"The sight and sounds that met him were such as he had never before encountered."
"The sight and sounds that met him were such as he had neverbefore encountered."
A fresh westerly breeze was blowing, filling the vessel's few sails. The sun was rising in the east, over a grey-bluesea, and between it and the brig, scarcely, as it seemed, a mile away, lay a group of jagged, rocky islands, whose tallest point was a green-topped mountain, shining bright in the early sunlight like an emerald set in ebony. Above the islands there whirled in ceaseless movement, even as specks in a sunbeam, thousands and thousands of clamorous sea-birds. All around the ship, and as far as the boy's amazed sight could reach, the sea was dotted with swimming puffins and kittiwakes, gannets and fulmars. A green-backed shag was preening its feathers on the extremity of theAurora'sbowsprit; a fearless eider-duck strutted across the deck; along the rail a school of puffins sat, like charity children in their black tippets and white bibs.
But Ben Clews thought less of the sea-birds and their noisy voices than of the one great fact that land was near. He hurried below.
"Land, ho!" he cried, and again, "Land ho!"
"Where away?" called the quartermaster, in a feeble voice from his hammock.
"Right under our bows," answered Ben. "An island—three islands I counted, and we're drifting on to them, hand over hand!"
"Then if that be so, 'tis no place for you down here, my hearty," declared the quartermaster. "Don't think of me, but take your trick at the helm and look arter the ship; for you're cap'n, and crew as well, till I can move, God mend me! Our fate's in your hands for good or bad, and you may lay to that."
"Ay, ay," returned Ben; "but there aren't no hurry just yet a bit, quartermaster. There's time and to spare for me to see you snug. 'Tarn't as if we was bowling along under full sail. Why, we aren't making above a knot an hour at best, and the nearest land's a good mile off yet."
The boy lost no time, however, in making his companioncomfortable. Placing a prescribed dose of medicine, a dipper of water, and a softened biscuit within the quartermaster's easy reach, he returned to the deck and took up his post at the helm, heading the brig towards the lee side of the largest island. The rate at which theAurorawas drifting was less than he had calculated, and her distance from the land was greater. Yet slow though her progress was, the islands became more and more distinct with every half-hour. At first it had seemed that there were but three separate islands—a high, isolated rock, whose splintered outline with its many spires and pinnacles gave it the appearance of a great Gothic cathedral rising out of the blue sea on the larboard bow; to the southward, a smaller islet with a rounded, grassy top; and between these two sentinels, the long stretch of the main island with its dark, precipitous sides ascending to verdant slopes. But as the brig drew nearer still, many detached stacks and smaller rocks appeared, the frowning cliffs revealed their yawning caves and caverns, and thousands of tiny specks, that at first had looked like white pebbles in the rock, resolved themselves into roosting sea-birds.
Ben's alert eyes sought for an anchorage, and soon, near the western headland of the largest island, he caught a glimpse of sandy beach, and the gleaming white ribbon of a watercourse. The beach sloped down to a channel of calm sea that was sheltered behind the hill of a protecting island. The calm bay seemed to offer a likely refuge, and towards it Ben steered the brig. Another hour's slow sailing brought the little vessel into the safety of this roadstead, where she lost her headway and rode for the time secure on the swell of the clear green water.
Already Ben Clews had realised the impossibility of casting the heavy anchors. He was only a weak boy, and his weakness was greater than ordinary now, for he had but lately recovered from his own attack of the felldisease which had been fatal to theAurora'screw, and which now held the quartermaster helpless in his hammock. Ben had been the first in the ship's company to be laid up by the awful visitation. It had been caught from a distressed slave-ship which they had boarded off the Newfoundland Banks, and each of the brig's crew had taken it in his turn. Ben's attack had been only a slight one; but his face still told its tale, and his limbs were yet weak. But if he had not strength to move the anchor, he at least had the ingenuity to devise a workable substitute in the use of a pair of stout hawsers, which he paid out fore and aft, lashing them taut round convenient rocks, which he reached by the means of the ship's smallest boat.
In the afternoon theAuroralay so snug at her moorings that even the quartermaster, when he heard Ben's report, was forced to express satisfaction.
"You have done well, boy," said he, with an approving nod; "but now that we've fetched land," he added, fixing his bleared eyes on the lad's marred face, "what d'ye mean for to do? Tell me that! It don't seem to me, lookin' at the matter all round, as you might say, that we're any better off than we was before. We've got victuals enough to last us for months, I know; but barrin' the cannibal savages, you can't say as we're in anywise more fortunate than that chap Robisson Crusoe. We haven't saved theAurorayet, look you. You'd look queer if a gale was to spring up and her be smashed to pieces on them rocks you speak of, wouldn't you?"
