MARJORI E BY JUSTIN HUNTLY M C CARTHY MARJORIE L SL SL BL BL BL J MARJORIE BY [Justin Huntly McCarthy */" IF I WERE KING " _ Ob Marjorie, my world 1 s delight Tour yellow hair is angel-bright, Tour eyes are angel-blue. I thought, and think, the sweetest sight Between the morning and the night Is just the sight of you. R. H. RUSSELL 1903 is COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY R. H. RUSSELL First Impression, March, 1903 Co ANTHONY HOPE 2137183 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. MY APOLOGY i II. LANCELOT AMBER 7 III. THE ALEHOUSE BY THE RIVER .... 15 IV. A MAID CALLED BARBARA 29 V. LANCELOT LEAVES 38 VI. THE GENTLEMAN IN BLUE 54 VII. CAPTAIN MARMADUKE'S PLAN .... 62 VIII. THE COMPANY AT THE NOBLE ROSE . 68 IX. THE TALK IN THE DOLPHIN .... 72 X. SHE COMES DOWN THE STAIRS . . . 81 XL A FEAST OF THE GODS 87 XII. MR. DAVIES'S GIFTS 91 XIII. To THE SEA , . . . 100 ' XIV. THE SEA LIFE 105 XV. UTOPIA Ho! 113 XVI. I MAKE A DISCOVERY ... 117 vii CONTENTS CHAPTER f AGE XVII. A VISITATION . . . . . * . 126 XVIII. THE NIGHT AND MORNING . .134 XIX. How SOME OF us GOT TO THE ISLAND 145 XX. . A BAD NIGHT 155 XXL RAFTS . ... 163 XXII. WE LOSE CORNELYS JENSEN . , .168 XXIII. WE GET TO THE ISLAND . . 8 -179 XXIV. FAIR ISLAND . 190 XXV. THE STORY FROM THE SEA . . . 205 XXVI. THE BUSINESS BEGINS . . .214 XXVII. AN ILL TALE . 232 XXVIII. WE DEFY JENSEN 241 XXIX. THE ATTACK AT LAST ..... 249 XXX. OUR FLAG COMES DOWN . . . .261 XXXI. A PIECE OF DIPLOMACY ..<,.. 268 XXXII. THE SEA GIVES UP ITS QUICK . . 280 XXXIII. THE LAST OF THE SHIP .... 290 vm MARJORIE CHAPTER I MY APOLOGY WHAT I have written may seem to some, who have never tossed an hour on salt water, nor, indeed, tramped far afield on dry land, to be astounding, and well-nigh beyond belief. But it is all true none the less, though I found it easier to live through than to set down. I believe that nothing is harder than to tell a plain tale plainly and with precision. Twenty times since I began this narrative I have damned ink and paper heartily after the swearing fashion of the sea, and have wished myself back again in my perils rather than have to write about them. I was born in Sendennis, in Sussex, and my earli- est memories are full of the sound and colour and smell of the sea. It was above all things my par- ents' wish that I should live a landsman's life. But l MARJORIE I was mad for the sea from the first days that I can call to mind. My parents were people of substance in a way did well with a mercer's shop in the Main Street, and were much looked up to by their neighbours. My mother always would have it that I came through my father of gentle lineage. Indeed, the name I bore, the name of Crowninshield, was not the kind of name that one associates usually with a mercer's business and with the path in life along which my father and mother walked with content. There certainly had been old families of Crownin- shields in Sussex and elsewhere, and some of them had bustled in the big wars. There may be plenty of Crowninshields still left for aught I know or care, for I never troubled my head much about my possible ancestors who carried on a field gules an Eastern crown or. I may confess, however, that in later years, when my fortune had bettered, I as- sumed those armes parlantes, if only as a brave device wherewith to seal a letter. Anyway, Crown- inshield is my name, with Raphael prefixed, a name my mother fell upon in conning her Bible for a holiname for me. So, if my arms are but canting heraldry, I carry the name of an archangel to bet- ter them. a MY APOLOGY I was an only son, and my parents spoilt me. They had some fancy in their heads that I was a weakling, and needed care, though I had the strength of a colt and the health a sea-coast lad should have, so they did not send me to a school. Yet, because they set a store by book-learning which may have its uses, though it never charmed me I had some schooling at home in reading, writing, and ciphering. My father sought to in- stil into me an admiration for the dignity of trade, because he wished me to become a merchant in time, with mayhap the Mayoralty in perspective. I liked the shop when I was little, and thought it a famous place to play in, lurking down behind its dark counter as in a robbers' den, and seeing through the open door of the parlour at the back of the shop my mother knitting at her window and the green trees of the garden. I liked, too, the folds of sober cloth and coloured prints, and the faces of folk when they came in to buy or cheapen. Even the jangle of the bell that clattered at the shop door when we put it to at meal times pleased my ears, and has sounded there many times since and softly in places thousands of miles away from the Main Street. I do not know how or why, but the ding-clang of that bell always stirred strange fan- 3 MARJORIE cies in my mind, and strange things appeared quite possible. Whenever the bell went tinkle I began to wonder who it was outside, and whether by chance they wanted me, and what they might want of me. But the caller was never better than some neighbour, who needed a button or a needle. The great event of my childhood was my father's gift to me of an English version of Mon- sieur Galland's book, 'The Arabian Nights' En- tertainments.' Then the tinkle of the shop bell as- sumed a new significance. Might not Haroun al Raschid himself, with Giafar, his vizier, and Mes- rour, his man, follow its cracked summons, or some terrible withered creature whom I, and I only, knew to be a genie in disguise, come in to catch me by the shoulder and sink with me through the floor ? Those were delicious terrors. But what I most learnt from that book was an unconquerable love for travel and an unconquerable stretching to the sea. When I read in my book of Sinbad and his Seven Voyages I would think of the sea that lay so near me, and wish that I were waiting for a wind in a boat with painted hull and sails like snow and my name somewhere in great gold letters. I would wander down to the quays and watch the shipping and the seamen, and wonder whence they came and 4 MY APOLOGY where they went, and if any one of them had a roc's egg on board. I was very free for a child in those days, for my parents, still fretting on my delicacy, rarely crossed me; and, indeed, I was tame enough, partly from keeping such quiet, and well content to be by myself for the hour together. But, when I had lived in this wise until I was nearly fifteen, my father and my mother agreed that I needed more book-learning; and, since they were still loath to send me to school, they thought of Mr. Davies, the bookseller, of Cliff Street. He was a man of learning. His business was steady. He had leisure, and was never pressed for a penny, or even for a guinea. It was agreed that I should go every day for a couple of afternoon hours, to sit with him and ply my book, and become a famous scholar. Poor Mr. Davies! he never got his will of me in that way, and yet he bore me no grudge, though it filled him with disappointment at first. There was a vast deal of importance for me, though I did not dream it at the time, about my going to take my lessons of Mr. Davies, of Cliff Street. For if I had not gone I should never have got that tincture of Latin which still clings to me, and which a world of winds and waters has not blown or washed from my wits; nor, which is far 5 MARJORIE more important, should I ever have chanced upon Lancelot Amber; and if I had not chanced upon Lancelot Amber I should have lost the best friend man ever had in this world, and missed seeing the world's fairest woman. CHAPTER II LANCELOT AMBER MR. DA VIES was a wisp of a man, with a taste for snuff and for snuff-coloured garments, and for books in snuffy bindings. His book-shop in Cliff Street was a dingy place enough, with a smell of leather and paste about it, and if you stirred a book you brought enough snuffy dust into the air to make you sneeze for ten minutes. But his own room, which was above the shop, was blithe enough, and it was there I had my lessons. Mr. Davies kept a piping bullfinch in it, and a linnet, and there was a little window garden on the sill, where tulips bloomed in their season, and under a glass case there was a plaster model of the Arch of Titus in Rome, of which he was exceedingly proud, and which I thought very pretty, and at one time longed to have. Mr. Davies was a smooth and decent scholar, and when he was dreamy he would shove his scratch back from his forehead and shut his eyes and recite 7 MARJORIE Homer or Virgil by the page together, while Lance- lot and I listened open-mouthed, and I wondered what pleasure he got out of all that rigmarole. The heroes of Homer and of Virgil seemed to me very bloodless, boneless creatures after my kings and wizards out of Mr. Galland's book; even Ulysses, who was a thrifty, shifty fellow enough, with some touch of the sea-captain in him, was not a patch upon my hero, Sindbad of Bagdad, from whose tale I believe the Greek fellow stole half his fancies, and those the better half. I remember still clearly the very first afternoon when I presented myself at Mr. Davies's shop in Cliff Street. He told me I was very welcome, as- sured me that on that day I crossed the threshold of the Muses' Temple, shook me warmly by the hand, and then, all of a sudden, as if recollecting himself, told me to greet my class-fellow. A lad of about mine own age came from the window and held out his hand, and the lad was Lancelot Amber. I have seen many gracious sights in my time, but only one so gracious as that sudden flash of Lance- lot Amber upon my boyish vision. As he came for- ward with the afternoon sunlight strong upon him he looked like some militant saint. There is a St. George in our church, and there is a St. Michael 8 LANCELOT AMBER too, both splendid in coat-armour and terrible with swords, but neither of them has ever seemed to me half so heroic or half so saintly as the boy Lancelot did that morning in Mr. Davies's parlour. He was tall of his years, with fair hair curling about his head as I have since seen hair curling in some of the old Pagan statue-work. The boy came forward and shook hands with me in friendly fashion, with a friend's grip of the fingers. I gave him the squeeze again, and we both stood for a moment looking at each other silently, as dogs over-eye one another on a first meeting. How little it entered into either of our brains that moment of the times that we should stand together, and the places and the trials and perils that we should endure together. We were only two lads standing there in a snug first-floor room, where yel- low parrots sprawled on the painted wall, and a mild-mannered gentleman with a russet wig mo- tioned us to sit down. Our life ran in current for long enough. We sat together at Mr. Davies's feet I am speaking metaphorically, for in reality we sat opposite to him and we thumbed our Cordery and our Nepos together, and made such progress as our natures and our application permitted. Mine, to be hon- 9 MARJORIE est, was little enough, for I hated my grammar cordially. Lancelot was not like me in this, any more than in bodily favour; he was keen of wit and quick of memory; he was quick in learning, yet as modest as he was clever, for he never sought in any way to lord it over me because I, poor dunce, was not of such nimble parts as himself. It was the hardest task in the world for me to keep my eyes and my fancy upon the pages of my book. My eyes were always straying from the print, first to the painted parrots on the walls, and then, by natural succession, to the window. Once there, my fancy would put on free wings, and my thoughts would stray joyously off among the salt marshes, where the pools shone in the sunlight and a sweet air blew. Or I would stand upon the downs and look along the curve of cliffs, and note the ships sailing round the promontory, and the flashes of the sea beyond, and feel in fancy the breeze blow- ing through my hair, and puffing away all the non- sense I had been poring over in the room. At such times I would quite forget myself, and sit staring into vacancy, till Mr. Davies, lifting his nose from his volume, would note my absence and call on me by name, and thump his desk, and startle xo LANCELOT AMBER me with some question on the matter we were sup- posed to have in hand. A mighty matter, truly, the name of some emperor or the date of some cam- paign matter infinitely less real than the name of the ship that was leaving the harbour or the sun- light on the incoming sail. And I would answer at random and amiss, and earn reproof. Yet there were things which I knew well enough, too, and could have given him shrewd and precise answers concerning them. Lancelot Amber was never much my companion away from Mr. Davies's room. His father, whose name he perpetuated, had been a simple, gentle gen- tleman and scholar who had married, as one of his kin counted it, beneath him, because he had mar- ried the woman he loved. The woman he loved was indeed of humble birth, but she made him a fair wife and a good, and she bore him two chil- dren, boy Lancelot and girl Marjorie, and died for the life of the lass. Her death, so I learned, was the doom of Lancelot Amber the elder, and there were two babes left in the wood of the world, with, like the children in the ballad, such claims upon two uncles as blood might urge and pity supple- ment. These two uncles, as Lancelot imagined them to me, were men of vastly different stuff and II MARJORIE spirit, as you may sometimes find such flaming con- trasts in families. The elder, Marmaduke Amber, used the sea, and was, it seems, as fine a florid piece of sea flesh as an island's king could wish to wel- come. His brother, Nathaniel, had been a city merchant, piling up moneys in the Levant trade, and now lived in a fine house out in the swelling country beyond Sendennis, with a fine sea-view. Him I had seen once or twice; a lean monkey creature with a wrinkled walnut of a face and bright, unkind eyes. He was all for leaving the boy of three and the girl of two to the small mercies of some charity school, but the mariner brother gath- ered the two forlornlings to his great heart, and with him they had lived and thriven ever since. Now it seems Captain Marmaduke was on a voyage to the Bermudas and taking the maid with him, while the boy, to better his schooling and strengthen his body with sea air, was sent to Sendennis to stay with his other uncle, Nathaniel Amber, now, to all appearance, reconciled to the existence of his young relative. This uncle, as I gathered, did not at first approve overmuch of Lancelot taking lessons in common with a single mercer's son, but Mr. Davies, I believe, spoke so well of me that the arrangement was allowed to hold. 12 LANCELOT AMBER But after lesson hours were done Lancelot had always to go back to his uncle's, and though I walked part of the way, or all the way, with him most days of the week, I was never bidden inside those doors. Lancelot told me that he had more than once besought leave to bring me in, but that the old gentleman was obdurate. So, save in those hours of study in the parrot-papered room, I saw but little of Lancelot. I never expected to be asked inside the doors of the great house where Lancelot's days were passed, and I did not feel any injustice in the mat- ter. I was only a mercer's son, while Lancelot de- rived of gentlefolk, and it never entered into my mind to question the existing order of things, or to wish to force my way into places where I was not wanted. Excellent gentlemen on the other side of the Atlantic have made very different opinions popular from the opinions that prevailed with me in my youth. Indeed, I myself have now been long used to associate with the great folk of the earth, and have found them in all essential matters very much like other men. I have had the honour of including more than one king amongst my acquaint- ances, and have liked some and not liked others, just as if they were plain Tom or Harry. But in 13 MARJORIE the days of my youth I should have as soon ex- pected to be welcomed at St. James's as to be wel- comed in the great house where Lancelot's uncle lived. CHAPTER III THE ALEHOUSE BY THE RIVER. THREE years after I went to learn under Mr. Davies, of Cliff Street, my father died. I remember with a kind of terror still, through all these years, when death of every kind has been so familiar to me, how the news of that death came upon me. I had no realisation of what death meant till then. I had heard of people dying, of course; had watched the black processions creeping, plumed and solemn, along the streets to the churchyard; had noted how in any circle of friends now one and now another falls away and returns to earth. I knew that all must die, that I must die myself, as I knew a lesson got by heart which has little mean- ing to the unawakened ear. But now it came on me with such a stabbing knowledge that for a little while I was almost crazy with the grief and the fear. But the sorrow, like all sorrows, lessened with 15 MARJORIE time. There was my mother to cheer; there was my schooling to keep ; there was the shop to look after. My father had thriven well enough to lay by a small store, but my mother kept the shop on, partly for the sake of my father, whose pride it was, partly because it gave her something to occupy her wid- owed life, and partly because, as Mr. Davies point- ed out to her, there would be a business all ready for me when I was old enough to step into it. In the meantime my life was simple enough. When I was not taking my schooling with Lancelot I was tending the shop with mother; and when I was doing neither of these things I was free to wander about the town much as I pleased. Our town was of a tidy size, running well back from the sea up a gentle and uneven acclivity, which made all the streets that stemmed from the border slightly steep, and some of them exceedingly so. Upon the coast line, naturally enough, lay the busi- est part of the hive; a comely stretch of ample docks and decent wharves along the frontage of the town, and, straggling out along the horns of the harbour, a maze of poorer streets, fringed at the waterside with boozing-kens, low inns, sailors' lodging-houses, and crimperies of all kinds. There 16 THE ALEHOUSE BY THE RIVER were ticklish places for decent folk to be found in lying to right and left of the solemn old town aye, and within ten minutes' walk of the solemn old market-square, where the effigy of Sir William Wal- let, the goodly and godly Mayor of many years back, smiled upon the stalls of the hucksters and the fine front of the town-hall. If you strayed but a little way from the core of the town you came into narrow, kinkled streets, where nets were stretched across from window to window drying; and if you persevered you came, by cobbly declivities, to the bay shore, and to all the odd places that lay along it, and all the odd people that dwelt therein. Of course, with the inevitable perversity of boy- hood, it was this degenerate quarter of the town which delighted me. I cared nothing, I am sorry to say, for the fine-fronted town-hall, nor for the solemn effigy of Sir William Wallet. I had not the least desire ever to be a functionary of importance in the building, ever to earn the smug immortality of such a statue. I am sorry to say the places I cared for were those same low-lived, straggling, squalid, dangerous regions which hung at one end of respectable little Sendennis like dirty lace upon a demure petticoat. In the early days of my acquaint- ance with those regions I must confess that I entered 17 MARJORIE them with a certain degree of fear and trembling; but after a while that feeling soon wore off, when I found that no one wanted to do me any harm. Indeed, the dwellers in those parts were generally too much occupied in drinking themselves drunk and sleeping themselves sober to note an unremark- able lad like me. As for their holiday time, they passed it so largely in quarrelling savagely, and occasionally murderously, amongst themselves that they had scant leisure to pay any heed to me. For the rest, these Sendennis slums were not conspicu* ously evil. You will find just the same places in any seaport town, great or little, in the kingdom. But there was one spot in Sendennis which I do not thinlr that it would be easy to match in any other town, although, perhaps to say this may be but a flash o^ provincial pride on my part. A good way from the town, and yet before thf river fairly widens into an estuary, there stood a certain hostel, or inn, which it was my joy and my sorrow to haunt. It stood by the water's edge in a kind of little garden of its own; a dreary place, where a few sickly plants tried to hold their own against neglect and the splashings of rinsed glasses. There was a wooden terrace at the back of this place the back overlooked the river, while the 18 THE ALEHOUSE BY THE RIVER front was on the by-road and here the habitual revellers, the haunters, whose scored crosses lent the creaking shutters an unnatural whiteness over their weather-beaten surface, dark with age and dirt, loved to linger of a summer evening, and ply the noggin and fill the pipe. There was an old fiddler, a kind of Orpheus of the slums, who would sometimes creep in there and take his post in a corner and begin to play, happy if the mad lads threw him halfpence, or thrust a half-drained tankard under his tearful old nose: happy, too, if they did not as they often did toss the cannikin at him out of mere lightness of heart and drunkenness of wit. He used to play the quaintest old tunes, odd border-side ballad airs, that seemed to go apace with blithe country weddings and decent pastoral merry-makings of all kinds, and to be strangely out of suits with that brotherhood of rakehells, smugglers, and desperadoes who gam- bled and drank, and swore and quarrelled, while the poor old fellow worked his catgut. Lord, Lord, how the memory of it all comes back upon me while I write ! I have but to close my eyes, and my fancy brings me back to that alehouse by the river, to a summer's eve with its golden shafts falling on the dingy woodwork and lending it a 19 MARJORIE pathetic glory, upon the shining space of dwindled water in the middle of its banks of glistening mud, and there in the corner the pinched old rogue in his ragged bodygear scraping away at 'Barbara Allen,' or 'When first I saw thy face,' or 'The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington,' while the leering rascals in the pilot coats and the flap-eared caps huddled to- gether over their filthy tables, and swigged their strong drink and thumbed their greasy cards and swore horribly in all the