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Title: The Great Quest
Author: Hawes, Charles Boardman
Language: English
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THE GREAT QUEST
[Illustration: _I gave a quick jerk,--literally my foot was
held,--I lost my balance and all but went over._]
THE
GREAT QUEST
_A romance of 1826, wherein are recorded
the experiences of Josiah Woods of Topham,
and of those others with whom he sailed
for Cuba and the Gulf of Guinea._
BY
CHARLES BOARDMAN HAWES
Author of "The Mutineers"
[Illustration]
_Illustrated by_
GEORGE VARIAN
_The_ ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
BOSTON
Copyright, 1920, 1921
By THE TORBELL COMPANY
(Publishers of _The Open Road_)
Copyright, 1921
By CHARLES BOARDMAN HAWES
First Impression, September, 1921
Second Impression, January, 1922
_Printed in the United States of America_
_To_
MY FATHER AND MOTHER
CONTENTS
I
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
I The Stranger 3
II My Uncle Behaves Queerly 12
III Higgleby's Barn 18
IV Swords and Ships 26
V A Mysterious Project 36
II
HANDS ACROSS THE SEA
VI Good-bye to Old Haunts and Faces 49
VII A Wild Night 63
VIII The Brig Adventure 81
IX An Old Sea Song 87
III
A LOW LAND IN THE EAST
X Matterson 99
XI New Light on an Old Friend 109
XII Captain North Again 119
XIII Issues Sharply Drawn 132
XIV Land Ho! 137
IV
THREE DESPERATE MEN
XV The Island 151
XVI Strangest of All 165
XVII The Man from the Jungle 173
XVIII A Warning Defied 185
XIX Burned Bridges 193
V
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
XX Up Stream 201
XXI A Grim Surprise 212
XXII Siege 225
XXIII Sortie 234
VI
FOR OUR VERY LIVES
XXIV Spears in the Dark 247
XXV Cards and Chess 252
XXVI An Unseen Foe 261
XXVII The Fort Falls 268
XXVIII Down the Current 283
XXIX The Fight at the Landing 295
VII
THE LONG ROAD HOME
XXX The Cruiser 307
XXXI A Passage at Arms 321
XXXII Westward Bound 332
XXXIII The Door of Disaster 340
XXXIV An Old, Old Story 352
XXXV Eheu Fugaces! 357
ILLUSTRATIONS
_I gave a quick jerk--literally my foot was held,--I lost my
balance and all but went over_ Frontispiece
_Clapping his hand to the wound, the landlord went white
and leaned back against the bar_ 78
"_In the name of Heaven, Neil, don't tell! Don't tell!_" 142
_There in a chair by the table sat a stark skeleton dressed in
good sound clothes_ 220
_And with that the two sat down by the board ... and began
perhaps the most extraordinary game of chess that ever
two men played_ 258
I
OLD ACQUAINTANCE
[Illustration]
THE GREAT QUEST
CHAPTER I
THE STRANGER
One morning early in the summer of 1826, I brushed the sweat from my
forehead and the flour from my clothes, unrolled my shirt-sleeves to
my wrists, donned my coat, and, with never a suspicion that that day
was to be unlike any other, calmly walked out into the slanting
sunshine. Rain had fallen in the night, and the air was still fresh
and cool. Although the clock had but just struck six, I had been at
work an hour, and now that my uncle, Seth Upham, had come down to
take charge of the store, I was glad that some business discussed
the evening before gave me an excuse to go on an errand to the other
end of the village.
Uncle Seth looked up from his ledger as I passed. "You are prompt to
go," said he. "I've scarce got my hat on the peg. Well, the sooner
the better, I suppose. Young Mackay's last shipment of oil was of
poor quality and color. The rascal needs a good wigging, but the
best you can do is tell the old man my opinion of his son's goods.
If he gets a notion that we're likely to go down to nine cents a
gallon on the next lot, he'll bring the boy to taw, I'll warrant
you. Well, be gone. The sooner you go, the sooner you'll come, and
we're like to have a busy day."
I nodded and went down the steps, but turned again and looked back.
As Uncle Seth sat at his desk just inside the door, his bald head
showing above the ledgers, he made me think of a pigeon-holed
document concerned with matters of trade--weights and measures, and
dollars and cents. He was a brisk, abrupt little man, with keen eyes
and a thin mouth, and lines that cut at sharp angles into his
forehead and drew testy curves around his chin; and in his way he
was prominent in the village. Though ours was a community of
Yankees, he had the reputation, in which he took great pride, of
being an uncommonly sharp hand at a bargain. That it could be a
doubtful compliment, he never suspected.
He owned property in three towns besides our own village of Topham;
he kept a very considerable balance in a Boston bank; he loaned
money at interest from one end of the county to the other, and he
held shares in two schooners and a bark--not to mention the bustling
general store that was the keystone of his prosperity.
If anyone had presumed so far as to suggest that a close bargain
could be aught but creditable, Uncle Seth would have shot a testy
glance at him, with some such comment as, "Pooh! He's drunk or
crazy!" And he would then have atoned for any little trickery by his
generosity, come Sunday, when the offering was taken at church.
There were, to be sure, those who said, by allusion or implication,
that he would beat the devil at his own game, for all his pains to
appear so downright honest. But they were ne'er-do-weels and village
scoundrels, whom Uncle Seth, although he was said to have known them
well enough in early youth, passed without deigning to give them so
much as a nod; and of course no one believed the word of such as
they.
For my own part, I had only friendly feelings toward him, for he was
always a decent man, and since my mother died, his odd bursts of
generosity had touched me not a little. Grumpy old Uncle Seth!
Others might call him "nigh," but for all his abrupt manner, he was
kind to me after a queer, short fashion, and many a bank-note had
whisked from his pocket to mine at moments when a stranger would
have thought him in furious temper.
Turning on my heel, I left him busy at his desk amid his barrels and
cans and kegs and boxes, and unwittingly set forth to meet the
beginning of the wildest, maddest adventure that I ever heard of
outside the pages of fiction.
As I went down past the church, the parsonage, and the smithy,--the
little group of buildings that, together with our general store,
formed the hub on which the life of the country for many miles
thereabouts revolved,--I was surprised to see no one astir. Few
country people then were--or now are--so shameless as to lie in bed
at six o'clock of a summer morning.
By rights I should have heard the clank of metal, the hum of voices,
men calling to their horses, saws whining through wood, and hammers
driving nails. But there was no sound of speech or labor; the
nail-kegs on which our village worthies habitually reposed during
long intervals of the working day were unoccupied; the fire in the
blacksmith's forge, for want of blowing, had died down to a dull
deep red. Three horses were tugging at their halters inside the
smithy, and a well-fed team was waiting outside by a heavy cart; yet
no one was anywhere to be seen.
Perceiving all this from a distance, I was frankly puzzled; and as I
approached, I cast about with lively curiosity to see what could
cause so strange a state of affairs. It was only when I had gone
past the smithy, that I saw the smith and his customers and his
habitual guests gathered on the other side of the building, where I
had not been able to see them before. They were staring at the old
village tavern, which stood some distance away on a gentle rise of
land.
My curiosity so prevailed over my sense of duty that I turned from
the road through the tall grass, temporarily abandoning my errand,
and picked my way among some old wheels and scrap iron to join the
men.
Their talk only aggravated my wonder.
Clearing his throat, the smith gruffly muttered, "It does act like
him, and yet I can't believe it'll be him."
"Why shouldn't he come back?" one of the farmers asked in a louder
voice. "Things done twenty years ago will never be dragged up to
face him, and he'd know that."
The smith grunted. "Where would Neil Gleazen find the money to buy a
suit of good clothes and a beaver hat?"
"That's easy answered," a third speaker put in. And they all
exchanged significant glances.
In the silence that followed I made bold to put a question for
myself. "Of whom are you talking?" I asked.
They looked closely at me and again exchanged glances.
"There's someone up yonder at the inn, Joe," the smith said kindly;
"and Ben, here, getting sight of him last night and again this
morning, has took a notion that it's a fellow who used to live here
years ago and who left town--well, in a hurry. As to that, I can't
be sure, but I vum, I'd not be surprised if it was Neil Gleazen
after all."
I now discerned in one of the rocking-chairs on the porch the figure
of a stranger, well dressed so far as we could see at that distance,
who wore a big beaver hat set rakishly a trifle forward. He had
thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and as he
leaned back, with his feet raised against one of the columns that
supported the porch-roof, he sent clouds of white cigar-smoke
eddying up and away.
The others were so intent on their random speculations that, when I
asked more about who and what Neil Gleazen was, they ignored my
question, and continued to exchange observations in low voices.
I could hear little of their talk without forcing myself into their
very midst, and of what little I heard I made still less, for it was
full of unfamiliar names and reminiscences that meant nothing to me.
When some one spoke of Seth Upham, my mother's brother, I was all
ears on the instant; but I saw the smith glance at me, and probably
he nudged the speaker, for, after a moment's pause, they went on
about indifferent matters. I then perceived that I was unlikely to
learn more, so I returned to the road and continued on my way.
As I passed the tavern I took occasion to see what I could, in
courtesy, of the stranger; but he looked so hard at me while I was
passing that I could steal only glances at him, unless I gave him
stare for stare, which I did not wish to do. So I got only a brief
glimpse of tall hat, bold dark eyes under bushy brows, big nose,
smooth-shaven chin, and smiling mouth, all of which a heavy stock
and voluminous coat seemed to support. I thought that I caught the
flash of a jeweled pin in the man's stock and of a ring on his
finger, but of that I was not sure until later. Pushing on, I left
him in the old inn chair, as proud as a sultan, puffing clouds of
white smoke from a long cigar and surveying the village as grandly
as if he owned it, while I went about my uncle's business at the
other end of the town.
But when I had gone far on my way, his dark face and arrogant manner
were still in my mind. While I was arguing with surly old Dan Mackay
about whale-oil and horses and sugar and lumber, I was thinking of
those proud, keen eyes and that smiling, scornful mouth; while I was
bargaining with Mrs. Mackay for eggs and early peas, I was thinking
of the beaver that the man had worn and the big ring on his finger;
and while I was walking back over two miles of country road, on
which the sun was now pouring down with ever-increasing heat, I was
thinking of how my uncle's name had popped out in the conversation
beside the smithy--and how it had popped, so to speak, discreetly
back again.
I was all eagerness, now, for another and better look at the
stranger, and was resolved to stare him out of countenance, if need
be, to get it. Imagine, then, my disappointment when, hot and
sweaty, I once more came in sight of the tavern and saw the
unmistakable figure under the beaver hat walk jauntily down the
steps, pause a moment in the road, and, turning in the opposite
direction, go rapidly away from me.
The stranger should not escape me like that, I thought with a grim
chuckle; and warm though I was, I lengthened my stride and drew
slowly up on him.
As he passed the smithy, he looked to neither right nor left, yet I
was by no means sure that he did not see the curious faces that
filled the door when he went by. A man can see so much without
turning his head!
While I toiled on after him, trying to appear indifferent and yet
striving to overtake him before he should go beyond the store, where
I must turn in, would I or would I not, he passed the church, the
parsonage, and the schoolhouse. He wore his hat tilted forward at
just such an angle, and to one side over his right eye; swinging his
walking-stick nonchalantly, he clipped the blossoms off the
buttercups as he passed them; now he paused to light a fresh cigar
from the butt of the one that he was smoking; now he lingered a
moment in the shade of an old chestnut tree. All the time I was
gaining on him; but now the store was hard by.
Should I keep on until I had passed him and, turning back, could
meet him face to face? No, Uncle Seth would surely stop me. In my
determination to get a good look at the man, I was about to break
into a run, when, to my amazement, he turned to the left toward the
very place where I was going.
So close to him had I now come that, when he stood on the threshold,
I was setting foot on the lower step. I could see Uncle Seth's
clerks, Arnold Lamont, a Frenchman, and Simeon Muzzy, busily at work
in the back room. I could see, as before, Uncle Seth's bald head
shining above the top of his desk. But my eyes were all for the
stranger, and I now saw plainly that in the ring on his finger there
flashed a great white diamond.
Uncle Seth, hearing our steps, raised his head. "Well?" he said
sharply, in the dictatorial way that was so characteristic of him.
"Well!" repeated the stranger in a voice that startled me. It was
deep and gruff, and into the monosyllable the man put a solid, heavy
emphasis, which made my uncle's sharpness seem as light as a woman's
burst of temper.
Uncle Seth, too, was startled, I think, for he raised his head and
irritably peered over the steel rims of his spectacles. "Well," he
grumpily responded, "what do you want of me?"
"An hour of your time," said the stranger, lowering his voice.
"Time's money," returned my uncle.
"I'm the lad to transmute it into fine gold for you, Seth Upham,"
said the stranger.
"How do you know my name?"
"That's a foolish question to ask. Everyone in town can tell a
stranger the name of the man who keeps the village store."
My uncle grunted irritably, and brushed his chin with the feather of
his quill.
"Come," said the stranger, "where's a chair?"
"Them that come to this store to loaf," my uncle cried, "generally
sit on cracker-boxes. I'm a busy man."
He was still looking closely at the stranger, but his voice
indicated that, after all, it might not be so hard to mollify him.
"Well, I ain't proud," the stranger said with a conciliatory
gesture, but without the faintest flicker of a smile. "It won't be
the first time I've set on a cracker-box and talked to Seth Upham. I
mind a time once when old Parker used to keep the store, and me and
you had stole our hats full of crackers, which we ate in the little
old camp over by the river."
"Who," cried Uncle Seth, "who in heaven's name are you?"
He was pale to the very summit of his bald head; unconscious of what
he was doing, he had thrust his pen down on the open ledger, where
it left a great blotch of wet ink.
"Hgh! You've got no great memory for old friends, have you, Seth?
You're rich now, I hear. Money-bags full of gold. Well, 'time's
money,' you said. You're going to put in a golden hour with me this
day."
Uncle Seth got up and laid a trembling hand on the back of his desk.
"Neil Gleazen! Cornelius Gleazen!" he gasped.
The stranger pushed his beaver back on his head, and with the finger
on which the diamond sparkled flicked the ash from his cigar. "It's
me, Seth," he returned; and for the first time since I had seen him
he laughed a deep, hearty laugh.
"Well, what'll you have?" Uncle Seth demanded hotly. "I'm an honest
man. I'm a deacon in the church. My business is an honest business.
There's nothing here for you, Neil! What do you want?"
In spite of his apparent anger,--or because of it,--Uncle Seth's
voice trembled.
"Well, what do you mean by all this talk of an honest man? Ain't I
an honest man?"
"Why--why--"
"Hgh! You've not got much to say to that, have you?"
"I--why--I don't--know--"
"Of course you don't know. You don't know an honest man when you see
one. Don't talk to me like that, Seth Upham. You and me has robbed
too many churches together when we was boys to have you talk like
that now. You and me--"
"For heaven's sake keep still!" Uncle Seth cried. "Customers are
coming."
Neil Gleazen grunted again. Pushing a cracker-box into the corner
behind Uncle Seth's desk and placing his beaver on it, he settled
back in Uncle Seth's own chair, with a cool impudent wink at me, as
if for a long stay, while Uncle Seth, with an eagerness quite unlike
his usual abrupt, scornful manner, rushed away from his unwelcome
guest and proceeded to make himself surprisingly agreeable to a pair
of country woman who wished to barter butter for cotton cloth.
CHAPTER II
MY UNCLE BEHAVES QUEERLY
The village of Topham, to which, after an absence of twenty years,
Cornelius Gleazen had returned as a stranger, lay near the sea and
yet not beside it, near the post road and yet not upon it. From the
lower branches of an old pine that used to stand on the hill behind
the tavern we could see a thread of salt water, which gleamed like
silver in the sun; and, on the clearest days, if we climbed higher,
we could sometimes catch a glimpse of tiny ships working up or down
the coast.
In the other direction, if we faced about, we could see, far down a
long, broad valley, between low hills, a bit of white road that ran
for a mile or two between meadows and marshes; and on the road we
sometimes saw moving black dots trailing tiny clouds of dust, which
we knew were men and horses and coaches.
In Topham I was born, and there I spent my boyhood. I suppose that I
was quieter than the average boy and more studious, for I was
content to find adventures in the pages of books, and I read from
cover to cover all the journals of the day that came to hand.
Certainly I was a dreamy lad, who knew books better than men, and
who cared so little for "practical affairs" that much passed me by
unnoticed which many another youth of no more native keenness would
instantly have perceived.
When my mother, some years after my father's death, came to live
with her brother and keep his house for him, it did not make so
great a change in my manner of life as one might have expected.
Bustling, smart Uncle Seth ruled the household with a quick,
nervous hand; and for the time, as he bent all his energies to the
various projects in which he was interested and in which he was more
than ordinarily successful, he almost ignored his nephew.
It was not strange that after my mother died Uncle Seth should give
me more thought, for he was left a second time alone in the world,
and except for me he had neither close friend nor blood relation. I
think that his very shrewdness, which must have shown him how much a
man needs friends, perversely kept him from making them; it built
around him a fence of cold, calculating, selfish appraisal that
repelled most people whom he might have drawn closer to him. But to
me, who had on him claims of a kind, and whom he had come by slow
stages to know intimately, he gave a queer, testy, impulsive
affection; and although the first well-meant but ill-chosen act by
which he manifested it was to withdraw me from my books to the
store, where he set me to learn the business, for which I was by no
means so grateful as I should have been, both I and his two clerks,
Sim Muzzy and Arnold Lamont, to whom long association had revealed
the spontaneous generosity of which he seemed actually to be
ashamed, had a very real affection for him.
It was no secret that he intended to make me his heir, and I was
regarded through the town as a young man of rare prospects, which
reconciled me in a measure to exchanging during the day my worn
volumes of Goldsmith and Defoe for neat columns that represented
profit and loss on candles and sugar and spice; and my hard,
faithful work won Uncle Seth's confidence, and with it a curiously
grudging acknowledgment. Thus our little world of business moved
monotonously, though not unpleasantly, round and round the cycle of
the seasons, until the day when Cornelius Gleazen came back to his
native town.
He continued to sit in my uncle's chair, that first morning, while
Uncle Seth, perspiring, it seemed to me, more freely than the heat
of the day could have occasioned, bustled about and waited on his
customers. I suppose that Neil Gleazen really saw nothing out of the
ordinary in Uncle Seth's manner; but to me, who knew him so well
now, it was plain that, instead of trying to get the troublesome
women and their little business of eggs and cloth done with and out
of the store as quickly as possible, which under the circumstances
was what I should have expected of him, he was trying by every means
in his power to prolong their bartering. And whether or not Neil
Gleazen suspected this, with imperturbable assurance he watched
Uncle Seth pass from one end of the store to the other.
When at last the women went away and Uncle Seth returned to his
desk, Gleazen removed the beaver from the cracker-box, and blowing a
ring of smoke out across the top of the desk, watched the draft from
the door tear it into thin blue shreds. "Sit down," he said calmly.
I was already staring at them in amazement; but my amazement was
fourfold when Uncle Seth hesitated, gulped, and _seated himself on
the cracker-box_.
"Joe," he said in an odd voice, "go help Arnold and Sim in the back
shop."
So I went out and left them; and when I came back, Cornelius Gleazen
was gone. But the next day he came again, and the next, and the
next.
That he was the very man the smith and his cronies had thought him,
I learned beyond peradventure of a doubt. Strange tales were
whispered here and there about the village, and women covertly
turned their eyes to watch him when he passed. Some men who had
known him in the old days tried to conceal it, and pretended to be
ignorant of all that concerned him, and gave him the coldest of cold
stares when they chanced to meet him face to face. Others, on the
contrary, courted his attention and called on him at the tavern, and
went away, red with anger, when he coldly snubbed them.
At the time it seemed to make little difference to him what they
thought. Strangely enough, the Cornelius Gleazen who had come back
to his boyhood home was a very different Cornelius, people found,
from the one who, twenty years before, had gone away by night with
the town officers hot on his trail.
Strange stories of that wild night passed about the town, and I
learned, in one way and another, that Gleazen was not the only lad
who had then disappeared. There was talk of one Eli Norton, and of
foul play, and an ugly word was whispered. But it had all happened
long before, much had been forgotten, and some things had never come
to light, and the officers who had run Gleazen out of town were long
since dead. So, as the farmer by the smithy had said would be the
case, the old scandals were let lie, and Gleazen went his way
unmolested.
That my uncle would gladly have been rid of the fellow, for all his
grand airs and the pocketfuls of money that he would throw out on
the bar at the inn or on the counter at the store, I very well knew;
I sometimes saw him wince at Gleazen's effrontery, or start to
retort with his customary sharpness, and then go red or pale and
press his lips to a straight line. Yet I could not imagine why this
should be. If any other man had treated him so, Uncle Seth would
have turned on him with the sharpest words at his command.
It was not like him to sit meekly down to another's arrogance. He
had been too long a leading man in our community. But Cornelius
Gleazen seemed to have cast a spell upon him. The longer Gleazen
would sit and watch Uncle Seth, the more overbearing would his
manner become and the more nervous would Uncle Seth grow.
I then believed, and still do, that if my uncle had stood up to him,
as man to man, on that first day, Neil Gleazen would have pursued a
very different course. But Uncle Seth, if he realized it at all,
realized it too late.
At the end of a week Gleazen seemed to have become a part of the
store. He would frown and look away out of the window, and scarcely
deign to reply if any of the poorer or less reputable villagers
spoke to him, whether their greeting was casual or pretentious; but
he would nod affably, and proffer cigars, and exchange observations
on politics and affairs of the world, when the minister or the
doctor or any other of the solid, substantial men of the place came
in.
I sometimes saw Uncle Seth surreptitiously watching him with a sort
of blank wonder; and once, when we had come home together late at
night, he broke a silence of a good two hours by remarking as
casually as if we had talked of nothing else all the evening, "I
declare to goodness, Joe, it does seem as if Neil Gleazen had
reformed. I could almost take my oath he's not spoken to one of the
old crowd since he returned. Who would have thought it? It's
strange--passing strange."
It was the question that the whole town was asking--who would have
thought it? I had heard enough by now of the old escapades,--drunken
revels in the tavern, raids on a score of chicken-roosts and
gardens, arrant burglary, and even, some said, arson,--to understand
why they asked the question. But more remarkable by far to me was
the change that had come over my uncle. Never before had the
business of the store been better; never before had there been more
mortgages and notes locked up in the big safe; never had our affairs
of every description flourished so famously. But whereas, in other
seasons of greater than ordinary prosperity, Uncle Seth had become
almost genial, I had never seen him so dictatorial and testy as now.
Some secret fear seemed to haunt him from day to day and from week
to week.
Thinking back on that morning when Cornelius Gleazen first came to
our store, I remembered a certain sentence he had spoken. "You and
me has robbed too many churches together when we was boys--" I
wondered if I could not put my finger on the secret of the change
that had come over my uncle.
CHAPTER III
HIGGLEBY'S BARN
That Cornelius Gleazen had returned to Topham a reformed and honest
man, the less skeptical people in the village now freely asserted.
To be sure, some said that no good could come from any man who wore
a diamond on his finger, to say nothing of another in his stock, and
the minister held aloof for reasons known only to himself. But there
was something hearty and wholesome in Gleazen's gruff voice and
blunt, kindly wit that quite turned aside the shafts of criticism,
particularly when he had made it plain that he would associate only
with people of unquestioned respectability; and his devout air, as
he sat in the very front pew in church and sang the hymns in a fine,
reverberating bass, almost--although never quite--won over even the
minister. All were agreed that you could pardon much in a man who
had lived long in foreign parts; and if any other argument were
needed, Gleazen's own free-handed generosity for every good cause
provided it.
There were even murmurs that a man with Seth Upham's money might
well learn a lesson from the stranger within our gates, which came
to my uncle's ears, by way of those good people you can find in
every town who feel it incumbent on them to repeat in confidence
that which they have gained in confidence, and caused him no little
uneasiness.