"I was thinking we might manage to get a crew together," ventured Ben, somewhat downcast.
"A crew of auks and gannets, I suppose?" sneered the quartermaster.
"No," returned Ben; "I mean men, of course."
The quartermaster had been sitting up in his hammock to listen to the boy's account of how he had broughtthe brig into the bay, but now he leaned back and lay watching the play of the reflected sunlight on the timbers above him.
"I thought you said as how you had made out no signs of houses?" he pursued.
Ben admitted that he had discovered no dwelling-places on the land. For all he knew, indeed, the islands might never have known human inhabitants. Certainly no fields nor growing crops were visible from this west bay. "But," he added more hopefully, "I saw a dead sheep on the hillside when I rowed ashore with the bight of the hawser; and where there's sheep, d'ye see, there's pretty sure to be men."
"I'll allow that," agreed the quartermaster. "But even if so be you find your men, you can't force 'em to come aboard a plague ship."
Ben lapsed into silence at this sane remark; but presently, as if a bright thought had struck him, he said—
"Anyhow, I've a mind to make a trip in the dingey and see if I can find some people. From what I can make out, these here islands must belong to Great Britain somehow; and if there's any one living on 'em, why, they'll speak our own tongue and tell us where we are, and that's something."
So when he had cooked some food and prepared a meal for himself and his companion, he set off upon his voyage of discovery. He pulled the little boat round under the tremendous cliffs of the north coast of the island, but sought in vain for a landing-place or for a sign of habitation. Sea-birds were everywhere—on the ledges of the cliffs, and in the long dark caverns; they filled the sunlit air, they speckled the sea, and the outlying skerries were white with them. The cries they made were mingled in a strange musical harmony that was like the pealing of a church organ. The short shrill treble of the auks and puffins, the trumpet cry of the wild swans, themewing notes of the kittiwakes, the tenors of the divers and guillemots, and the deep bass croaking of the cormorants and ravens united in a prolonged symphony, and through it all was the profound roar of the sea from the throats of countless caves.
If Ben had been a naturalist, instead of an ill-informed ship's boy, he would have recognised this as a paradise of birds. But he only thought of his sick companion on board theAurora, and of how he might find human help. He rowed along the coast for some two miles without discovering even so much as a yard of beach. Once he came upon a floating log of driftwood—the remnant of some bygone shipwreck. Once, too, he heard what he took to be the bleating of a sheep, but there were no signs of human inhabitants. His little voyage was useless. So he went about, and returned disappointed towards the brig, resolving to make his next journey of exploration by land.
As he came again into the bay where theAuroralay at her moorings, he glanced up the little glen that led up between the hills. The land was bare of trees—a barren moor, with tufts of purple heather growing among the boulders on the higher ground, and level beds of grass marking the course of a fresh-water stream.
On the heights he saw the figure of a man.
For a moment Ben questioned within himself if it would be wise to prolong his absence from the brig and go up to the man and speak with him; but as the stranger was only a short distance away, he decided to go ashore and follow him. He brought the boat in to the beach, pulled her up a yard or two above the tide, and set off in pursuit.
When he reached the spot where he had first seen him, the man had disappeared. Ben was about to turn and walk back to the boat when a movement near him on the heather attracted his eye. A dog approached him, smelt at his heels, and then scampered away. Benfollowed the animal over the brow of the hill, and at this point he came within view of the farther end of the island, and a wide bay that opened out between two great rocky headlands. He stood for a time contemplating the scene, almost forgetting theAuroraand her sick quartermaster.
A voice at his elbow startled him. It was a woman's voice, strangely gentle and sweet.
"You are a stranger here," she said. "Where have you come from?"
Ben turned. At sight of his scarred face the womanshrank from him, and then the lad remembered the infection that was upon him.
"The woman shrank fromhim."
"The woman shrank from him."
"Stand back from me!" he cried. "I have been ill—it is the smallpox, as they call it—and all my shipmates are dead of it; all except one, who is now aboard the brig, across the hill there, in the bay." He stepped back as he spoke, and put her to the windward of him, so that the infection might not reach her.
"A ship!" she cried in agitation, clasping her hands. "At last! at last! And you can rescue me. You can carry me across to Scotland, and I shall no longer pine and languish on this barren, heaven-forsaken rock!"
The boy marvelled at her words, not understanding her meaning. He even wondered if she were in her right senses.
"How do you name these islands, ma'am?" he asked, as if to test her sanity.
She looked about her nervously, as though half afraid that the very birds should overhear her.
"This where we now are is called Hirta," she answered. "The rock to the north is Borrera. The one to the west is Soa. They are the St. Kilda islands, and they lie out some fourscore miles west from the mainland of Scotland."