lingoes of Babel. One such summer evening surges up before me with a crimson smear across its sunlight. There was a Low Country fellow there, waist deep in schnapps, and a Finlander sucking strong beer like a hog. Meinheer and the Finn came to words and blows, and I, who was sitting astride of the railing staring, heard a shrill scream from the old man and a rattle as he dropped his fiddle, and then a flash and a red rain of blood on the table as my Finn fell with a knife in him, the Hollander's knife, smartly pegged in between the left breast and the shoulder. I declare that, even in my excitement at that first sight of blood drawn in feud, my boyish thought was half divided between the drunken quarrel and the poor old fiddler, all hunched to- gether on the ground and sobbing dry-eyed 20 THE ALEHOUSE BY THE RIVER in a kind of ecstasy of fear and horror. I heard afterwards that he had a son knifed to his death in a seaman's brawl, and never got over it. As for the Finn, they took him home and kept it dark, and he recovered, and may be living yet for all I know to the contrary, and a perfect pattern to the folk in Finland. That inn had a name, stranger I have never heard; and a sign, stranger I have never seen; though I have wandered far and seen more than old Ulysses in the school-book ever dreamt of. It was called the Skull and Spectacles ; and if its name was at once horrible and laughable, its sign was more devilish still. For instead of any painted board, swinging pleasantly on fair days and creaking lustily on foul, there stood out over the inn door a kind of bracket, and on that bracket stood a human skull, so parched and darkened by wind and weather that it looked more fearful than even a caput mortuum has a right to look. On the nose of this grisly reminder of our mor- tality some wag or so I suppose, but perhaps he was a cynic had stuck a great pair of glassless barnacles or goggles. It was a loathly conceit, and yet it added vastly to the favour of the inn in the minds of those wildings that haunted it. Must I 21 MARJORIE add that it did so in mine too, who should have known better? If it had not been for the fascina- tion of that sign, perhaps I might have kept better company, and never done what I did do, and never written this history. When first I happened upon the Skull and Spec- tacles it attracted me at once. Its situation, in the middle of that wilderness of mouldering wharves, decaying gardens, and tumble-down cottages, was in itself an invitation to the eye. Then the devilish mockery of its sign was an allurement. It looked like some fantastical tavern in a dream, and not a thing of real timber. The oddness of the place tickled my adventurous palate, the loathsomeness of the sign gripped me hardly by the heart and made my blood run icily for an instant. Who does not recall to mind mo- ments and places when he seems to have stepped out of the real living world into some grey, uncanny land of dreams, where the very air is thick and haunted with some quality of unknown fear and unknown oppression? So it seemed to me when I first saw the Skull and Spectacles with its death's- head smirking welcome and the river mud oozing about its timbers. But the place piqued me while it frightened me, and I pulled my courage together 22 THE ALEHOUSE BY THE RIVER like a coat, buttoned it metaphorically about me, and entered. Like many another enterprise upon which we enter with a beating heart, the preface was infinitely more alarming than the succeeding matter. There was no one in the bar-parlour when I entered save a sailor, who was sleeping a drunken, stertorous sleep in a corner. From the private parlour beyond, when I entered, a man came out, a burly seafaring man, who asked me shortly, but not uncivilly, what I wanted. I called for a jug of ale. He brought it to me without a word, together with a hunch of bread, set them before me, and left me alone again, going into his snuggery at the back, and drawing the door after him jealously. I sat there for some little time, sipping my ale and munching my bread and indeed the ale was excellent; I have never tasted better and looking at the grimy wall, greasy with the rubbings of many heads and shoulders, scrawled all over with sums, whose addition seemed to have mightily perplexed the taproom arithmeticians, and defiled with in- scriptions of a foul, loose-witted, waterside lubricity that made me blush and feel qualmish. But I found a furtive enjoyment in the odd place, and the snor- ing sailor, and the low plashing of the estuary 23 MARJORIE against the decaying timbers, and the silence of soli- tude all around. Presently the door was pushed open; but before anyone could come in I was made to jump from my seat in a kind of terror, for a voice sang out sharply just above my head and startled me prodigiously. 'Kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me!' the strange voice screamed out. 'Kiss me on the lips and eyes and throat I kiss me on the breast ! kiss me kiss me kiss me !' I turned up my eyes and noted above my head what I had not seen before a cage swinging fron? the rafters, and in it a small green parrot, with fiery eyes that glowed like blazing rubies. It went rattling on at an amazing rate, adjuring; its hearers to kiss it on all parts of the body with. a verbal frankness that was appalling, and with a distinctness which even pricked the misty senses of the slumberer, who peevishly turned in his sleep and stuttered out a curse at me to keep still. As the human voice called me back from my < do with my black flag?' 'What have you to do with it were a question more to the point,' I answered him, and I make no doubt now that in speaking as I did I was doing a very foolish thing. But I was only a boy, and in- experienced, and indeed all my life I have been given to blurting out things that mayhap I had better have kept to myself. He laughed again. 'Nay,' he said, 'it is one of my most treasured possessions. I hauled it down with mine own hands from a pirate ship in my youth, when we captured the bark of that nefarious sea rover Captain An- thony. I have carried it with me for luck ever since, and it has always brought me luck always till now.' Then he nodded his head again slowly twice or thrice. 'I will give it to you if you wish, Master Ralph,' he said; 'I will give it to you for luck.' 'I do not want it,' I said angrily, being somewhat confused with the turn things had taken. 'I am not superstitious for luck.' Which indeed was not true, for I never met a seaman yet who was not superstitious; but I was wrathful, and I knew not what to say. 160 A BAD NIGHT 'Very well,' he said, Very well. But you are welcome to it if you wish.' Then he went out of the cabin without another word and drew the door behind him. I sat still for some seconds listening to the sound of his de- parting footstep. Now I was bitterly vexed with myself. I had done a vain thing. I had put Jensen upon his guard by showing him that I knew something at least of his purposes, and I had put it into his power to offer a very ready explanation of suspicious cir- cumstances. Indeed, how was I to know that what he said was not true ? There was nothing whatever on the face of it unlikely, and if he told such a story to Captain Marmaduke, why, it was ten chances to one that Captain Marmaduke would implicitly believe in him. For there was no doubt about it, Captain Marmaduke had a great regard for Cornelys Jensen. There was nothing for it but to tell Lancelot of what Jensen had said, and I did this with all dis- patch. My statement had at least the effect of con- vincing Lancelot that I had in very fact seen what I had described to him about the flag. But I could see that Jensen's explanation had its effect upon him very much as I felt sure that it would have its effect 161 MARJORIE upon Captain Marmaduke. Lancelot had nothing like the same regard for Jensen that his uncle had, but I knew that he did follow his uncle's lead in trusting him. 'You see, Ralph,' he said to me, 'this is a very likely story. Jensen is an old sailor. My uncle has told me a thousand times that he has served against pirates in his youth. What more natural than that he should preserve such a trophy of his prowess as the captured flag of some such villain as that same Captain Anthony, of whom I have often heard ? But we will be watchful none the less, and well on our guard.' I could see that Lancelot did not share my fears as regarded Jensen, although he was troubled by the mutinous carriage of certain of the crew. I know that I was very apprehensive and unhappy, and that it seemed to me as if that night would never end. 162 CHAPTER XXI RAFTS WHEN the day did break at last it brought no great degree of comfort with it. We were surrounded by a yellow, yeasty sea, and the air was so thick that the islands on which our lives depended seemed but shapeless shadows in the distance. Still the wind had abated somewhat, but the swell was very strong, and we were without any means of attempt- ing to leave the vessel. When it was quite morning, and the sky cleared a little, we saw the skiff, with the Captain on board, beating about on the water and trying to make for us. But in this he was not able to succeed, for the waves were running so high that it would have been quite impossible either to bring the skift alongside or to get on board our vessel if he had done so. We could see the Captain standing up in the bows of the boat and signalling to us, and it made our hearts sick to be able to see him and to be unable to know what he wanted or what we ought to do. At this moment one of the men he was the ship's carpenter, and a decent, honest sort of fel- 163 MARJORIE low said that he was a very good swimmer, and that he thought he could reach the skiff in that way. He was so very confident of his own powers that though we were somewhat unwilling to let him risk his life, he did in the end prevail upon Lancelot to let him make the attempt. The man stripped and was into the sea in a moment, fighting bravely with the billows that buf- feted him. It was a good sight to see him slowly forging his way through that yellow, clapping water; it is always a good sight to* see a strong man or a brave man doing a daring thing for the sake of other people. We watched his body as he swam ; he was but a common man, but his skin seemed as white as a woman's in that foul spume, and his black hair, which he wore long, streamed in a rail upon the water as a woman's might. But I do not think the woman ever lived who could swim as that man swam. We watched him grow smaller and smaller, and most of us prayed for him silently as he fought his way through the waters. At last we saw that he had reached the skiff, and we could see that he was being pulled over the side. Then there came a long interval oh, how long it seemed to us, as we watched the leaping waves and the distant skiff 164 RAFTS that leaped upon them, and wondered if the man's strength would carry him back again to us! By- and-by it was not really such a very long time, but it seemed like centuries Lancelot, who was looking through his spy-glass, said that the man was going over the skiff's side again. Then we all held our breaths and waited. So it was; the fellow was swimming steadily back to us. It was plain enough to see that he was sorely fatigued, and that he was husbanding his strength, but every stroke that he gave was a steady stroke and a true stroke, and every stroke brought him a bit nearer to where we lay. And at last his black head was looking up at us beneath our hull, and in another second he had caught a rope and was on the deck again, dripping like a dog, and hard pushed for lack of breath. Lancelot gave him a measure of rum with his own hands, and by-and-by his wind came back to him, and he found his voice to speak as he strug- gled into his clothes. What he had to tell was not very cheering. He had given Captain Amber a faithful picture of our perils and our privations, and Captain Amber had made answer that he was sorry for us with all his heart, and only wished that he was in the 165 MARJORIE danger with us. Which we knew very well to be true, though, indeed, the good gentleman was in scarcely less danger himself. His orders to us were that we should with all speed construct rafts by tying together the planks of which we had abundance, and that we should embark upon these rafts and so try to make the shallop and the skiff, which would bear us in safety to the islands. It was not tempting to make rafts and trust them and ourselves upon them to the sea that was churn- ing and creaming beneath us, but it seemed to be well-nigh the only thing to do, and it was the Captain's orders, and we prepared to set to work and execute his commands. But we had scarce begun to tie a couple of planks together before it was plain that our labour would be in vain. For even while the man had been telling his tale the weather had grown much rougher, and we could see that the skiff was unable to remain longer near to us, but had to turn back for her own safety to the islands. I felt very sure that Captain Amber must be in anguish, having thus to leave us, his dear Lancelot and some seventy of his sailors and followers, on board a vessel that might cease to be a vessel at any moment. 166 RAFTS Now we were in very desperate straits indeed, and some of us seemed tempted to give ourselves over to despair. If it had not been for the stead- iness of those that were under Lancelot, I feel sure that the most part of the sailors would have paid no further heed to Jensen's counsels, but would have incontinently drunk themselves into stupor or madness, and so perished miserably. But our men, if they were resigned to their fate, were resolved to meet it like Christians and stout fellows, and as we were the well-armed party the others had, sullenly enough, to fall in with our wishes. And Lancelot's wishes were that all hands should employ themselves still in the making of those rafts, so that if the weather did mend we should be able to take advantage of the improve- ment ere it shifted again. Though the water was beating up in great waves all about us, we were so tightly fixed upon our bank that we were well-nigh immovable, and it was possible for us to work pretty patiently and persistently through all the dirty weather. But though we worked hard and well, it took up the fag-end of that day and the whole of the next to get our two rafts ready for the sea, which was by that time more ready for them, as the storm had again abated. 167 CHAPTER XXII WE LOSE CORNELYS JENSEN IT was on the night when we had well-nigh fin- ished our two rafts that a very unexpected thing happened a thing which I took at the time to be a piece of good fortune, but which, as it happened, proved to be a misfortune for some of us. The unexpected event was, namely, that we lost Cor- nelys Jensen; and this was the way in which the thing came about. The nights during that spell of foul weather were very dark and moonless, not because there was no moon, though she was now waning into her last quarter, but because of the quantity of clouds that muffled up the face of the heavens and hid the moon and the stars from us. But we made shift as well as we could, working hard all the time that the daylight lasted, and giving up the night to the rest we were all in such sore need of. Of course, the usual discipline of the ship was preserved, the usual watches set, and all observed exactly as if 1 68 WE LOSE CORNELYS JENSEN Captain Amber himself had been aboard, for, though the Royal Christopher was sadly shaken, she was still uninjured as to her inward parts, and we were all able to sleep under cover and out of the -vay of wind or weather. On the night before the weather mended, al- though it was not my watch and I was below in my cabin, I found that I could not sleep. The air was close and oppressive, full of a heat that heralded, though I did not know it, the coming of a spell of fine weather. I was feverish and dis- tressed of body, and tossed for long enough in my hammock, trying very hard to get to sleep; but, though I was tired as a dog, the grace of sleep would not come to me. At last, in very despera- tion, I resolved to continue the struggle no longer. If I could not sleep I could not, and there was an end of it. I would go on deck and get there a little air to cool my hot body. So up on deck I went and looked about me. All was quiet, all was dark. Here and there a ship's lanthorn made a star in the gloom ; the ship seemed like a black rock rising out of blackness. I could hear the tread of the watch; I could hear the noisy lapping of the water. There was no wind, there was no moon; the air seemed to be 169 MARJORIE thick and choking. I felt scarcely more refreshed than I had been in my cabin, but as I had come up I thought that I might as well stay up for a bit and have the benefit of whatever air there was. So I made my way cautiously in the darkness to the side of the vessel, and, leaning upon the bul- wark, looked out over the sea, and fell to thinking of Marjorie and of my love for her and all its hopelessness. Presently I heard voices. Those who spoke drew nearer and nearer to me, and I soon recog- nised the speakers as Lancelot and Cornelys Jensen. At the spot where I was standing a great pile of boxes and water barrels had been raised for transfer to the rafts, and I, being on the one side of this pile, was invisible to them as they approached, and would have been passed unnoticed had the night been brighter than it was. I could almost hear what they were saying; I am certain that I heard Jensen utter my name. I came out of the shadow, or rather out of my corner for it was all shadow alike and called out Lancelot's name. Lancelot called back to me, and then I heard Jensen wish him good-night and turn and tramp heavily down the stairs that led below. He seemed to tramp very heavily, heavier 170 WE LOSE CORNELYS JENSEN than was his wont, for he was a light, alert man, even when his biggest sea-boots were on him, as I make no doubt they now were. Lancelot joined me, and I drew him with me into the place where I had been standing, after first casting a glance around the deck to see that no one was within hearing. All seemed deserted, save for the distant walk of the watch. We leaned over the bulwark together and began to talk. I asked him what Jensen had been saying to him. He told me that Cornelys had come to him and expressed great surprise and anger at the doubts which he believed, from my manner and from some words that I had uttered, I entertained of him. It seemed that he had said again to Lance- lot what he had said to me about the flag; that he insisted that there was no mystery at all about the matter, but that he was proud of its possession and superstitious as to its luck, and that he never was willingly parted from it. At the same time he offered to give it Lancelot, as he had already offered to give it me, if Lancelot was minded or wishful to take possession of it; an offer which Lancelot had refused. I could see from Lancelot's manner that he was largely convinced of the integrity of Jensen, and 171 MARJORIE I must confess that Jensen's conduct had given him grounds for confidence, and that I had very little in the way of reasonable argument to shake that confidence. Still, I made bold to be somewhat im- portunate with Lancelot. When he spoke of his uncle's trust in Jensen's integrity, when he urged the value of Jensen's services to us on the voyage, and the way in which he had kept the sailors under control at the first symptom of mutiny, I had, it must be confessed, little to say in reply that could seriously damage Jensen's character. But I was so thoroughly convinced of the man's treachery that I argued hotly, and it may be that as I grew hot I raised my voice a trifle, which is a way of mine ; and, indeed, my voice is never a good whis- pering voice. I entreated Lancelot, at all events, to have a very watchful eye upon Jensen, and I urged that on the first symptom of anything in the least like double-dealing he should place Jensen under arrest. Lancelot listened to me very patiently. He was impressed by my earnestness, and at last promised that he would scrutinise Jensen's actions very nar- rowly, and that if he saw anything that was at all suspicious in his demeanour he would immediately take steps to render him harmless. At this I 172 WE LOSE CORNELYS JENSEN pressed Lancelot's hand warmly, and was about to leave him and go below when I fancied that I heard steps stealing away from us very softly, from the other side of the pile of barrels and boxes by which we stood. I whipped out of my corner and round the pile in an instant, but there was no one there, and I could neither see nor hear anything suspicious. Lancelot declared that I was as suspi- cious as an old maid of her neighbour's hens. I echoed his laughter as well as I could, but I went below again with a heavy heart, for I was oppressed with a sense of danger which I dreaded the more because it seemed to lurk in darkness. I had laid me down again with no very great hope of sleep, but I had no sooner laid my head upon its pillow than I fell into a most uneasy slumber, in which all my apprehensions and all our perils seemed to be multiplied and magnified a hundredfold. A nightmare terror brooded upon my breast. Sud- denly I imagined, in the swift changes of my dream, that we were sinking, and that the vessel was going to pieces with great crashes. I awoke with a start, to find that the noises of my dream were being con- tinued into my waking life. The deck above was noisy with trampling feet and confused cries. For a moment I sat up, dizzy with surprise, and unable 173 MARJORIE to realise whether I was awake or asleep. Then I pulled my wits together, and was on deck in a trice. I caught hold of a sailor who was hurrying rapidly by, and asked him what was the matter. He answered me that there was a man overboard, and that they were doing all they could to save him by casting over the side spars and timbers that would float, in the hope that he might be able to catch one of them. The deck was all confusion, men running hither and thither, and some hang- ing over the bulwarks and peering into the dark- ness, in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of their drowning comrade. We had not a boat to lower, save only the little dinghy, which would not have lived a minute in such a sea. When I found somebody who could tell me what had happened this was what I learnt. A man had fallen overboard; the watch had heard the splash as the body fell into the water, and a wild cry that followed upon the splash; a sailor had shouted out his warning of 'Man overboard!' and the cry had