Of the probity of Cornelius Gleazen the village came gradually to
have few doubts; and those of us who believed in the man were
inclined to belittle the blacksmith, who persisted in thinking ill
of him, and even the minister. Unquestionably Gleazen had seen the
error of his youthful ways and had profited by the view, which, by
all accounts, must have been extensive.
It was a fine thing to see him sitting on the tavern porch or in my
uncle's store and discoursing on the news of the day. By a gesture,
he would dispose of the riots in England and leave us marveling at
his keenness. The riots held a prominent place in the papers, and we
argued that a man who could so readily place them where they
belonged must have a head of no mean order. Of affairs in South
America, where General Paez had become Civil and Military Dictator
of Venezuela, he had more to say; for General Paez, it seemed, was a
friend of his. I have wondered since about his boasted friendship
with the distinguished general, but at the time he convinced us that
Venezuela was a fortunate state and that her affairs were much more
important to men of the world than a bill to provide for the support
of aged survivors of the Army of the Revolution, which a persistent
one-legged old chap from the Four Corners tried a number of times to
introduce into the conversation.
There came a day when both the doctor and the minister joined the
circle around Cornelius Gleazen. Never was there prouder man! He
fairly expanded in the warmth of their interest. His gestures were
more impressive than ever before; his voice was more assertive. Yet
behind it all I perceived a curious twinkle in his eyes, and I got a
perverse impression that even then the man was laughing up his
sleeve. This did not in itself set my mind on new thoughts; but to
add to my curiosity, when the doctor and the minister were leaving,
I saw that they were talking in undertones and smiling significantly.
Late one night toward the end of that week, I was returning from
Boston, whither I had gone to buy ten pipes of Schiedam gin and six
of Old East India Madeira, which a correspondent of my uncle's had
lately imported. An acquaintance from the next town had given me a
lift along the post road as far as a certain short cut, which led
through a pine woods and across an open pasture where once there had
been a farmhouse and where, although the house had burned to the
ground eight or ten years since, a barn still stood, which was known
throughout the countryside as "Higgleby's."
The sky was overcast, but the moonlight nevertheless sifted through
the thin clouds; and with a word of thanks to the lad who had
brought me thus far, I vaulted the bars and struck off toward the
pines.
My eyes were already accustomed to the darkness, and the relief from
trying to see my way under the thickly interwoven branches of the
grove made the open pasture, when I came to it, seem nearly as light
as day, although, of course, to anyone coming out into it from a
lighted room, it would have seemed quite otherwise. Of the old barn,
which loomed up on the hill, a black, gaunt, lonesome object a mile
or so away, I thought very little, as I walked along, until it
seemed to me that I saw a glimmer of fire through a breach where a
board had been torn off.
Now the barn was remote from the woods and from the village; but the
weather had been dry, the dead grass in the old pasture was as
inflammable as tinder, and what wind there was, was blowing toward
the pines. Since it was plain that I ought to investigate that flash
of fire, I left the path and began to climb the hill.
Stopping suddenly, I listened with all my ears. I thought I had
heard voices; it behooved me to be cautious. Prudently, now, I
advanced, and as silently as possible. Now I _knew_ that I heard
voices. The knowledge that there were men in the old barn relieved
me of any sense of duty in the matter of a possible fire, but at the
same time it kindled my imagination. Who were they, and why had they
come, and what were they doing? Instead of walking boldly up to the
barn door, I began to climb the wall that served as the foundation.
The wall was six or eight feet high, but built of large stones,
which afforded me easy hold for foot and hand, and from the top I
was confident that I could peek in at a window just above. Very
cautiously I climbed from rock to rock, until I was on my knees on
the topmost tier. Now, twisting about and keeping flat to the barn
with both arms extended so as not to overbalance and fall, I raised
myself little by little, only to find, to my keen disappointment,
that the window was still ten inches above my eyes.
That I should give up then, never occurred to me. I placed both
hands on the sill and silently lifted myself until my chin was well
above it.
In the middle of the old barn, by the light of four candles, a
number of men were playing cards. I could hear much of what they
said, but it concerned only the fortunes of the game, and as they
spoke in undertones I could not recognize their voices.
For all that I got from their conversation they might as well have
said naught, except that the sound of their talking and the clink of
money as it changed hands served to cover whatever small noises I
may have made, and thus enabled me to look in upon them
undiscovered. Nor could I see who they were, for the candle light
was dim and flickered, and those who were back to me, as they
pressed forward in their eagerness to follow the play, concealed the
faces of those opposite them. Moreover, my position was extremely
uncomfortable, perhaps even dangerous. So I lowered myself until my
toes rested on the wall of rock, and kneeling very cautiously, began
to descend.
Exploring with my foot until I found a likely stone, I put my weight
on it, and felt it turn. Failing to clutch the top of the wall, I
went down with a heavy thud.
For a moment I lay on the ground with my wind knocked out of me,
completely helpless. Then sharp voices broke the silence, and the
sound of someone opening the barn door instilled enough wholesome
fear into me to enable me to get up on all fours after a fashion,
and creep cautiously away.
From the darkness outside, my eyes being already accustomed to the
absence of light, I could see a number of men standing together in
front of the barn door. They must have blown out the candles, for
the door and the windows and the chinks between the boards were
dark. Cursing myself for a silly fool, I made off as silently as
possible.
I had not recognized one of the players, I had got a bad tumble and
sore joints for my trouble, and my pride was hurt. In short, I felt
that I had fallen out of the small end of the horn, and I was in no
cheerful mood as I limped along. But by the time I came into the
village half an hour later, I had recovered my temper and my wind;
and so, although I earnestly desired to go home and to bed, to rest
my lame bones, I decided to go first to the store and report to
Uncle Seth the results of my mission.
Through the lighted windows of the store, as I approached, I could
see Arnold Lamont and Sim Muzzy playing chess in the back room. They
were a strange pair, and as ill matched as any two you ever saw.
Lamont was a Frenchman, who had appeared, seemingly from nowhere,
ten or a dozen years before, and in quaintly precise English had
asked for work--only because it was so exceedingly precise, would
you have suspected that it was a foreigner's English. He carried
himself with a strange dignity, and his manner, which seemed to
confer a favor rather than to seek one, had impressed Uncle Seth
almost against his will.
"Why, yes," he had said sharply, "there's work enough to keep
another man. But what, pray, has brought you here?"
"It is the fortune of war," Lamont had replied. And that was all
that my uncle ever got out of him.
Without more ado he had joined Sim Muzzy, a well-meaning, simple
fellow who had already worked for Uncle Seth for some eight years,
and there he had stayed ever since.
Arnold and Sim shared the room above the store and served both as
watchmen and as clerks; but it was Sim who cooked their meals, who
made their beds, who swept and dusted and polished. Although the two
worked for equally small pay and, all in all, were as satisfactory
men as any storekeeper could hope to have, Arnold had carried even
into the work of the store that same odd, foreign dignity; and it
apparently never occurred, even to petulant, talkative Sim, that
Arnold, so reserved, so quietly assured, should have lent his hand
to mere domestic duties.
Learning early in their acquaintance, each that the other played
chess, they had got a board and a set of men, and, in spite of a
disparity in skill that for some people must have made it very
irksome, had kept the game up ever since. Arnold Lamont played chess
with the same precision with which he spoke English; and if Sim
Muzzy managed to catch him napping, and so to win one game in
twenty, it was a feat to be talked about for a month to come.
Through the windows, as I said, I saw them playing chess in the back
shop; then, coming round the corner of the store, I saw someone just
entering. It was no other than Cornelius Gleazen, in beaver, stock,
coat, and diamonds, with the perpetual cigar bit tight between his
teeth.
A little to my surprise, I noticed that there were beads of
perspiration on his forehead. I had been walking fast myself, and
yet I had not thought of it as a warm evening: the overcast sky and
the wind from the sea, with their promise of rain to break the
drouth, combined to make the night the coolest we had had for some
weeks. It surprised me also to see that Gleazen was breathing
hard--but was he? I could not be sure.
Then, through the open door, I again saw Arnold Lamont in the back
room. In his hand he was holding a knight just over the square on
which it was to rest; but with his eyes he was following Cornelius
Gleazen across the store and round behind my uncle's desk, where now
there was a second chair in place of the cracker-box.
When Gleazen had sat down beside my uncle, he tapping the desk with
a long pencil, which he had drawn from his pocket, Uncle Seth
bustling about among his papers, with quick useless sallies here and
there, and into the pigeonholes, as if he were confused by the mass
of business that confronted him,--it was a manner he sometimes
affected when visitors were present,--Arnold Lamont put down the
knight and absently, as if his mind were far away, said in his calm,
precise voice, "Check!"
"No, no! You mustn't do that! You can't do that! That's wrong! See!
You were on that square there--see?--and you moved so! You can't
put your knight there," Sim Muzzy cried.
That Lamont had transgressed by mistake the rules of the game hit
Sim like a thunderclap and even further befuddled his poor wits.
"Ah," said Lamont, "I see. I beg you, pardon my error. So! Check."
He again moved the knight, apparently without thought; and Sim Muzzy
fell to biting his lip and puzzling this way and that and working
his fingers, which he always did when he was getting the worst of
the game.
Arnold Lamont seemed not to care a straw about the game. Through the
door he was watching Cornelius Gleazen. And Cornelius Gleazen was
wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.
I wondered if it was my lively imagination that made me think that
he was breathing quickly. How long would it have taken him, I
wondered, to cut across the pasture from Higgleby's barn to the
north road? Coming thus by the Four Corners, could he have reached
the store ahead of me? Or could he, by way of the shun-pike, have
passed me on the road?
CHAPTER IV
SWORDS AND SHIPS
Having succeeded in establishing himself in the society and
confidence of the more substantial men of the village, and having
discomfited completely those few--among whom remained the
blacksmith--who had treated him shabbily in the first weeks of his
return and had continued ever since to regard him with suspicion,
Cornelius Gleazen began now to extend his campaign to other
quarters, and to curry favor among those whose good-will, so far as
I could see, was really of little weight one way or another. He now
cast off something of his arrogant, disdainful air, and won the
hearts of the children by strange knickknacks and scrimshaws, which
he would produce, sometimes from his pockets, and sometimes, by
delectable sleight of hand, from the very air itself. Before long
half the homes in the village boasted whale's teeth on which were
wrought pictures of whales and ships and savages, or chips of ivory
carved into odd little idols, and every one of them, you would find,
if you took the trouble to ask, came from the old chests that Neil
Gleazen kept under the bed in his room at the tavern, where now he
was regarded as the prince of guests.
To those who were a little older he gave more elaborate trinkets of
ivory and of dark, strange woods; and the report grew, and found
ready belief, that he had prospered greatly in trade before he
decided to retire, and that he had brought home a fortune with which
to settle down in the old town; for the toys that he gave away so
freely were worth, we judged, no inconsiderable sum. But to the
lads in their early twenties, of whom I was one, he endeared himself
perhaps most of all when, one fine afternoon, smoking one of his
long cigars and wearing his beaver tilted forward at just such an
angle, he came down the road with a great awkward bundle under his
arm, and disclosed on the porch of my uncle's store half a dozen
foils and a pair of masks.
He smiled when all the young fellows in sight and hearing gathered
round him eagerly, and called one another to come and see, and
picked up the foils and passed at one another awkwardly. There was
an odd satisfaction in his smile, as if he had gained something
worth the having. What a man of his apparent means could care for
our good-will, I could not have said if anyone had asked me, and at
the time I did not think to wonder about it. But his air of triumph,
when I later had occasion to recall it to mind, convinced me that
for our good-will he did care, and that he was manoeuvring to win
and hold it.
It was interesting to mark how the different ones took his
playthings. Sim Muzzy cried out in wonder and earnestly asked, "Are
those what men kill themselves with in duels? Pray how do they stick
'em in when the points are blunted?" Arnold Lamont, without a word
or a change of expression, picked up a foil at random and tested the
blade by bending it against the wall. Uncle Seth, having satisfied
his curiosity by a glance, cried sharply, "That's all very
interesting, but there's work to be done. Come, come, I pay no one
for gawking out the door."
The lively hum of voices continued, and a number of town boys
remained to examine the weapons; but Arnold, Sim, and I obediently
turned back into the store.
"That's all right, lads," Cornelius Gleazen cried. "Come evening,
I'll show you a few points on using these toys. I'll make a
fencing-master and a good one, I'll have you know, and there are
some among you that have the making of swordsmen. You're one, Joe
Woods, you're one."
I was pleased to be singled out, and went to my work with a will,
thinking meanwhile of the promised lessons. It never occurred to me
that Cornelius Gleazen could have had a motive that did not appear
on the surface for so choosing my name from all the rest.
That evening, true to his promise, he took us in hand on the village
green, with four fifths of the village standing by to watch, and
gave us lessons in thrusting and parrying and stepping swiftly
forward and backward. We were an awkward company of recruits, and
for our pains we got only hearty laughter from the onlookers; but
the new sport captured our imagination, and realizing that, once
upon a time, even Cornelius Gleazen himself had been a tyro, we
zealously worked to learn what we could, and in our idle moments we
watched with frank admiration the grand flourishes and great leaps
and stamps of which Gleazen was master.
The diamond on the finger of his gracefully curved left hand flashed
as he sprang about, and his ruffled shirt, damped by his unwonted
exercise, clung close to his big shoulders and well-formed back.
Surely, we thought, few could equal his surprising agility; the
great voice in which he roared his suggestions and commands
increased our confidence in his knowledge of swordsmanship.
When, after my second turn at his instruction, I came away with my
arms aching from the unaccustomed exertion and saw that Arnold
Lamont was watching us and covertly smiling, I flamed red and all
but lost my temper. Why should he laugh at _me_, I thought. Surely I
was no clumsier than the others. Indeed, he who thought himself so
smart probably could not do half so well. Had not Mr. Gleazen
praised me most of all? In my anger at Arnold's secret amusement, I
avoided him that evening and for several days to come.
It was on Saturday night, when we were closing the store for the
week, that quite another subject led me back to my resentment in
such a way that we had the matter out between us; and as all that we
had to say is more or less intimately connected with my story I will
set it down word for word.
A young woman in a great quilted bonnet of the kind that we used to
call calash, and a dress that she no doubt thought very fetching,
came mincing into the store and ordered this thing and that in a way
that kept me attending closely to her desires. When she had gone
mincing out again, I turned so impatiently to put the counter to
rights, that Arnold softly chuckled.
"Apparently," said he, with a quiet smile, "the lady did not impress
you quite as she desired, Joe."
"Impress me!" I snorted, ungallantly imitating her mincing manner.
"She impressed me as much as any of them."
"You must have patience, Joe. Some day there will come a lady--"
"No, no!" I cried, with the cocksure assertiveness of my years.
"But yes!"
"Not I! No, no, Arnold--, 'needles and pins, needles and pins'--"
"When a man marries his trouble begins?" Sadness now shadowed
Arnold's expressive face. "No! Proverbs sometimes are pernicious."
"You are laughing at me!"
I had detected, through the veil of melancholy that seemed to have
fallen over him, a faint ray of something akin to humor.
"I am not laughing at you, Joe." His voice was sad. "You will marry
some day--marry and settle down. It is good to do so. I--"
There was something in his stopping that made me look at him in
wonder. Immediately he was himself again, calm, wise, taciturn; but
in spite of my youth I instinctively felt that only by suffering
could a man win his way to such kindly, quiet dignity.
I had said that I would not marry: no wonder, I have since thought,
that Arnold looked at me with that gentle humor. Never dreaming that
in only a few short months a new name and a new face were to fill my
mind and my heart with a world of new anxieties and sorrows and
joys, never dreaming of the strange and distant adventures through
which Arnold and I were to pass,--if a fortune-teller had foretold
the story, I should have laughed it to scorn,--I was only angry at
his amused smile. Perhaps I had expected him to argue with me, to
try to correct my notions. In any case, when he so kindly and yet
keenly appraised at its true worth my boyish pose, I was sobered for
a moment by the sadness that he himself had revealed; then I all but
flew into a temper.
"Oh, very well! Go on and laugh at me. You were laughing at me the
other night when I was fencing, too. I saw you. I'd like to see you
do better yourself. Go on and laugh, you who are so wise."
Arnold's smile vanished. "I am not laughing at you, Joe. Nor was I
laughing at you then."
"You were not laughing at me?"
"No."
"At whom, then, were you laughing?"
To this Arnold did not reply.
The fencing lessons, begun so auspiciously that first evening,
became a regular event. Every night we gathered on the green and
fenced together until twilight had all but settled into dark. Little
by little we learned such tricks of attack and defense as our master
could teach us, until we, too, could stamp and leap, and parry with
whistling circles of the blade. And as we did so, we young fellows
of the village came more and more to look upon Cornelius Gleazen
almost as one of us.
Though his coming had aroused suspicion, though for many weeks there
were few who would say a good word for him, as the summer wore away,
he established himself so firmly in the life of his native town that
people began to forget, as far as anyone could see, that he had ever
had occasion to leave it in great haste.
If he praised my fencing and gave me more time than the others, I
thought it no more than my due--was I not a young man of great
prospects? If Uncle Seth had at first regarded him with suspicion,
Uncle Seth, too, had quite returned now to his old abrupt, masterful
way and was again as sharp and quick of tongue as ever, even when
Neil Gleazen was sitting in Uncle Seth's own chair and at his own
desk. Perhaps, had we been keener, we should have suspected that
something was wrong, simply because _no one_--except a few stupid
persons like the blacksmith--had a word to say against Neil Gleazen.
You would at least have expected his old cronies to resent his
leaving them for more respectable company. But not even from them
did there come a whisper of suspicion or complaint.
Why should not a man come home to his native place to enjoy the
prosperity of his later years? we argued. It was the most natural
thing in the world; and when Cornelius Gleazen talked of foreign
wars and the state of the country and the deaths of Mr. Adams and
Mr. Jefferson, and of the duel between Mr. Clay and Mr. Randolph,
the most intelligent of us listened with respect, and found occasion
in his shrewd observations and trenchant comment to rejoice that
Topham had so able a son to return to her in the full power of his
maturity.
There was even talk of sending him to Congress, and that it was not
idle gossip I know because three politicians from Boston came to
town and conferred with our selectmen and Judge Bordman over their
wine at the inn for a long evening; and Peter Nuttles, whose sister
waited on them, spread the story to the ends of the county.
Late one night, when Uncle Seth and I were about to set out for
home, leaving Arnold and Sim to lock up the store, we parted with
Gleazen on the porch, he stalking off to the right in the moonlight
and swinging his cane as he went, we turning our backs on the
village and the bright windows of the tavern, and stepping smartly
toward our own dark house, in which the one lighted lamp shone from
the window of the room that Mrs. Jameson, our housekeeper, occupied.
"He's a man of judgment," Uncle Seth said, as if meditating aloud,
"rare judgment and a wonderful knowledge of the world."
He seemed to expect no reply, and I made none.
"He was venturesome to rashness as a boy," Uncle Seth presently
continued. "All that seems to have changed now."
We walked along through the dust. The weeds beside the road and the
branches of the trees and shrubs were damp with dew.
"As a boy," Uncle Seth said at last, "I should never have thought of
going to Neil Gleazen for judgment--aye, or for knowledge." And when
we stood on the porch in the moonlight and looked back at the
village, where all the houses were dark now except for a lamp here
and there that continued to burn far into the night, he added, "How
would you like to leave all this, Joe, and wrestle a fall with
fortune for big stakes--aye, for rich stakes, with everything in our
favor to win?"
At something in his voice I turned on my heel, my heart leaping, and
stared hard at him.
As if he suddenly realized that he had been saying things he ought
not to say, he gave himself a quick shake, and woke from his
meditations with a start. "We must away to bed," he cried sharply.
"It's close on midnight."
Here was a matter for speculation. For an hour that afternoon and
for another hour that evening Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen had sat
behind my uncle's desk, with their chairs drawn close together and
the beaver laid on the cracker-box, and had scribbled endless
columns of figures and mysterious notes on sheet after sheet of
foolscap. What, I wondered, did it mean?
At noon next day, as I was waiting on customers in the front of the
store, I saw a rider with full saddlebags pass, on a great black
horse, and shortly afterwards I heard one of the customers remark
that the horse was standing at the inn. Glancing out of the window,
I saw that the rider had dismounted and was talking with Cornelius
Gleazen; though the distance was considerable, Gleazen's bearing and
the forward tilt of his beaver were unmistakable. When next I passed
the window, I saw that Gleazen was posting down the road toward the
store, with his beaver tipped even farther over his right eye, his
cane swinging, and a bundle under his arm.
As I bowed the customers out, Gleazen entered the store, brushing
past me with a nod, and loudly called, "Seth Upham! Seth Upham!
Where are you?"
"Here I am. What's wanted?" my uncle testily retorted, as he
emerged from a bin into which he had thrust his head and shoulders
in his efforts to fill a peck measure.
"Come, come," cried Gleazen in his great, gruff voice. "Here's
news!"
"News," returned my uncle, sharply; "news is no reason to scare a
man out of a year's growth."
Neil Gleazen laughed loudly and gave my uncle a resounding slap on
the back that made him writhe. "News, Seth, news is the key to
fortune. Come, man, come, lay by your pettifogging. Here's papers
just in by the post. You ain't going to let 'em lie no more than I
am."
To my amazement,--I could never get used to it,--my uncle's
resentment seemed to go like mist before the sun, and he said not a
word against the boisterous roughness of the friend of his youth,
although I almost believe that, if anyone else had dared to treat
him so, he would have grained the man with a hayfork. Instead, he
wiped his hands on his coarse apron and followed Gleazen to the
desk, where they sat down in the two chairs that now were always
behind it.
For a time they talked in voices so low that I heard nothing of
their conversation; but after a while, as they became more and more
absorbed in their business, their voices rose, and I perceived that
Gleazen was reading aloud from the papers some advertisements in
which he seemed especially interested.
"Here's this," he would cry. "Listen to this. If this ain't a good
one, I'll miss my guess. 'Executor's sale, Ship Congress: on
Saturday the 15th, at twelve o'clock, at the wharf of the late
William Gray, Lynn Street, will be sold at public auction the ship
Congress, built at Mattapoisett near New Bedford in the year 1823
and designed for the whale fishery. Measures 349 tons, is copper
fastened and was copper sheathed over felt in London on the first
voyage, and is in every respect a first-rate vessel. She has two
suits of sails, chain and hemp cables, and is well found in the
usual appurtenances. By order of the executors of the late William
Gray, Whitewell, Bond and Company, Auctioneers.' There, Seth,
there's a vessel for you, I'll warrant you."
My uncle murmured something that I could not hear; then Gleazen
tipped his beaver back on his head--for once he had neglected to set
it on the cracker-box--and hoarsely laughed. "Well, I'll be shot!"
he roared. "How's a man to better himself, if he's so confounded
cautious? Well, then, how's this: 'Marshal's Sale. United States of
America, District of Massachusetts, Boston, August 31, 1826.
Pursuant to a warrant from the Honorable John Davis, Judge of the
District Court for the District aforesaid, I hereby give public
notice that I shall sell at public auction on Wednesday the 8th day
of September, at 12 o'clock noon, at Long Wharf, the schooner
Caroline and Clara, libelled for wages by William Shipley, and the
money arising from the sale to be paid into court. Samuel D. Hains,
Marshal.' That'll come cheap, if cheap you'll have. But mark what I
tell you, Seth, that what comes cheap, goes cheap. There's no good
in it. It ain't as if you hadn't the money. The plan's mine, and I
tell you, it's a good one, with three merry men waiting for us over
yonder. Half's for you, a whole half, mind you; and half's to be
divided amongst the rest of us. It don't pay to try to do things
cheap. What with gear carried away and goods damaged, it don't pay."
Uncle Seth was marking lines on the margin of the newspaper before
them.
"I wonder," he began, "how much--"
Then they talked in undertones, and I heard nothing more.
