh. An' marster waitin', an' Missy Shiela waitin', Marster Carpt'n, to take um away—to take um home, suh. He very sick, suh."
"After us, Ubbo."
We raced to where was the long-boat, screened under a bank. From her crew we took four good men and followed Ubbo.
The roof of a low building loomed above the jungle growth. Ubbo uttered a warning sound. We could hear the regular tread and presently a form showed around the corner of the house. It was a negro in uniform with a musket held carelessly over his shoulder.
Captain Blaise whispered to his men: "When he comes around again get him. No noise. Choke him first." The four sailors leaped together when next he appeared. In an instant almost it was done. They laid him on the ground, threw his musket into the brush, and we entered the building.
On a cot beside an open window, with a reading-lamp at his head, lay a tall man.
[pg 133]
"Still alive, Gad," called Captain Blaise cheerily.
"Still alive, Blaise, and I reckon you did a neat job on that nigger guard, for all I heard was a little gurgling. Yes, still alive. Still alive, Blaise, thanks to Shiela's discrimination in the selection of the Governor's nourishing cordials, and thanks no less to my boy Ubbo's sleepless habits. But, old friend, you're none too soon. And don't waste any time in getting Shiela. She is still at the Governor's. I bade her stay there so they would not suspect. She has my sabre and duelling pistols with her, by the way. And she'll bear a hand with them, if need be. But who is this? Oh, this is Guy? I'm glad to know you, Guy."
A wreck of a tall, slender, handsome man, such a man he may have been in his prime as was Captain Blaise, but older. A sporting, reckless sort he may have been, but a man of manner and blood. Two of the crew bore him out, though one would have sufficed. "Ubbo will show you where the strong-box is, Blaise," he called on being borne off; and Ubbo led us through the thick jungle to where, under a rock over which a little water-fall played, a massive iron chest was buried. It took two stout men of the crew to handle it.
We saw Mr. Cunningham and the strong-box safely to the long-boat and then, with Ubbo, took station behind a hedge which bordered the Governor's grounds. There was much going on there—music[pg 134]and people strolling on the lawn. Captain Blaise pointed out the Governor to me, and his son, and bade me notice also fifteen or twenty barefooted but armed and uniformed negroes clustered between two rows of palms on the farther side of the lawn.
"We'll wait here, with the hedge to protect us," said Captain Blaise, and motioned to Ubbo. "Tell Miss Shiela that all's ready."
The negro slipped away. A short minute or so and Captain Blaise, who had been peering like a man on watch on a bad night, gripped me nervously. "Look, there she is!"
I looked. Never again would I have to be told to look. She was framed in a low window off the veranda. The Governor's son was now close behind her. Ubbo was standing on the lawn over near the musicians. We crept nearer. Turning, as if accidentally, she saw him and called to him. "How is your master, Ubbo, to-night?"
"Marster tell me to say he more happy to-night, Missy."
"Told you to say, Ubbo?"
"Yes, Missy, marster tell me to say."
"That's the signal, that sentence," whispered Captain Blaise.
"That's good. You can go, Ubbo." She smiled and chatted with the Governor's son then.
[pg 135]
"She can't have interpreted the message aright," I panted.
"Because she did not leap into the air? Trust her—she's Gadsden Cunningham's, her own father's daughter."
In a few minutes she turned from the Governor's son to his father, from him to her ladyship, and from her without haste to some less distinguished member, and then in the most casual way in the world she strolled inside and from our sight.
Hardly a minute later the signal came: a firefly's flash five times together and three times repeated from the darkened upper story.
Ubbo was with us when the signal came. "Marster Carpt'n," he whispered, and handed him a sabre and a pair of duelling pistols. "Missy send um—an' dey loaded, both um, suh."
Captain Blaise, taking the sabre and passing me the pistols, ordered Ubbo to show the way.
We skirted the grounds and entered by a rear gate a garden where were all sorts of low-growing trees and high-growing shrubs to screen us as we drew near the rear veranda. I saw the white gown with the dark blue sash shining out from the shrubbery, and then the white and blue drew back. I would have leaped out on the path to follow, but a restraining hand was on my arm. "Wait, wait!" warned Captain Blaise.