roused the whole ship. Up to this point nobody seemed to have any idea who the missing man was, but when Lancelot, who was im- mediately on deck, though he had but just gone to WE LOSE CORNELYS JENSEN lie down, had commanded silence, and the men were gathered about him on the deck, the sailor who had first made the alarm was found and ques- tioned. This sailor said that he saw a man stand- ing at the vessel's side at a place where, when the mast fell, the bulwark had been torn away and had left a gaping wound in the ship's railings; that as he, surprised at seeing a man there, came nearer to try and ascertain what he was doing, the man stag- gered, flung up his arms here the man who was narrating these things to us flung up his hands in imitation and then went over the side with a great splash and a great cry. He believed that the man was none other than Cornelys Jensen. When Lancelot and I heard the name of Cor- nelys Jensen upon the man's lips we looked invol- untarily at each other, and I make certain that we both grew pale. That the man of whom we had been talking not an hour before in such different terms should have thus suddenly been taken out of our lives came like a shock to us both. Further investigation confirmed the accuracy of the man's statement. The roll was called over, and every man answered to his name except Cornelys Jensen. His cabin was at once searched, but he was not in it, and it was evident that he had made no attempt 175 MARJORIE to sleep there that night, for his hammock was undisturbed. On the table lay a folded sheet of paper, which Lancelot took up and opened. It contained only these words: 'Your doubts have driven me to despair.' These words had apparently been followed by some other words, the beginning of a fresh sentence, but, whatever they were, they were so scrawled over with the pen that their mean- ing was as effectually blotted out as if they had never been written. Of course, all efforts to rescue the unhappy man were unavailing. There was really nothing that we could do save to cast pieces of spar and plank overboard in the faint hope that some one of them might come in the drowning man's way and enable him to keep afloat till daylight, if by any chance his purpose of self-slaughter for so it seemed to me had changed with his souse into the water. The night was pitchy black, and the waves were running a tremendous pace, so that there really seemed to be little likelihood of the strongest swim- mer keeping himself long afloat; but we did our best and hoped our hardest, even those of us who, like myself, disliked and distrusted Cornelys Jensen profoundly. Though Lancelot said little to Marjorie beyond 176 WE LOSE CORNELYS JENSEN the bare news of what had happened I could see that he took the disappearance of Jensen and that little scrawl we found in his cabin badly to heart. He was convinced at once that Jensen had com- mitted suicide, driven thereto by the suspicions that we had formed of him; and, indeed, though I tried to console Lancelot as well as I could, it did look very like it, and I must confess that I felt a little guilty. For though I still thought that the grounds upon which I had formed my suspicions of the man were reasonable grounds, and justified all my ap- prehensions, still I could not resist an uncomfort- able feeling that perhaps, after all, I might have misjudged the man, and that in any case I was the instrument the unwitting instrument, but still the instrument none the less of sending a fellow- creature before his Maker with the stigma of self- slaughter upon his soul. So certainly Lancelot and I passed a very unhappy night, what there was left of it; and when the dawn came we scanned the sea anxiously in the faint hope that we might see something of the missing man. But, though the sea was far quieter than it had been for many hours, there was no trace of any floating body upon it, and it became only too clear to our minds that, for some cause or other, Cornelys Jensen had in- 177 MARJORIE deed killed himself. I could only imagine that the man was really crazed, although we did not dream of such a thing, and that the perils and privations through which we had passed, and against which he seemed to bear such a bold front, had in fact completed the unhinging of his wits, and that my accusations, acting upon a weakened mind, had driven him in his frenzy to destroy himself. To be quite candid, though I was sufficiently sorry for the man, I was still dogged enough in my own opinion of his character as to think that, if it was the will of Providence that he should so perish, at all events the Royal Christopher was no loser by his loss. 178 CHAPTER XXIII WE GET TO THE ISLAND EVEN if we had lost a better man than Jensen it would have been our duty none the less to work hard the next day to get our rafts ready and fit for sea. Very few men are indispensable to their fellows, and certainly, as far as making the rafts was concerned, it would have been far more serious if Abraham Janes, the carpenter, had taken it into his head to throw himself overboard than that Cornelys Jensen had taken it into his head to do so. Yet, in a manner, too, we missed Cor- nelys Jensen. He was an able man, full of all kinds of knowledge, and he had a domineering way with the seamen which they seemed to recognise and to obey unflinchingly. These fellows, for the most part, took the tidings of his death very indif- ferently. Some of them seemed to miss him as a trained dog might miss his master. Some, again, seemed scarcely to miss him at all. One or two, especially the fellow who saw the death and 179 MARJORIE the manner of it, seemed to take the matter very greatly to heart, and to go about with a sad brow and a sullen eye in consequence. As for Lancelot and myself, I must say that we soon grew to accept his loss with composure. There was so much to do that there would have been little time for a greater grief than either of us could honestly wear. The weather was mend- ing hourly, and the rafts were making rapid prog- ress. By the end of that day they were finished and ready for the sea. By this time, so strange are the chops and changes of the weather in that part of the world, the sea and sky were as gentle as on a summer's day. I have heard the phrase 'as smooth as a mill-pond' applied to salt water many a thousand times, but never, indeed, with so much truth as if it had been applied to the ocean that day. It lay all around us, one tranquillity of blue, and above it the heavens were domed with an azure fretted here and there with fleeces of clouds, even as the water was fretted here and there with laces of foam. In the clear air we could see the islands ahead of us sharply dark against the sky, and as we watched them our long- ing to be at them, to tread dry land again, was so great as to be almost unbearable. Those who 1 80 WE GET TO THE ISLAND have lived on shore all their lives can form little or no idea of the way in which the thoughts of a man who is tasting the terrors of shipwreck for the first time turn to a visible land, and how they burn within him for longing to walk upon turf or highway once again in his jeopardised life. Now, the rafts that we had constructed were by no means ill-fashioned. That ship's carpenter, Abraham Janes, was a man of great parts in his trade. I never in my life saw a handier man at his tools or a defter at devices of all kinds. The poor old Royal Christopher had timber enough and to spare for the planks that were to make our rafts, and we had a great plenty of idle rope aboard in the rigging wherewith our fallen mast was en- tangled. So there was no lack of material, and when our men saw that there was really and truly a prospect of escape there was no lack of willing hands to work. So by the end of the time I have already specified we had two large and serviceable rafts ready to try their fortunes upon the ocean that was now so tempting in its calm. It was a matter of some little surprise to us who were on board the ship that with the calm weather Captain Amber made no further attempt to come out to us. But there was no sign of a sail upon 181 MARJORIE the water, although we watched it eagerly through the spy-glass; and we were sorely puz- zled to imagine what could have happened to our leader, for that he could be forgetful of or indifferent to our danger it was impossible to be- lieve. The rafts being now ready and the weather so propitious, nothing was left for us but to commit them, with ourselves and all our belongings, to the water, in the hope of making the shore with them. They were each of them capable of holding our whole number and a quantity of such stores as were left on board. These latter, therefore, divided into two equal parts, we proceeded to put upon the rafts as quickly as we could, together with as many barrels of water as we had. Each of the rafts carried a stout mast and sail, and in the absence of any wind could be propelled slowly over such a smooth water as that which now lay around us by means of oars. The stores and water barrels we adjusted in such a way as to preserve as nicely as might be the balance of the rafts. We effected the transfer of our stores and pro- visions with very little difficulty, and embarked all our party, also without any difficulty whatever. In obedience to Lancelot's resolution, which he had 182 WE GET TO THE ISLAND privately communicated to me beforehand, we di- vided our forces into two parties. That is to say, half of the sailors were set on each raft, and with each raft half of our armed men; for though we had little or no apprehension now that there would be any trouble with the sailors, we still deemed it best to let them see very plainly that we were and meant to be the masters. I went on the one raft, Lancelot and of course Marjorie with him upon the other, and when all was ready we pushed away from the Royal Christopher and trusted our- selves and our fortunes to our new equipages. There was happily little danger, even little dif- ficulty, about the enterprise. The rafts were well made; they rode on the waters like corks. What little wind there was blew towards the islands, and the sea was as placid as a lake, so that the men could use their big oars easily enough. It was indeed slow work to paddle these great rafts along, but it was quite unadventurous, so that I have little or nothing to record of note concerning our journey. Little by little the Royal Christopher grew smaller and smaller behind us, with her great mast sticking out so sadly over her side ; little by little the island loomed larger and larger on our view. At last, after a couple of hours that were the most pleasur- 183 MARJORIE able we had passed for many days, we came close to the island, and could see that the colonists were all crowded together upon the beach, waiting to receive us. The island was very large, rocky, and thickly wooded, and the coast was rocky too, and the water very shoaly, which made me understand how diffi- cult landing must have been in the stormy weather. But now, with the sea so fair and the weather so fine, we had little or no difficulty in getting ashore, and with the eager assistance of the colonists were soon able to effect the landing of all our stores and belongings. Our first great surprise on our arrival was to see no sight of Captain Amber amongst those who were gathered upon the beach to receive us. But his absence was soon explained in reply to our anxious inquiries. It seemed that a great spirit of discontent prevailed among the colonists upon that island, and that they upbraided Captain Amber very bitterly for being the cause of their misfort- unes: as is the way with weak-spirited creatures, who have not the heart to bear a common misfort- une courageously. To make a long story short, they insisted that he must needs endeavour to find some means of rescue for them by getting into the 184 WE GET TO THE ISLAND sea track and persuading some ship to come to their aid and take them from the island; which certainly was a disconsolate place enough, especially for people who were always ready to make a poor mouth over everything that did not please them. As the sailors who were with Captain Amber sided with the colonists in this matter, he had no choice but to consent; and as his vessel was fairly sea- worthy, he and his people had departed, in the hope of meeting some ship to bring all succour. Captain Marmaduke was, it seems, most loath to depart while we were in such a plight on board of the Royal Christopher; but there was no help for it, for his men were almost in open mutiny, and would have carried him on board would he or no. So he had sailed away and the colonists were all hopeful, in their silly, simple way, that he would soon return in a great ship and carry them to a land as lovely as a dream, where all their wishes would be fulfilled for the asking, and where each man would have his bellyful of good things without the working for it. For that was, it seems, the notion most of these fellows had in their heads of poor Captain Amber's Utopia. I had begun to perceive by this time that a very large number of those that had come out with Cap- 185 MARJORIE tain Amber aboard of the Royal Christopher were but weak-spirited creatures, and such as might be called fair-weather friends. So long as all was going well and there was a prospect before them of a prosperous future and everything they wanted, they were supple enough and loud to laud the good gentleman who was conveying them to comfort. But with the break in our luck their praises and their patience went in a whiff, and they showed themselves to be such a parcel of wrong-headed, grumbling, disheartened and dispiriting knaves as ever helped to shake a good man's courage. They were as ready to imprecate Captain Amber now as they had been to load him with praises before, and in this they were supported by all the worser sort and these were the greater part among the sailors that had stayed with the colonists. But with Lancelot's arrival upon the island he soon put a stop to all loudly expressed grumbling or at least to all grumbling that was loudly expressed in his hearing. There were some good fellows amongst the colonists, and the old soldiers were staunch and sturdy fellows, who adored Captain Amber, and Lancelot after him. So, as we had these with us, we made the grumblers keep civil tongues in their heads, aye and work too to the 1 86 WE GET TO THE ISLAND bettering of our conditions. The first party had made themselves some huts and now we made more for ourselves who were new-comers, with tents of a kind out of sail-cloth that we had brought from the ship, and for Lancelot a large double hut cov- ered with some of this same cloth for him and Marjorie to dwell in. And, Lord ! what a joy it was to see how Marjorie bestirred herself making her- self as good a lieutenant to Lancelot as Captain's heart could desire. But we were all so busy that in those hours on that island I seldom had speech with her, for my care was chiefly with those discon- tented and weaklings who were so eager to com- plain and make mischief. It seemed to me then that the best man of all that pack was the woman Barbara Hatchett. For while the colonists were making poor mouths over their plight and piping as querulously as sparrows after rain, and while the sailors were for the most part sour and sullen, Barbara took her lot with cheerfulness, and had smiles and smooth words for everybody and everything. She had even smiles and smooth words with me, who had exchanged no speech with her beyond forced greeting for this many a day. For she came up to me laughing once, at a time when I stood alone and was, indeed, think- 187 MARJORIE ing of Marjorie who was busy in her hut at some task that Lancelot had set her. Barbara began to banter with me in a way that seemed strange with her, saying that I was fickle like all my sex, that I was sighing for fair hair now, who had doted on black locks a few years ago, and much more idle talk to the same want of purpose. At last she asked me bluntly if I had loved her once, and when I answered yes, she asked me if I loved her still, now that she was a married woman; and without giving me time to answer she said that she had a kindness for me, and would do me a good turn yet for the sake of old days when she came to be queen. I was vexed with her for the vanity and impor- tunity of her mirth, and to stop her words I asked her bluntly if she had ever seen a black flag. But my question had no effect to disconcert her gaiety. 'You mean the black flag of poor Jensen?' she said; and when I nodded she began to pity Jensen for his belief in his trophy, which, after all, had brought him no more luck than a sea grave; and then she went on with shrillish laughter to tell me that she had begged it of him to give her to make into a petticoat, 'For it would have made a bonny petticoat, would it not ?' she said suddenly, coming 188 WE GET TO THE ISLAND to a sharp end and looking me earnestly in the face. I was at a loss what to say, being so flustered by her carriage and her words, which seemed to make it plain to me that I had sorely misjudged the dead man. But I said nothing, and moved a little way from her; and she, seeing my disinclination, laughed again, and then 'God blessed' me with a vehemence and earnestness that, as I thought, meant me more harm than good. But after that she turned and went back to the rest of the women, and I could see her going from one to the other, soothing and comforting them, and showing them how to make the best of their bitter commons on the island. And as I watched her I wondered ; but I had little time for watching or for wondering. 189 CHAPTER XXIV] FAIR ISLAND FOR the nonce I will make bold to leave Captain Marmaduke sailing the seas and to occupy myself solely with the fate of those who were encamped on the island, and chiefly of Marjorie and Lance- lot and thereby myself who had the good fortune to be with them to the end of the enterprise. And, oh, as I think of Marjorie in those days it is ever with fresh wonder and delight and infinite grati- tude to Heaven for the privilege to have seen her. She seemed just a boy with boys, she with Lancelot and me, and she wore her boyish weed with a simple straightforward ease that made it somehow seem the most right and natural thing in the world. But that was ever her way ; whatever she did seemed fit and good, and that not merely to my eyes who loved her, but, as I think, to most. And she was very helpful in mind and body, always eager to bear her share in any work that was toward, and in council advising wisely without assertion. It might seem at first blush a handicap for adventurers to FAIR ISLAND have a girl on their hands, but we did not find it so, only always, save for the peril in which the maid was, a gain and blessing. And so to our fortunes. You must know that from the further coast of our island the further from our wreck, I mean we could discern the outlines of other islands, the nearest of which appeared to be within but a few hours' sail. It was plain, therefore, that we were, very fortunately for us, cast away in the neighbourhood of a considerable archipelago, and that we had every reason on the whole to rejoice at our condition instead of bewailing it. Now, though the island we were on was in many ways fair and commodious, we were not without confidence that another island, which lay a little further off, as it might be a couple of hours' sail, would serve us even in better stead, and at least we resolved to explore it. So Lancelot and Mar- jorie and I, with some thirty of our own men, re- solved to cross over in the shallop boat which had conveyed the first party to the island while the weather was still fair, taking with us a great plenty of arms and implements, canvas and abundance of provisions, as well as a quantity of lights and fire- works, which we had saved from the ship, and which Lancelot thought might be useful for many MARJORIE purposes. It was agreed between us and the col- onists that if we found the new island better than the old we were to make great bonfires, the smoke of which could not fail to be seen from the first island, or Early Island, as we came to call it. This they should take as a signal to come with all speed to the new camping-ground. You must not think it strange that we set out upon this expedition thoughtlessly and leaving the other folk unprotected. For, in the first place, there were a goodly number of the colonists as many in number as the sailors; and, in the second place, the sailors were not so well armed as many of the colonists were, having nothing but their knives and a few axes. Furthermore, as Cornelys Jensen was not among them, and as it seemed most unlikely that the purpose, if purpose he had, would hold with his fellows now that there was, as it were, no ship to seize, we felt that there could be no danger to our companions in leaving them while we went on our voyage of exploration. So you will please to bear in mind how matters now stood. There was Captain Marmaduke in the skiff, who had sailed away from us to seek succour for us all. There was on the island with which we had first made acquaintance the majority of our colonists 192 FAIR ISLAND men, women and children, together with the greater part of the sailors under the authority of Hatch- ett. There were, further, Lancelot and Marjorie and myself and our thirty men, who had gone off in the shallop to explore the adjacent islands in the hope of finding a better resting-place for our whole party. As for Cornelys Jensen, I took him to be at the bottom of the sea. We had arranged that during our absence the administration of the colony should be vested in a council, of whom the Reverend Mr. Ebrow was one and Hatchett another, for, as the leading man among sailors, he could not be overlooked, and I mistrusted him no more now that Jensen was gone. Certain of the soldierly men and two or three of the most cool-headed amongst the colonists made up the total of this council, whose only task would be to apportion the fair share of labour to each man in making the island as habitable a place as might be till our return. For, after all, it was by no means certain that we should have better luck with the near island, and in any case it was well to be prepared for all emergencies. It was late on the second day of our arrival at the island that Lancelot and Marjorie and I with our companions set off on our expedition. We fol- MARJORIE lowed the coast-line of our island a long while, keeping a sufficiently wide berth for fear of the shoals. When we had half circumnavigated it there lay ahead of us the island for which we were making. It lay a good way off, and, as the day