CHAPTER V
A MYSTERIOUS PROJECT
For three days I watched with growing amazement the strange behavior
of my uncle. Now he would sit hunched up over his desk and search
through a great pile of documents from the safe; now he would toss
the papers into his strong box, lock it, and return it to its place
in the vault, and pace the floor in a revery so deep that you could
speak in his very ear without getting a reply. At one minute he
would be as cross as a devil's imp, and turn on you in fury if you
wished to do him a favor; at the next he would fairly laugh aloud
with good humor.
The only man at whom he never flew out in a rage was Cornelius
Gleazen, and why this should be so, I could only guess. You may be
sure that I, and others, tried hard to fathom the secret, when the
two of them were sitting at my uncle's desk over a huge mass of
papers, as they were for hours at a time.
On the noon of the third day they settled themselves together at the
desk and talked interminably in undertones. Now Uncle Seth would
bend over his papers; now he would look off across the road and the
meadows to the woods beyond. Now he would put questions; now he
would sit silent. An hour passed, and another, and another. At four
o'clock they were still there, still talking in undertones. At five
o'clock their heads were closer together than ever. Now Neil Gleazen
was tapping on the top of his beaver. He had a strange look, which I
did not understand, and between his eyes and the flashing of his
diamond as his finger tapped the hat, he charmed me as if he were a
snake. Even Sim Muzzy was watching them curiously, and on Arnold
Lamont's fine, sober face there was an expression of mingled wonder
and distrust.
Customers came, and we waited on them; and when they had gone, the
two were still there. The clocks were striking six when I faced
about, hearing their chairs move, and saw them shaking hands and
smiling. Then Cornelius Gleazen went away, and my uncle, carefully
locking up his papers, went out, too.
Supper was late that night, for I waited until Uncle Seth came in;
but he made no excuse for his long absence and late return. He ate
rapidly and in silence, as if he were not thinking of his food, and
he took no wine until he had pushed his plate away. Then he poured
himself a glass from the decanter, tasted it, and said, "I am to be
away to-morrow, Joe."
"Yes, sir," said I.
"I may be back to-morrow night and I may not. As to that, I can't
say. But I wish, come afternoon, you'd go to Abe Guptil's for me.
I've an errand there I want you to do."
I waited in silence.
"I hold a mortgage of two thousand dollars on his place," he
presently went on. "I've let it run, out of good-nature. Good-nature
don't pay. Well, I'm going to need the money. Give him a month to
pay up. If he can't, tell him I'll sell him out."
"You'll what?" I cried, not believing that I heard him aright.
"I'll sell him out. Pringle has been wanting the place and he'll
give at least two thousand."
"Now, Uncle Seth, Abraham Guptil's been a long time sick. His best
horse broke a leg a while back and he had to shoot it, and while he
was sick his crops failed. He can't pay you now. Give him another
year. He's good for the money and he pays his interest on the day
it's due."
Uncle Seth frowned. "I've been too good-natured," he said sharply.
"I need the money myself. I shall sell him out."
"But--"
"Well?"
I stopped short. After all, I could not save Abe Guptil--I knew
Uncle Seth too well for that. And it might be easier for Abe if I
broke the news than if, say, Uncle Seth did.
"Very well," I replied after a moment's thought. "I will go."
Uncle Seth, appeased by my compliance, gave a short grunt, curtly
bade me good-night and stumped off to bed. But I, wondering what was
afoot, sat a long time at table while the candles burned lower and
lower.
Next morning, clad in his Sunday best, Uncle Seth waited in front of
the store, with his horses harnessed and ready, until the tall
familiar figure, with cane, cigar, and beaver hat, came marching
grandly down from the inn. Then the two got into the carriage and
drove away.
Some hours later, leaving Arnold Lamont in charge of the store, I
set off in turn, but humbly and on foot, toward the white house by
the distant sea where poor Abraham Guptil lived; and you can be sure
that it made me sick at heart to think of my errand.
From the pine land and meadows of Topham, the road emerged on the
border of a salt marsh, along which I tramped for an hour or two;
then, passing now through scrubby timber, now between barren farms,
it led up on higher ground, which a few miles farther on fell away
to tawny rocks and yellow sand and the sea, which came rolling in on
the beach in long, white hissing waves. Islands in the offing
seemed to give promise of other, far-distant lands; and the sun was
so bright and the water so blue that I thought to myself how much I
would give to go a-sailing with Uncle Seth in search of adventure.
Late in the afternoon I saw ahead of me, beside the road, the small
white house, miles away from any other, where Abraham Guptil lived.
A dog came barking out at me, and a little boy came to call back the
dog; then a woman appeared in the door and told me I was welcome.
Abe, it seemed, was away working for a neighbor, but he would be
back soon, for supper-time was near. If I would stay with them for
the meal, she said, they should be glad and honored.
So I sat down on the doorstone and made friends with the boy and the
dog, and talked away about little things that interested the boy,
until we saw Abraham Guptil coming home across the fields with the
sun at his back.
He shook hands warmly, but his face was anxious, and when after
supper we went out doors and I told him as kindly as I could the
errand on which my uncle had sent me, he shook his head.
"I feared it," said he. "It's rumored round the country that Seth
Upham's collecting money wherever he can. Without this, I've been in
desperate straits, and now--"
He spread his hands hopelessly and leaned against the fence. His
eyes wandered over the acres on which he was raising crops by sheer
strength and determination. It was a poor, stony farm, yet the man
had claimed it from the wilderness and, what with fishing and odd
jobs, had been making a success of life until one misfortune after
another had fairly overwhelmed him.
"It must go," he said at last.
As best I could, I was taking leave of him for the long tramp home,
when he suddenly roused himself and cried, "But stay! See! The storm
is hard upon us. You must not go back until to-morrow."
Heavy clouds were banking in the west, and already we could hear the
rumble of thunder.
It troubled me to accept the hospitality of the Guptils when I had
come on such an errand; but the kindly souls would hear of no
denial, so I joined Abe in the chores with such good-will, that we
had milked, and fed the stock, and closed the barns for the night
before the first drops fell.
Meanwhile much had gone forward indoors, and when we returned to the
house I was shown to a great bed made up with clean linen fragrant
of lavender. Darkness had scarcely fallen, but I was so weary that I
undressed and threw myself on the bed and went quietly to sleep
while the storm came raging down the coast.
As one so often does in a strange place, I woke uncommonly early.
Dawn had no more than touched the eastern horizon, but I got out of
bed and, hearing someone stirring, went to the window. A door closed
very gently, then a man came round the corner of the house and
struck off across the fields. It was Abraham Guptil. What could he
be doing abroad at that hour? Going to the door of my room, which
led into the kitchen, I softly opened it, then stopped in amazement.
Someone was asleep on the kitchen floor. I looked closer and saw
that it was a woman with a child; then I turned back and closed the
door again.
Rather than send me away, even though I brought a message that meant
the loss of their home, those good people had given me the one bed
in the house, and themselves, man, woman, and child, had slept on
hard boards, with only a blanket under them.
Since I could not leave my room without their knowing that I had
discovered their secret, I sat down by the window and watched the
dawn come across the sea upon a world that was clean and cool after
the shower of the night. For an hour, as the light grew stronger, I
watched the slow waves that came rolling in and poured upon the long
rocks in cascades of silver; and still the time wore on, and still
Abe remained away. Another hour had nearly gone when I saw him
coming in the distance along the shore, and heard his wife stirring
outside.
Now someone knocked at my door.
I replied with a prompt "Good-morning," and presently went into the
kitchen, where the three greeted me warmly. All signs of their
sleeping on the kitchen floor had vanished.
"I don't know what I shall do, Joe," said Abraham Guptil when I was
taking leave of him an hour later. "This place is all I have."
I made up my mind there and then that neither Abraham Guptil nor his
wife and child should suffer want.
"I'll see to that," I replied. "There'll be something for you to do
and some place for you to go."
Then, with no idea how I should fulfil my promise, I shook his hand
and left him.
When at last I got back to the store, Arnold Lamont was there alone.
My uncle had not returned, and Sim Muzzy had gone fishing. It was an
uncommonly hot day, and since there were few customers, we sat and
talked of one thing and another.
When I saw that Arnold was looking closely at the foils, which stood
in a corner, an idea came to me. Cornelius Gleazen had praised my
swordsmanship to the skies, and, indeed, I was truly becoming a
match for him. Twice I had actually taken a bout from him, with a
great swishing and clattering of blades and stamping of feet, and
now, although he continued to give me lessons, he no longer would
meet me in an assault. As for the other young fellows, I had far and
away outstripped them.
"Would you like to try the foils once, Arnold?" I asked. "I'll give
you a lesson if you say so."
For a moment I thought there was a twinkle in the depths of his
eyes; but when I looked again they were sober and innocent.
"Why, yes," he said.
Something in the way he tested the foils made me a bit uneasy, in
spite of my confidence, but I shrugged it off.
"You have learned well by watching," I said, as we came on guard.
"I have tried it before," said he.
"Then," said I, "I will lunge and you shall see if you can parry
me."
"Very well."
After a few perfunctory passes, during which I advanced and
retreated in a way that I flattered myself was exceptionally clever,
and after a quick feint in low line, I disengaged, deceived a
counter-parry by doubling, and confidently lunged. To my amazement
my foil rested against his blade hardly out of line with his
body--so slightly out of line that I honestly believed the attack
had miscarried by my own clumsiness. Certainly I never had seen so
nice a parry. That I escaped a riposte, I attributed to my deft
recovery and the constant pressure of my blade on his; but even then
I had an uncomfortable suspicion that behind the veil of his black
mask Arnold was smiling, and I was really dazed by the failure of an
attack that seemed to me so well planned and executed.
Then, suddenly, easily, lightly, Arnold Lamont's blade wove its way
through my guard. His arms, his legs, his body moved with a lithe
precision such as I had never dreamed of; my own foil, circling
desperately, failed to find his, and his button rested for a moment
against my right breast so surely and so competently that, in the
face of his skill, I simply dropped my guard and stood in frank
wonder and admiration.
Even then I was vaguely aware that I could not fully appreciate it.
Though I had thought myself an accomplished swordsman, the man's
dexterity, which had revealed me as a clumsy blunderer, was so
amazingly superior to anything I had ever seen, that I simply could
not realize to the full how remarkable it was.
I whipped off my mask and cried, "You,--you _are_ a fencer."
He smiled. "Are you surprised? A man does not tell all he knows."
As I looked him in the face, I wondered at him. Uncle Seth had come
to rely upon him implicitly for far more than you can get from any
ordinary clerk. Yet we really knew nothing at all about him. "A man
does not tell all he knows"--He had held his tongue without a slip
for all those years.
I saw him now in a new light. His face was keen, but more than keen.
There was real wisdom in it. The quiet, confident dignity with which
he always bore himself seemed suddenly to assume a new, deeper, more
mysterious significance. Whatever the man might be, it was certain
that he was no mere shopkeeper's clerk.
That afternoon Uncle Seth and Gleazen, the one strangely elated, the
other more pompous and grand than ever, returned in the carriage. Of
their errand, for the time being they said nothing.
Uncle Seth merely asked about Abe Guptil's note; and, when I
answered him, impatiently grunted.
Poor Abe, I thought, and wondered what had come over my uncle.
In the evening, as we were finishing supper, Uncle Seth leaned back
with a broad smile. "Joe, my lad," he said, "our fortunes are
making. Great days are ahead. I can buy and sell the town of Topham
now, but before we are through, Joe, I--or you with the money I
shall leave you--can buy and sell the city of Boston--aye, or the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There are great days ahead, Joe."
"But what," I asked, with fear at my heart, "but what is this great
venture?"
Uncle Seth looked at me with a smile that expressed whatever power
of affection was left in his hard old shell of a heart,--a meagre
affection, yet, as far as it went, all centred upon me,--and
revealed a great conceit of his own wisdom.
"Joe," he said, leaning forward on his elbows till his face, on
which the light threw every testy wrinkle into sharp relief, was
midway between the two candles at the end of the table, "Joe, I've
bought a ship and we're all going to Africa."
For a moment his voice expressed confidence; for a moment his
affection for me triumphed over his native sharpness.
"You're all I've got, Joey," he cried, "You're all that's left to
the old man, and I'm going to do well by you. Whatever I have is
yours, Joey; it's all coming to you, every cent and every dollar.
Here,--you must be wanting a bit of money to spend,--here!" He
thrust his hand into his pocket and flung half a dozen gold pieces
down on the dark, well-oiled mahogany where they rang and rolled and
shone dully in the candle-light. "I swear, Joey, I think a lot of
you."
I suppose that not five people in all Topham had ever seen Uncle
Seth in such a mood. I am sure that, if they had, the town could
never have thought of him as only a cold, exacting man. But now a
fear apparently overwhelmed him lest by so speaking out through his
reticence he had committed some unforgivable offense--lest he had
told too much. He seemed suddenly to snap back into his hard,
cynical shell. "But of that, no more," he said sharply. "Not a
word's to be said, you understand. Not a word--to _any one_."
When I went back to the store that evening, I sat on the porch in
the darkness and thought of Uncle Seth as I had seen him across the
table, his face thrust forward between the candles, his elbows
planted on the white linen, with the dim, restful walls of the room
behind him, with the faces of my father and my mother looking down
upon us from the gilt frames on the wall. I knew him too well to ask
questions, even though, as I sat on the store porch, he was sitting
just behind me inside the open window.
What, I wondered, almost in despair, could we, of all people, do
with a ship and a voyage to Africa? Had I not seen Cornelius Gleazen
play upon my uncle's fear and vanity and credulity? I had no doubt
whatever that the same Neil Gleazen, who had been run out of town
thirty years before, was at the bottom of whatever mad voyage my
uncle was going to send his ship upon.
Then I thought of good old Abraham Guptil, so soon to be turned out
of house and home, and of Arnold Lamont, who saw and knew and
understood so much, yet said so little. And again I thought of
Cornelius Gleazen; and when I was thinking of him, a strange thing
came to pass.
Down in the village a dog barked fiercely, then another nearer the
store, then another; then I saw coming up the road a figure that I
could not mistake. The man with that tall hat, that flowing coat,
that nonchalant air, which even the faint light of the stars
revealed, could be no other than Cornelius Gleazen himself.
In the store behind me I heard the low drone of conversation from
the men gathered round the stove, the click of a chessman set firmly
on the board, the voice of Arnold Lamont--so clear, so precise, and
yet so definitely and indescribably foreign--saying, "Check!"
Through the small panes of glass I saw my uncle frowning over his
ledgers. Now he noted some figure on the foolscap at his right, now
he appeared to count on his fingers.
I turned again to watch Cornelius Gleazen. Of course he could not
know that anyone was sitting on the porch in the darkness. When he
passed the store, he looked over at it with a turn of his head and a
twist of his shoulders. His gesture gave me an impression of scorn
and triumph so strong that I hardly restrained myself from retorting
loudly and angrily. Then I bit my lip and watched him go by and
disappear.
"Who," I wondered, "who and _what_ really is Cornelius Gleazen?"
[Illustration]
II
HANDS ACROSS THE SEA
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI
GOOD-BYE TO OLD HAUNTS AND FACES
That some extraordinary thing was afoot next day, every soul who
worked in our store, or who entered it on business, vaguely felt. To
me, who had gained a hint of what was going forward,--baffling and
tantalizing, yet a hint for all that,--and to Arnold Lamont, who, I
was convinced as I saw him watch my uncle's nervous movements,
although he had no such plain hint to go upon, had by his keen,
silent observation unearthed even more than I, the sense of an
impending great event was far from vague. I felt as sure as of my
own name that before nightfall something would happen to uproot me
from my native town, whose white houses and green trees and hedges,
kindly people and familiar associations, lovely scenes and quiet,
homely life I so deeply loved.
The strange light in Cornelius Gleazen's eyes, as he watched us hard
at work taking an inventory of stock, confirmed me in the
presentiment. My uncle's harassed, nervous manner as he drove us on
with our various duties, Sim Muzzy's garrulous bewilderment, and
Arnold Lamont's keen, silent appraisal, added each its little to the
sum of my convictions.
The warmer the day grew, the harder we worked. Uncle Seth flew about
like a madman, picking us up on this thing and that, and urging one
to greater haste, another to greater care. Throwing off his coat, he
pitched in with his own hands, and performed such prodigies of labor
that it seemed as if our force were doubled by the addition of
himself alone. And all the time Neil Gleazen sat and smiled and
tapped his beaver.
He was so cool, so impudent about it, that I longed to turn on him
and vent my spleen; but to Uncle Seth it apparently seemed entirely
suitable that Gleazen should idle while others worked.
Of the true meaning of all this haste and turmoil I had no further
inkling until in the early afternoon Gleazen called loudly,--
"He's here, prompt to the minute."
Then Uncle Seth drew a long breath, mopped the sweat from his face
and cried,--
"I'm ready for him, thank heaven! The boys can be finishing up what
little's left."
I looked, and saw a gentleman, just alighted from his chaise, tying
a handsome black horse to the hitching-post before the door.
Turning his back upon us all, Uncle Seth rushed to the door, his
hands extended, and cried, "Welcome, sir! Since cock-crow this
morning we have been hard at work upon the inventory, and it's this
minute done--at least, all but adding a few columns. Sim, another
chair by my desk. Quick! Mr. Gleazen, I wish to present you to Mr.
Brown. Come in, sir, come in."
The three shook hands, and all sat down together and talked for some
time; then, at the stranger's remark,--"Now for figures. There's
nothing like figures to tell a story, Mr. Upham. Eh, Mr. Gleazen? We
can run over those columns you spoke of, here and now,"--they
bestirred themselves.
"You're right, sir," Uncle Seth cried: and then he sharply called,
"Arnold, bring me those lists you've just finished. That's right; is
that all? Well, then you take the other boys and return those boxes
in the back room to their shelves. That'll occupy you all of an
hour."
No longer able to pick up an occasional sentence of their talk, we
glumly retired out of earshot and were more than ever irritated when
Gleazen, his cigar between his teeth, stamped up to the door between
the front room and the back and firmly closed it.
"Why should they wish so much to be alone?" Arnold asked.
I ventured no reply; but Sim Muzzy, as if personally affronted,
burst hotly forth:--
"You'd think Seth Upham would know enough to ask the advice of a man
who's been working for him ever since Neil Gleazen ran away from
home, now wouldn't you? Here I've toiled day in and out and done
good work for him and learned the business, for all the many times
he's said he never saw a thicker head, until there ain't a better
hand at candling eggs, not this side of Boston, than I be. And does
he ask my advice when he's got something up his sleeve? No, he
don't! And yet I'll leave it to Arnold, here, if my nose ain't
keener to scent sour milk than any nose in Topham--yes, sir."
The idea of Sim Muzzy's advice on any matter of greater importance
than the condition of an egg or the sweetness of milk, in
determining which, to do him justice, he was entirely competent,
struck me as so funny that I almost sniggered. Nor could I have
restrained myself, even so, when I perceived Arnold looking at me
solemnly and as if reproachfully, had not Uncle Seth just then
opened the door and called, "Sim, there's a lady here wants some
calico and spices. Come and wait on her."
When, fifteen minutes later, Sim returned, closing the door smartly
behind him, Arnold asked with a droll quirk, which I alone
perceived, "Well, my friend, what did you gather during your stay in
yonder?"
"Gather? Gather?" Sim spluttered. "I gathered nothing. There was
talk of dollars and cents and pounds and pence, and stocks and
oils, and ships and horses, and though I listened till my head swam,
all I could make out was when Neil Gleazen told me to shut the door
behind my back. If they was to ask my advice, I'd tell 'em to talk
sense, that's what I'd do."
"Ah, Sim," said Arnold, "if only they were to ask thy advice, what
advice thee would give them!"
"Now you're talking like a Quaker," Sim replied hotly. "Why do
Quakers talk that way, I'd like to know. Thee-ing and thou-ing till
it is enough to fuddle a sober man's wits. I declare they are almost
as bad as people in foreign parts who, I've heard tell, have such a
queer way of talking that an honest man can't at all understand what
they're saying until he's got used to it."
"Such, indeed, is the way of the inconsiderate world, Sim," Arnold
dryly replied.
Then the three of us put our shoulders to a hogshead, and in the
mighty effort of lifting it to the bulkhead sill ceased to talk.
As we finally raised it and shoved it into the yard, Sim stepped
farther out than Arnold and I, and looking toward the street,
whispered, "He's going."
I sprang over beside him and saw that the visitor, having already
unhitched his horse, was shaking hands with Uncle Seth. Stepping
into the chaise, he then drove off.
For a space of time so long that the man must have come to the bend
in the road, Uncle Seth and Cornelius Gleazen watched him as he
went; then, to puzzle us still further, smiling broadly, they shook
hands, and turning about, still entirely unaware that we were
watching them, walked with oddly pleased expressions back into the
store.
My uncle's face expressed such confidence and friendliness as even I
had seldom seen on it.
"Now ain't that queer?" Sim began. "If Seth Upham was a little less
set in his ways, I'd--"
With a shrug Arnold Lamont broke in upon what seemed likely to be a
long harangue, and made a comment that was much more to the point.
"Now," said he, "we are going to hear what has happened."
Surely enough, we thought. No sooner were we back in the store, all
three of us, than the door opened and in came Uncle Seth.
"Well," said he, brusquely, and yet with a certain pleased
expression still lingering about his eyes, "I expected you to have
done more. Hm! Well, work hard. We must have things in order come
morning."
Arnold smiled as my uncle promptly returned to the front room, but
Sim and I were keenly disappointed.
"How now, you who are so clever?" Sim cried when Uncle Seth again
had closed the door. "How now, Arnold? We have heard nothing."
"Why," said Arnold, imperturbably, "not exactly 'nothing.' We have
learned that the man is coming back to-morrow."
"Are you crazy?" Sim responded. "Seth Upham said nothing of the
kind."
Arnold only smiled again. "Wait and see," he said.
So we worked until late at night, putting all once more to rights;
and in the morning, true to Arnold's prophecy, the gentleman with
the big black horse, accompanied now by a friend, made a second
visit in the front room of the store.
This time he talked but briefly with Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen,
who had already waited an hour for his arrival. As if eager to see
our business for himself, he then walked through the store,
examining every little detail of the stock and fixtures, and asked a
vast number of questions, which in themselves showed that he knew
what he was about and that he was determined to get at the bottom of
our affairs. There was talk of barrels of Alexandria superfine flour
and hogsheads of Kentucky tobacco; of teas--Hyson, young Hyson,
Hyson skin, Powchong and Souchong; of oil, summer and winter; of
Isles of Shoals dun fish and Holland gin and preserved ginger, and
one thing and another, until, with answering the questions they
asked me, I was fairly dizzy.
Having examined store and stock to his satisfaction, he then went
with Uncle Seth, to my growing wonder, up to our own house; and from
what Sim reported when he came back from a trip to spy upon them,
they examined the house with the same care. In due course they
returned to the store and sat down at the desk, and then the friend
who accompanied our first visitor wrote for some time on an
official-looking document; Uncle Seth and the strange gentleman
signed it; Arnold Lamont, whom they summoned for the purpose, and
Cornelius Gleazen witnessed it; and all four drove away together,
the gentleman and his friend in their chaise and Uncle Seth and Neil
Gleazen in our own.
"When Seth Upham returns," said Arnold, "we shall be told all."
And it was so.
Coming back alone in the late afternoon, Uncle Seth and Gleazen left
the chaise at the door, and entering, announced that we should close
the store early that day. Gleazen was radiant with good-nature, and
there was the odor of liquor on his breath. Uncle Seth, on the
contrary, appeared not to have tasted a drop. He was, if anything, a
little sharper than ever at one moment, a little more jovial at the
next, excited always, and full of some mysterious news that seemed
both to delight and to frighten him.
Obediently we fastened the shutters and drew the shades and made
ready for the night.
"Now, lads," said Uncle Seth, "come in by my desk and take chairs. I
have news for you."