As Ben listened to her voice, and contemplated her delicate hands and her refined face, he knew almost by instinct that, in spite of her coarse, homespun clothing, she was not of the common sort, but a woman of good birth. He stood silently watching her, wondering how it happened that a gentlewoman should be in such a place.
"From what land do you come?" she questioned. "You are English by your tongue."
"We are from Newfoundland," explained Ben. "But our ship is English—his Majesty's brig-of-warAurora. And you, ma'am, how do it happen as a lady like you is here?"
"I am a prisoner," she answered. "I am Rachel Chiesley. My husband has imprisoned me here because I knew his secrets—his secrets that would be the hanging of him if they were known to the King. He told people that I was dead, and they believed him. There was a public funeral, but the coffin was filled with stones, and I, who was supposed to be buried, was secretly carried off by his agents and brought over here to St. Kilda. I have been here for five long years, living among islanders who are little more than savages, and who understand no word that I speak. No ship have I seen during all that time. But now yours has come. God has sent you, and you will rescue me!"
Ben hesitated for an instant. Then he said awkwardly—
"It might be done, ma'am, if so be you could get some of your savages to make up a crew and work our ship home to Plymouth. We're short-handed, d'ye see. In fact, barring myself, and the quartermaster, what's lying ill with the smallpox, there aren't nobody aboard to trim the sails or do anything."
The marooned woman made a step towards the boy, but he waved her back.
"Don't come nigh me!" he cried, "'tis dangerous."
She shook her head. "I am not afraid," she said, "and I would risk any danger to get away from this horrible place." She glanced swiftly westward to where a vast cloud of sea-birds now darkened the sky. "Something has disturbed the gulls," she added.
At the same moment the report of a firearm sounded faintly from the distance.
"It must be the shipwrecked seamen," explained the lady. "Their ship was broken on the crags in the storm last week, and they have been living in one of the caves. They are evil-looking men, and the islanders fear them."
"The shot seemed to me to come from where theAurorais lying," cried Ben in alarm. "I'll engage 'tis the quartermaster signalling to me to go back." And giving a hasty seaman's salute, he abruptly left his strange companion, and ran across the moor in the direction of the brig. An unaccountable dread of some impending disaster oppressed him as he ran. From the top of the hill he saw that theAurorawas still riding safe at her moorings; but his quick eye discovered the figures of two men moving upon her quarter-deck. Who could they be? He made his way down to the beach. He glanced at the water's edge where he had left his boat, but the boat was gone.
III
"I'mnot by half so ill as Ben thinks," ruminated the quartermaster, as he lay in his lonely hammock pondering over the situation during Ben's absence. "I do believe I'm fit even now to take watch and watch about with him. 'Tis hard on the lad to leave him to do all the work, and me able to lend a hand." He glanced towards the open port, through which he could see a snowy-white seagull calmly floating on the green water. Then looking down at the deck below him, he added, "Blamed if I don't get out of this and see what I can do." He sat up, dangling his trembling legs over the side of his hammock; his toes were but a dozen inches from the flooring.
"I believe I can do it," he went on; and turning over, he gripped the hammock with his two hands, and swung himself slowly and cautiously down until his feet touched the boards.
His limbs were shaky, and his head seemed to swim; but stepping out, he succeeded in tottering across to the nearest bulkhead. Supporting himself by his outstretched hands, he went step by step along the gangway to the foot of the companion-way. Slowly he mounted the stairs,until the fresh sea-air played upon his bare head. He sat on the top stair for a long time, drinking in the sweet cool atmosphere, and looking up into the blue sky and its sailing white clouds.
"Seems to me I'd best step aft to the cap'n's room," he muttered to himself. "'Tis no place for the likes o' me to enter, certainly; but being as Ben and me are in charge of the brig, why, 'tis no court-martial matter. Nay, now I come to think of it, 'tis my duty to go in." And rising with difficulty to his feet, he staggered aft and boldly but respectfully entered.
The first thing that caught his eye was the captain's silver ink-pot on the table; then it was the mingled red and blue folds of the Union Jack lying across the dead body of the captain in the inner sleeping-room.
"Good boy, Ben," he said. "You haven't forgot what's due to a king's officer. You and me'll have to act the parson soon, too, if we can lay our hands on a prayer-book. Mayhap you know the words without the book; you must ha' heard 'em pretty often lately. But I don't know 'em, except 'We therefore commit his body to the deep until the sea shall give up her dead——'"
An unexpected sound startled the quartermaster in his ruminations. It was a man's gruff voice, and it came from outside, below the brig's counter.