was very fine and still, it seemed nearer to us than it proved to be. As far as we could judge at that distance, it seemed to be a very much larger island than the one which we had just left; and so indeed it proved to be. The shallop was a serviceable vessel, and ran bravely before the wind on the calm sea. Had the wind been fully in our favour we should have made the island for which we were steering within the hour; but it blew slightly across our course, compelling us to tack and change our course often, so that it was a good two hours before we were close to our goal. When we came close enough we saw that the island seemed in all respects to be a more delectable spot than that island on which chance had first cast us. There was a fine natural bay, with a strand of a fine, white, and sparkling sand such as recalled to me the aspect of many of the little bays and creeks in the coast beyond Sen- dennis, and in the recollection brought the tears into my mouth, not into my eyes. From this strand we 194 FAIR ISLAND could see that the land ran up in a gentle elevation that was very thickly wooded. Beyond this again rose in undulating succession several high hills, that might almost be regarded as little mountains, and these also seemed to be densely clothed with trees. Marjorie declared that the place looked in its soft greenness and the clean whiteness of its shore a kind of Earthly Paradise, and indeed our hearts went out to it. I found afterwards, from conversa- tion with my companions, that every man of us felt convinced on our first close sight of Fair Island, as we afterwards called it, that we should find there abundance of water and all things that we needed which could reasonably be hoped for. We came, after a little coasting, to a small and sheltered creek, into which it was quite easy to carry our vessel. The creek ran some little way inland, with deep water for some distance, so here we beached the shallop and got off and looked about us. Although by this time the day was grown some- what old, we were determined to do at least a measure of exploring then and there, and ascertain some, at least, of the resources of our new territory. There was, of course, the possibility that we might meet with wild animals or with still wilder savages, 195 MARJORIE but we did not feel very much alarm about either possibility. For we were a fairly large party; we were all well armed, and well capable of using our weapons. Each of us carried pistols and a hanger, Marjorie with the rest, she being as skilful in their use as any lad of her age might be. For my own part I always wore in my coat pocket a little pistol Lancelot had given me, that looked like a toy, but was a marvel of mechanism and precision. Weap- oned as we were, we had come, moreover, into that kind of confidence which comes to those who have just passed unscathed through grave peril, a con- fidence which is, as it were, a second wind of cour- age. It would not do, of course, to leave our boat un- protected, so it was necessary to tell off by lot a certain number of our men to stay with it and guard it. All the men were so eager for exploration that those upon whom the lots fell to remain behind with the shallop made rather wry faces ; but Lance- lot cheered them by telling them that theirs was a position to the full as honourable as that of ex- plorers, and that in any case those who looked after the boat one day should be relieved and go with the exploring party on the next day, turn and turn about. 196 FAIR ISLAND This satisfied them, and they settled down to their duty in content. It was agreed upon that in case of any danger or any attack, whether by sav- ages or by wild beasts for in those parts of the world there might well be monstrous and warlike creatures they were to make an alarm by blowing upon a horn which we had with us, and by firing a shot. It was to be their task while we were away to prepare a fire for our evening meal. We had our supply of provisions and of water with us, but those of us who were to explore had very good hopes that we should bring back to the skiff not merely the good news that we had found water, but also something in the way of food for our supper. Lancelot, for one, expressed his confidence that there must be game of various kinds in so thickly a wooded place, and when Lancelot expressed an opinion I and the others with me always listened to it like Gospel. Luckily for us, we soon found one and then an- other spring of fresh water. But it took us a mat- ter of three days to explore that island thoroughly, for it was very hilly, and in many parts the woods were well-nigh impenetrable in spite of our axes. Most of the trees and shrubs had at this time either blossoms or berries on them, red, white, and yel- 197 MARJORIE low, that filled the air with sweet and pungent odours. It was a large island, and on the other side of the ridge of hills which rose up so sharply from the place where we first landed the land stretched almost level for a considerable distance before it dropped again in low cliffs to the sea. Part of this plain was grass-grown land, not unlike English down land, but in other parts the grass grew in great tufts as big as a bush, intermixed with much heath, such as we have on our commons in England ; part of it was thickly grown with all manner of bright flowers and creeping plants, that knotted themselves together in such an entanglement that it was very hard to cut a path. We had need to go carefully here, for suspicion of snakes. We found no sign of savage wild beasts, though of harmless ones there were plenty, some of which made very good meat. As for savages, we saw none; and as far as we could make out we were the only human beings upon the island. Yet Lance- lot, who was wonderfully quick at noting things, thought that he detected signs here and there which went to show that we were not the first men who had ever explored it. There were few land fowls only eagles of the larger sort, but five or six sorts of small birds. There were waterfowl in abun- 198 FAIR ISLAND dance of many varieties, with shellfish to our hands, and good fish for the fishing, so between the sea and the land we were in no fear of want of victual, which cheered us very greatly. We had rigged up some rough tents with our canvas, one apart for Marjorie and one for me and Lancelot, and half a dozen for our men, and alto- gether our condition had fair show of comfort, and to me indeed seemed full of felicity. Until we had thoroughly explored the island we did not deem it wise to make our promised communication with the former island. But as soon as we had pretty well seen all that there was to be seen, we thought that, the time still being fair, we could scarcely do better than get our fellow- adventurers over. Our men were therefore set to work collecting as large a quantity of fuel as might be, and in clearing a path to the summit of the nearest hill, from which we might set off our bon- fire to the best advantage. Our men were all dispersed about the island busy at this business, and Marjorie was in her tent, tak- ing at her brother's entreaty the rest she would never have allowed herself. It was a very hot day, and Lancelot and I, who had been collecting fire- wood on the near slope of the hill, but a few yards 199 MARJORIE from the creek where our craft was beached, were lying down for a brief rest under a tree and talk- ing together of old times. The sight of a small gaudy parrot, of which there was an abundance in the island, had sent our memories back to that parlour of Mr. Davies's where we had first met, and where there were parrots on the wall, and so we chatted very pleasantly. By-and-by our talk flagged a little, for we grew drowsy with the heat, and our eyes closed and we fell into dozes, from which we would lazily wake up to enjoy the warm air and the bright sunlight and the vivid colours of everything about us, sea and sky and trees and flowers and grasses. I remember very well musing as I lay there upon the strangeness of disposition which leads men to pine out their lives in the mean air of smoky cities, with all their hardship and their unloveliness, when the world has so many brave places only waiting for bold spirits to come and dwell therein. Boylike, I had forgotten all the perils which I had undergone before ever I came to Fair Island. I was only con- scious of the delicious appearance of the place, of our good fortune in finding so fair a haven; and if only Captain Marmaduke and my mother had been with us I think I could have been very well 200 FAIR ISLAND content to pass the remainder of my days upon that island, which seemed to me to the full as enchanted as any I had read of in the Arabian tales. I had dropped into a kind of sleep, in which I dreamt that I was Sindbad the Sailor, when I was awakened by a light step and the sound of a soft voice. I looked up and saw that Marjorie was bending over Lancelot, who was sitting up by me. She held him by the arm and pointed out across the sea. 'Don't you see something out there ?' she asked, speaking quite low, as she always did when excited by anything. Lancelot and I followed the direction of her gaze and her outstretched finger, and discerned very far away upon the sea a small black object. It lay be- tween us and the island we had left, but somewhat to the right of it. 'What is it?' I asked. 'That's just what I want to know,' said Marjorie. 'How if it should be savages?' The very thought was disquieting. We had grown so secure that we had almost forgotten the possibility of such dangers; but now, at Marjorie's words, the possibilities came clearly back to me. Captain Marmaduke had told us many a time 201 MARJORIE stories about savages and their war canoes and their barbarous weapons, and it was very likely indeed that what we saw was a boat filled with such creatures creeping across the sea to attack us. It moved very slowly across the smooth waters, and there was a strong bright sun, which played upon the surface of the water very dazzlingly, which added to our difficulty in understanding the floating object. But as it came slowly nearer we saw that it must be some kind of vessel, for we dis- tinguished what was clearly a mast with a sail, though, as there was very little wind that morning, the sail hung idly by the mast. A little later we were able to be sure that what we saw was a kind of raft, with, as I have said, a mast and sail, but that its propulsion came from some human beings who were aboard it, and who were causing its slow prog- ress with oars. By this time I had got out a spy- glass from our tent ; and then Lancelot gave a cry of amazement, for he recognised in the new-comers certain of those colonists our companions whom we had left behind on the hither island. There were five of them on board, all of whom Lancelot named to us, and as he named them, Marjorie and I, look- ing through the glass in turns, were able to recognise them too. By-and-by they saw us too, for one of 202 FAIR ISLAND them stood up on the raft, and stripping off his shirt waved it feebly in the air as a signal to us, a signal which we immediately answered by waving our kerchiefs. It takes a long time to tell, but the thing itself took longer to happen, for it must have been fully an hour after we first noted the raft before it came close to the shore of our island. As soon as it was within a couple of boats' lengths Lancelot and I, in our impatience and our anxiety to aid, ran into the water, which was shallow there, for the beach sloped gently, and was not waist high when we reached the voyagers, so that we had no fear of sharks. The new-comers were huddled to- gether on as rudely fashioned a raft as it had ever been my lot to see, and had it not been for the astonishing tranquillity of the sea it is hard to be- lieve that they could have made a hundred yards without coming to pieces. They all leaped into the water now, and between us we ran the crazy raft on to the beach, Lancelot and I doing the most part of the work, for the poor wretches that had been on board of her seemed to be sorely exhausted and scarcely able to speak as they splashed and stag- gered through the shallow water to the shore, where Marjorie was waiting anxiously for us. They did speak, however, when once they were 203 MARJORIE safely on dry land and had taken each a sip from our water-bottles, for all their throats were parched and swollen with thirst. It was a terrible tale which they had to tell, and it made us shiver and grow sick while they told it. I will tell it again now, not, indeed, in their words, which were wild, rambling, and disconnected, but in my own words, making as plain a tale of it as I can, for indeed it needs no skill to exaggerate the horror of it. 204 CHAPTER XXV THE STORY FROM THE SEA IN few words, it came to this. The sailors on the island had proved themselves to be as bloody vil- lains as had ever fed the gallows. They had taken the unhappy colonists by surprise and had mas- sacred them, all but the women and the children. As for the women poor things ! it would have been better for them if they had been killed with the others, but their lives were spared for greater sorrows. Those who told us that tale were all that were left, they said, of the unhappy company. They had escaped by mere chance to the woods, and had fashioned with their axes the rough raft and oars which had conducted them at last to us and to temporary safety. This was their first raw story. Horrid as it was it took a stronger horror when one of the men shouted a curse at Cornelys Jensen. 'Cornelys Jensen !' I cried. 'Cornelys Jensen Cornelys Jensen is dead, and the seas have swal- lowed him.' 205 MARJORIE The man who had uttered his name gave a great groan. 'Would to Heaven they had,' he said. 'But Heaven has not been so merciful. That tiger still lives and lusts for blood.' Marjorie and Lancelot and I glanced at each other in amazement, and the same thought crossed all our minds that fear and grief had crazed the unhappy man who was speaking to us. But he, reading something of our thoughts in our eyes, turned to his fellows for confirmation, and confirma- tion they readily gave. Cornelys Jensen was alive. Cornelys Jensen was on the island. Cornelys Jen- sen was the instigator of the massacre, the bloodiest actor in the bloody work. Here was indeed amazing tidings, and we cried to know more, but the men had no more to tell. They had no knowledge of how Cornelys Jensen made his appearance upon the island ; all they knew was that he did appear, and that his appearance was the signal for a display of weapons on the part of the sailors on his side and the massacre of all the unhappy wretches who were not inclined to his piratical purposes. The colonists seemed to have made no sort of stand for their lives. Indeed, it would appear that they were taken quite unawares, 206 THE STORY FROM THE SEA and that the most were struck down before they had time to act in their own defence. As for the miserable wretches who told us this tale, they had fled to the woods when the wicked business began, and the murderers either lost count of them or imagined that they must perish miserably of famine in the forest Indeed, they must have so perished if it had not occurred to one of them, who had his wits a little more about him than the others, to suggest the manufacture of a raft, whereby they might make the attempt to reach the island, where, as they guessed, we, with our well-armed fellows, were safely settled. 'For,' as the man argued, 'we risk death either way. If we stop here we must either perish among these trees for lack of sus- tenance or must creep back to the piratical camp with little other hope than a stroke from a hanger, or tempt the seas in the hope of friends and safety.' So they fashioned a raft as well as they could out of a number of fallen trees, which they fastened together with natural ropes made of the long creep- ing plants that abounded, and that were as tough and as endurable as ever was rope that was weaved out of honest hemp. They found enough timber for their craft among the fallen tree trunks, and they had the less difficulty in their work that one 207 MARJORIE of their number was Janes, who had his saw in his belt at the moment of their flight to the woods. Long before they finished telling their tale our men, who were scattered abroad in the woods, came tumbling down to us at the sound of the horn, that Lancelot wound to summon them, and gathered in horror around their unhappy comrades. As for me, I was so amazed at the news that Cornelys Jensen was alive that I stood for awhile like one stunned, and could say nothing, but only stare at those pale faces and wonder dumbly. When after awhile the power of speech did return to me I strove with many questions to find out how Jensen was thus restored to life and to evil deeds, but as to that they none of them knew anything. If the marvel of Jensen's reappearance was the greatest marvel, marvel only second to it was how the sailors who obeyed him came to have weapons for their busi- ness. As to that, again, the fugitives could give no help. The sailors had arms, every man of them, muskets and pistols and cutlasses, and had used them with deadly effect. It was all a mystery that made our senses sick to think upon. Of one thing the fugitives were very positive that Jensen and his murderers would very soon make a descent upon our island, in the hope of sur- 208 THE STORY FROM THE SEA prising us unawares and killing us. For now they were very numerous, and at least as well armed as we were, and would make very formidable enemies. The only wonder was that they had not already attempted it, but the men believed that the villains were so engrossed in a swinish orgie after their triumph as to be heedless of time or prudence. So here were we but thirty-two men in all, not count- ing these fugitives and with one woman, though so brave an one in urgent peril. It was fortunate for us all that in Lancelot's youth there was an alli- ance of courage with skill which would have done credit to a general of fifty. I was not much in those days in the way of giving advice, but I was strong and active, and ready to obey Lancelot in all things, which was what was most wanted of me in that juncture. We had every reason to be confident in the fidelity and courage of the men who were with us, and our confidence was not misplaced. The first thing to be done was to settle the fugi- tives in the utmost comfort we could afford them. We put them to rest in one of our tents we had built, and gave to each of them a taste of strong waters, after which we urged them to sleep if they could, adding, to encourage them in that effort, that the sooner their bodies were refreshed by rest 209 MARJORIE and food the better they would be able to bear their part in resisting the common enemy. This argu- ment had great weight with the men, who were very willing to be of help, but too hopelessly worn out just then to be of the smallest aid to us or the smallest obstacle to our enemies. Indeed, the poor fellows were so broken with fear and suffering that I think they would have slept if they had heard that Cornelys Jensen, with all his pack, had landed upon the island. As it was, in a very few minutes all of them were lying in a row and sleeping soundly. I could almost have wept as I looked upon them lying there so quiet and so miserable, and thought of all the high hopes with which they had entered upon the adventure that had proved so disastrous for them and so fatal for so many of their com- panions. Having thus disposed of them, our next course was to take such steps as we could towards strength- ening our position. To begin with, we hauled our boat further up the creek than she now was, for it would be a terrible misfortune to us if anything were to happen to her, seeing that on her depended any chance we had of leaving the island if we were so far pushed as to have to make the attempt. Our position was not an easy one to attack as it stood, 210 THE STORY FROM THE SEA coming, as the attack must, from the island we had left, for of an attack in our rear we had no danger. Even if Cornelys Jensen were able to get to the back of our island, it would take him an intolerable time to make his way through the well-nigh impenetrable woods that lay between us. On our front we felt confident that the attack would come, and we felt further confident that, even if it was made with the full force of ruffians that Jensen had at his com- mand, we ought to be able to repulse it, and to pre- vent the scoundrels from effecting a landing. For though the news that they were thoroughly equipped with the weapons and munitions of war was wofully disheartening news, still, as we were well armed ourselves, it did not altogether dis- courage us. They might be very well two to one, but two to one is no such great odds when the larger party has to effect a landing upon an open place held by resolute men and well weaponed. It was, in Lancelot's judgment, our first duty to erect a sort of fort or stockade upon the beach, wherein we could take shelter if we were really hard pressed, and wherein we could store for greater safety our stores and ammunition from our skiff. We had set up several huts along the shore of the creek for habitation and for storage of our goods. 211 MARJORIE But they would have offered no protection in case of an attack, being but mere shells hurriedly put together, and intended merely as temporary shelters from possible foul weather. Lancelot's scheme was to enclose all these buildings in a strong wall, and to connect that fort by another wall with the spot at which our skiff was beached. There was no great difficulty in the construction of such a stockade in itself. Timber enough and to spare was to be had for the chopping, and we had thirty odd pairs of arms and sufficient axes to make that a matter of no difficulty. Nor was there any difficulty as regards the building of such a fort, for Lancelot's knowledge of military matters made him quite capable of planning it out according to the most approved methods of fortification. We set to work upon the stockade at once, and soon were chopping away for dear life, even Mar- jorie wielding a light axe, and wielding it well. Many hands, it is said, make light work, and there were enough of us to make the business move pretty quickly. Choosing trees with trunks of a middling thickness, we soon had a great quantity cut down and made of the length that was needed. These we proceeded to set up in the places that Lancelot had marked out, but first we dug deep trenches in the 212 THE STORY FROM THE SEA ground so as to ensure their being firmly estab- lished, Marjorie taking her share of the spade work with a will. We had not done very much before Abraham Janes, the carpenter, came out of the hut and joined us. He declared that he was now well refreshed, and that he wished to bear his part in the labour; and indeed we were very glad to let him do so, because he was an exceedingly skil- ful workman, and very ready with the use of saw and hatchet. 