Exchanging glances, we did so. Even Sim Muzzy was silent now.
We all sat down together, Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen at the desk,
Arnold Lamont and I a little at one side, and Sim Muzzy tilting back
importantly at a point from which he could watch us all.
At the time I thought what an interesting study in character the
others made; but since then I have come to think that by my own
attitude toward them I revealed more of the manner of youth I myself
was, than by their bearing they revealed of the manner of men they
were. There was Neil Gleazen, who held his cigar in his left hand
and, with the finger on which his great diamond flashed, knocked
each bit of ash on the floor so promptly after it formed, that the
glowing coal of fire seemed to eat into the dark tobacco and leave
no residue whatever. I was confident that he thought more of me both
for my good fellowship and for my sound sense than he thought of any
of the others present--or in town, for that matter! As for Uncle
Seth, who was at once nervous and elated, I must confess, although
it did not take me long to learn enough to be heartily ashamed of
it, that I was just a little inclined in my own mind to patronize
him; for although all my excellent prospects came entirely from his
shrewd labors, I felt that he was essentially the big toad in the
small puddle.
With the others, I smiled at Sim Muzzy. But with regard to Arnold
Lamont I was less confident. There had been a world of philosophy in
his brief remark that a man does not tell all he knows; and my
fencing bout with him was still too fresh in my mind to permit me
actually to patronize him. He sat now with his thoughtful eyes
intent on my uncle, and of the five of us he was by long odds the
most composed.
Although I have betrayed my vanity in a none too flattering light,
it would be unjust, I truly think, not to add, at the risk of
seeming to contradict myself, that I was instinctively kind-hearted,
and that I did not lack for courage.
"I have news for you, boys," Uncle Seth began, with a manner at once
abrupt and a little pompous, but with a warm smile at me. "I hope
you'll be glad to hear it, although it means a radical change in the
life we've lived together for so many years. First of all, I want to
say that each of you will be well looked after."
Uncle Seth paused and glanced at Cornelius Gleazen, who nodded as if
to encourage him to go on.
"Yes, you will be well looked after, however it may appear at first
flush. I'll see that no faithful man suffers to my profit, even
though I have sold the store."
"What's that? You've sold the store?" Sim wildly broke in. "If
you've--you've gone and sold the store? What--what?"
"Be still, Sim," Uncle Seth interposed. "Yes, I have sold the store.
I know that Joe'll not be surprised to hear it; but even he has had
only the vaguest hint of what's going forward. The gentleman who was
here yesterday and to-day, has bought me out, store and house, lock,
stock, and barrel."
"The house!" I cried.
"Yes," said Uncle Seth shortly.
"But what'll I do? And Arnold? And Joe?" Sim demanded. "Oh, Seth
Upham! Never did I think to see this day and hear them words."
"I'm coming to that," said Uncle Seth. "There'll be room here for
the three of you if you want to stay, and there'll be work in
abundance in the store; but--ah, lads, here's the chance for
you!--there'll be room for you with me, if you wish to come. I have
bought a ship--"
"A brig," Cornelius Gleazen put in.
"A brig," said Uncle Seth, accepting the correction. "The Adventure,
a very tidy little craft, and well named."
Cornelius Gleazen gave his cigar a harder flick and in a reminiscent
voice again forced his way into the conversation. "Ninety-seven foot
on deck, twenty-four foot beam, sixteen foot deep, and a good two
hundred and fifty ton, built of white oak and copper fastened.
Baltimore bow and beautiful rake. Trim as a gull and fast as a duck.
Tidy's the word, Seth, tidy."
Gleazen's fingers were twitching and his eyes were strangely alight.
"Yes, yes," said Uncle Seth, sharply.
"But that's not all," Gleazen insisted.
"Well, what of it?" Uncle Seth demanded. "Are you going to tell 'em
everything?"
At this Gleazen paused and looked hard at his cigar. His fingers, I
could see, were twitching more than ever.
"No," he slowly said, "not everything. Go ahead, Seth."
"If you keep putting in, how can I go ahead."
"Oh, stow it!" Gleazen suddenly roared. "This is no piffling
storekeeper's game. Go on!"
As you can imagine, we were all eyes and ears at this brush between
the two; and when Gleazen lost his temper and burst out so hotly, in
spite of my admiration for the man, I hoped, and confidently
expected, to see Uncle Seth come back, hammer and tongs, and give
him as good as he sent. Instead, he suddenly turned white and
became strangely calm, and in a low, subdued voice went on to the
rest of us:--
"We shall take on a cargo at Boston and sail for the West Indies,
where we shall add a few men to the crew and thence sail for Africa.
I'm sure the voyage will yield a good profit and--"
"O Seth, O Seth!" cried Gleazen, abruptly. "That is no manner of way
to talk to the boys. Let me tell 'em!"
My uncle, at this, drew back in his chair and said with great
dignity, "Sir, whose money is financing this venture?"
"Money?" Gleazen roared with laughter. "What's money without brains?
I'll tell 'em? You sit tight."
We were all but dumbfounded. White of face and blue of lip, Seth
Upham sat in his chair--_his no longer!_--and Gleazen told us.
He threw his cigar-butt on the floor and stepped on it, and drummed
on his beaver hat with nimble fingers.
"It's like this, lads," he said in a voice that implied that he was
confiding in us: "I've come home here to Topham with a fortune, to
be sure, and I've come to end my days in the town that gave me
birth. But--" his voice now fell almost to a whisper--"I've left a
king's wealth on the coast of Guinea."
He paused to see the effect of his words. I could hear my uncle
breathing hard, but I held my eyes intently on Neil Gleazen's face.
"A fit treasure for an emperor!" he whispered, in such a way that
the words came almost hissing to our ears.
Still we sat in silence and stared at him.
"With three good men to guard it," he went on after another pause.
"Three tried, true men--friends of mine, every one of them. Suppose
I _have_ made my fortune and come home to end my days in comfort?
I'd as soon have a little more, _hadn't you_? And I'd as soon give a
hand to a hard-working, honest boyhood friend, _hadn't you_? Here's
what I done: I said to Seth Upham, who has robbed many a church with
me--"
At that, I thought my uncle was going to cry out in protest or
denial; but his words died in his throat.
"I said to him, 'Seth, you and me is old friends. Now here's this
little scheme. I've got plenty myself, so I'll gladly share with
you. If you'll raise the money for this venture, you'll be helping
three good men to get their little pile out of the hands of heathen
savages, and half of the profits will be yours.' So he says he'll
raise money for the venture, and he done so, and he's sold his store
and his house, and now he can't back down. How about it, Seth?"
My uncle gulped, but made no reply. Gleazen, who up to this point
had been always deferential and considerate, seemed, out of a clear
sky, suddenly to have assumed absolute control of our united
fortunes.
"Of course it won't do to turn off old friends," he continued. "So
he made up his mind to give you lads your choice of coming with us
at handsome pay--one third of his lay is to be divided amongst those
of you that come--"
"No, I never said that," Uncle Seth cried, as if startled into
speech.
"You never?" Gleazen returned in seeming amazement. "The papers is
signed, Seth."
"But I never said that!"
Gleazen turned on my uncle, his eyes blazing. "This from you!" he
cried with a crackling oath. "After all I've done! I swear _I'll_
back out now--then where'll you be? What's more, I'll tell what I
know."
My uncle in a dazed way looked around the place that up to now had
been his own little kingdom and uttered some unintelligible murmur.
"Ah," said Gleazen, "I thought you did." Then, as if Uncle Seth had
not broken in upon him, as if he had not retorted at Uncle Seth, as
if his low, even voice had not been raised in pitch since he began,
he went on, "Or, lads, you can stay. What do you say?"
Still we sat and stared at him.
Sim Muzzy, as usual, was first to speak and last to think. "I'll
go," he exclaimed eagerly, "I'll go, for one."
"Good lad," said Gleazen, who, although they were nearly of an age,
outrageously patronized him.
With my familiar world torn down about my shoulders, and the
patrimony that I long had regarded as mine about to be imperiled in
this strange expedition, it seemed that I must choose between a
berth in the new vessel and a clerkship with no prospects. It was
not a difficult choice for a youth with a leaning toward adventure,
nor was I altogether unprepared for it. Then, too, there was
something in me that would not suffer me lightly to break all ties
with my mother's only brother. After a moment for reflection, I
said, "I'll go, for two."
Meanwhile, Arnold Lamont had been studying us all and had seen, I am
confident, more than any of us. He had taken time to notice to the
full the sudden return of all Cornelius Gleazen's arrogance and the
extraordinary meekness of Uncle Seth who, without serious affront,
had just now taken words from Gleazen for which he would once have
blazed out at him in fury.
It did not take Arnold Lamont's subtlety to see that Gleazen, by
some means or other, had got Seth Upham under his thumb and was
taking keen pleasure in feeling him there. Gleazen's attitude toward
my uncle had undergone a curious series of changes since the day
when, for the first time, I had seen him enter our store: from
arrogance he had descended to courtesy, even to deference; but from
deference he had now returned again to arrogance. In his attitude on
that first day there had been much of the cool insolence that he now
manifested; but after a few days it had seemed to a certain extent
to have vanished. Rather, the consideration with which he had of
late treated my uncle had been so great as to make this new
impudence the more amazing.
Many things may have influenced Arnold in his decision; but among
them, I think, were his gratitude to Uncle Seth, who had taken him
in and given him a good living, and who, we both could see, was
likely now to need the utmost that a friend could give him; his
friendliness for Sim and me, with whom he had worked so long; and,
which I did not at the time suspect, the desire of a keen, able,
straight-forward man to meet and beat Cornelius Gleazen at his own
game.
"I will go with you," he quietly said.
"Good lads!" Gleazen cried.
"One thing more," said I.
"Anything--anything--within reason, aye, or without."
"Uncle Seth once spoke to me of selling out Abraham Guptil."
My uncle now bestirred himself and, shaking off the discomfiture
with which he had received Gleazen's earlier words, said with
something of his usual sharpness, "The sheriff has had the papers
these three days."
"Then," I cried, "I beg you, as a favor, let him have a berth with
us."
"What's that? Some farmer?" Gleazen demanded.
"He's bred to the sea," I returned.
"That puts another face on the matter," said Gleazen.
"Well," said my uncle. "But his lay comes out of the part that goes
to you, then."
"But," I responded, "I thought of his signing on at regular wages."
Then I blushed at my own selfishness and hastened to add, "Never
mind that. I for one will say that he shall share alike with us."
And the others, knowing his plight, agreed as with a single voice.
"Now, then, my lads," Cornelius Gleazen cried, "a word in
confidence: to the village and to the world we'll say that we are
going on a trading voyage. And so we are! All this rest of our
talk," he continued slowly and impressively, "all this rest of our
talk is a secret between you four and me and God Almighty." He
brought his great fist down on the desk with a terrific bang. "If
any one of you four men--I don't care a tinker's damn which
one--lets this story leak, I'll kill him."
At the time I did not think that he meant it; since then I have come
to think that he did.
CHAPTER VII
A WILD NIGHT
Unless you have lived in a little town where every man's business is
his neighbor's, you cannot imagine the furor in the village of
Topham when our fellow citizens learned that Seth Upham had actually
sold his business and his house, and was to embark with Cornelius
Gleazen on a voyage of speculation to the West Indies and Africa.
The friction with Great Britain that had closed ports in the West
Indies to American ships added zest to their surmises; and the
unexpected news that that very worthy gentleman, Cornelius Gleazen,
who had so recently returned to his old home, was so soon to depart
again, sharpened their regrets. All were united in wishing us good
fortune and a safe, speedy return; all were keenly interested in
whatever hints of the true character of the voyage we let fall,
which you can be sure were few and slender. It was such an
extraordinary affair in the annals of the village, that the more
enterprising began to prepare for a grand farewell, which should
express their feelings in a suitable way and should do honor both to
their respected fellow townsman, Seth Upham, and to their
distinguished resident, Cornelius Gleazen.
There was to be a parade, with a band from Boston at its head, a
great dinner at the town hall, to which with uncommon generosity
they invited even the doubting blacksmith, and a splendid farewell
ceremony, with speeches by the minister and the doctor, and with
presentations to all who were to leave town. It was to mark an epoch
in the history of Topham. Nothing like it had ever taken place in
all the country round. And as we were to go to Boston in the near
future,--the man who had bought out Uncle Seth was to take over the
house and store almost at once,--they set the date for the first
Saturday in September.
Because I, in a way, was to be one of the guests of the occasion, I
heard little of the plans directly, for they were supposed to be
secret, in order to surprise us by their splendor. But a less
curious lad than I could not have helped noticing the long benches
carried past the store and the platform that was building on the
green.
The formal farewell, as I have said, was to take place on the first
Saturday in September, and the following Wednesday we five were to
leave town. But meanwhile, in order to have everything ready for our
departure, and because we needed another pair of hands to help in
the work during the last days at the store, I went on Friday to get
Abraham Guptil to join us.
He had been so pleased at the chance to ship for a voyage, thus to
recover a little of the goods and gear that misfortune had swept
away from him almost to the last stick and penny, that I was more
than glad I had given him the chance. Well satisfied, accordingly,
with myself and the world, I turned my uncle's team toward the home
of Abe's father-in-law, where Mrs. Guptil and the boy were to stay
until Abe should return from the voyage; and when I passed the
green, where the great platform was almost finished, I thought with
pleasure of what an important part I was to play in the ceremonies
next day.
It was a long ride to the home of Abraham Guptil's father-in-law,
and the way led through the pines and marshes beside the sea, and up
hill and down valley over a winding road inland. The goldenrod
beside the stone walls along the road was a bright yellow, and the
blue frost flowers were beginning to blossom. In the air, which was
as clear as on a winter night, was the pleasant, almost
indescribable tang of autumn, in which are blended so mysteriously
the mellow odors of stubble fields and fallen leaves, and fruit that
is ready for the market; it suggested bright foliage and mellow
sunsets, and blue smoke curling up from chimneys, and lighted
windows in the early dusk.
On the outward journey, but partly occupied by driving the
well-broken team, I thought of how Neil Gleazen, before my very
eyes, had at first frightened Uncle Seth, and had then cajoled him,
and, finally, had completely won him over. I had never put it in so
many words before, that Gleazen had got my uncle into such a state
that he could do what he wished with him; but to me it was plain
enough, and I suspected that Arnold Lamont saw it, too. Although I
had watched Gleazen from the moment when he first began to
accomplish the purpose toward which he had been plotting, I could
not understand what power he held over Uncle Seth that had so
changed my uncle's whole character. Then I fell to thinking of that
remark, twice repeated, about robbing churches, and meditated on it
while the horses quietly jogged along. Never, I thought, should the
people of the town learn of my suspicions; they concerned a family
matter, and I would keep them discreetly to myself.
It was touching to see Abraham Guptil bid farewell to his wife and
son. Their grief was so unaffected that it almost set me sniffling,
and I feared that poor Abe would make a dreary addition to our
little band; but when we had got out of sight of the house, he began
to pick up, and after wiping his eyes and blowing his nose, he
surprised me by becoming, all things considered, quite lively.
"Now," said he, "you can tell me all about this voyage for which
I've shipped. It seems queer for a man to sign the articles when he
don't know where his lay is coming from, but, I declare, it was a
godsend to me to have a voyage and wages in prospect, and you were a
rare good friend of mine, Joe, to put my name in like you done."
It puzzled me to know just how much to tell him, but I explained as
well as I could that it was a trading voyage to the West Indies and
Africa, and gave him a hint that there was a secret connected with
it whereby, if all went well, we were to get large profits, and let
him know that he was to share a certain proportion of this extra
money with Arnold, Sim, and me, in addition to the wages that we all
were to draw.
It seemed to satisfy him, and after thinking it over, he said, "I've
heard Seth Upham was getting all his money together for some reason
or other. There must be more than enough to buy the Adventure. He's
been cashing in notes and mortgages all over the county, and I'm
told the bank is holding it for him in gold coin."
"In gold!" I cried.
"Gold coin," he repeated. "It's rumored round the county that Neil
Gleazen's holding something over him that's frightened him into
doing this and that, exactly according to order."
"Where did you hear that?" I demanded.
It was so precisely what I myself had been thinking that it seemed
as if I must have talked too freely; yet I knew that I had held my
tongue.
"Oh, one place and another," he replied. Then, changing the subject,
he remarked, "There'll be a grand time in town to-morrow, what with
speeches and all. I'd like to have brought my wife to see it, but I
was afraid it would make it harder for her when I leave."
"She doesn't want you to go?"
"Oh, she's glad for me to have the chance, but she's no hand to bear
up at parting."
Conversing thus, we drove on into the twilight and falling dusk,
till we came so near the town that we could see ahead of us the
tavern, all alight and cheerful for the evening.
"I wonder," Abe cried eagerly, "who'll be sitting by the table with
a hot supper in front of him, and Nellie Nuttles to fetch and
carry."
I was hungry after my day's drive and could not help sharing Abe's
desire for a meal at the tavern, which was known as far as Boston
and beyond for its good food; but I had no permission thus wantonly
to spend Uncle Seth's money, so I snapped the whip and was glad to
hear the louder rattling of wheels as the horses broke into a brisk
trot, which made our own supper seem appreciably nearer.
And who, indeed, would be sitting now behind those lighted windows?
Abe's question came back to me as we neared the tavern. The broad
roofs seemed to suggest the very essence of hospitality, and as if
to indorse their promise of good fare, a roar of laughter came out
into the night.
As we passed, I looked through one of the windows that but a moment
since had been rattling from the mirth within, and saw--I looked
again and made sure that I was not mistaken!--saw Neil Gleazen,
red-faced and wild-eyed, standing by the bar with a glass raised in
his hand.
The sight surprised me, for although Gleazen, like almost everyone
else in old New England, took his wine regularly, in all the months
since his return he had conducted himself so soberly that there had
been not the slightest suggestion that he ever got himself the worse
for liquor; and even more it amazed me to see beside him one Jed
Matthews who was, probably, the most unscrupulous member of the
lawless crew with whom Gleazen was said to have associated much in
the old days, but of whom he had seen, everyone believed, almost
nothing since he had come home.
As we drove on past the blacksmith shop, I saw the smith smoking his
pipe in the twilight.
"It's a fine evening," I called.
"It is," said he, coming into the road. And in a lower voice he
added, "Did you see him when you passed the inn?"
"Yes," I replied, knowing well enough whom he meant.
"They've called me a fool," the smith responded, "but before this
night's over we'll see who's a fool." He puffed away at his pipe and
looked at me significantly. "We'll see who's a fool, I or them that
has so much more money and wisdom than I."
He went back and sat down, and Abe and I drove on, puzzled and
uncomfortable. The smith was vindictive. Could he, I wondered, be
right?
A good supper was keeping hot for us in the brick oven, and we sat
down to it with the good-will that it merited; but before we were
more than half through, my uncle burst in upon us. He seemed
harassed by anxiety, and went at once to the window, where he stood
looking out into the darkness.
"Have you heard anything said around town?" he presently demanded,
more sharply, it seemed to me, than ever.
"I've heard little since I got back," I returned. "Only the smith's
ravings. He was in an ill temper as we passed. But I saw Neil
Gleazen at the inn drinking with Jed Matthews."
"The ungrateful reprobate!" Uncle Seth cried with an angry gesture.
"He's drawn me into this thing hand and foot--hand and foot. I'm
committed. It's too late to withdraw, and he knows it. And now, now
for the first time, mind you, he's starting on one of his old
sprees."
"He's not a hard drinker," I said. "In all the time he's been in
Topham he's not been the worse for liquor, and this evening, so far
as I could see, he was just taking a glass--"
"You don't know him as he used to be," my uncle cried.
"A glass," put in Abe Guptil; "but with Jed Matthews!"
"You've hit the nail on the head," Uncle Seth burst out--"with Jed
Matthews. God save we're ruined by this night's work. If he should
go out to Higgleby's barn with that gang of thieves, my good name
will go too. I swear I'll sell the brig."
Uncle Seth wildly paced the room and scowled until every testy
wrinkle on his face was drawn into one huge knot that centred in his
forehead.
The only sounds, as Abe and I sat watching him in silence, were the
thumping of his feet as he walked and the hoarse whisper of his
breathing. Plainly, he was keyed up to a pitch higher than ever I
had seen him.
At that moment, from far beyond the village, shrilly but faintly,
came a wild burst of drunken laughter. It was a single voice and one
strange to me. There was something devilish in its piercing,
unrestrained yell.
"Merciful heavens!" Uncle Seth cried,--actually his hand was shaking
like the palsy; a note of fear in his strained voice struck to my
heart like a finger of ice,--"I'd know that sound if I heard it in
the shrieking of hell; and I have not heard Neil Gleazen laugh like
that in thirty years. Come, boys, maybe we can stop him before it's
too late."
Thrusting his fingers through his hair so that it stood out on all
sides in disorder, he wildly dashed from the room.
Springing up, Abe and I followed him outdoors and down the road. We
ran with a will, but old though he was, a frenzy of fear and anxiety
and shame led him on at a pace we could scarcely equal. Down the
long road into town we ran, all three, breathing harder and harder
as we went, past the store, the parsonage, and the church, and past
the smithy, where someone called to us and hurried out to stop us.
It was the smith, who loomed up big and black and ominous in the
darkness.
"They've gone," he said, "they've gone to Higgleby's barn."
"Who?" my uncle demanded. "Who? Say who! For heaven's sake don't
keep me here on tenterhooks!"
"Neil Gleazen," said the smith, "and Jed Matthews and all the rest.
Ah, you wouldn't listen to _me_."
"And all the rest!" Uncle Seth echoed weakly.
For a moment he reeled as if bewildered, even dazed. Whatever it was
that had come over him, it seemed to have pierced to some
unsuspected weakness in the fibre of the man, some spot so terribly
sensitive that he was fairly crazed by the thrust. To Abe and me,
both of us shocked and appalled, he turned with the madness of
despair in his eyes.
"Boys," he said hoarsely, "we've got to be ready to leave. Call Sim
and Arnold! Hitch up the horses! Pack my bag and--and, Joe,"--he
laid his hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, a mere
trembling breath of a whisper,--"here's the key to the house safe.
Pack all that's in it in the bed of the wagon while the others are
busy elsewhere. O Joe! what a wretched man I am! Why in heaven's
name could he not walk straight for just one day more?"
Why, indeed? I thought. But I remembered Higgleby's barn, and in my
own heart I knew the reason. Secretly, all this time, Neil Gleazen
had been hand in glove with his old disreputable cronies; now that
he had got Uncle Seth so far committed to this new venture that he
could not desert it, Gleazen was entirely willing to throw away his
hard-won reputation for integrity, for the sake of one farewell
fling with the "old guard."
"Go, lads," Uncle Seth cried; "go quickly." He rested a shaking hand
on my arm as Abe turned away. "My poor, poor boy!" he murmured.
"I've meant to do so well by you, Joey! Heaven keep us all!"
"But you?" I asked.
"I'm going, if I can, to bring Neil Gleazen back before it is too
late," Uncle Seth replied. And with that he set off into the
darkness.
As we turned back to the store to rouse up Arnold and Sim, I caught
a glimpse of the stark white platform on the green, which was
visible even in the darkness, and ironically I thought of the
farewell ceremonies that were to take place next day.
I shall never forget how the store looked that night, as Abe and I
came hurrying up to it. The shadows on the porch were as black as
ink, and the shuttered windows seemed to stare like the sightless
eyes of a blind man who hears a familiar voice and turns as if to
see whence it comes. From the windows of the room above, which
Arnold and Sim occupied, there shone a few thin shafts of light
along the edges of the shades, and the window frames divided the
shades themselves into small yellow squares, on which a shadow came
and went as one of the men moved about the room.
In reply to our cries and knocks, Arnold raised the curtain and we
saw first his head, then Sim's, black against the lighted room.
"Who is there?" he called, "and what's wanted?"