"I don't know what you bullies think," it said, "but it looks to me as if the crew'd all gone off on a holiday. Pull round to the gangway ladder, Alick, and let's get aboard of her. Crew or no crew, King's ship or merchantman, I'm going to take her, and the Jolly Roger shall fly at her gaff peak before——"
The quartermaster did not hear what limit of time the man allowed himself for the accomplishment of his daring proposal; but a thrill of terror ran through him as he realised what manner of men these were.
"God! Where is Ben?" he cried, and he lookedround the cabin for some weapon with which to defend himself and the ship. The captain's pistols were in their rack. With what speed his bodily weakness allowed him, he went to them and took a pair of them down. They were already loaded.
"It's one sick man against a boatload of pirates!" he said. "But, God helping me, they shall not take the ship while I'm alive!" As he passed to the door he caught sight of the reflection of his own face in the captain's mirror, and started back appalled. But the remembrance of the scourge that had killed off theAurora'scompany leapt to his mind. "We've got at least one strong ally, me and the King," he cried, as he staggered out to the doorway under the poop. He stood there, steadying himself with one foot on the companion-ladder, not venturing to go nearer to the open gangway, where already he could hear the talk of the strangers on the ladder as they climbed up from their boat.
The quartermaster listened intently, trembling the while.
"Tumble up!" cried the one in authority. "Make for the quarter-deck."
A man sprang in upon the deck—a tall, evil-looking man, with a bushy black beard and bedraggled clothing, a naked cutlass in his hand. He was followed by three others, and then a fifth. The fifth man was young and handsome, and his blue coat was adorned with tarnished gold braid. The five of them advanced towards the poop. The quartermaster levelled his pistol at their bodies.
"Stand back!" he commanded. "Who are you? and what is your business on this ship? 'Tis King George's ship, look you, and——"
"Shut your ugly face!" cried the tall black-bearded man, with an oath.
The quartermaster fired his two pistols, and the man fell. His four companions hesitated, staring at the quartermaster'sdisease-scarred countenance. None of them carried firearms; or if they did so, they were without ammunition. Their leader, the youngest of the band, stepped forward, sword in hand. The quartermaster, already exhausted, retreated into the cabin, banging to and bolting the door.
"The quartermaster fired his two pistols, and the man fell.
"The quartermaster fired his two pistols,and the man fell."
The pirates (for such he was now assured that they were) went up to the poop-deck, and from this point of vantage surveyed the ship.
"You're right, Goff," said one of them, addressing the leader. "The craft's got no crew—none, at least, except that strawberry-faced lubber that has shot poor Tom."
"It seems so, Alick," returned Goff. "But some of 'em must have gone ashore in the boat. They'll have gone across to St. Kilda village. One of you had better pull ashore to the cave and bring off our men while there's time. Phillips, go you. But you might take a bigger boat than the one we found. There's plenty of them, see. Lend a hand there, Flett, and you, Dewson, and launch that starboard boat. Well," he continued speaking to the man named Alick, "she's a real goddess, thisAurora. Not very clean about the decks, 'tis true, but well found, in a double sense, eh? I wonder how she came in here? She doesn't seem to have suffered much in the gale that was so fatal to our poor ship. But 'tis a mystery how she came to be so short-handed. Why, they've not even anchored her!"
He strode towards the men who were launching the boat, and gave them some directions, while Alick stepped to the skylight, and leaning over it, peered down into the cabin where the quartermaster had temporarily entrenched himself.
It was at this moment that Ben Clews came down to the beach and discovered that the brig's boat had disappeared. From behind the rock near which he had left it, he looked over at theAurorain terrified amazement.Who were these men that were aboard of her? And what was the meaning of the shot that he had heard? Surely there was something wrong! He blamed himself now for having left the brig. While he watched, he saw a boat put out from her, with one man at the oars, and his heart leapt with hope at the thought that it was coming shoreward for himself. He waved his hand; but the rower did not see, or disregarded, his signal, and pulled with steady, measured stroke through the sound in the direction of the western headland of the bay, soon to be lost to sight beyond the cliffs, where the homing sea-birds screamed.
Ben noted the drift of the current, and calculated the distance that divided him from the brig. The vessel's wide square stern was towards him, and from over her taffrail the stout hawser was stretched to the isolated rock round which he had bound it. The bight of the rope dipped into the water, making a rippled track as the brig rose and fell on the ocean swell. The rock was but a dozen yards away from him, separated from him by a deep channel of calm sea. Ben was not a great swimmer, but he thought he could cross those dozen yards; and reaching the rock, he would then be able to gain the ship, dragging himself hand over hand along the hawser. He pulled off his heavy sea-boots and left them on the shingle, waded breast deep into the sea, and throwing himself forward, struck out. The current was sweeping strong, but he had allowed for its carrying him out of the straight course. After a tough struggle, he came within a few feet of the rock. The tide was taking him past it, but he grabbed at a tangle of seaweed, caught it, and dragged himself into safety.