213 CHAPTER XXVI THE BUSINESS BEGINS WITH toil we set up the front of our stockade and a portion ,of the sides of the parallelogram. It was all loopholed for our musketry, and was firm and strong, being carefully stiffened behind by cross beams and shored up with buttresses of big logs in a manner that, if not thoroughly workmanlike, was at least satisfactory from the point of strength, which was just then our main consideration. Our palisade was about double the height of a man, and in the centres, both front and back, there was a gate, that was held in its place when shut by heavy bars of wood which fitted into holes cut to receive them. Ere set of sun we had our outworks completed, and found ourselves the possessors of a very credit- able stockade, which under ordinary conditions ought, if properly manned and well supplied with ammunition, to resist the attack of a very much greater number than the defending party. It was still in our mind to run out a palisade that should connect our stronghold with the place where the 214 THE BUSINESS BEGINS skiff lay, but it was too late, and we were now too exhausted to think of that, for we had worked at our task ever since we had got the alarm, and it was really impossible for us to do more in that work. But before we rested we conveyed from our boat all our stores and all our arms and ammunition of which latter, indeed, we had no great quantity, a matter which we had not heeded before, but which now gave us great trouble. We brought in abun- dance of water, and we had ample provisions, which the island itself had in chief part offered to us, so that we could hold our own- very well for a time in case it came to a siege. Our hope, however, was that we might be able to prevent the pirates from effecting a landing at all. When we went to seek rest for the night we took care to set good guard and to keep strict watch, for a night attack was possible, if it was not very likely. Though we were all very tired, both bodily and mentally, by reason of the labour of our hands and the strain upon our minds, I do not think that any of us found sleep very easy to come at first. I only know that I lay on my back and stared up at the stars for the night was too hot to sleep under cover for long enough. At last I fell asleep, and 215 MARJORIE through sleep into a fitful feverish dream, which chopped and changed from one place and subject to another; but at last it settled down into one decided dream and that was a good dream, for it was a dream of Marjorie. It seemed that I was walking with her along the downs beyond Sen- dennis, not far from that place where Lancelot found me blubbering in years gone by, and that I was telling her that I loved her, and that she let me hold her hand while I told her, which showed that she was not averse to my tale, and that when I had done she turned and looked me full in the face, and there was love love for me in her eyes. Then I awoke suddenly and found it was full day, and that Marjorie was bending over me. For the moment I did not recollect where I was, and stared in surprise at the great wooden paling by which we were surrounded. Then recollection of the whole situation came back to me in a flash, and I leapt to my feet. All around me the men were making preparations for the morning meal, or were engaged in looking to their weapons, testing the sharpness of a cutlass or seeing to the priming of a matchlock. The big door of the stronghold was open, and through it I 216 THE BUSINESS BEGINS could see the white beach and the sea-edge, where Lancelot stood scanning the horizon with the spy- glass. The sun was very bright, and I could hear the parrots screaming away in the woods behind us. 'Come outside, Ralph,' said Marjorie. 'I want to speak with you.' We went out together through the gate into the open, and walked slowly a little way in the direction of the sea. Both of us looked, naturally enough, to that island where our enemies lay. Presently we halted and stood in silence a few minutes, and then Marjorie spoke. 'Ralph,' she said quietly, 'you are my friend, I believe.' I had it in my heart to cry wild words to her; to tell her again that I loved her then and for ever, but though the words tingled on my lips they never took life and sound. For Marjorie was looking at me so steadfastly and sadly with a strange gravity in the angel-blue of her eyes that I could not speak what she might not wish to hear. So I simply nod- ded my head and held out my hand and caught hers and clasped it close. 'Ralph,' she said again. 'We fight for the right, but right is not always might, and our enemies may overpower us. If they do ' here I thought 217 MARJORIE she paled a little, but her voice was as firm as ever 'if they do, I want you to promise me one promise.' I suppose the look in my face assured her that there was nothing she could ask of me that I would not obey, for she went on without waiting for me to speak: 'I have the right to ask you because of some words you once said to me, words which I remem- ber. If the worst comes you must kill me. Hush' for I gave a groan as she spoke. 'That must be. I have heard enough to know that I must not live if our enemies triumph. If I were alone I should kill myself; if you were not here I should have to ask Lancelot, but you are here and I would rather it happened by your hand.' It was strange to stand on that quiet shore by that quiet sea and look into that beautiful face and listen to that beautiful voice and hear it utter such words. But my heart thrilled with a wild pride at her prayer. 'I will do your bidding,' I said, and she answered 'I thank you.' We might have been talking of nothing in particular so even were our voices and so simple was our speech. I pressed her hand and let it go. Then, swiftly, she came a little nearer 218 THE BUSINESS BEGINS and took my face in her dear hands and kissed me on the forehead, and there are no words in the world sweet enough or sacred enough to interpret my thoughts in that moment. Then she moved away and made to go towards Lancelot, but even as she did so I saw him turn and run towards us along the beach. As soon as he joined us he bade Marjorie go to our hut and blow the horn to bring our people together. After that she was to wait in her own shelter till he came for her. She obeyed him un- questioningly, as she always did in those days of danger, and for a moment Lancelot and I were alone. 'Here they come,' he said very tranquilly. 'See for yourself.' And he handed the spy-glass to me. As I put it to my eye he added : 'I can't under- stand where they get their rig from.' Neither could I. As I looked through the glass I could see that two boats were coming slowly towards us, and that each boat was full of men. It was surprising enough to see them coming in boats, but it was not that which had chiefly sur- prised either Lancelot or me. Our wonder was caused by the fact that all the men in the boats were clad in scarlet coats, scarlet coats that looked very bright and clean and new. 219 MARJORIE 'Can these be our men at all?' I asked of Lance- lot in amazement. I could not for the life of me conceive what other men they could be, but the sight of all those scarlet coats filled me with astonish- ment. Lancelot took the spy-glass from me again with- out replying, and looked long and patiently at the approaching boats. 'Yes,' he said at last, 'they are our men sure enough, for I see the face of Jensen among them. But how on earth has he contrived to deck out all his gang of rascals in the likeness of soldiers?' He paused for a moment; then added thoughtfully: 1 'Tis our Providence that the Royal Christopher lost her cannon. Yonder stronghold would be no better than so much pasteboard against a couple of the ship's guns.' We had no time for further converse. The sound of the horn had rallied our party, and soon the whole of our men were gathered about us, star- ing over the sea at those two moving blots of scar- let. I cast an anxious glance at the face of each man of our little party, and when I had finished I did not feel anxious any more. I could see by the face of every man that he meant to fight and to fight his best. 220 THE BUSINESS BEGINS Lancelot lost no time in getting the men into or- der and in arranging exactly what was to be done. It was curious, perhaps, although I did not think it curious then, that these men should have accepted so unquestioningly Lancelot's command over them. But they were old soldiers, who had promised to obey Captain Amber, and he had himself devolved his command upon Lancelot. And so, until Lance- lot went stark staring mad, which he was not in the least likely to do, they were perfectly prepared to obey him. I should not be adhering to the spirit of truth- fulness which I have observed in setting down these my early experiences if I did not confess that I faced the fact of coming conflict with very mingled emotions. This was the very first time that I had ever seen human beings about to close in bloody strife. Here I found myself standing up with arms in my hands, ready to take away the life of a fellow- creature to take away the lives of several fellow- creatures, if needs must. Moreover, I knew very well that there were plenty of chances of my get- ting knocked on the head in this my first scrimmage, and I trembled a little inwardly though not, as I believe, outwardly at the thought of my promise to Marjorie. And yet even with that thought a 221 MARJORIE new courage came into my heart. For I immedi- ately resolved that, come what might, I would en- deavour to carry myself in such a manner as Mar- jorie would have me carry myself, namely, as an honest man should, fighting to the best of his abil- ity for what he believed to be the right cause, and not making too much of a fuss about it. And that resolve nerved me better than a dram of spirits would have done, and I set aside the flask from which I had been on the point to help myself. I do not know if Lancelot felt like that in any degree, and I never presumed to question him on the point afterwards, as there are some topics upon which gentlemen cannot approach each other, how- ever great the degree of intimacy may be between them. But he certainly carried himself as com- posedly as if we were standing in a ball-room before the dancing began. It is true that he had been brought up to understand the military life and the use of arms, and he had seen a battle fought in the Low Countries, and had fought a duel him- self in France with some uncivil fellow. He never looked handsomer, brighter, more gallant than then, and his faded sea-clothes became him as well as the richest gala suit or finest uniform that courtier or soldier ever wore. He had an exquisite neatness 232 THE BUSINESS BEGINS of his person ever, and had contrived every day upon that island to shave himself, so that while most of his fellows bore bristling beards, and my own chin was as raspy as a hedgehog, he might have presented himself at the Court of St. James's, so spruce was his appearance. When all was ready Lancelot drew up his men very soldierly and made them a little speech. He bade them bear in mind that the men who were about to attack us were not merely our own enemies, but the King's ; and not merely the King's enemies, but Heaven's, because, being pirates, they sinned against the laws of Heaven as well as the laws of earth. He bade them be sure that they need look for no mercy from such fellows, and that therefore it behoved every man of them to fight his best, both for his own sake and for the sake of his companions ; but also he conjured them, if the victory went with them, not to forget that even those pirates were made in God's image, albeit vilely perverted, and that it was our duty as Christians and as soldiers to show them more mercy than they would deal out to us. He ended by reminding them that they were Englishmen, and that a portion of England's honour and glory depended upon the way in which they carried themselves that day. To all of which 323 MARJORIE they listened attentively, every man standing steady as if on parade. When Lancelot had quite finished he pulled off his hat and swung it in the air, calling upon them to huzza for the King. Then there went up from our band such a cheer as did my heart good. The island rang for the first time in its life to the huzzaing with which those stout fellows greeted the name of the King. Again and yet again their voices shook the silence with that manly music, and I, while I shouted as loud as the rest of them, glowed with pride to think that courage and loyalty were the same all the world over. Nothing has ever made me prouder than the courage of that knot of men about to engage in a doubtful conflict in a nameless place with a gang of devils, and gallantly cheering for their King before beginning it. Those men in scarlet must have heard that cheer and been not a little amazed by it. I dare say that by this time Cornelys Jensen had seen us through his spy-glass. If so, how he must have cursed at our readiness and at the sight of our stockade ! It was decided by Lancelot that the first thing to do was to prevent the pirates from landing. If they succeeded by untoward chance in effecting a 224 THE BUSINESS BEGINS landing, then all of us who were lucky enough to be left alive were to retreat with all speed to the stronghold and fasten ourselves in there. To this end the gate was left open, and in the charge of two men, whose duty it would be to swing it to and bolt it the moment the last of our men had got inside. A few men were left inside the stockade, including the fugitives, to whom we had given arms. The main body of our men were drawn up along the beach, with their muskets ready. Between these and the stockade a few men were thrown out to cover our retreat, if retreat there had to be. It was anxious work to watch the advance of those two boats with their scarlet crews over that tranquil tropic sea. The water was smooth, as it had been now for days, and their coming was steady and measured. As had been the case ever since we made Fair Island, there was almost no wind, so that their sails were of little service, but their rowing was excellent, as the rowing of good seamen always is. And, villains though they were, those underlings of Jensen's were admirable sailors. When they were quite near we could recognise the faces of the fellows in the two boats. Cornelys Jensen was in the first boat, and he was dressed out 225 MARJORIE as sumptuously as any general of our army on a field day. For though every man jack of them in the two boats was blazing in scarlet, and though that scarlet cloth was additionally splendid with gold lace, the cloth and the cut of Jensen's coat were finer and better than those of the others, and it was adorned and laced with far greater profusion. With his dark face and evil expression he looked, to my mind, in all his finery more like my lady's monkey in holiday array than man, pirate, or devil, although he was indeed all three. Every man in those two boats was decked out in scarlet cloth and gold lace except one. Every man in those two boats was heavily armed with muskets, pistols and cutlasses except one. The exception was a man who sat by the side of Jensen. He was clad in black, and his face was very pale, and there was an ugly gash of a raw wound across his forehead. I could see that his hands were tied behind him, and in the wantonness of power Jensen had laid his own bare hanger across the prisoner's knees. I knew the captive at once. He was the Reverend Mr. Ebrow, who had so strengthened us by his exhortation during our peril on board the Royal Christopher. When Lancelot saw whom they had with them 226 THE BUSINESS BEGINS and the way that those villains treated their captive I noted that his face paled, and that there came a look into his eyes which I had not often seen there, but which meant no good for Jensen and his scum if Lancelot got the top of them. For Lancelot was a staunch Churchman and a respecter of ministers of God's Word, and as loyal to his religion as he was to his King. There was one face which I missed out of those boatloads of blackguards, a face which I had very confidently expected to find most prominent amongst them. When I missed it in the first boat I made sure that I should find it in the second, and probably in the place of command ; but it was not there either, very much to my surprise. At that crisis in our affairs, at that instant of peril to my life, I was for the moment most perturbed, or at least most puzzled by the fact that I could not find this familiar face among the collection of scarlet-coated scoundrels who were creeping in upon us. The face that I was looking for was a face that would have gone well enough too with a scarlet coat, for it was a scarlet face in itself. I looked for that red-haired face which I had seen for the first time leering at me over Barbara's shoulders on the last day that ever I set foot within the Skull and 227 MARJORIE Spectacles. I was looking for the face of Jensen's partner in treason Hatchett. By this time our enemies had come to within perhaps ten boats' lengths of Fair Island. All this time they had kept silence, and all this while we had kept silence also. But now, as if Lancelot had made up his mind exactly at what point he would take it upon him to act, we assumed the defensive. For Lancelot gave the command to make ready and to present our pieces, and his words came from his lips as clearly and as composedly as if he were only directing some drilling on an English green. In a moment all our muskets were at the shoulder, while Lancelot called out to the pirates that if they rowed another inch nearer he would give the order to fire. Our men were steady men, and, though I am sure that more than one of them was longing to empty his piece into the boats, all remained as motionless as if on parade. The pirate boats came to a dead stop, and I could see that all the men who were not busy with the oars were gripping their guns. But Jensen kept them down with a gesture. Then, as the boats were steady, he rose to his feet and waved a white hand- kerchief in sign that he wished for parley. It was part of the foppishness of the fellow that the hand- 228 THE BUSINESS BEGINS kerchief was edged with lace, like a woman's or a grandee's. Lancelot called out to him to know what he wanted. Jensen shouted back that he wished to par- ley with us. Lancelot promptly made answer that he needed no parley, that he knew him and his crew for traitors, murderers, and pirates, with whom he would have no dealings save by arms. At those bold words of his we could see that the fellows in the scarlet coats were furious, and we could guess from their gestures that many of them were urging Jensen to attack us at once, thinking, no doubt, that they might return our fire and, being able to effect a landing before we could reload, might cut us to pieces. But, whatever their purposes were, Jensen re- strained them, and it was a marvel to see the ease with which he ruled those savages. He again ad- dressed himself to Lancelot, warning him that it would be for his peace and the peace of those who were with him to come to some understanding with the invaders. And at last, having spoken some time without shaking Lancelot's resolve, Jensen asked if he would at least receive an envoy upon the island. Lancelot was about to refuse again when some- thing crossed his mind, and he shouted back to Jen- 229 MARJORIE sen to know whom he would send. Jensen, who had probably divined his thoughts, clapped his hand upon the shoulder of that prisoner of his who sat by his side all in black, and called out to Lancelot that he proposed to send the parson as his envoy. To this Lancelot agreed, but I saw that he looked anxious, for it crossed his mind, as he afterwards told me, that this propositon might merely serve as an excuse for the pirate boats to come close, and so give them a better chance of attacking us. How- ever, the pirates made no such attempt. It may be that Jensen, who was quick of wit, guessed Lancelot's thought. The boats remained where they were. We saw the reverend gentleman stand up. One of Jensen's fellows untied his hands, and then without more ado Jensen caught the poor man up by his waistband and straightway flung him into the sea. A cry of anger broke from Lancelot's lips when he saw this, for he feared that the man might drown. But he was a fair swimmer, and the dis- tance was not so great, so within a few seconds of his plunge he found his depth and came wading towards us with the water up to his middle, looking as wretched as a wet rat, while all the rogues in the boats laughed loud and long at the figure he cut. 230 "LANCELOT RUSHED FORWARD INTO THE WATER/ THE BUSINESS BEGINS Lancelot rushed forward into the water to give him his hand, and so drew the poor fellow on to the dry land and amongst us again. The first thing he did was to assure us which was indeed hardly necessary, considering his cloth and his character that he was in no wise leagued with the pirates, but simply and solely a prisoner at their mercy, whose life they had preserved that he might be of use to them as a hostage. Lancelot called out to the pirate boats to with- draw further back, which they did after he had passed his word that he would confer with them again in a quarter of an hour, after he had heard what their envoy had to say. When they had with- drawn out of gunshot, their scarlet suits glowing like two patches of blood on the water, then Lance- lot, still bidding our line to be on guard against any surprise, withdrew with me and the clergyman and two or three of our friends a little way up the beach. And there we called upon Mr. Ebrow to tell us all that he had to tell. 231 CHAPTER XXVII AN ILL TALE IT was an ill tale which he had to tell, and he told it awkwardly, for he was not a little confused and put about, both by his wound and by his treatment at the hands of those people. We gave him some- what to eat and drink, and he munched and sipped between sentences, for he had not fared well with the pirates. We would have given him a change of raiment, too, after his ducking, but this he refused stiffly, saying that he was well enough as he was, and that a wetting would not hurt him. And he was in- deed a strong, tough man. Much of what he had to tell us we knew, of course, already of the appearance of Jensen on the island, of the attack upon the colonists and the massacre of the most part of them. He himself had got his cut over the head in the fight, a cut that knocked him senseless, so that by the time he came to again the business was over and the pirates were masters of the island. 