Almost before we had finished pouring out our story, Arnold was
downstairs and fumbling at the bolts of the door; and as we entered
the dark store, Sim, his shoes in his hand, followed him, even more
than usually grotesque in the light from above.
"My friends," said Arnold, calmly, "let us now, all four, prove to
ourselves and to Seth Upham, the mettle that is in us."
We lost no time in idle speculation. Dividing among us all that was
to be done, we fell to with a will. Working like men possessed, we
packed our own possessions and Uncle Seth's, both at the store and
at the barn; and while the others were still busy in the
carriage-shed, I hurried back to the house and opened the safe, and
brought out bags of money and papers and heaven knows what, and as
secretly as possible packed them in the bottom of the wagon. For
three hours we toiled at one place and the other; then, hot, tired,
excited, apprehensive of we knew not what, we rested by the wagon
and waited.
"I never heard of anything so rattle-headed in all my life," Sim
Muzzy cried, when he had caught his breath. "Seth Upham gets crazier
every day. Here all's ready for the grand farewell to-morrow and all
of us to be there, and not one of us to leave town until next week,
and yet he gets us up at all hours of the night as if we was to
start come sunrise. I'm not going to run away at such an hour, I can
tell you. Why it may be they'll call on me to make a speech! Who
knows?"
"We'll be lucky, I fear," said Arnold Lamont, "if we do not start
before sunrise."
"Before sunrise! Well, I'll have you know--"
I simply could not endure Sim's interminable talk. "Watch the goods
and the wagon, you three," I said. "I'm going to look for Uncle Seth
and see what he wants us to do next."
Before they could object, I had left them sitting by the wagon and
the harnessed horses, ready for no one knew what, and had made off
into the night. Having done all that I could to carry out my uncle's
orders, I had no intention of returning until I had solved the
mystery of Higgleby's barn.
I hurried along and used every short cut that I knew; and though I
now stumbled in the darkness, now fell headlong on the dewy grass,
now barked my shins as I scrambled over a barway, I made reasonably
good progress, all things considered, and came in less than half an
hour to the pasture where Higgleby's lonely barn stood. The door of
the barn, as I saw it from a distance, was open and made a rectangle
of yellow light against the black woods beyond it. When I listened,
I heard confused voices. As I was about to advance toward the barn,
a certain note in the voices warned me that a quarrel was in
progress. I hesitated and stopped where I was, wondering whether to
go forward or not, and there I heard a strange sound and saw a
strange sight.
First there came a much louder outcry than any that had gone before;
then the light in the barn suddenly went out; then I heard the sound
of running back and forth; then the light appeared again, but
flickering and unsteady; then a single harsh yell came all the way
across the dark pasture; then the light grew and grew and grew.
It threw its rays out over the pasture land and revealed men running
about like ants around a newly destroyed hill. A tongue of flame
crept out of one window and crawled up the side of the old
building. A great wave of fire came billowing out of the door.
Sparks began to fly and the roar and crackling grew louder and
louder.
As I breathlessly ran toward the barn, from which now I could see
little streams of fire flowing in every direction through the dry
grass, I suddenly became aware that there was someone ahead of me,
and by stopping short I narrowly escaped colliding with two men
whom, with a sudden shock, I recognized as my uncle and Neil
Gleazen.
"Uncle Seth!" I gasped out.
Nothing then, I think, could have surprised Seth Upham. There was
only relief in his voice when he cried, "Quick, Joe, quick, take his
other arm."
Obediently, if reluctantly, I turned my back on the conflagration
behind us, and locking my right arm through Neil Gleazen's left,
helped partly to drag him, partly to carry him toward the village
and the tavern.
"I showed the villains!" Gleazen proclaimed thickly. "The
scoundrels! The despicable curs! I showed them how a gentlemen
replies to such as them. I showed them, eh, Seth?"
"Yes, yes, Neil! Hush! Be still! There are people coming. Merciful
heavens! That fire will bring the whole town out upon us."
"I showed them, the villains! the scoundrels! the despicable curs!
They are not used to the ways of gentlemen, eh, Seth?"
"Yes, yes, but do be still! _Do, do_ be still!"
"I showed them how a gentleman acts--"
The man was as drunk as a lord, but in his thick ravings there was a
fixed idea that sent a thrill of apprehension running through me.
"Uncle Seth," I gasped, "Uncle Seth, _what has he done_?"
"Quick! quick! We must hurry!"
"What has he done?"
"Come, come, Joe, never mind that now!"
For the moment I yielded, and we stumbled along, arm in arm, with
Gleazen now all but a dead weight between us.
"I showed them!" he cried again. "I showed them!"
I simply could not ignore the strange muttering in his voice.
"Tell me," I cried. "Uncle Seth, tell me what he has done."
"Not yet! Not yet!"
"Tell me!"
"Not yet!"
"Or I'll not go another step!"
My uncle gasped and staggered. My importunity seemed to be one thing
more than he could bear, poor man! and even in my temper, pity
sobered me and cooled my anger. For a moment he touched my wrist.
His hand was icy cold. But his face, when I looked at him, was set
and hard, and my temper flashed anew.
"Not another step! Tell me."
Glancing apprehensively about, my uncle gasped in a hoarse
undertone, "He has killed Jed Matthews."
As people were appearing now on all sides and running to fight the
fire, Uncle Seth and I tried our best to lead Gleazen into a by-path
and so home by a back way; but with drunken obstinacy he refused to
yield an inch. "No, no," he roared, "I'm going to walk home past all
the people. I'm not afraid of them. If they say aught to me, I'll
show 'em."
So back we marched, supporting between us, hatless but with the
diamonds still flashing on his finger and in his stock, that maudlin
wretch, Cornelius Gleazen. I felt my own face redden as the curious
turned to stare at us, and for Uncle Seth it was a sad and bitter
experience; but we pushed on as fast as we could go, driven always
by fear of what would follow when the people should learn the whole
story of the brawl in the burning barn.
Back into the village we came, now loitering for a moment in the
deeper shadows to avoid observation, now pushing at top speed across
a lighter open space, always dragging Cornelius Gleazen between us,
and so up to the open door of the tavern.
"Now," murmured Uncle Seth, "heaven send us help! Neil, Neil--Neil,
I say!"
"Well?"
"We must get your chests and run. Your money, your papers--are they
packed?"
"Money? What money?"
"Your fortune! You can never come back here. Sober up, Neil, sober
up! You killed Jed Matthews."
"Served him right. Despicable cur, villain, scoundrel! I'll show
them."
"Neil, Neil Gleazen!" cried my uncle, now all but frantic.
"Well, I hear you."
"Oh, oh, will he not listen to reason? Take his arm again, Joe."
We lifted him up the steps and led him into the inn, and there in
the door of the bar-room came face to face with the landlord, who
was hot with anger.
"Don't bring him in here, Mr. Upham," he cried; "I keep no house for
sots and swine."
"What!" gasped my uncle, "you'll not receive him?"
"Not I!"
"But what's come over you? _But you never would treat Mr. Gleazen
like this!_"
"But, but, but!" the landlord snarled. "This very night he threw my
good claret in my own face and called it a brew for pigs. Let him
seek his lodgings elsewhere."
"Where are his chests, then?" my uncle demanded. "We'll take his
chests and go."
"Not till he's paid my bill."
For a moment we stood at deadlock, Uncle Seth and I, with Gleazen
between us, and the landlord in the bar-room door. Every sound from
outside struck terror to us lest the village had discovered the
worst; lest at any moment we should have the people about our ears.
But the landlord, who, of course, knew nothing of what had been
going forward all this time, and Gleazen, who seemed too drunk to
care, were imperturbable, until Gleazen raised his head and with
inflamed eyes stared at the man.
"Who's a swine?" he demanded. "Who's a sot?"
Lurching forward, he broke away from us and crashed against the
landlord and knocked him into the bar-room, whither he himself
followed.
"You blackfaced bla'guard!" the landlord cried; and, raising a
chair, he started to bring it down on Gleazen's head.
I had thought that the man was too drunk to move quickly, but now,
as if a new brawl were all that he needed to bring him again to his
faculties, he stepped back like a flash and raised his hand.
A sharp, hook-like instrument used to pull corks was kept stuck into
the beam above his head, where, so often was it used, it had worn a
hollow place nearly as big as a bowl. This he seized and, holding it
like a foil, lunged at the landlord as the chair descended.
The chair struck Gleazen on the head and knocked him down, but the
cork-puller went into the landlord's shoulder, and when Gleazen,
clutching it as he fell, pulled it out again, the hooked end tore a
great hole in the muscles, from which blood spurted.
Clapping his hand to the wound, the landlord went white and leaned
back against the bar; but Gleazen, having received a blow that might
have killed a horse, got up nimbly and actually appeared to be
sobered by the shock. Certainly he thought clearly and spoke to a
purpose.
[Illustration: _Clapping his hand to the wound the landlord went
white and leaned back against the bar._]
"Now, by heaven!" he cried, "I _have_ got to leave town. Come, Seth,
come, Joe."
"But your chests! Your money!" my uncle repeated in a dazed way. The
events of the night were quite too much for his wits.
"Let him keep them for the bill," said Gleazen with a harsh laugh.
"Come, I say!"
"But--but--"
"Come! Hear that?"
"Watch the back door," someone was crying. "He's probably dead
drunk, but he's a dangerous man and we can't take chances."
It was the constable's voice.
Gleazen was already running through the long hall, and we followed
him at our best speed.
As we left the room, the landlord fell and carried down with a crash
a table on which a tray of glasses was standing. I would have stayed
to help him, but I knew that other help was near, and to tell the
truth I was beginning to fear the consequences of even so slight a
part as mine had been in the ghastly happenings of the night. So I
followed the others, and we noiselessly slipped away through the
orchard, just as the men sent to guard the back door came hurrying
round the house and took their stations.
With the distant fire flaming against the sky, with the smell of
smoke stinging in our nostrils, and with the clamor of the aroused
town sounding on every side, we hurried, unobserved, through dark
fields and orchards, to my uncle's house, where Arnold and Sim and
Abe were impatiently waiting.
They started up from beside the wagon as we drew near, and crowded
round us with eager questions. But there was no time for mere
talking. Already we could hear voices approaching, although as yet
they were not dangerously near.
"Come, boys," my uncle cried, "into the wagon, every one. Come,
Neil, come--for heaven's sake--"
"Be still, Seth, I am sober."
"Sober!" Uncle Seth put a world of disgust into the word.
"Yes, sober, curse you."
"Very well, but do climb in--"
"Climb in? I'll climb in when it suits my convenience."
Jostling and scrambling, we were all in the wagon at last. Uncle
Seth held reins and whip; Neil Gleazen, who was squeezed in between
him and me on the seat, snored loudly; and the others, finding such
seats as they could on boxes or the bed of the wagon, endured their
discomfort in silence.
The whip cracked, the horses started forward, the wheels crunched in
gravel and came out on the hard road. Turning our backs on the
village of Topham, we left behind us the benches on the green, the
fine new platform, the banquet that was already half prepared, and
all our anticipations of the great farewell.
We went up the long hill, from the summit of which we could see the
lights of the town shining in the dark valley, the great flare of
fire at the burning barn, and the country stretching for miles in
every direction, and thence we drove rapidly away.
Thus, for the second time, twenty years after the first, Cornelius
Gleazen left his native town as a fugitive from justice. But this
time the fortunes of five men were bound up with his, and we whom he
was leading on his mad quest knew now only too well what we could
expect of our drunken leader.
CHAPTER VIII
THE BRIG ADVENTURE
We drove for a long time in silence, with the jolting of the chaise
and the terrible scenes behind us to occupy our minds; and I assure
you it was a grim experience. In all the years that have intervened
I have never been able to escape from the memory of the burning
barn, with the dark figures running this way and that; the shrill
cries of Cornelius Gleazen, staring drunk, and his talk of the man
he had killed; the landlord at the tavern, with the blood spurting
from his shoulder where the hook had pulled through the flesh.
In a night the whole aspect of the world had changed. From a
care-free, selfish, heedless youth, put to work despite his wish to
linger over books, I had become of a sudden a companion of
criminals, haunted by terrible memories, and through no fault of my
own. After all, I thought, by whose fault was it? Cornelius
Gleazen's, to be sure. But by whose fault was I forced to accompany
Cornelius Gleazen in his flight? Certainly I was guiltless of any
unlawful act--for that matter, we all were, except Gleazen. I had
not a jot of sympathy for him, yet so completely had he interwoven
our affairs with his that, although the man was a drunken beast, we
dared not refuse to share his flight. By whose fault? I again asked
myself.
For a while I would not accept the answer that came to me. It seemed
disloyal to a well-meaning man who at one time and another had given
a thousand evidences of his real affection for me, which underlay
the veneer of sharpness and irascibility that he presented to the
world at large. It seemed to me that I could hear him saying again,
"You're all I've got, Joey; you're all that's left to the old man
and I'm going to do well by you--"; that I could hear again the
clink of gold thrown down before me on the table; that I could feel
his hand again on my shoulder, his voice again trembling with
despair when he cried, "I've meant to do so well by you, Joey! But
now--heaven keep us all!" Yet, as we jounced away over that rough
road and on into the night, and as I thought of things that one and
another had said, I felt more and more confident that at bottom Seth
Upham was to blame for our predicament. To be sure, he had _meant_
well, even in this present undertaking; and though he was said to
drive sharp bargains, he lived, I well knew, an honest life. Yet I
was convinced that at some time in the past he must have been guilty
of some sin or other that gave Neil Gleazen his hold over him. It
fairly staggered me to think of the power for good or evil that lies
in every act in a man's life. To be sure, had Seth Upham been a
really strong man, he would have lived down his mistake long since,
whatever it might have been, and would have defied Gleazen to do his
worst. But the crime, if such there was, was his, none the less; and
that it was the seed whence had sprung our great misfortunes, I was
convinced.
Looking back at Arnold Lamont, I caught his eye by the light of the
rising moon and found great comfort in his steady glance. As if to
reassure me further, he laid his hand on my arm and slightly pressed
it.
On and on and on we drove, past towns and villages, over bridges and
under arching trees, beside arms of the sea and inland ponds, until,
as dawn was breaking, we came down the road into Boston, with the
waters of the Charles River and of the Back Bay on our left and
Beacon Hill before us.
Here and there in the town early risers were astir, and the smoke
climbed straight up from their chimneys; but for the most part the
people were still asleep, and the shops that we passed were still
shuttered, except one that an apprentice at that very moment was
opening for the day. Down to the wharves we drove, whence we could
see craft of every description, both in dock and lying at anchor;
and there we fell into a lively discussion.
As the horses stopped, Gleazen woke, and that he was sick and
miserable a single glance at his face revealed.
"Well," said he, "there's the brig."
"Yes," Uncle Seth retorted, "and if you had kept away from
Higgleby's barn, we'd not have seen her for a week to come. We've
got you out of that scrape with a whole skin, and I swear we've done
well."
"It was _sub rosa_," Gleazen responded thickly, "only _sub rosa_,
mind you. Under the rose--you know, Seth."
"Yes, I know. If I had had my wits about me, you would never have
pulled the wool over my eyes."
Gleazen laughed unpleasantly. It was plain that he was in an evil
temper, and Uncle Seth, worn and harassed by the terrible
experiences of the night, was in no mood to humor him. So we sat in
the wagon on a wharf by the harbor, where the clean salt water
licked at the piling and rose slowly with the incoming tide, while
our two leaders bickered together.
At last, in anger, Seth Upham cried: "I swear I'll not go. I'll hold
back the brig. I'll keep my money. You shall hang."
Gleazen laughed a low laugh that was more threatening by far than if
as usual he had laughed with a great roar. "No, you don't, Seth," he
quietly said. "You know the stakes that you've put up and you know
that the winnings will be big. I've used you right, and you're not
going to go back on me now--_not while I know what I know_! There's
them that would open their eyes to hear it, Seth. I've bore the
blame for thirty years, but the end's come if you try to go back on
me now."
I looked at my uncle and saw that his face was white. His fingers
were twisting back and forth and he seemed not to know what to say;
but at last he nodded and said, "All right, Neil," and got down from
the wagon; and we all climbed out and stretched our stiff muscles.
"Here's a boat handy," Gleazen cried.
Uncle Seth cut the painter, and drawing her up to a convenient
ladder, we began to carry down our various belongings, finishing
with the big bags that hours before I had packed so carefully in the
bottom of the wagon. Neil Gleazen then seated himself in the stern
sheets, Abe Guptil took the oars, and I climbed into the bow.
As Uncle Seth was coming on board, Sim Muzzy stopped him.
"What about the horses?" he exclaimed. "You ain't going off to leave
them, are you? Not with wagon and all. Why, they must be worth a
deal of money; they--"
"Come, come, you prattling fool," Gleazen called.
Uncle Seth, after reflecting a moment, added sharply, "They'll maybe
go to pay for the boat we're taking. I don't like to steal, but now
I see no way out. Quick! I hear steps."
So down came Sim, and out into the harbor we rowed; and when I
turned to look, I saw close at hand for the first time the brig
Adventure.
She was a trim, well-proportioned craft, with a grace of masts and
spars and a neatness of rigging and black and white paint that quite
captivated me, although coming from what was virtually an inland
town, I was by no means qualified to pass judgment on her merits;
and I was not too weary to be glad to know that she, of all vessels
in the harbor, was the one in which we were to sail.
When a sleepy sailor on deck called, "Boat ahoy!" Gleazen gave him
better than he sent with a loud, "Ahoy, Adventure!"
Then we came up to her and swung with the tide under her chains,
until a couple of other sailors came running to help us get our
goods aboard; then up we scrambled, one at a time, and set the boat
adrift.
I now found myself on a neat clean deck, and was taken with the
buckets and pins and coiled ropes lying in tidy fakes--but I should
say, too, that I was so tired after my long night ride that I could
scarcely keep my eyes open, so that I paid little attention to what
was going on around me until I heard Uncle Seth saying, "And this,
Captain North, is my nephew. If there are quarters for him aft, I'll
be glad, of course."
"Of course, sir, of course," the captain replied; and I knew when I
first heard his voice that I was going to like him. "If he and the
Frenchman--Lamont you say's his name?--can share a stateroom, I've
one with two berths. Good! And you say we must sail at once? Hm! In
half an hour wind and tide will be in our favor. We're light of
ballast, but if we're careful, I've no doubt it will be safe. We
must get some fresh water. But that we can hurry up. Hm! I hadn't
expected sailing orders so soon; but in an hour's time, Mr. Upham,
if it's necessary, I can weigh anchor."
"Good!" cried Uncle Seth.
"Mr. Severance," Captain North called, "take five men and the cutter
for the rest of the fresh water, and be quick about it. Willie, take
Mr. Woods and Mr. Lamont below and show them to the stateroom the
lady passengers had when we came up from Rio. Now then, Guptil, you
take your bag forward and stow it in the forecastle, and if you're
hungry, tell the cook I said to give you a good cup of coffee and a
plate of beans."
As with Arnold Lamont I followed Willie MacDougald, the little cabin
boy, I was too tired to care a straw about life on board a ship; and
before I should come on deck again, I was to be too sick. But as I
threw myself into one of the berths in our tiny cubby, I welcomed
the prospect of at least a long sleep, and I told Arnold how
sincerely glad I was that we were to be together.
"Joe," he said, slowly and precisely, "I am very much afraid that we
are going on a wild-goose chase. Seth Upham has been kind to me in
his own way. He is one of the few friends I have in this world. Now,
I think, he would gladly be rid of me. But I shall stay with him to
the end, for I think the time is coming when he will need his
friends."
I am afraid I fell asleep before Arnold finished what he had to say;
but weary though I was, I felt even then a great confidence in this
quiet, restrained man. He was so wise, so unfathomable. And I felt
already the growing determination, which, before we had seen the
last of Neil Gleazen, was to absorb almost my very life, to work
side by side with Arnold Lamont in order to save what we could of
Uncle Seth's happiness and property from the hands of the man who,
we both saw, had got my poor uncle completely in his power.
CHAPTER IX
AN OLD SEA SONG
The noise of the crew as they catted the anchor and made sail must
have waked me more than once, for to this very day I remember
hearing distinctly the loud chorus of a chantey, the trampling of
many feet, the creaking and rattling and calling--the strange jumble
of sounds heard only when a vessel is getting under way. But strange
and interesting though it all was, I must immediately have fallen
asleep again each time, for the memories come back to me like
strange snatches of a vivid dream, broken and disconnected, for all
that they are so clear.
When at last, having slept my sleep out, I woke with no inclination
to close my eyes again, and sat up in my berth, the brig was
pitching and rolling in a heavy sea, and a great wave of sickness
engulfed me, such as I had never experienced. How long it lasted, I
do not know, but at the time it seemed like months and years.
Perhaps, had I been forced to go on deck and work aloft, and eat
coarse sea-food, and meet my sickness like a man, I might have
thrown it off in short order and have got my sea-legs as soon as
another. But coming on board as the owner's nephew, with a stateroom
at my command, I lay and suffered untold wretchedness, now thinking
that I was getting better, now relapsing into agonies that seemed to
me ten times worse than before. Uncle Seth himself, I believe, was
almost as badly off, and Arnold Lamont and Willie MacDougald had a
time of it tending us. Even Arnold suffered a touch of sickness at
first; but recovering from it promptly, he took Uncle Seth and me
in his charge and set Willie jumping to attend our wants, which he
did with a comical alacrity that under other circumstances would
mightily have amused me.
I took what satisfaction I could in being able to come on deck two
days before Uncle Seth would stir from his bunk; but even then I was
good for nothing except to lie on a blanket that Arnold and Willie
spread for me, or to lean weakly against the rail.
But now, as I watched the blue seas through which the keen bow of
the brig, a Baltimore craft of clipper lines, swiftly and smoothly
cut its course, the great white sails, with every seam drawn to a
taut, clean curve by the wind, the occasional glimpses of low land
to the west, and the succession of great clouds that swept across
the blue sky like rolling masses of molten silver, I fell to
thinking in a dull, bewildered way of all that we had left behind.
How long would it be, I wondered, before someone would take charge
of the horses we had left on the wharf in Boston? I could imagine
the advertisement that would appear in the paper, and the questions
of the people, until news should come from Topham of all that had
happened. Who then, I wondered, would get the team?
Well, all that was done with, and we were embarked on our great
adventure. What was to become of us, no human prophet could
foretell.
Cornelius Gleazen, who years before had got over his last attack of
seasickness, welcomed me on deck, with rough good-nature; but
something in his manner told me that, from this time on, in his eyes
I was one of the crowd, no further from his favor, perhaps, than any
of the others, but certainly no nearer it.
To me, so weak from my long sickness that I could scarcely stand
unaided, this came like a blow, even although I had completely lost
my admiration for the man. I had been so sure of his friendly
interest! So confident of my own superiority! As I thought of it, I
slowly came to see that his kindness and flattery had been but a
part of his deep and well-considered plan to work into the
confidence of my uncle; that since he had secured his hold upon Seth
Upham and all his worldly goods, I, vain, credulous youth, might,
for all he cared, sink or swim.
"Well," he would say carelessly, "how's the lad this morning?" And
when I would reply from the depths of my misery, he would respond
briefly, as he strolled away, "Better pull yourself together.
There's work ahead for all hands."
It was not in his words, you understand, that I found indication of
his changed attitude,--he was always a man of careless speech,--but
in his manner of saying them. The tilt of his head, and his trick of
not looking at me when he spoke and when I replied, told me as
plainly as direct speech could have done that, having gained
whatever ends he had sought by flattery, he cared not a straw
whether I came with him or followed my own inclinations to the
opposite end of the earth.
So we sailed, south, until we entered the Straits of Florida. Now we
saw at a distance great scarlet birds flying in a row. Now schools
of porpoises played around us. Now a big crane, speckled brown and
white, alighted on our rigging. Now we passed green islands, now
sandy shoals where the sea rose into great waves and crashed down in
cauldrons of foam. And now we sighted land and learned that it was
Cuba.