He rested for many minutes on the rock, shivering. Then he climbed up to the hawser and prepared for the final battle. With hands and legs at work, he slipped down the incline of the rope until his body was again inthe water. Hand over hand he pulled himself along. The upward ascent was more difficult, for his limbs were already tired and sore. Very soon he found that the task of swarming up to the brig's rail was impossible. Besides, he was not sure that the strange men were not still on the quarter-deck. So he dropped once again into the sea, and swam round to theAurora'slarboard side, where the small boat was dragging at her painter at the foot of the gangway ladder.
Exhausted and breathing heavily, he at last caught at a rung of the ladder, and climbed up a few steps. When he had rested and recovered his free breathing, he mounted farther, and peeped in through the open gangway. No one was in sight. Yet, what was that lying on the main deck? He shuddered as his eyes rested on the prostrate form of the huge black-bearded man, and the wet crimson stain that lay about it, and converged in two thin lines that ended at the scupper.
At sight of the dead man the boy drew back in horror. Murder had been committed, and he had not the courage to enter upon the deck. As he turned to go down the ladder a few steps, he looked towards the shore and saw the woman Rachel Chiesley standing there at the water's edge, waving her hand in signal to the ship. Ben descended and quietly stepped into the boat. No one in the brig saw him as he rowed away to where the woman waited.
"Take me with you!" she implored, as the boat's keel grounded on the shingle. "In mercy take me away in your ship!"
Ben bade her get into the dingey, and she obeyed. He felt that, with a human companion to encourage him, he could now go on board the brig with all his lost boldness. Neither spoke as the little craft was pulled back to the vessel's side. When he had secured the boat he got out and climbed the ladder, signing to the woman to follow.He crept on board, rose to his feet, and sped forward and down the stairs to the lower deck. At the foot of the stairs he paused until Rachel Chiesley joined him; and there he pointed towards the open door of a tiny dark cabin, telling her to enter and remain in there until he should see that all was safe on board.
His heart seemed to cease its beating when, on going into the compartment where he had left the quartermaster, he discovered that the sick man's hammock was empty. What had happened? What was to be done?
He saw a cup of rum and water that the quartermaster had left untouched in the forenoon on the top of a chest. He drank some and it revived him. Leaving the cabin, he made his way through a dark passage along the lower deck to the gunner's storeroom; and there he provided himself with a cutlass, a brace of small pistols, a full powder-flask, and a handful of shot. He carefully charged the pistols, and when he was thus armed he returned to the main-deck and stole aft to the poop. The door of the captain's quarters was open now, and the splintered lock told its own tale. Voices came from within. Ben listened, crouching down on his hands and knees.
"You'd best come out of there, Mr. Strawberry-face," Goff was saying, "unless you want us to break in the door and drag you out. We'll not harm you. Come out and have a drink with us. 'Tis charming brandy, this." There was a clink of glasses. "Come," he added persuasively. "Join us in a glass, and tell us your yarn. We can get nothing from this silent shipmate of yours in the bunk here." Ben knew that the man was referring to the dead surgeon. "Twas the King's ship, you say. You may well say 'was'; for 'tis his no longer, but mine! mine! And I mean to set sail and be off on a glorious cruise so soon as my men come aboard. We'll run up the Jolly Roger and scour the seas, and send Jimmy Speeding and his Firebrands to the bottom of thePentland Firth to play with the mermaids. Won't we, Alick?"
"That we will," gurgled Alick into the mouth of his glass of brandy. "And Strawberry-face shall be our master-gunner, and share in the swag with the rest of us."
The quartermaster's voice came faintly from within the captain's sleeping-room.
"I'll see you all hanged first!" he growled with a fierce seaman's oath. "Wait till my mates come aboard. They'll let you know what it means to trespass on a king's ship."
"Mates?" cried Goff with a short laugh. "There can't be many of 'em if they all went ashore in the cockleshell we found on the beach!"
Ben knew now what these men were; knew, too, that the quartermaster was still alive and game. He crept out from his place of concealment, stole up to the quarter-deck, climbed over the rail, and with the help of a rope lowered himself down to the port-hole of the room in which the quartermaster had ensconced himself. The port-hole was open. He saw the quartermaster sitting on the edge of the dead captain's bunk with a pistol gripped in each hand.
"I'm here, quartermaster," whispered Ben. "Come to the port-hole."