232 AN ILL TALE But he was able to tell us the thing we most want- ed to know, the thing which the fugitives could give us no inkling of, and that was how it came to pass that Jensen, whom we all deemed dead and drowned, should have come so calamitously to life again. It was, it seemed, in this wise. Jensen, who unit- ed a madman's cunning to a bad man's daring, saw that my suspicions of him might prove fatal to his plans. Those plans had indeed been, as I had guessed, to seize the Royal Christopher and make a pirate ship of her, with himself for her captain; and to that end he had manned the ship with men upon whom he could rely, many of whom had been pirates before, all of whom were willing to go to any lengths for the sake of plunder and pleasure. But so long as our party were suspicious of him, and had arms in readiness to shoot him and his down at the first show of treachery, it was plain to a simpler man that his precious scheme stood every chance of coming to smoke. He guessed, therefore, that if we could be led to believe that he was dead and done with our suspi- cions would be lulled, and he would be left with a fair field to carry out his plan. To that end he de- vised a scheme to befool us, and, having primed his 233 MARJORIE party as to his purpose, he carried it out with all success. It was no man's body that went overboard on that night, but merely a mighty beam of wood that one of Jensen's confederates cast over the vessel's side just before he raised the cry of 'Man overboard!' Jensen himself was snugly concealed in the inner- most parts of the ship, where he lay close, laughing in his sleeve at us and our credulity. After we left he came out of his hole and made his way to Early Island, as agreed upon with his companions, who, on his arrival, butchered the most of the colo- nists. One mystery was disposed of. So was the other mystery how Jensen and his men came to be so well armed and so gaily attired. When our expedi- tion was preparing, Captain Marmaduke commis- sioned Jensen to buy a store of all manner of agri- cultural and household implements and utensils for the use of the young colony. Now, as such gear was not likely to be of service to Jensen in his piracies, he was at pains to serve his own ends while he pretended to obey the Captain's commands. He had therefore made up and committed to the hold a quantity of cases which professed to contain what the Captain had commanded. But never a 234 AN ILL TALE spade or pick, never a roasting-jack or flat-iron, never a string of beads or a mirror for barter with natives was to be found in all those boxes. If our colony had ever by any chance arrived at their goal they would have found themselves in sore straits for the means of tilling the earth and of cooking their food. The boxes contained instead a great quantity of arms, such as muskets and pistols and cutlasses, to- gether with abundance of ammunition in the shape of powder, bullets and shot. Others of those boxes contained goodlier gear, for Jensen was a vain rogue as well as a clever rogue, and dearly loved brave colours about him and to make a gaudy show. I believe that it was a passion for power and the pomp that accompanies power more than anything else which drove him to be a pirate, and that if he could have been, say, a great Minister of State, who is, after all, often only another kind of pirate, he might have carried himself very well and been looked upon by the world at large as a very decent, public-spirited sort of fellow. I have known men in high office with just such passion for display and dominion as Jensen, and I do not think that there is much to choose between him and them in that re- gard. 235 MARJORIE So sundry of those lying boxes were loaded with gay clothing, such as those scarlet coats with which we had now made acquaintance, and which were fashioned on the pattern of those of the bodyguard of His Majesty, only much more flauntingly tricked out with gold lace and gilded buttons. It added a shade of darkness to the treachery of this scoundrel that he should thus presume to parade himself in a parody of such a uniform. But besides all this there was yet another secret which those same false coffers concealed. He had dealings with shipbuilders at Haarlem, who were noted for their ingenuity and address, and this firm had built for him two large skiffs, which were made in such a fashion that the major part of them could be taken to pieces and the whole packed away in a small space with safety and convenience for his purpose. These vessels were as easily put together as taken to pieces, and were as serviceable a kind of boat as ever vessel carried. And so there was the rascal well prepared to make sure of our ship. It makes my heart bleed now, after all these years, to think how the fellow deceived my dear patron, and how the Royal Christopher went sail- ing the seas with that secret in her womb, and that we all walked those decks night after night and 236 AN ILL TALE day after day, and never suspected the treason that lay beneath our feet. But we never did suspect it, and when the time came for us to leave the ship in a hurry we had little thought in our minds of taking agricultural imple- ments or household gear or articles of barter with us. So they lay there snugly in the hold, and Jensen with them, and Jensen was busy and happy in his wicked way in getting at them, and in laughing as he did so over our folly in being deceived by him. It seems that after the departure of Lancelot and our little party certain of the sailors, as agreed upon beforehand, made their way back to the ship, and in the dead of night transported the greater quantity of the weapons and ammunition. They put the skiffs together, too, and lowered them over the side. The camp had gone to rest when Jensen, shrieking like a fiend, leaped from his concealment among the trees and gave the signal for attack. The butch- ery was brief. The few men who were armed found that their weapons had been rendered useless, but even if their murderers had not taken that pre- caution their victims could have made no sort of a stand. They were taken by surprise. The horrible cries that the pirates made as they rushed from their ambush helped to dishearten the colonists, for they 237 MARJORIE took those noises for the war-cries of savages, and they yielded to the panic. A very few escaped from the slaughter, and hid themselves in the woods in the centre of the island. The manner of their es- cape I have already related. It seemed from what the parson now told us that Jensen made little effort to pursue them, feeling confident that they must perish miserably from hunger and thirst, if not from wild beasts, in the jungle. The first use Jensen made of his triumph was to bring over to the island from the wreck everything that he believed to be needful for the comfort and adornment of his person and the persons of his fol- lowing. All the arms and ammunition that his malign thoughtfulness had provided, all the fine clothes that he had hidden away, all the store of wines and strong waters that still remained upon the ship were carefully disembarked and brought to Early Island. He dressed himself and his follow- ers up in the smart clothes that we had seen, called himself king of the island, made his companions take a solemn oath of allegiance to him and sign it with their blood, and then they all gave them- selves up to an orgie. For, bad as all this was to tell and to listen to, there was still worse to be told and heard. To 238 AN ILL TALE treachery and bloodshed were added treachery and lust. The cup of Jensen's iniquity was more than full. It ran over and was spilt upon the ground, crying out to Heaven for vengeance. There were, as you know, women among our colonists not many, but still some, the wives of some of the settlers, the daughters and sisters of others. None of these were hurt when Jensen and his fellow-fiends made their attack none of them, unhappily for themselves, were killed. My cheeks blazed with shame and wrath as I listened to what the parson had to say, and if Jensen had been before me I would have been rejoiced to pistol him with my own hand. The women were parcelled out among the men as the best part of their booty. There was not a wickeder place on God's earth at that hour than the island, and its sins, as I thought, should be blot- ted out by a thunderbolt from Heaven. Yet there is something still worse to come, as I take it. In all this infamy Jensen reserved for him- self the privilege of a deeper degree of infamy. For he told Hatchett, it seems, that he must give up Barbara, and when Hatchett laughed in his face Jensen shot him dead where he stood and took her by force. Such was the terror the man inspired that 239 MARJORIE no one of all his fellows presumed to avenge Hatch- ett, or even to protest against the manner of his death. As for the woman, as for Barbara, she was a strong woman, and she loved Hatchett with all her heart, and she fought, I believe, hard. But if she was strong, Jensen was stronger, and merci- less. He had everything his own way at the island ; he had his arts of taming people, and the parson told me that he had tamed Barbara. I have had to set these wrongs down here for the sake of truth, and to justify our final deeds against Jensen and his gang. I have set them down as barely and as briefly as possible, for there are some things so terrible that they scarcely bear the telling. I cannot be more particular; the whole bad busi- ness was hideous in the extreme, with all the hide- ousness that could come from a mind like Jensen's a mind begotten of the Bottomless Pit. But in all my sorrow I was grateful to Heaven that Marjorie had not been left upon that other island. Better for her to die here by the hand of the man who loved her than to have been on that island at the mercy of such men. Thank God, thank God, thank God ! I said to myself again and again. I could say nothing more, I could think nothing more, only thank God, thank God I 240 CHAPTER XXVIII WE DEFY JENSEN THAT unhappy Barbara ! Her sin had found her out indeed. She was a wicked woman, for she had been part and parcel in the treason, she had been hand and glove with the traitors. But she did not mean such wickedness to the women-folk, and she did what she had done for her husband's sake, thinking that he would be a pirate king and she his consort. This was what she meant when she had called herself a queen. With such falsehoods had Jensen stuffed the ears of the man and his wife, snaring them to their fate. As I had loved her once, so I pitied her now. She had shared in a great crime, but it would be hard to shape a greater penalty for her sin. By the time that the parson had finished his story we who were listening to him felt dismal, and we looked at each other grimly. 'What is the first thing to be done?' Lancelot said softly, more to himself than as really asking any advice upon the matter from us. 241 MARJORIE 'Fire a volley upon those devils when they draw near, and so rid the earth of them,' I suggested. Lancelot shook his head. 'They are under the protection of a flag of truce ' he began, when I interrupted him hotly. 'What right,' I raged at him, 'what right have such devils to the consideration of honourable war- fare and of honourable men?' Lancelot sighed. 'None whatever; but that does not change us from being honourable men and from carrying on our contest according to the rules of honourable warfare. They are devils, ruffians, what you will, but we we are gentlemen, and we have passed our word. We cannot go back from that.' I know very well that I blushed a fiery red, from rage against our enemy and shame at Lancelot's reproof. But I said nothing, and Mr. Ebrow spoke. 'Mr. Amber,' he said, clasping Lancelot's hand as he spoke, 'you are in the right, in the very right, as a Christian soldier and a Christian gentleman. Their hour will come without our anticipating it.' And then he wrung my hand warmly, in token that he understood my feelings too, and did not overmuch blame me. 242 WE DEFY JENSEN 'One thing at least is certain,' said Lancelot. 'You must not return to the mercies of those vil- lains.' Mr. Ebrow drew himself stiffly up. He was wet and weary, and the ugly cut on his forehead did not add to the charm of his rugged face, but just at that moment he seemed handsome. 'Mr. Amber,' he said, 'I passed my word to those men that I would return after I had given you their message, and I will keep my word.' 'But,' said Lancelot, 'they will kill you !' 'It is possible,' said the man of God calmly. 'It is very probable. But I have in my mind the con- duct of the Roman Regulus. Should I, who am a minister of Christ, be less nice in my honour than a Pagan?' 'Nay, but if we were to restrain you by force?' asked Lancelot. 'Mr. Amber,' Ebrow answered, 'it was your duty just now to administer a reproof to your friend; I hope you will not force me to reprove you in your turn. I have given my word, and there is an end of it; and if you were to hold me by the strong hand I should think you more worthy to consort with those pirates than with me.' 243 MARJORIE It was now Lancelot's turn to blush. Then he gripped Mr. Ebrow's hand. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, and there were tears in his eyes as he spoke. 'You have taught me a noble lesson.' Mr. Ebrow seemed as if he would be going, but I stayed him. 'Reverend sir,' said I, 'may I make so bold as to ask what is this message that you have to deliver to us ?' For, as a matter of fact, we had so plied him with questions, and he had been so busy in an- swering us, that he had not as yet delivered to us the pirates' message, of which he was the spokes- man. There came a spot of colour on his grey jaws as I spoke. 'True. I fear I make but a poor intermediary/ he said. 'The pirates propose, in the first place, that you make common cause with them, and recog- nise the authority of Cornelys Jensen as your cap- tain, in the which case Cornelys Jensen guarantees you your share of the spoiling of the Royal Chris- topher, and in future a fitting proportion of what- ever profits may come from their enterprises.' 244 WE DEFY JENSEN 'I suppose you do not expect us to consider that proposition?' said Lancelot. Mr. Ebrow almost smiled. 'No, indeed,' he said, 'and I do but discharge my promise in repeating it to you. I must tell you too that he added that he was wishful to make your sister his wife.' There came into Lancelot's eyes the ugliest look I ever saw there, and for myself I know not how I looked, I know only how I felt, and I will not put my feelings into words. I suppose Mr. Ebrow understood us and our silence, for he went on with his embassy. 'In the second place, then, they call upon you to swear that you will take no part against them, and will, on the contrary, do your endeavour to protect them in case they should be attacked by other forces.' 'That also needs no consideration,' said Lance- lot. Mr. Ebrow nodded. 'Of course not, of course not. Then, in the third place, they call upon you to throw down your weapons and to surrender yourselves to them as prisoners of war, in which case they pledge them- selves to respect your lives and preserve you all as hostages for their own safety.' 245 MARJORIE 'And if we refuse even this offer,' Lancelot asked, 'what is to happen then ?' 'In that case,' said Mr. Ebrow, 'they declare war against you; they will give you no quar- ter ' 'Let them wait till they are asked!' I broke in; but Lancelot rested his hand restrainingly upon my arm. 'As for the matter of quarter,' he said, 'it may prove in the end more our business to give it than to seek for it. Quarter we may indeed give in this sense, that even those villains shall not be killed in cold blood if they are willing to surren- der. But every man that we take prisoner shall most assuredly be tried for his life for piracy and murder upon the high seas. Will you be so good as to tell those men from me that if they at once surrender the person of Cornelys Jensen and their own weapons they shall be treated humanely, kept in decent confinement, and shall have the benefit of their conduct when the time for trial comes? But this offer will not hold good after to-day, and if they attempt again to approach the island they shall be fired upon.' 'Well and good, sir,' said Mr. Ebrow. 'Have you anything more to say, for my masters did but 246 WE DEFY JENSEN give me a quarter of an hour, and I feel sure that my time must be expired by now?' 'Only this,' answered Lancelot, 'that if they want to fly their black flag over this island they must come and take it from us.' I never saw Lancelot look more gallant, with courage and hope in his mien, and the soft wind fretting his hair. But the brightness faded away from his face a moment after as he added : 'It grieves me to heart, sir, that you have to return to those ruffians.' Mr. Ebrow extended his hand to Lancelot with a wintry smile. 'It is my duty. I do but follow my Master's orders, to do all in His Name and for His glory.' He wrung Lancelot's hand and mine, and the hand of every man in our troop. He gave us his blessing, and then, turning, walked with erect head to the sea. As soon as the pirates saw him coming they rowed their boat a little nearer in, when they rested on their oars, while we stood to our guns and the parson waded steadily out into the deeper water. When he reached their boat they dragged him on board roughly, and we could see from their 247 MARJORIE gestures and his that he was telling them the result of the interview with us. The telling did not seem to give any great satis- faction to the villains, and least of all to Jensen, for he struck the parson a heavy blow in the face with his clenched hand that felled him, tumbling down among the rowers. Then Jensen turned and shook his fist in our direction, and shouted out something that we could not hear because of the distance and the slight wind. It seemed to me as if for a moment Jensen had a mind to order his boats to advance and try to effect a landing, and I wished this in my heart, for I was eager to come to blows with the villains, and confident that we should prove a match for them. But it would seem as if discretion were to pre- vail with them, in which, indeed, they were wise, for to attempt to land even a more numerous force in the face of our well-armed men would have been rash and a rough business. We saw the boats sweep round and row rapidly away, and we watched those scarlet coats dwindle into red spots in the distance. 248 CHAPTER XXIX THE ATTACK AT LAST IN what I am going to tell there will be little of Marjorie for a while, for sorely against her will we refused to rank her as a fighting man and made her keep within shelter, though busy in many ways making ready for the inevitable attack. Nothing happened on the next day or the next to disturb our quiet and the beauty of the weather. For all that was evident to the contrary we might very well have been the sole inhabitants of that archipelago, the sole children of those seas, with Marjorie for our queen. We did not hope, however, nor indeed did we wish, that we had heard the last of our enemies. There was a moment even when Lancelot consid- ered the feasibility of our making an attack upon Early Island in the hope of rescuing some of the captives. But the plan was only suggested to be dismissed. For every argument which told against their attempting to make an attack upon us told 249 MARJORIE with ten times greater force against our making an attack upon them. They outnumbered us; they were perhaps better armed. The odds were too heavily against us. But our hearts burnt within us at the thought of the captives. We had evidently come in for one of those spells of fine weather which in those regions so often fol- low upon such a storm as had proved the undoing of the Royal Christopher. If the conditions had been different our lives would have been sufficiently enviable. Fair Island deserves its name; we had summer, food and water; so far as material com- fort went, all was well with us. But mere material comfort could not cheer us much. We were in peril ourselves; we were yet more concerned for the peril of Captain Amber, of whose fortunes and whose whereabouts we knew absolutely nothing. If he failed to meet a ship he was to return to Early Island. What might not be his fate ? To diminish in some degree the chance of this catastrophe, we resolved to erect some signal on the highest point of Fair Island, in the hope that it would have the result of attracting his at- tention and leading him to suppose that the whole of the ship's company were settled down there. There was no difficulty in the making of such 250 THE ATTACK AT LAST a signal. We had a flag with us in the boat, and all that it was necessary to do was to fix it to the summit of one of the tall trees that crowned the hill which sprang from the centre of Fair Island. In a few hours the flag was flying gallantly enough from its primitive flag-staff, a sufficiently conspicu- ous object even with a gentle breeze to serve, as we hoped, our turn. In the two days that followed upon the visit of the pirates we were busy victualling the stockade and supplying it with water, looking to our arms and ammunition, and, which was of first impor- tance, in building a strong fence, loopholed like the stockade. This fence or wall led down to where our boat lay, and enabled us to protect it from any attempt of the pirates to carry it off or to de- stroy it. In work of this kind the eight-and- forty hours passed away as swiftly as if they had been but so many minutes. On the afternoon of the third day all our prepa- rations were completed, and I was convinced that within that stockade our scanty force could keep the pirates at bay for a month of Sundays, so long as they did not suceed in getting sufficiently close to employ fire as a means of forcing an en- trance. But though I felt cheered I noticed that 251 MARJORIE there was no corresponding cheerfulness in Lance- lot's face. He never looked despondent, but he looked dissatisfied. I drew him aside and asked what troubled him. 'The moon troubles me,' he answered. 'The moon !' I said in astonishment. 