All this time I had constantly been gaining strength, and though
more than once we had passed through spells of rough weather, I had
had no return of seasickness. It was natural, therefore, that I
should take an increasing interest in all that went on around me.
With some of the sailors I established myself on friendly terms,
although others seemed to suspect me of attempting to patronize
them; and thanks to the tutelage of Captain North, I made myself
familiar with the duties of the crew and with the more common
evolutions of a sailing ship. But in all that voyage only one thing
came to my notice that gave any suggestion of what was before us,
and that suggestion was so vague that at the time I did not suspect
how significant it was.
In the first dog watch one afternoon, the carpenter, who had a good
voice and a good ear for music, got out his guitar and, after
strumming a few chords, began to sing a song so odd that I set my
mind on remembering it, and later wrote the words down:
"Old King Mungo-Hungo-Ding
A barracoon he made,
And sold his blessed subjects to
A captain in the trade.
And when his subjects all were gone,
Oh, what did Mungo do?
He drove his wives and daughters in
And traded for them, too."
He sang it to a queer tune that caught my feet and set them
twitching, and it was no surprise to see three or four sailors begin
to shuffle about the deck in time to the music.
As the carpenter took up the chorus, they, too, began to sing softly
and to dance a kind of a hornpipe; but, I must confess, I was
surprised to hear someone behind me join in the singing under his
breath. The last time when I had heard that voice singing was in the
village church in Topham, and unless my memory serves me wrong, it
then had sung that good hymn:--
"No, I shall envy them no more, who grow profanely great;
Though they increase their golden store, and shine in robes of state."
It was Cornelius Gleazen, who, it appeared, knew both words and tune
of the carpenter's song:--
"Tally on the braces! Heave and haul in time!
Four and twenty niggers and all of them was prime!
Old King Mungo's daughters, they bought our lasses rings.
Heave now! Pull now! They never married kings."
They sang on and on to the strumming of the guitar, while all the
rest stood around and watched them; and when they had finished the
song, which told how King Mungo, when he had sold his family as well
as his subjects, made a raid upon his neighbors and was captured in
his turn and, very justly, was himself sold as a slave, Cornelius
Gleazen cried loudly, "_Encore! Encore!_" and clapped his hands,
until the carpenter, with a droll look in his direction, again began
to strum his guitar and sang the song all over.
As I have said, at the time I attributed little significance to
Cornelius Gleazen's enthusiasm for the song or to the look that the
carpenter gave him. But when I saw Captain North staring from one to
the other and realized that he had seen and heard only what I had, I
wondered why he wore so queer an expression, and why, for some time
to come, he was so grave and stiff in his dealings with both Gleazen
and Uncle Seth. Nor did it further enlighten me to see that Arnold
Lamont and Captain North exchanged significant glances.
So at last we came to the mouth of Havana harbor, and you can be
sure that when, after lying off the castle all night, we set our
Jack at the main as signal for a pilot, and passed through the
narrow strait between Moro Castle and the great battery of La
Punta, and came to anchor in the vast and beautiful port where a
thousand ships of war might have lain, I was all eyes for my first
near view of a foreign city.
On every side were small boats plying back and forth, some laden
with freight of every description, from fresh fruit to nondescript,
dingy bales, others carrying only one or two passengers or a single
oarsman. There were scores of ships, some full of stir and activity
getting up anchor and making sail, others seeming half asleep as
they lay with only a drowsy anchor watch. On shore, besides the
grand buildings and green avenues and long fortifications, I could
catch here and there glimpses of curious two-wheeled vehicles, of
men and women with bundles on their heads, of countless negroes
lolling about on one errand or another, and, here and there, of men
on horseback. I longed to hurry ashore, and when I saw Uncle Seth
and Neil Gleazen deep in conversation, I had great hopes that I
should accomplish my desire. But something at that moment put an end
for the time being to all such thoughts.
Among the boats that were plying back and forth I saw one that
attracted my attention by her peculiar manoeuvres. A negro was
rowing her at the command of a big dark man, who leaned back in the
stern and looked sharply about from one side to the other. Now he
had gone beyond us, but instead of continuing, he came about and
drew nearer.
He wore his hair in a pig-tail, an old fashion that not many men
continued to observe, and on several fingers he wore broad gold
rings. His face was seamed and scarred. There were deep cuts on
cheek and chin, which might have been either scars or natural
wrinkles, and across his forehead and down one cheek were two white
lines that must have been torn in the first place by some weapon or
missile. His hands were big and broad and powerful, and there was a
grimly determined air in the set of his head and the thin line of
his mouth that made me think of him as a man I should not like to
meet alone in the dark.
From the top of his round head to the soles of his feet, his whole
body gave an impression of great physical strength. His jaws and
chin were square and massive; his bull neck sloped down to great
broad shoulders, and his deep chest made his long, heavy arms seem
to hang away from his body. As he lay there in the stern of the
boat, with every muscle relaxed, yet with great swelling masses
standing out under his skin all over him, I thought to myself that
never in all my life had I seen so powerful a man.
Now he leaned forward and murmured something to the negro, who with
a stroke of his oars deftly brought the boat under the stern of the
Adventure and held her there. Then the man, smiling slightly, amazed
me by calling in a voice so soft and gentle and low that it seemed
almost effeminate: "Neil Gleazen! Neil Gleazen!"
The effect on Cornelius Gleazen was startling almost beyond words.
Springing up and staring from one side to the other as if he could
not believe his ears, he roared furiously: "By the Holy! Molly
Matterson, where are you?"
Then the huge bull of a man, speaking in that same low, gentle
voice, said; "So you know me, Neil?"
"Know you? I'd know your voice from Pongo River to Penzance,"
Gleazen replied, whirling about and leaning far over the taffrail.
The big man laughed so lightly that his voice seemed almost to
tinkle. "You're eager, Neil," he said. Then he glanced at me and
spoke again in a language that I could not understand. At the time I
had no idea what it was, but since then I have come to know
well--too well--that it was Spanish.
And all the time my uncle stood by with a curiously wistful
expression. It was as if he felt himself barred from their council;
as if he longed to be one of them, hand in glove, and yet felt that
there was between him and them a gap that he could not quite bridge;
as if with his whole heart he had given himself and everything that
was his, as indeed he had, only to receive a cold welcome.
Remembering how haughtily Uncle Seth himself had but a little while
ago regarded the good people of Topham, how seldom he had expressed
even the very deep affection in which he held me, his only sister's
only son, I marveled at the simple, frank eagerness with which he
now watched those two; and since anyone could see that of him they
were thinking lightly, if at all, I felt for him a pang of sympathy.
For a while the two talked together. Now they glanced at me, now at
the others. I am confident that they told no secrets, for of course
there was always the chance that some of us might speak the tongue,
too. But that they talked more freely than they would have talked in
English, I was very confident.
At last Gleazen said, "Come aboard at all events."
Instead of going around to the chains, the big man whom Gleazen had
hailed as Molly Matterson stood up in the boat, crouched slightly,
and leaping straight into the air, caught the taffrail with one
hand. Gracefully, easily, he lifted himself by that one hand to the
rail, placed his other hand upon it, where his gold rings gleamed
dully, and lightly vaulted to the deck.
I now saw better what a huge man he was, for he towered above us
all, even Neil Gleazen, and he seemed almost as broad across the
chest as any two of us.
He gently shook hands with Uncle Seth and Captain North, to whom
Gleazen introduced him, again glanced curiously at the rest of us,
and then stepped apart with Gleazen and Uncle Seth. I could hear
only a little of what they said, and the little that I did hear was
concerned with unfamiliar names and mysterious things.
I saw Arnold Lamont watching them, too, and remembering how they had
talked in a strange language, I wished that Arnold might have
appeared to know what they had been saying. Well as I thought I knew
Arnold, it never occurred to me that he might have known and, for
reasons of his own, have held his tongue.
Of one thing I was convinced, however; the strange talk that was now
going on was no such puzzle to Captain Gideon North as to me. The
more he listened, the more his lips twitched and the more his frown
deepened. It was queer, I thought, that he should appear to be so
quick-tempered as to show impatience because he was not taken into
their counsel. He had seemed so honest and fair-minded and generous
that I had not suspected him of any such pettiness.
Presently Gleazen turned about and said loudly, "Captain North, we
are going below to have a glass of wine together. Will you come?"
The captain hesitated, frowned, and then, as if he had suddenly made
up his mind that he might as well have things over soon as late,
stalked toward the companionway.
Twenty minutes afterward, to the amazement of every man on deck, he
came stamping up again, red with anger, followed by Willie
MacDougald, who was staggering under the weight of his bag. Ordering
a boat launched, he turned to Uncle Seth, who had followed him and
stood behind him with a blank, dismayed look.
"Mr. Upham," he said, "I am sorry to leave your vessel like this,
but I will not, sir, I will not remain in command of any craft
afloat, be she coasting brig or ship-of-the-line, where the owner's
friends are suffered to treat me thus. Willie, drop my bag into the
boat."
And with that, red-faced and breathing hard, he left the Adventure
and gave angry orders to the men in the boat, who rowed him ashore.
But it was not the last that we were to see of Gideon North.
[Illustration]
III
A LOW LAND IN THE EAST
[Illustration]
CHAPTER X
MATTERSON
"And who," I wondered, as I turned from watching Gideon North go out
of sight between the buildings that lined the harbor side, "who will
now command the Adventure?"
You would have expected the captain's departure to make a great stir
in a vessel; yet scarcely a person forward knew what was going on,
and aft only Seth Upham and Willie MacDougald, besides myself, were
seeing him off. Uncle Seth still stood in the companionway with that
blank, dazed expression; but Willie MacDougald scratched his head
and looked now at me and now at Uncle Seth, as if whatever had
happened below had frightened him mightily. The picture of their
bewilderment was so funny that I could have burst out laughing; and
yet, so obviously was there much behind it which did not appear on
the surface, that I was really more apprehensive than amused.
When Uncle Seth suddenly turned and disappeared down the
companionway, and when Willie MacDougald with an inquisitive glance
at me darted over to the companion-hatch and stood there with his
head cocked bird-like on one side to catch any sound that might
issue from the cabin, I boldly followed my uncle.
The brig was riding almost without motion at her anchorage, and all
on deck was so quiet that we could hear across the silent harbor the
rattle of blocks in a distant ship, the voice of a bos'n driving his
men to greater effort, and from the distant city innumerable street
cries. In the cabin, too, as I descended to it, everything was very
still. When I came to the door, I saw my uncle standing at one side
of the big, round table on which a chart lay. Opposite him sat Neil
Gleazen, and on his right that huge man with the light voice, Molly
Matterson.
None of them so much as glanced at me when I appeared in the door;
but I saw at once that, although they were saying nothing, they were
thinking deeply and angrily. The intensity with which they glared,
the two now staring hard at Seth Upham and now at each other, my
uncle looking first at Matterson, then at Gleazen, and then at
Matterson again, so completely absorbed my interest, that I think
nothing short of a broadside fired by a man-of-war could have
distracted my attention.
I heard the steps creak as Willie MacDougald now came on tiptoe part
way down the companion. I heard the heavy breathing of the men in
the cabin. Then, far across the harbor, I heard the great voice of a
chantey man singing while the crew heaved at the windlass. And still
the three men glared in silence at one another. It was Matterson who
broke the spell, when in his almost girlish voice he said; "He don't
seem to like me as captain of his vessel, Neil."
"You old whited sepulchre," Neil Gleazen cried, speaking not to
Matterson, but to my uncle; "just because you've got money at stake
is no reason to think you know a sailor-man when you see one. Why,
Matterson, here, could give Gideon North a king's cruiser and
outsail him in a Gloucester pinkie."
My uncle swallowed hard and laughed a little wildly. "If you hadn't
got yourself run out of town, Neil Gleazen, and had to leave your
chests with all that's in them behind you, you might have had money
to put in this vessel yourself. As it is, the brig's mine and I
swear I'll have a voice in saying who's to be her master."
"A voice you shall have," Gleazen retorted, while the bull-necked
Matterson broadly grinned at the squabble; "a voice you shall have,
but you're only one of five good men, Seth, only one, and a good
long way from being the best of 'em, and your voice is just one vote
in five. Now I, here, vote for Molly and, Molly, here, votes for
himself, and there ain't no need of thinking who the others would
vote for. We've outvoted you already."
Uncle Seth turned from red to white and from white to red. "Let it
be one vote to four, then. Though it's only one to four, my vote is
better than all the rest. The brig's mine. I swear, if you try to
override me so, I'll put her in the hands of the law. And if these
cursed Spaniards will not do me justice,--" again he laughed a
little wildly,--"there's an American frigate in port and we'll see
what her officers will say."
"Ah," said Gleazen, gently, "we'll see what we shall see. But you
mark what I'm going to tell you, Seth Upham, mark it and mull it
over: I'm a ruined man; there's a price on _my_ head, I know. But
they'll never take me, because I've friends ashore,--eh, Molly? You
can do _me_ no harm by going to the captain of any frigate you
please. _But_--_But_--let me tell you this, Seth Upham: when you've
called in help and got this brig away from your friends what have
given you a chance to better yourself, news is going to come to the
captain of that ship about all them churches you and me used to
rob together when we was lads in Topham. Aye, Seth, and about one
thing and another that will interest the captain. And supposing
he don't clap you into irons and leave you there to cool your
heels,--supposing he don't, mind you,--which he probably will, to
get the reward that folks will be offering when I've told what I
shall tell,--supposing you come back to Topham from which you run
away with that desperate villain, Neil Gleazen,--supposing, which
ain't likely, that's what happens, you'll find when you get there
that news has come before you. You old fool, unless you and me holds
together like the old friends which we used to be, you'll find
yourself a broken man with the jail doors open and waiting for you.
I know what I know, and you know what I know, but as long as I keep
my mouth shut nobody else is going to know. _As long as I keep my
mouth shut, mind you._
"Now I votes for Molly Matterson as captain; and let me tell you,
Seth Upham, you'd better be reasonable and come along like you and
me owned this brig together, which by rights we do, seeing that I've
put in the brains as my share. It ain't fitting to talk of _your_
owning her outright."
Uncle Seth, I could see, was baffled and bewildered and hurt. With
an irresolute glance at me, which seemed to express his confusion
plainer than words, he nervously twitched his fingers and at last in
a low, hurried voice said: "That's all talk, and talk's
cheap--unless it's money talking. Now if you hadn't made a fool of
yourself and had to run away and leave your chests and money behind
you, you'd have a right to talk."
Gleazen suddenly threw back his head and roared with laughter.
"Them chests!" he bellowed. "Oh, them chests!"
"Well," Uncle Seth cried, wrinkling his face till his nose seemed to
be the centre of a spider's web, "well, why not? What's so cursedly
funny about them chests?"
"Oh, ho ho!" Gleazen roared. "Them chests! Money! There warn't no
money in them chests--not a red round copper."
"But what--but why--" Uncle Seth's face, always quick to express
every emotion, smoothed out until it was as blank with amazement as
before it had been wrinkled with petulance.
"You silly fool," Gleazen thundered,--no other word can express the
vigor of contempt and derision that his voice conveyed,--"do you
think that, if ever I had got a comfortable fortune safe to Topham,
I'd take to the sea and leave it there? Bah! Them chests was crammed
to the lid with toys and trinkets, which I've long since given to
the children. Them chests served their purpose well, Seth,--" again
he laughed, and we knew that he was laughing at my uncle and me, who
had believed all his great tales of vast wealth,--"and they'll do me
one more good turn when they show their empty sides to whomsoever
pulls 'em open in hope of finding gold."
Matterson, looking from one to another, laughed with a ladylike
tinkle of his light voice, and Gleazen once more guffawed; but my
uncle sat weakly down and turned toward me his dazed face.
He and I suddenly, for the first time, realized to the full what we
should of course have been stupid indeed not to have got inklings of
before: that Neil Gleazen had come home to Topham, an all but
penniless adventurer; that, instead of being a rich man who wished
to help my uncle and the rest of us to better ourselves, he had been
working on credulous Uncle Seth's cupidity to get from him the
wherewithal to reëstablish his own shattered fortunes.
Of the pair of us, I was the less amazed. Although I had by no means
guessed all that Gleazen now revealed, I had nevertheless been more
suspicious than my uncle of the true state of the chests that
Gleazen had so willingly abandoned at the inn.
"Come," said Matterson, lightly, "let's be friends, Upham. I'm no
ogre. I can sail your vessel. You'll see the crew work as not many
crews know how to work--and yet I'll not drive 'em hard, either. I
make one flogging go a long way, Upham. Here's my hand on it. Nor do
I want to be greedy. Say the word and I'll be mate, not skipper.
Find your own skipper."
My uncle looked from one to the other. He was still dazed and
disconcerted. We lacked a mate because circumstances had forced us
to sail at little more than a moment's notice, with only Mr.
Severance as second officer. It was manifest that the two regarded
my uncle with good-humored contempt, that he was not in the least
necessary to their plans, yet that with something of the same clumsy
tolerance with which a great, confident dog regards an annoying
terrier, they were entirely willing to forgive his petulant
outbursts, provided always that he did not too long persist in them.
What could the poor man do? He accepted Matterson's proffered hand,
failed to restrain a cry when the mighty fist squeezed his fingers
until the bones crackled, and weakly settled back in his chair,
while Gleazen again laughed.
When he and Gleazen faced about with hostile glances, I turned away,
carrying with me the knowledge that Matterson was to go to Africa
with the Adventure in one capacity, if not in another, and left the
three in the cabin.
In the companionway I all but stumbled over Willie MacDougald, who
was such a comical little fellow, with his great round eyes and
freckled face and big ears, which stood out from his head like a
pair of fans, that I was amused by what I assumed to be merely his
lively curiosity. But late that same night I found occasion to
suspect that it was more than mere curiosity, and of that I shall
presently speak again.
There were, it seemed to me, when I came up on the quarter-deck of
the Adventure, a thousand strange sights to be seen, and in my
eager desire to miss none of them I almost, _but never quite_,
forgot what had been going on below.
When at last Seth Upham emerged alone from the companion head, he
came and stood beside me without a word, and, like me, fell to
watching the flags of many nations that were flying in the harbor,
the city on its flat, low plain, the softly green hills opposite us,
and the great fortifications that from the entrance to the harbor
and from the distant hilltops guarded town and port. After a while,
he began to pace back and forth across the quarter-deck. His head
was bent forward as he walked and there was an unhappy look in his
eyes.
I could see that various of the men were watching him; but he gave
no sign of knowing it, and I truly think he was entirely unconscious
of what went on around him. Back and forth he paced, and back and
forth, buried always deep in thought; and though several times I
became aware that he had fixed his eyes upon me, never was I able to
look up quickly enough to meet them squarely, nor had he a word to
say to me. Poor Uncle Seth! Had one who thought himself so shrewd
really fallen such an easy victim to a man whose character he ought
by rights to have known in every phase and trait? I left him still
pacing the deck when I went below to supper.
Because of my long seasickness I had had comparatively few meals in
the cabin, and always before there had been the honest face of
Gideon North to serve me as a sea anchor, so to speak; but now even
Uncle Seth was absent, and as Arnold Lamont and I sat opposite
Matterson and Gleazen, with Uncle Seth's place standing empty at one
end of the table and the captain's place standing empty at the
other, I could think only of Gideon North going angrily over the
side, and of Uncle Seth pacing ceaselessly back and forth.
Willie MacDougald slipped from place to place, laying and removing
dishes. Now he was replenishing the glasses,--Gleazen's with port
from a cut-glass decanter, Matterson's with gin from a queer old
blown-glass bottle with a tiny mouth,--now he was scurrying forward,
pursued by a volley of oaths, to get a new pepper for the grinder.
Gleazen, always an able man at his food, said little and ate much;
but Matterson showed us that he could both eat and talk, for he
consumed vast quantities of bread and meat, and all the while he
discoursed so interestingly on one thing and another that, in spite
of myself, I came fairly to hang upon his words.
As in his incongruously effeminate voice he talked of men in foreign
ports, and strangely rigged ships, and all manner of hairbreadth
escapes, and described desperate fights that had occurred, he said,
not a hundred miles from where at that moment we sat, I could fairly
see the things he spoke of and hear the guns boom. He thrilled me by
tales of wild adventure on the African coast and both fascinated and
horrified me by stories of "the trade," as he called it.
"Ah," he would say, so lightly that it was hard to believe that the
words actually came from that great bulk of a man, "I have seen them
marching the niggers down to the sea, single file through the
jungle, chained one to another. Men, women and children, all
marching along down to the barracoons, there's a sight for you!
Chained hand and foot they are, too, and horribly afraid until
they're stuffed with rice and meat, and see that naught but good's
intended. They're cheery, then, aye, cheery's the word."
"Hm!" Gleazen grunted.
"Aye, it's a grand sight to see 'em clap their hands and sing and
gobble down the good stews and the rice. They're better off than
ever they were before, and it don't take 'em long to learn that."
Matterson cast a sidelong glance at me as he leaned back and sipped
his gin, and Gleazen grunted again. Gleazen, too, I perceived, was
singularly interested in seeing how I took their talk.
What they were really driving at, I had no clear idea; but I soon
saw that Arnold Lamont, more keenly than I, had detected the purpose
of Matterson's stories.
"That," said he, slowly and precisely, "is very interesting. Has Mr.
Gleazen likewise engaged in the slave trade?"
There was something in his voice that caused the two of them to
exchange quick glances.
Gleazen looked hard at his wine glass and made no answer; but
Matterson, with a genial smile, replied: "Oh, I said nothing of
engaging in the slave trade. I was just telling of sights I've seen
in Africa, and I've no doubt at all that Mr. Gleazen has seen the
same sights, and merrier ones."
"It is a wonderful thing," Arnold went on, in a grave voice, "to
travel and see the world and know strange peoples. I have often
wished that I could do so. Now I think that my wish is to be
gratified."
As before, there was something strangely suggestive in his voice. I
puzzled over it and made nothing of it, yet I could no more ignore
it than could Matterson and Gleazen, who again exchanged glances.
When Matterson muttered a word or two in Spanish and Gleazen replied
in the same language, I looked hard at Arnold to see if he
understood.
His expression gave no indication that he did, but I could not
forget the words he had used long ago in Topham before ever I had
suspected Neil Gleazen of being a whit other than he seemed. "A
man," Arnold had said, "does not tell all he knows." There was no
doubt in my mind that Arnold was a _man_ in every sense of the word.
Again Gleazen and Matterson spoke in Spanish; then Matterson with a
warm smile turned to us and said, "Will you have a glass of wine,
lads? You, Arnold? No? And you, Joe? No?" He raised his eyebrows and
with a deprecatory gesture glanced once more at Gleazen.
I thought of Uncle Seth still pacing the quarter-deck. I suddenly
realized that I was afraid of the two men who sat opposite
me--afraid to drink with them or even to continue to talk with them.
My fear passed as a mood changes; but in its place came the
determination that I would not drink with them or talk with them.
They were no friends of mine. I pushed back my chair, and, leaving
Arnold below, went on deck.
CHAPTER XI
NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD FRIEND
My uncle was still pacing back and forth when I came out into the
sunset; then, almost at once, the twilight had come and gone, and I
saw him as a deeper shadow moving up and down the deck, with only
the faint sound of his feet to convince me that my eyes saw truly.
The very monotony of his slow, even steps told me that there was no
companionship to be got from him, and at that moment more than
anything else I desired companionship.
What I then did was for me a new step. Leaving the quarter-deck, I
went forward to the steerage and found Sim Muzzy smoking his pipe
with the sailmaker.
"So it's you," he querulously said, when he recognized me, "Now
aren't you sorry you ever left Topham? If I had lost as much as you
have by Seth Upham's going into his second childhood, I vow I'd jump
overboard and be done with life. You're slow enough to look up your
old friends, seems to me."
"But," said I, impatiently, "I've been like to die of seasickness. I
couldn't look you up then, and you never came near me."