It was the Governor and his son hurrying around[pg 136]the corner of the veranda. "I do not believe it," the Governor was saying. "I cannot credit it. That could not have been his ship which was reported still off the bar at dark—a clumsy galliot of a craft she was described; and besides, he would not dare, a whole squadron cruising within an hour's sail."
"But he is gone, and we found the guard was overpowered. He does not even know how it happened, and his ship is even now moored in the lagoon, and he himself was with Hassan less than an hour ago. Hassan will say no more until he gets his advance money in the morning. But if we move now, he is caught like a rat in a trap. Why not send word to the squadron? The wind is from the sea again and increasing, and he cannot now recross the bar. If we could get hold of Cunningham's nigger, he'll know something. Perhaps we can make him tell. I've sent Charlotte to watch her." He ran to the corner of the veranda. "O Ubbo! Where in the devil is he? O Ubbo! Only a few minutes ago he was talking to her out front. Ubbo! O Ubbo!"
A mulatto girl came hurrying from within the house. "The American missy, I cannot find her. She not in her room, suh."
"What!" The fat old potentate almost jumped into the air.
But the son kept his head. "Not in her room,[pg 137]Charlotte? And Ubbo gone, too? Had I not better make the guard ready, sir?"
"Yes, yes; have the guard fall in."
They rushed around the corner of the veranda and we leaped into the lighted path. She, too, stepped out into the light. "Captain Blaise, oh, Captain Blaise, you don't know what courage you give us."
"Miss Shiela, you don't know what joy you give us.
"Still the same—but—but who is this?" she cried out like a surprised child. And then she seemed to know without being told, for "Oh-h, of course, this is Guy," she said, and smiled as if she had an hour to smile in, and gave me both hands.
"Come," said Captain Blaise abruptly. And down the rear path we hurried, and, circling the garden, entered the hedged path to the lagoon bank. All went well until we had to pass the walk which crossed our path from the front lawn. Here the light of a row of hanging lanterns fell on us.
And they saw us, the Governor and his son and the assembled guards, and came charging down across the lawn after us. But only two abreast could they come down the path.
"The boat is now but a hundred yards away, Miss Shiela," said Captain Blaise. "Guy will take you there. Go you, too, Ubbo." I took her hand[pg 138]and we raced to the bank, where I handed her to a place beside her father in the boat.
"And what are you going to do now?" she asked.
"I? Why, I must go back to help Captain Blaise."
"Oh, of course. But hurry back. And be careful, won't you?"
I ran up the path and was soon at his elbow. The column was crowding down the path, and so soon after coming from the bright light, possibly they could not see clearly when he swung. However it was, one groaned and slid down. He cut again and the head of the column stopped dead. "What's wrong?" came a voice, the Governor's. "What are you stopping for?"
"Won't you step this way and find out?" jeered Captain Blaise.
"What! only one man?"
The hedge lining the path was waist high, trimmed flat and wide, but I never suspected what was coming until I saw the flash and felt the ting of the bullet on my cheek. "Drop!" warned Captain Blaise, but I had no mind to drop. I held one of Mr. Cunningham's duelling pistols ready for the next shot. I saw it and fired, to the right of and just above the flash. I had half seen how he had rested his elbow on the hedge and carried his head to one side when he fired that first shot. There was the[pg 139]crash of a body through the hedge. And then a silence.
"You got him, I think," said Captain Blaise.
I had been spun half around by the shock of something or other, and now I was once more facing the path squarely, and a thought of those red and blue and gold uniforms jammed in there gave me an idea. "Ready, men!" I called out. "Steady! Aim!—and be sure you fire low." No more than that, when in the Governor's guard there was the wildest scrambling and trampling to get to the rear.
And we left them falling rearward over each other and ran for the landing. The men were waiting on their oars. We leaped in, and Captain Blaise took the tiller ropes. "Give way!" he ordered.
Mr. Cunningham was lying on cushions in the bottom of the boat. I was still laughing, and he rolled his head, I thought, to look at me.
"Where did that skunk get you, Guy?" asked Captain Blaise.
"Why, I didn't know that he got me at all."
"Feel on your cheek."
There was blood, not much, trickling down my right cheek.
"You'd better attend to it."