"Thank God!" cried the quartermaster. And without preface or questioning he added in a whisper, "You see what these rats of pirates are up to. They're in possession, as you might say, and there's more of 'em coming. But we've got to save the brig, Ben, come what may. Listen! Have you got your pistols?" Ben nodded. "Right. Well, crawl round to the poop door. Stay there till you hear me cough. Then run in and let fly at 'em. Pick your men and be smart. I'll do the same. When we've killed 'em—the four of 'em—oneof the carronades'll help us to keep the others from boarding us, d'ye see?"
"I understand," returned Ben, and he moved quietly away to obey his instructions.
Many minutes passed before he heard the quartermaster's signal. From where he crouched in the shadow of the passage he saw the inner door of the captain's bedroom flung open. A moment afterwards four shots were fired, and three of the pirates fell. The fourth, Goff himself, had seen the quartermaster's uplifted pistols. One was levelled at himself. With the quickness of thought he snatched his dagger from its sheath and dexterously hurled it across the room. The flashing weapon turned in its flight and the point plunged into the quartermaster's bared throat. The pistol-shot, intended for Goff, buried itself in a cross-beam of the cabin ceiling.
Ben Clews and the pirate leader were now alone together. Ben gripped his cutlass and rushed forward in a desperate charge, but tripping over the body of one of the two men he himself had shot dead, he gave a false thrust. His cutlass was snatched from his grip by the pirate's left hand, while at the same instant a full brandy bottle, wielded as a bludgeon, came down upon his head with a blow that stunned him.
IV
WhenBen returned to consciousness he still lay upon the cabin floor. The blood from cuts made by the broken glass was dry upon his face. He heard the thud of waves against the brig's quarter. The vessel was heeling over, pitching as she sailed under a fresh breeze upon the open sea. From the deck above him came the sound of feet, the splash of water, and the scrubbingof holystones. A shaft of sunlight came in through the stern windows, shedding light about the cabin. The door of the captain's inner room was open; the Union Jack coverlet was gone, and the bed was vacant. The surgeon's body and the bodies of the dead quartermaster and the three pirates had also been removed. On the table a white cloth was laid, and upon it were the remains of a meal. It was evident that the pirates were making themselves thoroughly at home, and that they had taken possession of the brig in good earnest.
Ben anxiously looked at the great iron-bound chest in which, as he knew, there had been inclosed certain State documents of greatest importance to the Government. The iron bands and the hinges had been tampered with, but they had withstood the assault, and the chest and its precious contents were still safe.
Some one entered the cabin. It was John Goff. He had apparently been helping himself to the captain's wardrobe, for he was now attired in the full naval costume of the time.
"So ho! my lad," said he, seeing that Ben had recovered. "You have come back to your senses, eh? That's good. Now you can tell me all about this ship. Where was she bound for?"
"Plymouth," answered Ben. "From St. John's. Newfoundland." And then, in response to further questioning, the boy told the whole history of the voyage, omitting only such facts as he deemed too sacred to betray. And when he had come to the end of the story the pirate thanked him, said he was a good lad, and that he should now be rated as a junior quarter-deck officer. Ben did not demur to this, but while seeming to agree to the proposal, resolved in his mind still to do what lay in his power to retake the brig and bring her into an English port. And for the days that followed he performed such duties as were expected of him, alwaysremembering that he was a servant of the King, and that the safety of theAuroranow depended solely upon his own life and his own integrity.
"You have come back to your senses, eh?"
"You have come back to your senses, eh?"
As soon as he was at liberty to move unsuspected about the ship, he made his way to the little cabin where he had left Rachel Chiesley. She had not yet been discovered by Goff or his men. Ben conducted her to a yet safer hiding-place in the ship where she could remain secure from the pirates; and every morning the lad secretly brought her food and attended to her wants. On one occasion when he was with her she told him more of her history, and he learned that Rachel Chiesley was but the name of her girlhood, and that her title now wasLady Grange. Her husband was a notorious Jacobite, and it was because she had threatened to betray an evil plot which he was hatching that he had cruelly marooned her on the sea-girt rock of St. Kilda. This knowledge made Ben glad that he had chanced thus far to be of service to her, and for her sake, as well as for the sake of preserving the precious State documents that were in the cabin, he prayed that he might be able at last to save the ship.
He learned by degrees that it was Goff's intention to keep the brig beating about in the open sea until his crew of eleven men should have time so to disguise the vessel, by altering her rig and painting out her white stripe, that no one might recognise her again. This plan was helped by the fact that the brig was amply provisioned and was in good seaworthy trim. But the work progressed slowly, and ten days had gone by before Goff deemed it expedient to make a direct course and steer for the Orkneys.