"Oh, that's all very well for you to say, but you know I couldn't
come aft without a trouncing from that Neil Gleazen--I'm sure I'd
like to see something awful happen to him to pay him for breaking up
the store!--and you've had plenty of time since. If I didn't show
more fondness for my friends than you do, I'd at least have the good
grace to stay away from them. You've used me very shabbily indeed,
Joe Woods, and I've got the spirit to resent it."
The sailmaker, meanwhile, as if he were not listening with vast
interest to all that Sim had to say against me, looked absently away
and quietly smoked his pipe. But I imagined that I detected in his
eyes a glint of amusement at what he assumed to be my discomfiture,
and angered as much by that as by Sim's petulance, I turned my back
on the two and went on forward to the forecastle, where I found
Abraham Guptil, sprawled full length, in quiet conversation with two
shipmates.
From Abe I got pleasanter greetings.
"Here's Joe Woods," he cried, "one of the best friends Abe Guptil
ever had. You had a hard voyage, didn't you, Joe? I was sorry to
hear you were so bad off, I'd hoped to see more of you."
I threw myself down beside Abe and fell to talking with him and the
others about affairs aft and forward, such as Captain North and his
quarrel with Seth Upham, and the meeting of Gleazen and Matterson,
and Sim Muzzy and his irritating garrulousness, and a score of
things that had happened among the crew. It was all so very friendly
and pleasant, that I was sorry to leave them and go back to my
stateroom, and I did so only when I was like to have fallen asleep
in spite of myself. But on the quarter-deck, when I passed, I saw
Seth Upham still pacing back and forth. He must have known that it
was I, for I came close to him and spoke his name, yet he completely
ignored my presence.
How long he kept it up, I do not know; looking over my shoulder, I
saw last, as I went down the companionway, his stooped figure and
bowed head moving like a shadow back and forth, and back and forth.
Nor do I know just when my drowsy thoughts merged into dreams; but
it seems to me, as I look back upon that night, that my uncle's
bent figure silently pacing the deck haunted me until dawn. Only
when some noise waked me at daybreak, and I crept up the
companionway and found that he was no longer there, did I succeed in
escaping from the spell.
Returning to our stateroom to dress, I came upon Arnold Lamont lying
wide awake.
"Joe," said he, when I was pulling on my clothes, "I am surprised to
hear that Seth Upham ever believed Neil Gleazen to be aught but
penniless."
I turned and looked at him. How could Arnold have learned of the
quarrel between Uncle Seth and Gleazen and Matterson, which only I
had witnessed? Or, if he had not learned of the quarrel and what
transpired in the course of it, where had he heard the story of
Gleazen's empty chests?
Perceiving my amazement, he smiled. "I know many things that happen
on board this vessel, Joe," he said.
"How much," I demanded, "do you know about what happened yesterday?"
"Everything," said he.
"But how?" I cried. I was at my wit's end with curiosity.
"Listen!"
I heard a quick step.
"Joe," he whispered, "you must never tell. Crawl under your blankets
and cover your head so no one can see that you are there."
More puzzled, even, than before, I complied. Whatever Arnold had up
his sleeve, I was convinced that he was not merely making game of
me; and, in truth, I had no sooner concealed myself in my tumbled
berth, which was so deep that this was not hard to do, than a gentle
tap sounded on the door.
"Come in," Arnold said in a low voice.
The door then opened and I heard hesitant steps.
"Well?" Arnold said, when I had heard the latch of the door click
shut again.
"If you please, sir," said a piping little voice, which I knew could
come from only Willie MacDougald, "if you please, sir, they were
laughing hearty at Mr. Upham most of the morning."
"Yes?"
"Yes, sir, and they said it was a shame for him to ruin his
complexion by a-walking all night."
"What else?"
"Yes, sir, and he was asleep all morning--at least, sir, he was in
his berth, but I heard him groaning, sir."
"Anything else?"
"Yes, sir. They didn't seem to like the way you and Joe Woods acted
about their stories of trading niggers, and they said--"
"Ha!" That Arnold rose suddenly, I knew by the creaking of his bunk.
"And they said, sir--" Willie's voice fell as if he were afraid to
go on.
"Yes?"
"And they said--"
"Yes, yes! Come, speak out."
"And they said--" again Willie hesitated, then he continued with a
rush, but in a mere whisper--"that they was going to get rid of you
two."
For a long time there was silence, then Arnold asked in the same low
voice, "Have they laid their plans?"
"They was talking of one thing and another, sir, but in such a way
that I couldn't hear."
Again a long silence followed, which Willie MacDougald broke by
saying, "Please, sir, it was to-day you was to pay me."
"Ah, yes."
I heard a clinking sound as if money were changing hands; then
Willie MacDougald said, "Thank you, sir," and turned the latch.
As he left the stateroom I could not forbear from sticking my head
out of the blankets to look after him. He was so small, so young,
seemingly so innocent! Yet for all his innocence and high voice and
respectful phrases, he had revealed a devilish spirit of hard
bargaining by the tone and manner, if not the words, with which he
demanded his pay; and I was confounded when, as I looked after him,
he turned, met my eyes, and instead of being disconcerted, gave me a
bold, impudent grimace.
"He is a little devil," Arnold said with a smile.
"Do you believe what he tells you?"
"Yes, he does not dare lie to me."
"But," said I, "what of his story that they intend to get rid of
us?"
Arnold smiled again. "I shall put it to good use."
It was evident enough now where Arnold had learned of the quarrel;
and as I noted anew his level, fearless gaze, his clear eyes, and
his erect, commanding carriage, I again recalled his words,--who
could forget them?--"A man does not tell all he knows." More and
more I was coming to realize how little we of Topham had known the
manner of man that this Frenchman truly was.
It was with a paradoxical sense of security, a new confidence in my
old friend, that I accompanied Arnold to breakfast in the great
cabin, where two vacant places and three plates still laid showed
that Gleazen and Matterson had long since come and gone, and that
Seth Upham was still keeping aloof in his own quarters. But little
Willie MacDougald, appearing as ever a picture of childish
innocence, assiduously waited on us; and before we were through,
Matterson came below, flung his great body into a chair and, calling
for gin, settled himself for a friendly chat.
"Yes, lads," he said in his oddly light voice, "I've decided to cast
my lot with you. I'm going to ship as mate. Not that I feel I
ought,--I really scarce can afford the time for a voyage now,--but
Neil Gleazen and Seth Upham wouldn't hear to my not going."
He broadly grinned at me, for he knew well that I had heard every
word that passed between the three the day before.
"Well, lads," he went on, "it's a great country we're going to, and
there's great adventures ahead. Yes,--" he spoke now with a sort of
humorous significance, as if he were playing boldly with an idea and
enjoying it simply because he was confident that we could not detect
what lay behind it,--"Yes, there's great adventures ahead. It's
queer, but even here in Cuba a young man never knows what's going to
overtake him next. I've seen young fellows, with their plans all
laid, switched sudden to quite another set of plans that no one, no,
sir, not no one ever thought they'd tumble into. It's mysterious.
Yes, sir, mysterious it is."
That there was a double meaning behind all this talk, I had no doubt
whatever, and it irritated me that he should tease us as if we were
little children; but I could make no particular sense of what he
said, except so far as Willie MacDougald's tale served to indicate
that it was a threat; and Arnold Lamont, apparently not a whit
disturbed, continued his meal with great composure and, whatever he
may have thought, gave no sign to enlighten me.
We had so little to say to Matterson in reply, that he soon left us,
and for another day we sat idle on deck or amused ourselves as best
we could, The crew had numberless duties to perform, such as
painting and caulking and working on the rigging. Arnold Lamont and
Sim Muzzy got out the chessmen and played for hours, while Matterson
watched them with an interest so intent that I suspected him of
being himself a chess-player; and Gleazen and Uncle Seth
intermittently played at cards. So the day passed, until in the
early evening a boat hailed us, and a sailor came aboard and said
that Captain Jones of the Merry Jack and Eleanor sent his
compliments to Mr. Upham and Mr. Gleazen and would be glad to have
all the gentlemen come visiting and share a bowl of punch, at making
which his steward had an excellent hand.
My uncle seized upon the invitation with alacrity, for it seemed
that he had met Captain Jones in Havana two days since. He called to
Gleazen and Matterson, saying with something of his old sharp,
pompous manner that they certainly must come, too, and that he was
going also to bring Arnold, Sim, and me, at which, I perceived, the
two exchanged smiles.
Sim came running aft, ready to complain at the slightest
provocation, but too pleased with the prospect of an outing to burst
forth on no grounds at all; Neil Gleazen and my uncle led the way
toward the quarter-boat in which we were to go; and Arnold followed
them.
It did not escape me that both Gleazen and Matterson had held their
tongues since the sailor delivered his master's invitation, and
that, as they passed me, they exchanged nudges. I was all but
tempted into staying on board the Adventure. As I meditated on
Willie MacDougald's story, and Matterson's allusions,--how
significant they were, I could not know,--the silence of the two
alarmed me more than direct threats would have done. Why should
Gleazen and Matterson look at each other and smile when all the
rest--all, that is, except myself--were going down by the chains
ahead of them? Would they not, unless they had known more than we
about this Captain Jones and his ship, the Merry Jack and Eleanor,
have asked questions, or perhaps even have declined to go?
Whatever my thoughts, I had no chance to express them; so over the
side I went, close after the rest, and down into the boat where the
sailors waited at their oars. To none of us did it occur that it was
in any way contrary to the usual etiquette to take Sim Muzzy with
us. Except that force of circumstances had placed him in the
steerage, his position aboard the Adventure was the same as Arnold's
and mine, or even Gleazen's, for that matter.
Poor Sim! For once he forgot to complain and came with us as gayly
as the fly that walked into the spider's parlor. And yet I now hold
the opinion,--I was a long, long time in coming to it,--that after
all fate was very kind to Simeon Muzzy.
He settled himself importantly in the boat and began to talk a blue
streak, as the saying is, about one thing and another, until I would
almost have tossed him overboard. Uncle Seth, too, frowned at him,
and the strange sailors smiled, and Gleazen and Matterson spoke
together in Spanish and laughed as if they shared a lively joke. But
Arnold Lamont leaned back and half closed his eyes and appeared to
hear nothing of what was going on.
All the way to the Merry Jack and Eleanor, which lay about a quarter
of a mile from the Adventure, Gleazen and Matterson continued at
intervals to exchange remarks in Spanish; and although Uncle Seth
and Arnold Lamont completely ignored them, Sim, who by now had got
so used to foreign tongues that they no longer astonished and
confused him, took it hard that he could make nothing of what they
said and went into a lively tantrum about it, at which the strange
sailors chuckled as they rowed.
Passing under the counter of the vessel, we continued to the
gangway; but just as we came about the stern, Arnold touched my hand
and by a motion so slight as to pass almost unnoticed drew my
attention to a man-of-war that lay perhaps a cable's length away.
Under cover of the loud exchange of greetings and the bustle that
occurred when the others were going aboard, he whispered, "We are
safe for the time being. See! Yonder is a frigate. But either you or
I must stay on deck, and if there is aught of an outcry below, he
must call for help in such a way that there shall be no doubt of its
coming."
"What do you mean?" I whispered.
"Hush! They are watching us."
As we followed the others, Arnold stopped by the bulwark and half
leaned, half fell, against it.
"Pardon me, gentlemen," he said in that slow, precise voice, "For
the moment I am ill. It is a mere attack of dizziness, but I dare
not go below. I must stay in the open air. I beg you will pardon me.
I intend no rudeness."
His face did look pale in the half-light, and the others, whatever
their suspicions may have been, said nothing to indicate that they
doubted him. When Captain Jones of the Merry Jack and Eleanor came
toward us a second time and again with oily courtesy asked us all to
the cabin, Gleazen and Matterson made excuses for Arnold, and the
rest of us went down into the gloomy space below and left him in the
gangway whence he could watch the hills, which were now dark against
the evening sky, and the black masts of the frigate, which stood by
like sentries guarding our lives and fortunes.
There was a fetid, sickening odor about the ship, such as I had
never before experienced, and the cabin reeked of rum and tobacco.
The skipper had the face of a human brute, and the mate's right hand
was twisted all out of shape, as if some heavy weapon had once
smashed the bones of it. The more I looked about the dark, low
cabin, and the more I saw and heard of the skipper and his mate, the
more I wished I were on deck with Arnold. But the punch was brewed
in a colossal bowl and gave forth a fragrance of spices, and Sim
Muzzy drank with the rest, and for a while the five of them were as
jolly as the name of the ship would indicate.
CHAPTER XII
CAPTAIN NORTH AGAIN
First there was talk of old times, for it seemed that Matterson and
Gleazen and Captain Jones were friends of long standing. Then there
was talk of strange wars and battles, particularly of one battle of
Insamankow, of which neither Gleazen nor Matterson had had other
news than that which Captain Jones now gave them, and in which it
seemed that the British had met with great disaster, although it
puzzled me to know wherein such a battle even remotely concerned any
of us. After that there was talk of various other things--a
murderous plague of smallpox that years before had swept the African
coast, a war between the Fantis and Ashantis, a cruiser that they,
with oaths and laughter, said had struck her flag in battle with a
slaver, a year's journey with desert caravans that traded with the
Arabs, and last of all, and apparently most important, curious ways
of circumventing the laws of England and America and of bribing
Cuban officers of low degree and high.
All this, in a stuffy little place where the mingled smells of rum
and spices and tobacco hung heavily on the air as they grew stale,
filled me with disgust and almost with nausea. Vile oaths slipped
out between each two sentences, if by rare chance they were not
woven into the very warp of the sentences themselves; such stories
of barbarous and unbelievable cruelty were told and retold as I
cannot bear to call to mind, to say nothing of repeating; and always
I was aware of that sickening odor, now strong, now weak, which I
had detected before we went below.
The first sign that the others gave of noticing it was when Gleazen
threw back his head and cried, "Pfaw! What a stench! The smell is
all I have against the trade."
Matterson laughed, and Captain Jones with his grand manner said,
"You have been too long away from it, Mr. Gleazen."
"Too long? That's as may be. An old horse settles easy into harness
again."
Captain Jones smiled. With apparent irrelevance, but with a
reminiscent air, he said; "Too long or no, it's a long time since
first we met,--a long, long time, and yet I remember as yesterday
what a night we had of it. It began when that blasted Frenchman
slipped his cables and sought to beat us up the river. It was you,
Gleazen, that saved us then. When your message came, with what haste
we landed the boats and towed the old brig straight up stream! Row?
We rowed like the devil, and though our palms peeled, we won the
race. It was a good cargo you had waiting, too. Only seven died in
the passage."
In the passage! Already I had suspected, now I knew, that the ship
with her fast lines and cruel officers was none other than a slaver;
that the smell was the stench of a slave-ship; that in that very
cabin men had bartered for human beings. If I could, I would have
turned my back on them there and then; the repugnance that I had
long felt grew into downright loathing. What would I not have given
to be up and away with Arnold Lamont! But I was a mere stripling,
alone, so far as help was concerned, in a den of villains crueler
than wolves. Though I would eagerly have left them, I dared not; and
almost at once something happened that in any case would have held
me where I was.
Gleazen leaned across the punch-bowl and said to Captain Jones; "Who
is there in port will make a good captain for a smart brig with a
neat bow, swift to sail and clever to work?"
Captain Jones ran his fingers through his stiff, shaggy hair. "Now,
let me see," he replied, "there's a man--"
Cutting him sharply off, my uncle spoke up, "Gentlemen, I will
choose the master of my own vessel."
I knew by his voice that he, as well as I, was sickened by the
situation in which we found ourselves. Poor Uncle Seth, I thought,
how little did he suspect, when he united his fortune with the
golden dreams of Neil Gleazen, that he was to travel such a road as
this!
"Ah!" said Gleazen. "And who will it be?" An unkind smile played
around his mouth.
"Gideon North, if he will come back to us," said my uncle.
"Ah!" Matterson, Gleazen, and Captain Jones exclaimed as if with one
breath.
For a minute or so the three sat in silence, looking hard at the top
of the table; then Matterson with a queer twist of his lips spoke in
Spanish. When, after another silence, the captain of the Merry Jack
and Eleanor answered at length in the same tongue, Matterson
responded briefly, and all three men nodded.
A quality so curiously and subtly dramatic pervaded the scene that I
remember thinking, as I looked about, what a rare theme it would
have made for a painter. I believe that a skillful artist, if he had
studied the faces of us all as we sat there, could have put our
characters on his canvas so faithfully that he would have been in
danger of paying for his honesty with his life, had Matterson or the
strange captain had a chance at him in the dark. The very place in
which we sat smelled of villainies, and the rat-like captain of the
ship was a fit master of such a den.
Gleazen now turned to my uncle. "Very well," said he, with an
amused smile, "Joe, here, and Arnold Lamont are in good odor with
him. Suppose, then, that we let them go ashore and hunt him out and
talk matters over. I've no doubt he'll come back. He went off in a
tantrum, as a man will when he takes pepper up his nose. You must
know where the fellow's staying. You were to send him the money due
him. Captain Jones will lend them one of his boats for now, and I'll
have our boat ready to take them all off together in, say, three
hours' time."
As I have said in an earlier chapter of this narrative, by
inclination I was a dreamer; and yet I must have been more than a
mere dreamer, and worse, not to have scented by those dark looks and
cryptic words some trouble or other afoot. It was as if for a long
time I had seen the three to be united definitely against us, but as
if I now for the first time perceived what a desperately black and
sinful alliance they made--it was as if the spectacle struck me into
a daze. When Gleazen finished, the other two again nodded, and in
the very manner of their nods there was something as cold and
deliberate as a snake's eye. Had I been able to rely upon the
impressions of the moment, I should have said that time stood as
still as the sun upon Gibeon; that for many minutes we stared at one
another in mutual suspicion; that the beating of my heart had all
but ceased. But the impressions of the moment deceived me.
When Gleazen stopped speaking, he hit with his elbow the ink-bottle
that stood on the table. It tipped on its side, rolled deliberately
across the table, and fell; but before it struck the floor,
Matterson, leaning out with a swift, dexterous motion, caught it,
tried the stopper, and murmured as if to himself, "There's luck for
you! Not a drop is lost." In the time it had taken that bottle to
roll across the table, and not a second more, I had suffered that
untold suspense.
Now the spell was shattered, and hearing someone speaking in an
undertone behind me, I turned and caught Captain Jones in the act of
giving instructions _in Spanish_ to his negro steward.
I was surprised and angry. Though of late I had heard much Spanish,
it seemed to me that to speak it under the circumstances was so rude
as to verge on open affront. Then Uncle Seth, gulping down his
astonishment that Gleazen should so readily accede to his wishes,
spoke up for himself; and because I was so deeply interested in
whatever he might have to say, I turned my back on the mungo, ceased
to watch Captain Jones, and did not notice that the steward went
immediately on deck. Nor did I attribute any significance to the
sound of oars bumping against the pins, which I soon afterwards
heard. Had not Arnold Lamont been waiting on deck with his eyes
fixed apparently on the dark outline of the frigate, my stupidity
must have cost us even more than it did.
"Very well," said Uncle Seth. "I will do as you suggest."
"Perhaps," said Gleazen, thoughtfully, "Sim Muzzy, here, would like
to go."
"Oh, yes," cried Sim, "I'm fair dying for a trip on dry land. Yes,
indeed, I'd like to go. I'd like it mightily. You've always said,
Mr. Gleazen, I was too thick to do harm. Oh, yes indeed!"
Matterson smiled and Captain Jones covered his mouth with his hand,
but Gleazen gravely nodded.
"Well, Sim, go you shall," said he. "There ain't one of us here but
is glad to see an honest man take his fling ashore, and Havana's a
city for you. Such handsome women as ride about in their carriages!
And such sights as you'll see in the streets! You'll be a wiser man
e'er you come back to us, Sim. I swear, I'd like to go myself,--but
not to-night! I ain't one to neglect business for pleasure."
When he shot a glance at Matterson and Captain Jones, my eyes
followed his, and I saw that once more they had fixed their gaze on
the top of the table. Now I was actually unable, so baffling had
been their change of front, to make up my mind whether they were to
be suspected or to be trusted.
"Well," said Gleazen, "we are all agreed. Lay down your orders,
Seth. They'll carry them out to the last letter."
So Uncle Seth told me where to find Gideon North, and Neil Gleazen
wrote it on a paper,--_in Spanish_, mind you!--and they put their
heads together, every one, to think up such arguments as would
induce Captain North to return, all with an appearance of enthusiasm
that amazed me and might easily have put my suspicions to shame but
for those other things that had happened.
"I'll be civil to him," Gleazen cried. "And you can tell him, too,
that this is an _honest voyage_. We're to run no race with the
king's cruisers, Joe."
"Aye," Captain Jones put in, "an able vessel and an honest voyage."
"With a mountain of treasure to be got," added Matterson.
The three spoke so gravely and straightforwardly now, that I
wondered at their insolence; and as Sim and I got up to go, not yet
quite believing that in reality, and not in a dream, we were being
dispatched into the heart of that strange city, they accompanied us
on deck and told Arnold Lamont that he was to go with us on our
errand, and saw us safely started in the long boat of the Merry Jack
and Eleanor before returning to their punch.
I could see that Arnold had no liking for the mission, but while we
were in the boat he gave me no explanation of his uneasiness.
Indeed, Sim Muzzy talked so much and so fast that, when he once got
started, you could scarcely have thrust the point of a needle into
his monologue.
"She's a slaver," he murmured as we pulled away from the Merry Jack
and Eleanor. "A cruel-hearted slaver! Thank heaven, we're never to
have a hand in any such iniquity as that."
We looked back at the ship, black and gloomy against the sky, with
many men moving about on her deck.
"You're a silly fool," one of the oarsmen cried, having overheard
him, "a man without stomach, heart, or good red blood."
"Stomach, is it?" Sim retorted. "I'll have you know I eat my three
hearty meals a day and they set well too. I can eat as much victuals
as the next man. Why--" And there was no stopping him till the boat
bumped against a wharf and we three stepped out.
The boat, I noticed, instead of putting back to the ship, waited by
the wharf.
I turned and looked at the restless harbor, on which each light was
reflected as a long, tremulous finger of flame that reached almost
to my feet, at the sky, in which the stars were now shining, and at
the anchored ships, each with her own story, could one but have read
it; then I yielded to Sim's importunate call and in the darkness
turned after him and Arnold. What reason was there to suspect that
Simeon Muzzy and I stood at a crossroads where our paths divided?
Coming to the street, we stopped, and in the light from an open
window put our heads together over the paper that Gleazen had
written out and given to us with instructions to show it to the
first person we met and turn where he pointed.
"Why, it's all in foreigner's talk!" Sim exclaimed.
"Let me see it," said Arnold.
He looked at it a long time and smiled. "I wonder," he said, "do
they think we are so very simple?"
Now a man came toward us. Before he could pass, Arnold stepped
suddenly forward and _addressed him in Spanish_.
"Why," cried I, when the passerby had gone, "you, too--do you talk
Spanish?"
Arnold turned to me with a smile and said, for the second time, "A
man does not tell all he knows."
Thrusting the paper into his pocket, he continued, "According to the
directions that Mr. Gleazen has written down for our guidance, my
friends, we should turn to the right. But according to my personal
knowledge, which that man confirmed, we shall find Gideon North by
turning to the left."
To the left, then, we turned; and only Arnold Lamont, who told me of
it afterward, saw one of the boatmen, when we had definitely taken
our course, leave the boat and run into the darkness in the
direction that Neil Gleazen wished to send us.
Carriages passed us, and men on horseback, and negroes loitering
along the streets. There were bright lights in the windows; and we
saw ladies and their escorts riding in queer two-wheeled vehicles
that I later learned were called _volantes_.