'Yes,' he answered, 'the moon or rather, the absence of the moon. Last night was the moon's last night, and to-night we shall be in darkness after sunset. It is under cover of that darkness that, some time or another, to-night or another night, sooner or later, the pirates will make an attempt to land. For you may be sure that they have not forgotten us, and that they would be glad enough to pull down yonder flag.' I felt in my heart that what Lancelot said was true enough, but I tried to put a bold face upon it. 'After all,' I said, 'the darkness will be as bad for them as it is for us.' 'No,' Lancelot said; 'they can steer well enough by the stars. If I thought that they could get round to the back of the island and fall upon us that way, I should feel that we were in a very bad case indeed. But of that I have no fear. There is no place for landing in that part, and if there were they would find it hard enough to force their way through the 252 THE ATTACK AT LAST woods. No, no; they will come as they came before.' I asked him what he thought was the best thing to do. He replied that the only thing was to keep a very sharp look-out, and to fight hard if it came to fighting, a pithy sentence, which seemed to me to sum up the whole art of war at least, so far as we were concerned who dwelt on Fair Island. To make assurance doubly sure, however, Lancelot did during the day place a man by the flag-staff, from which point, as the hill ran up into a high peak, he would be able to sweep the sea in all directions. With regard to the night, Lancelot showed me how fortunate it was that he had brought the fireworks with us, as, at a pinch, in the darkness, we could get a gleam of light for a minute by firing them. I was getting so unstrung by all these alarms and watchings that I began to wish that the pirates would come once for all that we might have done with them. For I had confidence in our side and the certainty of its winning which was scarcely logi- cal, maybe, but which, after all, I think is a great deal better than feeling suspicious of the strength of one's own side or speculative as to the merits of one's own cause. How often afterward, in other places and amid 253 MARJORIE perils as great, or indeed ten times greater, have I remembered that night with all its agony of ex- pectation ! The main part of our little garrison was en- sconced in the stockade and sleeping, or seeking to sleep, for every man of us knew well enough that he needed to have all his energies when the struggle came, and that the more rest he got beforehand the better the fighting trim he would be in after- ward. We had sentinels posted at different points along that portion of the coast where landing was pos- sible, and though we had been grateful to it before for being such an easy place to land upon, we could almost have wished in our hearts now that it had been less easy of access. In front of the stockade, but some considerable distance from it, and on the sloping land that was nigh to the beach, we had thrown up a kind of intrenchment, behind which we could kneel and fire, and under whose cover we hoped to be able to make a good account of assailants. I was on guard here at night, and I paced up and down in front of it thinking of all the chances that had happened since I sailed in the Royal Christopher; and I pleased myself by recalling every word that 254 THE ATTACK AT LAST Marjorie had said to me, or in thinking of all the words that I should like to say to her. Suddenly my thoughts were brought from heaven to earth by a sound as of a splash in the water. It might have been but a sweep of a sea-bird's wing as it stooped and wheeled in its flight over the sea, but it set my pulses tingling and all my senses straining to hear more and to see something. The sea that lay so little away from me was all swallowed up in darkness. I could see nothing to cause me alarm. The quiet of the night seemed to breathe a deep peace that invited only to thoughts of sleep. But I was as wide awake as a startled hare, and I listened with all my ears and peered into the blackness. Was it my heated fancy, I asked myself, or did I indeed hear faint sounds coming to me from where the sea lay ? I whistled softly a note something like our Eng- lish starling's a signal that had been agreed upon between Lancelot and me. In a very few seconds he was at my side. As I told him of my suspicions Lancelot peered into the darkness, listening very carefully, and now both he and I felt certain that we could hear sounds, indistinct but regular, coming from the sea. 255 MARJORIE 'They are doing what I thought they would,* Lancelot whispered to me. Lancelot's voice had this rare quality, that when he whispered every syllable was as clear as if he were crying from the housetops. 'They have chosen this dark night to attack us, and they are rowing with muffled oars. We must do our best to give them a wild welcome. It is well we have those fireworks ; they will serve our turn now.' He slipped away from my side and was swal- lowed up in the darkness. But he soon came back to my side. 'All is ready,' he said. He had been from man to man, and now every one was at his post. The bulk of our little body crouched down behind the breastwork while four men were stationed by the open gates of the stock- ade to allow us to make our retreat there. Those who were behind the breastwork knew that when Lancelot gave the word they were to fire in the direction of the sea. Lancelot had his lights ready, and we waited anxiously for the flare. The seconds seemed to lengthen out into cen- turies as we lay there, listening to those sounds growing louder, though even at their loudest they might very well have escaped notice if one were 256 THE ATTACK AT LAST not watching for them. At last they came to an end altogether, and we could just catch a sound as of a succession of soft splashes in the water. Lancelot whispered close to my ear: 'They are getting out in the shallow water to draw their boats in. We shall have a look at them in an instant.' While I held my breath I was conscious that Lancelot was busy with his flint and steel. His was a sure hand and a firm stroke. I could hear the click as he struck stone and metal together; there was a gleam of fire as the fuse caught, and then in another instant one of his fireworks rose in a blaze of brightness. It only lasted for the space of a couple of seconds, but in that space of time it showed us all that we had to see and much more than we wished to see. As our meteor soared in the air the space in front of us was lit with a light as clear as the light of dawn, though in colour it was more like that of the moon at least, as I have seen her rays represented often enough since in stage plays. Before us the sea rippled gently against the sand, and in the shallows we saw the pirates as clearly as we had seen them on the day when they first came to the island, 257 MARJORIE There were now three boatloads of them, and the boats were more fully manned than before. Many of the men were still in the boats, but the greater part were in the water, barelegged, and were stealthily urging the boats ashore. They were doing the work quietly, and made little noise. It was the strangest sight I had ever seen, this sight of those men in their scarlet coats, that looked so glaring in that blue light, with their gleaming weapons, all moving towards us with murder in their minds. In their amazement at the flame the pirates paused for an instant, and in that instant Lancelot gave the order we itched for. 'Fire!' Then the silence was shattered by the discharge of our pieces in a steady volley. All the island rang with the report, and at that very instant the rocket on its home curve faded and went out with a kind of wink, and darkness swallowed us all up again. But what darkness! The darkness had been still; now it was full of noises. The echo of the report of our volley rang about us; from the woods came clamour, the screaming and chattering of wakened birds, and we could even hear the 258 THE ATTACK AT LAST brushing of their wings as they flew from tree to tree in their terror. But in front of us the sounds were the most terrible of all ; the splashing of bodies falling into the water, the shrieks of wounded men, the howls and curses of the astonished and infuri- ated enemy. We could not tell what hurt we had done, but it must have been grave, for we had fired at close range, and we were all good marks- men. But we could not hope that we had crippled our invaders, or done much toward equalising our forces. For, as it had seemed in that moment of illumination, we were outnumbered by well-nigh two to one. There was no need to fire another light; it was impossible that we could hope to hold our own in the open, and our enemies would be upon us before we had time to reload, so there was nothing for it but to retreat to the stockade with all speed. Lancelot gave the order, and in another instant we were racing for the stockade, bending low as we ran, for the pirates had begun to fire in our direction. But their firing was wild, and it hit none of us; and it stopped as suddenly as it began, for they soon perceived that it was idle waste of powder and ball in shooting into the darkness. 259 MARJORIE Luckily for us, we knew every inch of our terri- tory by heart, and could make our way well enough to the stockade in the gloom, while we could hear the pirates behind splashing and stumbling as they landed. But as they were taken aback by the suddenness of our assault and its result, they were not eager to advance into the night, and, as I guessed, waited awhile after landing from their boats. As for us, we did not pause until we had passed, every one of us, between the gates of our stockade, and heard them close behind us, and the bar fall into its place. The first thing I saw in the dim light was the face of Marjorie, fair in its pale pa- tience. She had a pistol in her hand, and I knew why she held it. 260 CHAPTER XXX OUR FLAG COMES DOWN WE lay still inside our fortalice for awhile, listen- ing, as well as the throbbing of our pulses would allow, to try and hear what our invaders were doing. We could hear the sound of their voices down on the beach, and the splashing they made in the water as they dragged their dead or wounded comrades out of the water and hauled their boats close up to the shore. But beyond this we heard nothing, though the air was so still, now that the screaming of the birds had died away, that we felt sure that we must hear the sound of any advance in force. Lancelot whispered to me that it was possible that they might put off their assault until daybreak. They were in this predicament, that if they lit any of the lights which we made no doubt they carried, in order to ascertain the plight that they were in, they would make themselves the targets for our 261 MARJORIE muskets. But the one thing certain was that, under the control of a man like Jensen, they would most certainly not rest till they tried to get the better of us. That Jensen himself was not among the disabled we felt confident, for Lancelot, who had a fine ear, averred that he could distinguish the sound of Jensen's voice down on the beach, which afterward proved to be so, for Jensen, unable to distinguish in the darkness the amount of injury that his army had sustained, was calling over from memory the name of each man of his gang. Every pirate who answered to his name stated the nature of his wounds, if he had any. Those who made no answer Jensen counted for lost, and of these latter there were no less than three. There was something terrible in the sense of a darkness that was swarming with enemies. We were not wholly in obscurity inside our enclosure, for we had a couple of the boat's lanterns, which shed enough light to enable us to see each other, and to look to our weapons, without allowing any appreciable light to escape between the timbers of our fortification. Soon all our muskets were loaded again. Lancelot appointed one of the men who came to us on the raft, and who was still too 262 OUR FLAG COMES DOWN weak for active service, as a loader of guns, that in case of attack we could keep up a steady firing. Happily for us, our supply of ammunition was tolerably large. For some time, however, we were left in peace. The blackness upon which the pirates had counted as an advantage had proved their bane. So there was nothing for them to do but to wait with what patience they could for the dawn. The dawn did come at last, and I never watched its coming with more anxiety. Often and often in those days when I believed myself to be fathom- deep in love I used to lie awake on my bed and watch the dawn filling the sky, and find in its sad- ness a kind of solace for mine own. For a sick spirit there is always something sad about the breaking of the day. Perhaps, if I had been like those who know the knack of verses, I should have worked off my ill-humours in rhyme, and slept bet- ter in consequence, and greeted the dawn with joy. Wonder rather than joy was in my mind on this morning as the sky took colour and the woods stirred with the chatter of the birds. For the pirates had disappeared 1 Their boats lay against the beach, but there was, as it seemed to us at first, no visible sign of their masters. 263 MARJORIE We soon discovered their whereabouts, however. They had groped, under cover of night, to the woods, and we soon had tokens of their presence. For by-and-by we could hear them moving in the wood, and could catch the gleam of their scarlet coats and the shine upon their weapons. In the wood they were certainly safe from us, if also we were, though in less measure, safe from them. As I have said, the wooded hill ran at a sharp incline at some distance from the place where we had set up our stockade, so we were not com- manded from above, and, no matter how high the pirates climbed, they could not do us a mischief in that way by firing down on to us. They did climb high, but with another purpose, for presently we saw, with rage in our eyes and hearts, one bit of business they were bent on. Our flag fluttered down like a wounded bird, and it made me mad to think that it was being hauled down by those rascals, and that we had no art to prevent them. Could we do nothing? I asked Lancelot impa- tiently. Could we not make a sortie and destroy the boats that lay down there all undefended? But Lancelot shook his head. The way to the sea was doubtless covered by our enemies in the wood. 264 OUR FLAG COMES DOWN We should only volunteer for targets if we attempt- ed to stir outside our stockade. There was nothing for it but to wait. I think that it must have enraged the pirates to find us so well protected that there was no means of taking us unawares or of creeping in upon us from the rear. With the daylight they essayed to hurt us by firing from the hill; but from the lie of the ground their shots did us no harm, either passing over our heads or striking the wall of our stronghold and knocking off a shower of splinters, but doing no further damage. We, on the contrary, were able to retaliate, firing through our loopholes up the slope at the red jackets in the woods, and with this much effect, that soon the scarlet rascals ceased to show themselves, and kept well under cover. We felt very snug where we were, and fit to stand a siege for just so long as our victuals and water held out. Then, if the pirates remained upon the island, famine would compel us to a sortie in the hope of clearing them from the woods, an ad- venture in which our chances of success seemed to kick the balance. But it did not come to that. About an hour before noon those of us who were at the loopholes saw the shine of a scarlet coat among the trees on 265 MARJORIE the nearest slope, but before there was time to aim a musket something white fluttered above it. It was, as it proved, but a handkerchief tied to a ram- rod, but it was a flag of truce for all that, and a flag of truce is respected by gentlemen of honour, whoever carries it. When the white flag had fluttered long enough for him who held it to make sure that it must have been seen by us, the bearer came out from the cover of the wood and walked boldly down the slope. For all the distance the sharp-sighted among us knew him at once for Cornelys Jensen, and it came into my mind that perhaps Lancelot might refuse to accept him as an emissary. Lance- lot, however, said nothing, but stood quietly wait- ing while the man came nearer. But when he came within pitch of voice Lancelot called out to him to come to a halt. Jensen stopped at once and waited till Lancelot again called out to him to ask what he wanted. Jensen replied that he came under the protection of a flag of truce ; that he wished to come to terms with Captain Amber for so he called him if it were by any means possible ; that he was alone and unarmed, and trusted himself to our honour. Thereupon Lancelot called back to him to come 266 OUR FLAG COMES DOWN nearer, and he would hear what he had to say. We had driven some great nails that we had with us into one of the posts of our wall to serve as a kind of ladder, and by these nails Lancelot lifted himself to the top of the palisade, and sat there waiting for Jensen's approach. I begged him not to expose himself, but he answered that there was no danger, so long as Jensen remained within short range of half a dozen of our guns, that the fellows in the woods would make himself a target. And so he sat there as coolly as if he were in an ingle, whistling 'Tyburn Tree' softly to himself as Jensen drew near. 267 CHAPTER XXXI A PIECE OF DIPLOMACY WHEN Jensen was within a few feet of the stock- ade he halted, and saluted Lancelot with a formal gravity that seemed grotesque under the circum- stances. I will do the rascal this justice, that he looked well enough in his splendid coat, though his carriage was too fantastical more of the stage player than the soldier. Lancelot, looking down at the fellow without returning his salutation, asked him what he wanted. 'Come, Captain Amber,' said Jensen boldly, 'you know what I want very well. I want to come to terms. Surely two men of the world like us ought to be able to make terms, Captain Amber.' 'I do not carry the title of Captain,' Lancelot answered, 'and I have no more in common with you than mere life. My only terms are the uncon- ditional surrender of yourself and your accom- plices. In their case some allowance may be made. In yours none !' 268 A PIECE OF DIPLOMACY Jensen shrugged his shoulders and smiled with affability at Lancelot's menaces. 'The young cock cackles louder than the old cock ever crowed,' he said; but he said it more good- humouredly than sneeringly, and it was evident that he was more than willing to propitiate Lancelot. 'We ought to make terms, for we are both at a loose end here, and might at least agree not to annoy each other. For you see, Lieutenant if you will take that title that as you judge you shall be judged. If you have no terms for us we will have no terms for you.' It was a proof of his own vanity that he thus thrust a title upon Lancelot, thinking to please him, for when Lancelot, calling him by his surname, told him again that he had no terms to make with him, he drew himself up with an offended air and said: 'I call myself Captain Jensen, if you please.' 'It does not please me,' Lancelot retorted, 'to call you anything but a pirate and a rogue. Go back to your brother rogues at once !' To my surprise, Jensen kept his temper, and seemed only hurt instead of angry at Lancelot's attack. 'Hot words,' he said quietly, 'hot words. Upon my honour, you do me wrong, Lieutenant Amber, 269 MARJORIE for I persist in respecting the courtesies of war. I wish with all my heart that we could agree, but if we cannot we cannot, and there's an end of it. But there is another matter I wish to speak about.' He paused, as if waiting for permission, and when Lancelot bade him be brief, he went on : 'We have one among us who is more inclined to your party than to mine. I mean your reverend friend Parson Ebrow.' For my part I was glad to hear that the poor man was still alive, for I feared that the pirates had killed him after their first attempt. But I saw Lancelot's face flush with anger, and his voice shook as he called out that if any harm came to Mr. Ebrow he would hold every man of the gang responsible for his life. 'Harm has come to him already,' Jensen an- swered ; 'but not from us, but from you, his friends. He was hurt in the boats last night by your fire.' At this Lancelot gave a groan, and we all felt sick and sorry, while Jensen, who knew that we could hear, though he could only see Lancelot, smiled compassionately. 'Do not be alarmed,' he said. 'The godly man is not mortally wounded. Only his face, which was always far from comely, has not been bettered 270 A PIECE OF DIPLOMACY by a shot that travelled across the side of the left cheek from jaw to ear. Now, another man in my place, Lieutenant, knowing the store you set by the parson, might very well use him to drive a bargain with you. He is no friend of ours, and the use upon him of a little torture might induce you to think better of the terms you deny.' Lancelot grew pale, and he made as if he would speak, but Jensen delayed him with a wave of the arm. 'Pray let me conclude, Lieutenant Amber,' he went on. 'Another man, having such a hostage, might use him pretty roughly. But I am not of that kidney. I want to fight fair. The reverend gentleman is no use to me. We want no chaplain. He is a friend of yours, and if we win the day some of you will be glad of his ghostly offices. But he is in our way, and I cannot answer for the temper of my people if he exhorts us any more. So I shall be heartily obliged if you will take him off our hands and relieve me of the responsibility of his presence.' I had listened to this, as you may believe, in some amazement, and Lancelot seemed no less surprised. 'What do you mean?' he asked; and Jensen answered him : 271 MARJORIE 'I mean what I say. You can have your parson. Two of my men, with this flag, will bring him down, for the poor gentleman is too feeble to walk alone from loss of blood, and leave him in your charge. After that we will send no more messages, but fight it out as well as we can till one or other wins the day.' He took off his hat as he spoke and made Lance- lot a bow; and this time Lancelot returned his salutation. 'I can only thank you for your offer,' Lancelot said, 'and accept it gladly. If I cannot change my terms, at least be assured that this charity shall be remembered to your credit.' 'I ask no more,' Jensen replied; 'and you shall have your man within the half-hour.' With that he clapped his hat proudly upon his head again, and turning on his heel marched away in a swaggering fashion, while Lancelot slipped down again into the shelter of the house. In a few minutes Jensen's red coat had disappeared among the trees, and then we all turned and stared at each other. 