Ben had been watching the crew day by day, little doubting that sooner or later the plague of which so many of his messmates had died would again assert itself. Already he observed that some of the men were beginning to move languidly and to look haggard and sick. On the twelfth day one of them took to his hammock. In the evening of the same day two others fell ill. Bold and careless of danger though these pirates were when it was a question of waylaying a merchant ship or engaging in an action with a vessel of war, they were one and all panic-stricken in contemplation of smallpox.
On the thirteenth day theAurorawas again within sight of the St. Kilda islands, giving them, however, a wide berth. Late in the evening Ben was in the watch on deck, when he espied a sail on the starboard bow. He did not report it, although it was the first that he had seen for many weeks. Instead, he strolled to the flaglocker, took out a white ensign, and boldly ran it up, reversed, to the gaff peak. The signal of distress was answered by the approaching vessel. Then Ben hauled down his flag, lest Goff, coming up on deck, should see it and guess its meaning. So far, none but the man at the helm had observed this action, and he, as it chanced, was so far advanced in the sickness that he minded nothing. Ben glanced into his face.
"Y'are looking sick, Allen," said he. "Give me the tiller for a spell, and go you below."
The man relinquished it willingly enough, and Ben, now alone on deck, steered the brig down upon the on-coming stranger. He had a brace of loaded pistols in his belt, prepared to fire upon Goff if he should appear from below and interfere.
When the two vessels drew nearer, Ben recognised, to his joy, that the stranger was a man-of-war's cutter. He waited until they drew within hailing distance of each other, then suddenly put over the helm, throwing the brig's sails aback. She lost her headway, and the cutter dropped alongside.
"Ahoy, there!" cried the young lieutenant from her bow. "What ship are you?"
Ben answered at the fullest pitch of his voice—
"His Majesty's brigAurora. For the love of God stand by us!"
"The very craft we're in search of," returned Captain Speeding's messenger. "Throw us a line, and I'll come aboard you!"
Ben flung a coil of rope; but before he could see whether or not it had been caught, John Goff had run up on deck, furious and cursing.
"You young traitor!" he cried, seeing what was going on. "What are you up to?"
"I'm up to saving his Majesty's ship," coolly returned Ben, levelling his pistol at the pirate. "Stand back, JohnGoff, or you're a dead man!" For full ten minutes he kept the man at bay. Perhaps he could not have done so if Goff had not been in the first stage of the sickness and too languid to act the bully. Once, indeed, Goff made a step forward as if with the intention of wresting the weapon from the boy's hand. Ben altered his aim a few inches and pulled the trigger. The shot entered Goff's shoulder. Ben took out his other pistol.
At this juncture the cutter's lieutenant leapt upon the brig's bulwarks, and in another moment appeared on the quarter-deck.
Lowering his weapon, Ben turned and saluted him. The lieutenant, however, had caught sight of the pirate and recognised him.
"Goff!" he cried.
"Ay, Goff," returned the pirate with meek submission. "You've got me at last, Master Firebrand—thanks to this meddlesome swab. I suppose I must surrender. I wouldn't do so if 'twere not that my men are all ill. This blessed craft's plague-stricken, Mr. Moreland. You'd best take care of your crew. Work the brig into Stromness, or any other handy port—even into Execution Dock if you will. I'll not interfere. I haven't the strength."
How Lieutenant Moreland succeeded in taking theAurorainto Stromness without endangering the health of his men; how the brig was there disinfected, remanned, and sent home to Plymouth, need not here be told. Lady Grange found that her evil husband had died a week before the ship brought her home, and she took possession of his estates, none questioning her rights; and she proved a good friend to Ben Clews, who was recompensed for his conduct by promotion to the quarter-deck, and as midshipman, lieutenant, and finally captain, served in the King's navy through war and through peace for many, many years, and always with honour.
CHAPTER I
"Ifthey're a-goin' to kill me, why don't they look sharp and git it over? IfI'ad the killin' o'them, I'd be quick enough about it, I knows that!"
So growled a solitary prisoner in the "black-hole" of a British outpost in Upper Bengal one hot May morning in 1803.
Though dark compared with the blistering glare outside, the cell was light enough to show its tenant in all his squalid and savage disorder. With his clothes almost torn from his back, his face smeared with dust and blood, and a scowl of sullen desperation on his hard, low-browed, ruffianly features, he looked like what too many of the Company's soldiers were, in days when it drew its recruits chiefly from the prison and the hulks, and often enough from the gallows itself.
His mouth was parched with thirst (for no one had thought of bringing him water), his bruised limbs were all one pain, his bound hands kept him from defending himself against the flies that swarmed around his wounded face, hardly to be scared away by incessant jerkings of his aching head. Well, what did it all matter? He would soon be past pain and thirst, and feeling of any kind; or,if there reallywasanything after that—well, God couldn't be harder on him than the colonel had been, anyhow.