"Yes, sir."
Warm fingers met mine. It was her silk scarf[pg 140]which she was pressing into my hand. I thrust it in my left breast, then took my own handkerchief and held it to my cheek.
I was chuckling to myself as I fancied the Governor's guards tumbling over each other in their retreat, when Captain Blaise broke in on me. "Aren't you laughing rather soon? You're not over your troubles yet."
"Troubles, sir? Troubles?" It was not at all like him, and his voice, too, was unwontedly harsh. "Troubles?" I almost laughed aloud again. He did not understand—I had only to lean forward to gaze into her eyes. I had only to reach out to clasp her hand. Troubles? Well, possibly so, but I smiled to myself in the dark.
Ere we had fairly boarded the brig they were in chase of us. We could see lights flitting along the lagoon bank and hear the hallooing of native runners—the Governor's, we knew. And for every voice we heard and every light we saw, we knew that hidden back of the trees were a dozen or a score whom we could not hear or see. And on the black surface of the lagoon, paddling between us and the bank, as we worked the ship out, were noiseless[pg 141]men in canoes. We could not see them, but every few minutes a mysterious cry carried across the silent water, and the cry, we knew, was the word of our progress from the Governor's canoe-men to the messengers on the bank.
The lagoon emptied on the south into the Momba River, which twisted and turned like so many S's to the sea; on the north was the passage by which we had come, that which led to the sea by way of the bar. But there was to be no crossing of the bar for us that night. Ten miles inland we had smelled that sea-breeze and knew what it meant; but Captain Blaise, nevertheless, held on with theBesstoward the bar. We could hear their crews paddling off and shouting their messages of our progress until they were forced by the breakers to go ashore. Their parting triumphant shouts was their word of our sure intent to attempt the passage of the bar.
When all was quiet from their direction, we put back to the lagoon and headed for the river passage. But one ship of any size had ventured this river passage in a generation, and the planking of that one, the brigOrion, for years lay on the bank by way of a warning. "But theOrionwas noDancing Bess," commented Captain Blaise. Surely not, nor was her master a Captain Blaise.
The top spars of theBesshad been slung while we were ashore, and by this time we had also[pg 142]knocked away the ugly and hindering false work on bow and stern, so that with her lifting foreyards which would have done for a sloop-of-war, and on her driving fore and aft sails which could have served the mizzen of a two-thousand-ton bark, theBesswas now herself again. And she had need to be for the work before her.
Captain Blaise ordered her foresails brailed in to the mast to windward and her foreyards braced flat, this that she might sail closer to the wind.
Entering the narrow passage, she was held to the edge of the low but steep bank to windward; so close that where the low-lying reeds grew outward we could hear them swishing against her sides as we passed on.
Miss Cunningham, having seen her father comfortably established with Ubbo in the cabin, had come on deck, and Captain Blaise, busy though he was, took time to make her welcome. No need for him to boast of his seamanship—the whole coast could tell her that; but how often had a beautiful girl a chance to see the proof of it?
We followed the curve of the river's bank almost as the running stream itself. When we came to a sharp-jutting point, Captain Blaise himself, or me to the wheel, would let her fall away until her jib-boom lay over the opposite bank; and then, her sails well filled, it was shoot her up into the wind[pg 143]and past the point before us. Twenty times we had to weather a point of land in that fashion. Fill and shoot, fill and shoot, never a foot too soon, never a foot too late—it was a beautiful exhibition, and only a pity it was not light for her to see it better.
We were clear of the river at last; that is, we were in the river's V-shaped mouth, the delta. The south bank extended westerly, two miles or so farther to the sea, and the other bank north-westerly toward Momba Bar. Now we were able to get a view of the coast line, and northward to beyond the bar it was an almost unbroken line, we could see, of lights flaring from high points along the shore.
Captain Blaise hove her to until he should see a guiding rocket from the men-of-war which he knew were waiting. And presently one came, a blue and gold from due west, and another red and gold from the west-nor'-west, then a red and blue from north-west by west. Presently there was another, from abreast of and close in to the bar. And we knew there were more in waiting than had signalled. It was already a solid line across the mouth of the river.