'The devil is not so black as he is painted, after all,' Lancelot said to me, 'if there is a leaven of good in Gornelys Jensen. But I shall be heartily 272 A PIECE OF DIPLOMACY glad to have Mr. Ebrow among us, for if the worst come it will be better to perish with us than to lie at their mercy.' I did not altogether relish Lancelot's talk about our perishing, for I had got it into my head that we were more than a match for the pirates, with all their threats and all their truculence, and my friend's readiness to face the possibility of being victims instead of victors dashed my spirits. But I thought of Marjorie, and felt that we must win or and then my thoughts grew faint and failed me, but not my promise and my resolve. We had not waited very long after Jensen's departure when we saw signs of the fulfilment of his promise. Three men came out of the wood where he had entered, two in scarlet and one in black. We could see that the two men in scarlet were supporting the man in black, who seemed to be almost unable to move, and as the three drew nearer we could see, at first with a spy-glass and soon without, that he in the middle had his face all bound about with bloody cloths. At this sight all our hearts grew hot with anger and pity, and there was not one of us that did not long to be the first to reach out a helping hand to the parson. 273 MARJORIE We could see, as the group came nearer, that Jen- sen's men were not handling their captive very tenderly. Though his limbs seemed so weak that his feet trailed on the ground, they made shift to drag him along at a walk that was almost a trot, as if their only thought was to be rid as soon as possible of their burden, whose meanings we could now plainly hear as he was jerked forward by his escort. It seemed such a shocking thing that a man so good and of so good a calling should be thus maltreated that, to speak for myself, it called for all my sense of the obligations of a white flag to stay me from sending a bullet in the direction of his cowardly companions. I could see that Lancelot was as much angered as I, by the pallor of his face and the way in which he clenched his hands. However, in a few seconds more the pirates had hauled their helpless prisoner to within a few feet of our fortress. Then, to the increase of our indig- nation, they flung him forward with brutal oaths, so that he fell grovelling on his injured face just in front of our doorway, and while he lay prone one of the ruffians dealt him a kick which made him groan like a dog. After they had done this the two red-jackets drew back a few paces and waited, 274 A PIECE OF DIPLOMACY according to the agreement, laughing the while at the plight of the clergyman. In a moment, obedient to a word from Lance- lot, a dozen hands lifted the beam and swung the door back. Lancelot sprang forward, followed hard by me, to succour our unhappy friend; and between us we lifted him from the ground, though with some effort, for he seemed quite helpless and senseless with his ill-treatment and the fall, and unable to give us the least aid in supporting him. Jensen's two brutes jeered at us for our pains, bid- ding us mind our sermon-grinder and the like, with many expletives that I shall not set down. Indeed, their speech and behaviour so discredited their mission that it would have jeopardised their safety, for all their flag of truce, with a commander of less punctiliousness than Lancelot. But he, without paying heed to their mutterings, propped the pris- oner up stoutly, and carried him, huddled and trail- ing, toward the stockade. As we moved him he moaned feebly, and kept up this moaning as we car- ried him inside the stockade and drew him toward the most sheltered corner to lay him down. My heart bled for the parson in his weakness, with his head all swathed in bloody bandages, and 275 MARJORIE I shuddered to think what his face would be like when we took off those coverings. I turned to pile some coats together for him to rest upon, but I was still looking at him as he hung helpless against Lancelot, when, in a breath, before my astounded eyes, the limp form stiffened, and Mr. Ebrow, stiff and strong, flung himself upon Marjorie and caught her in his arms. Quickly though the act was done, I still had time to think that Mr. Ebrow' s calamities had turned his brain, and to feel vexa- tion at the increase to our difficulties with a mad- man in our midst. In the next instant I saw that Mr. Ebrow was squatting on the ground behind Marjorie, sheltered by her body, which he held pinioned to his with his left arm, while his right hand held a pistol close to her forehead. Then a voice that was not the voice of Mr. Ebrow called out that Marjorie was his prisoner, and that if any man moved to rescue her he would blow the girl's brains out. And the voice that made these threats was the voice of Cornelys Jensen I I cannot tell you how astounded we were at this sudden turn in our fortunes. Our garrison, taken by surprise, had left their posts every man, and stood together at one end of our parallelogram. 276 A PIECE OF DIPLOMACY Lancelot stood still and white as a statue. I leant against the wall and gasped for breath like a man struck silly. Marjorie lay perfectly still in the grasp of her enemy, and Jensen's eyes between the bandages seemed to survey the whole scene with a savage sense of mastery. He was so well protected where he crouched by Marjorie's body that no one dared to fire, or, indeed, for the moment, to do any- thing but stare in stupefaction. The stroke was so sudden, the change so unexpected, the dash so bold, that we were at a disadvantage, and for a space no one moved. In a loud voice Jensen called upon every man to throw down his weapons, swearing furiously that if they did not do so he would kill Marjorie. Mar- jorie, on her part, though she could not free her- self from Jensen's hold for Jensen had the clasp and the hold of a bear cried out to them bravely, to do their duty, and defend the place, and pay no heed to her. But the men were not of that temper; they were at a loss; they feared Jensen, and this display of his daring unnerved them. They stood idly in a mass, while I, from where I stood, could see through the open door, to which no one else paid any heed, Jensen's men coming out of the wood, with only a few hundred yards of 277 MARJORIE level ground between them and us. I was cum- bered, as I told you, with some sea-coats, that I had caught up to make a couch for Mr. Ebrow, and as I held them to me with my left arm, they almost covered me from neck to knee. Now, in my pocket I carried the little pistol that Lancelot had given me, and in my first moment of surprise my right hand had involuntarily sought it out. Now, I was not much of a shot, and yet in a moment I made my mind up what I would do. I would, under cover of the coats, which I clutched to me, fire my piece through my pocket at Jensen, trusting to God to straighten the aim and guide the bullet. In that moment I took all the chances. If I hit Jensen, who was somewhat exposed to me where I stood, all would be well. If I missed him and he at once killed Marjorie, or if, missing him, I myself wounded or killed Marjorie, I knew that at least I should be doing as Marjorie would have me do, and in either of these cases we could despatch Jen- sen and have up our barricade again before help would come to him. All this takes time to tell, but took no time in the thinking, and my finger was upon the trigger when, in the providence of God, something happened which altered every purpose Jensen's and the others', and mine. There came 278 A PIECE OF DIPLOMACY a great crash through the air loud as immediate thunder, with a noise that seemed to shake heaven above and earth below us. Every one of us in that narrow place knew it for the roar of a ship's gun. 279 CHAPTER XXXII THE SEA GIVES UP ITS QUICK THE clatter of that reverberation altered in a trice the whole conditions of our game. Jensen, in his surprise, looked up for a moment, and in that mo- ment I had flung myself upon him, and his pistol, going off, spent its bullet harmlessly in the skies. In another second he had knocked me to the ground with a force that nearly stunned me; but before he could use another weapon twenty hands were upon him, and twenty weapons would have ended him but for Lancelot's command to take him alive. In a trice we had flung our door in its place and swung the beam across, and there we were, none the worse for our adventure, with the chief of our enemies fast prisoner in our hands. Already the pirates were scouring back into the woods, and though certain of our men had the presence of mind to empty their muskets after them, and bring down the two rogues who had carried the sham Ebrow 280 THE SEA GIVES UP ITS QUICK to us, most of us were occupied in peering through the loopholes on the other side of the fortress at a blessed sight. Not half a mile away rode the ship that had fired the shot; the smoke of the discharge was still in the air about her. She was a frigate, and she flew the Dutch flag. You may imagine with what a rapture we saw that frigate and that flag. It could only mean succour, and we were sick at heart to think that we had no flag with us to fly in answer. But we waited and watched with beating hearts behind our walls, and presently we could see that a boat was lowered and that men came over the side and filled it, and then it began to make for Fair Island as fast as stroke of oar could carry it. With a cry of joy Lancelot thrust his spy-glass into my hand, crying out to me that Captain Amber was on board the boat. And so indeed he was, for I had no sooner clapped the glass to my eye than there I saw him, sitting in the stern in his brave blue coat, and at the sight of him my heart gave a great leap for joy. We opened our seaward gate at once, and in a moment Marjorie and Lancelot and I were racing to the strand, followed by half a dozen others, leav- ing the stockade well guarded, and orders to shoot Jensen on the first sign of any return of the pirates 281 MARJORIE from the woods. Though, indeed, we felt pretty sure that they would make no further attempt against us, having lost their leader, and being now menaced by this new and unexpected peril. As the boat drew nearer shore Lancelot tied a handkerchief to the point of his cutlass and waved it in the air, and at sight of it the figure in blue in the stern raised his hat, and the men rowing, seeing him do this, raised a lusty cheer, and pulled with a warmer will than ever, so that in a few more min- utes their keel grated on the sand. Captain Amber leaped out of the boat like a boy, splashing through the water to join us, while the Dutch seamen hauled the boat up and stared at us stolidly. Captain Amber clasped Marjorie's hand and murmured to himself 'Thank God !' while tears stood in his china-blue eyes, and were answered, for the first time that I ever saw them there, by tears in Marjorie's. Next he embraced Lancelot, and then he turned to me and wrung my hand with the same heartiness as on that first day in Sendennis, and it seemed to me for the moment as if that strand and island and all those leagues of land and water had ceased to be, and I were back again in the windy High Street, with my mother's shop-bell tinkling. 282 THE SEA GIVES UP ITS QUICK Only for a moment, however. There was no time for day-dreams. Hurriedly we told Captain Amber all that we had to tell. Much of the ugly story we found that he knew, and how he knew you shall learn later. Our immediate duty was to secure the pirates who were still at large on the island, and this proved an easy business. For the Dutch commander, who claimed the authority of his nation for all that region, sent one of his men with a flag of truce, accompanied by one of us for interpreter, to let them know that if they did not surrender unconditionally he would first bombard the wood in which they sheltered, and then land a party of men, who would cut down any survivors without mercy. As there was no help for it, the pirates did surrender. They came out of the woods, a sorry gang, and laid down their arms, and with the help of the Dutchmen, who lent us irons, we soon had the whole band manacled and helpless. So there was an end of this most nefarious mutiny. With Cornelys Jensen fast in fetters the heart of the business would have been broken even without help from the sea. There was no man of all the others who was at all his peer, either for villainy or for enterprise and daring. Even if 283 MARJORIE there had been, the pirates would have had no great chance, while, as it was, their case had no hope in it, and they succumbed to their fate in a kind of sullen apathy. Honest men had triumphed over rogues once more in the swing of the world's story, as I am heartily glad to believe that in the long run they always have done and always will do, until the day when rogues and righteous meet for the last time. We soon heard of all that had happened to Cap- tain Marmaduke after he left the Royal Chris- topher or rather, after he had been forced to put forth from Early Island. It had been Captain Marmaduke's intention to make for Batavia, in the certainty of finding ships and succour there. By the good fortune of the fair weather, his course, if slow by reason of the little wind, was untroubled ; and by happy chance, ere he had come to the end, he sighted the Dutch frigate, and spoke her. The Dutch captain consented to carry Captain Amber back to the wreck. On their arrival at Early Island they found the place in the possession of a few half-drunken mutineers, who were soon over- powered, and they learnt the tale of Jensen's treachery from the lips of the captive women. It was then that they sailed for Fair Island, with the 284 THE SEA GIVES UP ITS QUICK women and prisoners on board, and arrived just in time to serve us the best turn in the world. There was nothing for us now to do but to ship off our prisoners to Batavia in the frigate, where they would be dealt with by Dutch justice, and be hanged with all decorum, in accordance with the laws of civilised States. We were to go with the frigate ourselves, for at Batavia it was our Cap- tain's resolve to buy him a new ship and so turn home to his own people and his own country, and try his hand no more at colonies, which was indeed the wisest thing he could do. Let me say here that to our great satisfaction we found Mr. Ebrow in the woods, tied nearly naked to a tree, alive and well, if very weak; but without a complaint on his lips or in his heart. I was one of the earliest to go aboard the frigate, and the first sight I saw on her decks was a group of women huddled together in all the seeming of despair. These were the victims of the pirates' lust, and as they sat together they would wail now and then in a way that was pitiful to hear. But there was one woman who sat a little apart from the others and held her head high, and this woman was Barbara Hatchett. I scarce knew if I should approach her or no, but when she saw me, which 285 MARJORIE was the moment I came aboard, she made me a sign with her head, and I at once went up to her. All the warm colour had gone out of her dark face, and the fire had faded from her dark eyes, but she was still very beautiful in her misery, and she car- ried herself grandly, like a ruined queen. As I looked at her my mind went back to that first day I ever saw her and was bewitched by her, and then to that other day when I found her in the sea- fellow's arms and thought the way of the world was ended. And for the sake of my old love and my old sorrow my heart was racked for her, and I could have cried as I had cried that day upon the downs. But there were no tears in the woman's eyes, and as I came she stood up and held out her hand to me with an air of pride; and I am glad. to think that I had the grace to kiss it and to kneel as I kissed it. 'Well, Ralph,' she said, 'this is a queer meeting for old friends and old flames. We did not think of this in the days when we watched the sea and waited for my ship.' I could say nothing, but she went on, and her voice was quite steady : 'This is a grand ship, but it is not my ship. My 286 THE SEA GIVES UP ITS QUICK ship came in and my ship went out, and the devil took it and my heart's desire and me.' She was silent for a moment, and then she asked me what the boats were bringing from the island. I told her that they were conveying the prisoners aboard to be carried to trial at Batavia. She heard me with a changeless face, as she looked across the sea where the ship's boats were making their way to the ship, and after awhile she asked me if I thought that we were bound to forgive our enemies and those who had used us evilly. I was at a loss what to answer, but I stammered out somewhat to the effect that such was our Chris- tian duty. The words stuck a little in my throat, for I did not feel in a forgiving mood at that mo- ment. 'So Mr. Ebrow tells us,' she went on softly. Mr. Ebrow had been sent on board at once, and had immediately devoted himself, sick and weak though he was, to ministrations among the unhappy women. 'So Mr. Ebrow says, and he is a good man, and ought to know best. Shall I forgive, Ralph, shall I forgive?' There was to me something infinitely touching in the way in which she spoke to me, as if she felt 287 MARJORIE she had a claim upon me the claim that a sister might have upon a brother. I told her that Mr. Ebrow, being a man of God, was a better guide and counsellor than I, but that forgiveness was a noble charity. Indeed, I was at a loss what to say, with my heart so wrung. 'Well, well,' she said, 'let us forgive and forget,' and for there was no restraint upon the move- ments of the woman she moved toward the side, where they were lifting the manacled prisoners on board. Jensen was in the first batch, but not the first to be brought on board, and he carried himself sullenly, with his eyes cast down, and seemed to notice nothing as he was brought up on the deck. The prisoners were so securely bound that no espe- cial guard was placed over them during the process of taking them from the boats, and so, before I was aware of it, Barbara had slipped by me and between the Dutch sailors, and was by Jensen's side. For the moment I thought that she had come to carry out her promise of forgiveness; but Jensen lifted his face, and I saw it, and saw that it was writhed with a great horror and a great fear. And then I saw her lift her hand, and saw a knife in her hand, and the next moment she had driven it once and twice into his breast by the heart, and 288 THE SEA GIVES UP ITS QUICK Jensen dropped like a log, and his blood ran over the deck. Then she turned to me, and her face was as red as fire, and she cried out, 'Forgive and for- get !' and so drove the knife into her own body and fell in her turn. It was all done so swiftly that there was no time for anyone to lift a hand to inter- fere, and when we came to lift them up they were both dead. This was the end of that beautiful woman, and this the end of Cornelys Jensen. He should have lived to be hanged; it was too good a death for him to die by her hand; but I can understand how it seemed to her hot blood and her wronged womanhood that she could only wash out her shame by shedding her wronger' s blood. May Heaven have mercy upon her! 289 CHAPTER XXXIII THE LAST OF THE SHIP IT was many a weary month before we saw Sen- dennis again, but we did see it again. For Captain Marmaduke was so dashed by the untoward results of his benevolence and the failure of his scheme that he saw nothing better to do than to turn home- ward, after mending his fortunes by the sale of the greater part of his Dutch plantations. A portion, however, he set apart and made over as a settlement for the remnant of the colonists, who, having got so far, had no mind to turn back, and as an asylum for the wretched women. With the aid of the Dutchmen we got the Royal Christopher off her reef and made shift to tow her into harbourage at Batavia, and there Captain Amber sold her and bought another vessel, wherein we made the best of our way back to England, with no further advent- ures to speak of. At Sendennis I had the joy to find my mother alive and well, and the wonder to find that my birth-place seemed to have grown smaller in my absence, but was otherwise un- changed. 290 THE LAST OF THE SHIP And at Sendennis the best thing happened to me that can happen to any man in the world. For one morning, soon after our home-coming, I prayed Marjorie to walk with me a little ways, and she consented, and we went together outside the town and into the free sweet country. We fared till we came to that place where Lancelot once had found me, drowned in folly, and there I showed Marjorie the picture that Lancelot had given me, the picture of her younger self. And somehow as she took it from my hands and looked at it there came a little tremor to her lips and my soul found words for me to speak. I told her again that I loved her, that I should love her to the end of my days. I do not remember all I said; I dare say my words would show blunderingly enough on plain paper, but she listened to them quietly, looking at the sea with steady eyes. When I had done she stood still for a little, and then answered, and I remember every word she said. 'We are young, you and I, but I do not believe we are changeable. I feel very sure that you have spoken the truth to me; be very sure that I am speaking the truth to you. I love you !' And so for the first time our lips met and the glory came into my life. I sailed the seas and made 291 MARJORIE my fortune and married my heart's desire, and we roved the world together year after year, and always the glory staying with me in all its morning brightness. All my life long I have hated parting from friends, parting from familiar faces and familiar places. Yet by the course which it has pleased Providence to give to my life it has been my lot to have many partings, both with well-loved men and women and with well-loved lands and dwell- ings. It is the plague of the wandering life, pleasant as it is in so many things, that it does of necessity mean the clasping of so many hands in parting, that it does of necessity mean the saying of so many farewells. Yet, after all, parting is the penalty of man for his transgression, and the most stay-at-home, lie-by-the-fire fellow has his share with the rest. Thus the philosopher by tempera- ment, like my Lord Chesterfield, takes his friend- ships and even his loves upon an easy covenant, and the religious accept in resignation, and the rest shift as best they can. And so I hold out my hand and wish you good luck and God-speed ! THE END 292 A 000126836