They would shoot him, of course; for he knew what a charge of "attempting to stir up mutiny" meant at a time when England's half-formed power in the East stood like a rock amid a thousand roaring waves, with all India raging around it. Well, let them! he would at least die game, and spite "Old Blue-Beard," who would want to see him flinch.
Just then a clear, childish voice was heard outside—the voice of the colonel's only child, a bright little lad of seven, who was the pet of the whole barrack, and even more loved (if such a thing could be) than his father was hated.
"Oh, please let me in; Idowant to see poor Bob!"
"Can't, lovey, can't indeed," replied the sentry's deep tones; "it's yer par's orders as no one's to pass in. I'd let yer in if I could, I would indeed; but orders is orders, you know."
And the voices died away.
The doomed man's face softened for a moment into such a look as he might have worn long ago, when he was a child himself.
"He thought o' me, then, the little 'un did!" he muttered. "Bless his 'art for a kind little chap!"
Meanwhile his comrades outside, with a fellow-soldier's life swaying in the balance, were laughing loudly at the tricks of a native juggler, who had begged and obtained leave to enter the barrack-yard.
And why not? The same sudden and violent death might be their own lot any day. Ignorant, debauched, reckless, they, like too many of those who had cemented with their blood the foundations of Britain's Eastern empire, found their chief enjoyment in the mad whirl ofbattle, and their chief ambition to be able to "git drunk and forget it all!"
The juggler, who was the centre of attraction, was a very remarkable-looking man, not at all like the average of his class. His tall, sinewy frame had a tiger-like elasticity in every movement, and through the fawning servility of his manner broke ever and anon a flash of something bolder and fiercer, which would have betrayed to any keen observer that he was not what he seemed.
But no such observer was to be found among the reckless soldiers, who were firmly convinced (like most "true Britons" of that age) that no one who had not had the luck to be born an Englishman could possess either courage or any other virtue—a theory to which the great Mahratta war of 1803 was just about to give the lie in a very startling way.
The juggler began by exhibiting some of the familiar feats that have amused India in all ages, including the swallowing of a sword and the famous "mango trick," which consisted in planting a mango-seed in a tiny basket of earth and then covering it with a cloth, the withdrawal of which a moment later showed the first green shoot already springing up. At the second lifting of the cloth, this shoot was seen to have grown into a miniature tree, on which, when uncovered once more, hung a tiny fruit, which the conjurer plucked and gave to one of the spectators to eat, as a proof that it was genuine.
Then the juggler turned to the nearest of the lookers-on, and said—
"Hey, Inglis sojeer! s'pose me give you one rupee, what you do?"
"Why, I'd take it, o' course," cried the soldier, with a loud laugh at the absurdity of such a question, hoarsely echoed by all the rest.
The other held out a silver coin, upon which the soldier's strong hand closed eagerly; but he opened itagain instantly with a start and an exclamation of disgust, and out fell a large, fat, wriggling worm, amid a fresh roar of laughter from his comrades.
Then the conjurer stepped forth into the midst, and called out—
"Look, see! you sojeer say you all plenty brave men."
"Say we are?" echoed a soldier angrily; "why, do you mean for to say as weain't, you lyin', coffee-coloured thief?"
"No, no, not speak one such word!" said the Hindu humbly. "Inglis man no fear nothing, mesabbee(know) plenty well. S'pose Inglis sojeer hold out hand, me put lemon on sojeer hand; cut lemon in half wid sword. Who come first?"
But no one seemed in any haste to do so; for, bold as they were, such a challenge made even these reckless men look grave.
Though they had all heard of this feat, none of them had ever seen it done; and to lay one's bare hand beneath a sword-stroke that would certainly hew it off if the juggler happened to miss the lemon (and very possibly whether he did or not), was a matter about which the boldest man might well think twice.
"What? are ye all afeared?" cried a tall, sturdy, rather good-looking young fellow, with a markedly reckless and defiant air, as he shouldered his way to the front. "Well, no man shan't ever say as Tom Tuffen showed the white feather afore a blackamoor! Go ahead, old 'un, 'ere'smy'and to work on; but mind, if yer cuts it off, I'll kill yer with t'other 'and afore ye can sing out 'Help!'"
The gleam of stern joy that shone for a moment in the seeming juggler's keen, black eyes, was strangely out of keeping with his cringing manner; and there was a perceptible change in his tone as he said, while putting back the soldier's extended right hand—
"That hand no good—cut thumb off, try wid him—give other."