If those ships guarding the river's mouth were only anchored, our problem would have been simplified; but they were constantly shifting, and as they showed no sailing lights, no telling where, after a signal flashed, they would fetch next up; and always,[pg 144]showing no signal-light whatever, would be the others guarding what they would like to have us mistake for an open passage in the dark.
Their sending up so many signals indicated a bewilderment as to our whereabouts. By this time they must have known ashore that we were not anchored inside the bar; and out to sea they must have known we had not foundered in the surf, and also by this time they had probably discovered that we were not in the lagoon.
"They will puzzle it out soon. Get your floating mines ready," ordered Captain Blaise. That was my work, and in anticipation of it I had knocked together two small rafts loaded with explosives and a large one with explosives and combustible stuff to burn brightly for half an hour or so.
"What does this mean?" Miss Cunningham was at Captain Blaise's elbow. She could not have asked a question more pleasing to him.
"It means that we are like a rat in a hole with half a dozen big cats guarding the exit. It is an acutely angled corner we are in, Miss Shiela, and a string of corvettes and sloops-of-war stretched, no knowing just where, across the narrow way out. So far they do not know we are here, but before long it is bound to occur to some of them that this is theDancing Bessand that she has made the Momba[pg 145]River passage—and then they will crowd in and pounce on us. That is, if we don't get out before that."
"I see. I must go down and tell father. He's not worrying, but he wants to know what's going on."
He let the brigantine now run offshore, parallel with the southern bank, almost to the entrance. Then we doubled back on our course. As we came about he called, "Ready with your mines, Guy?"
"Ready, sir!"
"Let go!"
At the word over went the big raft. We sailed on for a quarter mile or so. "Let go!" Over went the second. A quarter mile farther and the third one went. Each mine had its time-fuse. In a very few minutes—theBesswas in by the corner of the delta again—the inshore mine exploded.
Following the noise and flame there was a quiet and a great darkness, and then from the southerly guard-ship a rocket, while from the shore burst forth new lights. If the surf had not been roaring, we knew that we could have heard those joyful yells from the watchers up that way. Everybody on the coast knew that theBesscarried two long-toms and no lack of ammunition for them. We could imagine their chuckling over our explosion.
Then came the second explosion, and five minutes[pg 146]later the third, and from her a great flame which continued to burn.
"Captain Blaise, I don't understand. Why that fire-raft?" Miss Shiela had reappeared on deck.
"Why? We are hoping that they will think that we are sailing out to sea in line of the explosions, just the opposite from what we are doing. If they will but think that that burning raft is our burning hold and that we are in distress, why—Look, Miss Shiela!"
Two war-ships were now signalling to each other recklessly, and their signals gave us a chance to reckon pretty nearly the course that they were steering. Both ships were headed straight for the burning raft. As they came on they uncovered their sailing lights, to prevent collision with each other, and watching these two ships' lights we might have picked a way directly between them. But if they happened to have another ship under cover in that apparently open water, we would be lost; and also, in passing between, we would have blocked off the lights of each in turn to the other and then they would have us.
Between the bar and the sailing lights of the inshore ship of the pair now bearing down, we knew there was another ship. We had seen her signal early, and that ship, we knew, would be held as[pg 147]close to the line of surf as her draught and the nerve of her commander would allow. Captain Blaise, reckoning where she should be, laid theBess'scourse for her. "She's used to having a little loose water on her deck—let her have it again," he said, and at this time we had everything on her, and if I have not made any talk of it before, I'll say it now—theBesscould sail.
We were now heading about a point off the edge of the outer line of heavy breakers, and as theBesshad the least free-board of any ship of her size sailing the trades, she was soon carrying on her deck her full allowance of loose water. Amidships, when she lay quietly to anchor, a long-armed man could lean over her rail and all but touch his fingers in the sea. Now, with the wind beam, over her lee rail amidships the heavy seas mounted. On the high quarter-deck we had only to hang onto the weather-rail, but the men stationed amidships had to watch sharp to keep from being swept overboard.
She was long and lean. It was her depth, and not her beam, which had held theBessfrom capsizing in many a blow. Ten years Captain Blaise had had her, and in those ten years, whether in sport or need, he had not spared her. She was long and lean, and as loose forward as an old market basket.