All was strange and bizarre and extraordinarily interesting. Never
did three men from a little country village in New England find
themselves in a more utterly foreign city. But although Sim and I
had our eyes open for every new sight, I was nevertheless aware that
Arnold was more alert than either of us, and twice he urged us to
keep our eyes and wits about us.
Seeing nothing to fear, I inclined to smile at him. I now assumed
that I was the bolder and more sophisticated of the two of us. As
we tramped along in the darkness, I got over the sense of unreality
and felt as much at home in that alien city as if I had been back in
the familiar streets and lanes of Boston.
Three times Arnold stopped to inquire the way; and the last time the
man of whom he asked directions pointed at a house not a hundred
yards distant and said, with a bow, "It is there, señor."
That he spoke in English, which he had heard Sim and me use, so
surprised us that for the moment we were off our guard. I was
vaguely aware of hearing many feet trampling along, and afterwards I
realized that I had absently noticed the rumble of voices; but the
city was all so strange that I thought nothing of either the feet or
the voices, and gave all my attention to the stranger. He was
turning away, bowing and protesting his pleasure in serving us, when
Sim Muzzy said in a wondering tone, "Why, Arnold,--Joe,--how many
people there are hereabouts! Look there!"
Arnold, turning as the poor fellow spoke, seized my arm. "_Mon
dieu!_" he gasped, startled into his native French. Then in English
he cried, "Quick, Joe! Quick! _Vite!_ Ha! Strike out, Sim, strike!"
Around us there were indeed many men. They were approaching us from
ahead and behind. Suddenly, fiercely, three or four of them rushed
at us.
From his belt Arnold drew a knife and thrust at a man who had caught
my collar. I lost no time in leaping free.
Two of them, now, were upon Arnold, crying out in Spanish; but he
eluded them by a quick turn.
I first saw him spring out of their reach, then an arm, flung round
my throat, cut my wind. As I throttled, I saw Arnold come charging
back again, knife in hand. The blade slashed past my ear so closely
that it cut the skin; something spurted over my neck and the back
of my head, and the arm that held me fell.
Arnold, his hand on my shoulder, dragged me free. Stooping, he
picked up a stone and hurled it into the midst of our assailants,
eliciting a screech of pain and anger. When I bent to follow his
example, I saw a chance light flash on his knife-blade. But where, I
thought, is Sim? Then, somewhere in the crowd, I heard him choking
and gagging. My first impulse was to rush to his rescue, but
instantly I saw the folly of such a course, so greatly were we
outnumbered. For a moment Arnold and I held them off. Just behind us
was a street corner. As we darted toward it, one man dashed out from
the crowd, the rest followed, and a second time, with hoarse shouts,
they charged down upon us. They came in a solid phalanx, but we
rounded the corner and fled. At top speed we raced down the street
and round a second corner. Distancing them for the moment, but with
their yells ringing in our ears, we scrambled up over a wrought-iron
gate that gave us hold for fingers and feet, through a garden rich
with palms and statuary, over another gate and across still another
street. There we scaled one gate more, and throwing ourselves down
in some dense vines, lay quietly and got back our breath, while our
eluded pursuers raced and called on the street outside.
The last thing I had heard as we ran was poor Sim Muzzy screaming
for help.
"Who--wh-wh-o--wh-what--were th-they?" I gasped out.
"I believe it to have been a press-gang," Arnold replied. He, too,
was gasping for breath, but he better controlled his voice.
After a time he added, "Poor Sim! I fear that he is now on his way
into the service of the royal navy of Spain."
"But," I returned, "they cannot hold an American citizen."
"Lawfully," said he, "they cannot."
"Then we'll soon have Sim out again."
To this, he did not reply. He said merely, "You and I, Joe, must
keep it a secret between us that I speak their language."
We lay a long time in the garden, with the stars shining above us
and yellow lights streaming out of the house, and I thought of how
skillfully Arnold Lamont had concealed his interest in what Gleazen
and Matterson had said in a language they thought none of us could
understand. But when the racing and shouting had gone, and come, and
gone again, and when we both were convinced that all danger was
past, we rose and stretched ourselves and went up to the house and
knocked.
As the door swung open, a flood of light poured out into the garden;
but we saw only an old negro, who stood like a black shadow in our
way and assailed us with a broadside of angry Spanish. His gray head
shook with fury, I suppose at finding us in the garden, and he
spread his arms to keep us from entering the house. Behind him arose
a hubbub, and an angry white man came rushing out. When to his
fierce questions Arnold shot back prompt answers, his anger died,
and tolerance took its place, and finally a wave of cordiality swept
over his face. Stepping back he actually flung the door wide open
and with stately bows ushered us into the high-studded hall. Then
the negro went bustling down the passage and spoke in a low voice,
and I was amazed beyond measure to see Gideon North himself step out
of a lighted room.
In our flight Arnold, shrewd, quick to think and to act, had led us
to the garden in the rear of the very house of which we had come in
search.
"Well," said Captain North, when, after warm greetings and quick
explanations, we were seated together behind closed doors, "of all
that rascally crew in the cabin of the Adventure, you two are the
only ones I should be glad to see again. How in the name of
Beelzebub, prince of devils, did you light upon my lodging-house,
and what has brought you here?"
Now Gleazen had suggested various arguments by which to bring
Captain North back to his command, and not the least of them was an
apology of a kind from himself; but they had all lacked sincerity,
and as I knew well enough that Gleazen really would be very sorry if
we should succeed in our errand, I had wisely determined to have
none of them. It is exceedingly doubtful, however, if I should have
dared to speak quite as plainly as did Arnold Lamont.
"Sir," he said, "we have come on a strange errand. We ask you to
return to a ship where you have suffered indignities, to resume a
command that you have resigned under just provocation, to help a man
who, I fear, has forfeited every right to call upon you for help."
"I'm no hand for riddles," said Gideon North. "Talk plain sea-talk."
"Sir," said Arnold, "I ask you to come back as captain of the
Adventure, to save Seth Upham from his--friends." Arnold smiled
slightly.
"Blast Upham and his friends!"
"As you will. But that pair of leeches will get the blood from his
heart, and Joe Woods, his heir, will lose every penny of his
inheritance."
"Upham should have thought of that before. Leave him alone. He lies
in the bed he made."
"He, poor man, does not think of it now. Indeed, I fear he's beyond
saving."
Gideon North got up and went to the barred windows that opened upon
the street.
"What is this wild-goose chase?" he suddenly demanded.
"Exactly what the object is I do not know," Arnold replied. "They
talk of a treasure, but they are fit to rule an empire of liars.
They are not, I believe, equipped for the slave trade, though of
that you are a better judge than I."
Still Gideon North stood by the window. Without turning his head, he
remarked, "I wonder why _they_ want me back."
"They?" At that Arnold laughed. "_They_ do not want you. Not they!
Seth Upham insisted against their every wish. We came to your door
with a press-gang at our heels. _They_ planned that Joe and I should
share Sim Muzzy's fate and never see you again--or them."
Thereupon Captain North turned about.
"I am interested," he said. "Aye, and tempted."
He stood for a while musing on all he had heard; then he smiled in a
way that gave me confidence.
"We are three honest men with one purpose," he said; "but Gleazen
and Matterson are a pair of double-dyed villains. I go into this
affair knowing that it is at the risk of my life, but so help me!
I'll take the plunge."
After a pause he added, "You spend the night with me, lads, and we
will go on board together in the morning. That alone will give 'em a
pretty start, for I've no doubt they think already that they're well
rid of the three of us, and by sun-up they'll be sure of it. What's
more, we'll go armed, lads, knives in our belts and pistols in our
boots."
CHAPTER XIII
ISSUES SHARPLY DRAWN
We breakfasted next morning with Gideon North, and discussed in
particular Gleazen and Matterson and in general affairs on board the
Adventure. It seemed ages ago that I had first seen Gleazen on the
porch of the old tavern in Topham. I told all I knew of how he had
come to town and had won the confidence of so many people, of how
the blacksmith alone had stood out against him, and of how that last
wild night had justified the blacksmith in every word that he had
uttered.
Then Arnold Lamont took up the story and told of scores of things
that I had not perceived: little incidents that his keen eyes had
detected, such as secret greetings passed between Gleazen and men
with whom he pretended to have nothing whatever to do; chance
phrases that I, too, had overheard, but that only Arnold's native
shrewdness had translated aright; until I blushed with shame to
think how great had been my own vanity and conceit--I who thought I
had known so much, but really had known so little!
Then Captain North in blunt language told of things that had
happened on board the Adventure, which made Uncle Seth out to be a
poor, helpless dupe, and ended by saying vigorously, "Seth Upham is
truly in a bad way, what with Gleazen and Matterson; and brave lads
though you are, you're not their kind. Unless you two were smarter
than human, they'd get you in the end, for they're cruel men, with
no regard for human life, and the odds are all in their favor; but
three of us in the cabin is quite another matter. We'll see what we
can do to turn the cat in the pan.
"And now,"--he pushed his dishes away and set his elbows on the
table,--"now for facts to work upon. The pair of them are going to
Africa with a purpose. Am I not right?"
The question required no answer, but Arnold and I both nodded.
"A cargo's all well and good, and they've no objection to turning an
honest dollar, just because it's honest; but there's more than
honest dollars in this kettle of fish."
Again we nodded.
"Now, then, my lads, let me tell you this: when they've got what
they want in Africa, whatever it may be, when they've squeezed Seth
Upham's last dollar out of his wallet, when they no longer need
honest men on board to protect them from cruising men-o'-war, then,
lads, they're going to throw you and me to the sharks. As yet, it is
too soon to strike against them. The odds are in their favor still,
and as far as we're concerned there's no hope in Seth Upham, for
they've got him twirling on a spit. It is for us, lads, to go
through with them to the very end, to walk up and shake hands with
death and the devil if worst comes to worst, but to be ready always
to strike when the iron's hot,--aye, to strike till the sparks fly
white."
So there we sealed our compact, Arnold Lamont and Gideon North and
I, with no vows and with scant assertions, but with a completeness
of understanding and accord that gave us, every one, unquestioning
confidence in each of our associates. The fate of poor Sim Muzzy,
which Arnold and I had so narrowly escaped, was still perilously
close at hand; and in returning to the brig, which Gideon North had
left in anger, we shared a common danger that bound our alliance
more firmly than any pledge would have bound it.
Our breakfast eaten, we sorted over some pistols that Captain North
had ordered sent from a shop, and chose, each of us, a pair, for
which our host insisted on standing scot; then he paid the bill for
his lodgings, and, armed against whatever the future might bring,
and firmly resolved that Gleazen and Matterson should not beat us in
a matter of wits, we went into the street.
The day was beautiful almost beyond belief, and the streets of
Havana were full of wonderful sights; but with the memory of poor
Sim's sad fate in mind, and with our hearts set on the long contest
that we must wage, we saw little of what went on around us. Followed
by two negroes, who between them carried Captain North's bag, we
boldly marched three abreast down through the city to the
harbor-side, where we hailed a boatman and hired him to take us out
to the brig.
Coming up to the gangway, Captain North loudly called, "Ahoy there!"
There was a rush to the side of the brig, and a dozen faces looked
down at us; but none of them were the faces that we most desired to
see.
"Ho!" Captain North exclaimed, "they're not here. You there, pass a
line, and step lively. Two of you bear a hand to lift this bag on
board."
At that moment we heard steps, and a newcomer appeared at the rail.
It was Cornelius Gleazen. As he stared at us without a word, he
appeared to be the most surprised man that ever I had seen.
"Good-morning, Mr. Gleazen," Captain North called. "I've got your
messages and thank you kindly. I reciprocate all good wishes and I'm
sure when anyone comes out with a handsome apology, I'm no man to
bear a grudge. I resume command with no hard feelings. Good-morning,
sir."
By that time he was on deck and advancing aft.
I had already seen Cornelius Gleazen in some extraordinary
situations, and later I was to see him in certain situations beside
which the others paled to milk and water, but never at any other
time, from the moment when I first saw him on the porch at the
tavern until the day when we parted not to meet again this side of
Judgment, did I see Cornelius Gleazen affected in just the way that
he was affected then.
He backed away from Captain North, replied loudly as if in greeting,
still backed away, and finally turned and went below, where
evidently he recovered his powers of speech, for up came my uncle
with Matterson at his heels.
"Captain North," Uncle Seth cried, meeting him with right hand
outstretched, "I declare I'm glad you're back again, and I'm sure
that all will go well from this time on."
There was real pathos in Uncle Seth's eagerness to secure the
friendship of the stout captain. In his straight-forward, confiding
manner there was no suggestion of his old sharpness and pompousness.
To see him looking from one of us to another, so frankly pleased
that we had returned, you could not have failed to know that he was
sincere, and if any of us had had the least suspicion that Seth
Upham had condoned the scheme to have us fall into the hands of the
press-gang, he lost it there and then forever.
"But where," he cried, glancing down the deck, "where is Sim Muzzy?"
Matterson came a step nearer. I saw some of the sailors look
curiously at one another. A stir ran along the deck.
It was Gideon North who replied. "I am told," he said deliberately,
letting his eyes wander from face to face, "that he has fallen into
the clutches of a press-gang."
"What!"
"A press-gang. But of that, Lamont, here, can tell you better than
I."
And Arnold, in his precise, subtly foreign way, told all that had
happened.
Completely stunned, my poor uncle went to the rail and buried his
face in his hands.
As for Matterson, he shook hands with Captain North and nodded at
the rest of us impartially.
"I'm glad to see you back, sir," he said. "As you know, without
doubt, I've shipped as chief mate."
"You've what?" Captain North thundered, looking up at the big man
before him.
"Shipped as chief mate, sir."
"Is this true?" the captain demanded, turning on Uncle Seth.
"It is," my uncle replied like a man just waking. "Mr. Gleazen and I
talked it over--"
Captain North interrupted him without ceremony. "Well," said he to
Matterson, "I've no doubt you'll make a competent officer."
His abruptness left Matterson no excuse for replying; so, when the
captain went below, the chief mate stepped over to the rail. There,
frowning slightly now and then, he remained for a long time. It did
not take Arnold Lamont's intuition to perceive that he, as well as
Gleazen, was puzzled and disappointed by the way things had turned
out.
CHAPTER XIV
LAND HO!
With Captain North back on board again, we felt great confidence for
the future; and while we remained in Havana there was no other
attempt, so far as I know, to do us harm. But there was that in the
wind which kept us always uneasy; and at no time after the night
when Sim Muzzy left us, never to return to the brig Adventure, did
we have a moment of complete security.
Every one asked questions about poor Sim, and by the way the various
ones received our answers they indicated much of their own attitude
toward us. Abe Guptil was moved almost to tears, and most of the men
forward shook their heads sympathetically, although in my presence,
since I was not one of them, they said little. But Matterson would
smile with a certain unkind satisfaction, and Neil Gleazen would
laugh softly, and here and there some one or other of the men would
make sly jests or cast sidelong glances at Arnold and me.
Of all the men on board, Seth Upham was conspicuously the most
disturbed; and as he gloomily paced the deck,--a practice he
continued even after Captain North had returned,--I heard him more
than once murmuring to himself, "Sim, Sim, O my poor Sim! Into what
a plight I have led you!"
Arnold and I suggested in the cabin that we send out a searching
party to see what we could learn of Sim's fate, and Uncle Seth urged
it madly upon the others; but Gleazen and Matterson would hear
nothing of it, and even Gideon North told us frankly that he
regarded such measures as hopeless.
"The man's gone and I'm sorry," he said; "but I honestly believe it
is useless for us to try to help him now."
So, reluctantly, we dropped the matter, after reporting it both to
the local authorities and to our own consul; for however deeply we
distrusted Gleazen and Matterson, in Captain North we had implicit
faith.
To prepare for the voyage, we took on board in the next few days
supplies of divers kinds, and though I had learned much by now of
the ways of life at sea, many of the things puzzled me. One day it
was a vast number of empty water-casks; another day, more than a
hundred barrels of farina; yet another day, a boatload of beans and
one of lumber. There were mysterious gatherings in the cabin from
which Arnold and I were excluded,--we could not fail to notice that
they took place when Captain North was ashore,--but to which gentry
with dingy wristbands and shiny faces were bid; and presently we saw
stowed away forward iron boilers and iron bars, a great box of iron
spoons, a heap of rusty shackles, and still puzzling, although
perhaps less so, a mighty store of gunpowder.
All this occasioned a long argument between Arnold and Captain North
and myself, which fully enlightened me concerning the purpose of the
mysterious supplies. But reluctant though we were to take the goods
on board, there was nothing that we could do to stop it so long as
my uncle, under Gleazen's influence, insisted on it; for as owner of
the brig, and in that particular port where contraband trade played
so important a part, he could have had us even jailed, if necessary,
to carry his point. Our only way to serve him best in the end was to
stand by in silence and let the stores, such as they were, go into
the hold.
All the time my uncle came and went in a silence so deep that, if I
had not now and then caught his eyes fixed upon me with a sadness
that revealed, more than words, how unhappy he was, I could scarcely
have believed that he was the same Seth Upham in whose house I had
lived so long. From a person of importance in his own town and a
leader among those of us who had set forth with him, he had fallen
to a place so shameful that I felt for him the deepest concern, and
for the precious villains that were thus dishonoring my mother's
brother, the deepest anger.
"There are no pirates on the seas nowadays," I remarked one morning
to Neil Gleazen who stood beside me watching all that went
forward--and all the time I watched his face. "Why then should we
set out armed to fight a sloop-of-war? Or ship a pair of
small-swords on the cabin bulkhead?"
"Trade and barter, Joe," he replied. "The niggers fairly tumble over
themselves to buy such tricks. There's money in it, Joe." Then he
laughed as if mightily pleased with himself.
"But," I persisted, scarcely veiling my impatience, "you've said
more than once that trade is not the object of our voyage."
"True, Joe." He lowered his voice. "But that's no reason to neglect
a chance to turn our money over. Ah, Joe, you're a good lad, and we
must have a bout with the foils some day soon. I'm sure we'll get
along well together, you and I."
He smiled and clapped me on the shoulder; but the old spell was
broken, and when he had gone, I ruminated for a long time on one
thing and another that had occurred in the past months.
That evening, when Arnold and I stood with Gideon North abaft the
wheel where there was no one to overhear us, Arnold and the honest
captain would have confirmed my worst suspicions, had they needed to
be confirmed. But by then I had observed as much as they, and we
talked only in such vague terms as pleased our mood.
"No! There's more to this voyage than has appeared on the surface
even yet," Captain North said in an undertone.
"I have heard them talking in Spanish," said Arnold Lamont, "of
gold--and of other things--of two men on the coast--and of a ship
wrecked at the hour they needed her most. They share a great secret.
They have come scarred through more than one fight and have lost the
vessel on which they counted to make their fortunes. They are taking
us back now, perhaps to fight for them, perhaps to run for them, but
always as their creatures. So much I, too, have learned. We must
walk circumspectly, my friends. We must keep always together and
guard always against treachery. _Mon dieu!_ what men they are!"
It was the longest speech I had ever heard Arnold make.
Next day, following the arrival of a boatload of as rascally looking
mariners as ever attempted to ship on board a reputable vessel,
there ensued a quarrel so sudden and violent and so directly
concerned with our fortunes, that Arnold and I hung in breathless
suspense on the issue.
"Gentlemen," Gideon North cried, hammering the cabin table with his
fist, "as captain of this brig, I and I alone will say who shall
ship with me and who shall not. I'll not have my crew packed with
vagabonds and buccaneers. I'll turn those fellows back on shore, be
it bag in hand and clothes upon them, or be it as stark naked as
they came into this world, and I'll have you leave my crew alone
from this day forth."
Matterson laughed lightly. "Ah, captain," he said, in bitter
sarcasm, "you are so excitable. They are able men. I'll answer for
them."
"Mr. Matterson," the captain retorted, "it devolves upon you to
answer for yourself, which bids fair to be no easy task."
"But," roared Gleazen, cursing viciously, "the owner says they're to
come. And, by heaven, you'll cram them down your throat."
"Stuff and nonsense--"
By this time I felt that I could hold my peace no longer. Certainly
I was party to whatever agreement should be reached. "You lie!" I
cried to Gleazen, "the owner said nothing of the kind!"
"How about it, Seth, how about it?" Gleazen demanded, disdainfully
ignoring me. "Speak out your orders, speak 'em out or--" the man's
voice dropped until it rumbled in his throat "--or--you know what."
Poor Seth Upham had thought himself so strong and able and shrewd!
So he had been in little Topham. But neither the quick wit nor the
native courage necessary to cope with desperate, resolute men was
left to him now.
"I--I--" he stammered. "Take one or two of them, Captain North, just
one or two,--do that for me, I beg you,--and let the rest go."
"What!" exclaimed Gideon North.
"One or two?" Gleazen thundered, "one or two? Only one or two?"
Instantly both men had turned upon my uncle. Both men, their eyes
narrowed, their jaws out-thrust, faced him in hot anger. There was a
moment of dreadful silence; then, to my utter amazement, my uncle
actually got down on his knees in front of Neil Gleazen, down on his
marrow bones on the bare boards, and wailed, "In the name of Heaven,
Neil, don't tell! Don't tell!"
[Illustration: "_In the name of Heaven, Neil, don't tell! Don't
tell!_"]
While we stared at him, Gideon North, Arnold, and I, literally
doubting what our eyes told us was the plain truth, Matterson said
lightly, as if he were speaking of a sick and fretful child, "Let
him have it, Neil. I hate scenes. Keep only Pedro."
Gideon North looked first at my uncle, then at Matterson, and then
back at my uncle. As if to a certain extent moved by the scene that
we had just witnessed, he said no more; so of five strange seamen,
next day all save one went ashore again.
That brief, fierce quarrel had revealed to us, as nothing else could
have, into what a desperately abject plight my uncle had fallen. At
the time it shocked me beyond measure. It was so pitifully, so
inexpressibly disgraceful! In all the years that have passed since
that day in Havana harbor I have not been able to forget it; to this
moment I cannot think of it without feeling in my cheeks the hot
blood of shame.
The man whom Matterson chose to keep on board the Adventure appeared
to be a good-natured soul, and he went by the name of Pedro. What
other name he had, if any, I never knew; but no seafaring man who
ever met him needed another name. Years afterwards, down on old Long
Wharf in Boston, I elicited an exclamation of amazement by saying to
a sailor who had slyly asked me for the price of a glass of beer,
"Did you ever know a seafaring man named Pedro who had a pet
monkey?"
By his monkey I verily believe the man was known in half the ports
of the world. He came aboard with the grinning, chattering beast,
which seemed almost as big as himself, perched on his shoulder. He
made it a bed in his own bunk, fed it from his own dipper, and
always spoke affectionately of it as "my leetle frien'."
The beast was uncannily wise. There was something
veritably Satanic in the leers with which it would regard the men,
and before we crossed the ocean, as I shall relate shortly, it
became the terror of Willie MacDougald's life.
So far as most of us could see, we were now ready to weigh anchor
and be off; but by my uncle's orders we waited one day more, and on
the morning of that day Uncle Seth and Neil Gleazen went on shore
together.
When after a long absence they returned, they had words with Captain
North; and though we had become used by now to quarrels between
Gleazen and the captain, there was a different tone in this one,
which puzzled Arnold and me.
Presently the two and my uncle went below, where Matterson joined
them; and except for Willie MacDougald, Arnold and I might never
have known what took place. But Willie MacDougald, knocking at our
stateroom door that night, thrust his small and apparently innocent
face into the cabin, entered craftily and said, "If you please, sir,
I've got news worth a pretty penny."
"How much is it worth?" Arnold asked.
"A shilling," Willie whispered.
"That is a great deal of money."
"Ah, but I've got news that's worth it."
"I shall be the judge of that," Arnold responded.
Willie squinted up his face and whispered, "They've got new papers."
"How so?" Arnold demanded. He did not yet understand what Willie
meant.
"Why, new papers. Portuguese papers."
"Ah," said Arnold. "Forged, I suppose? Shall we not sail under the
American flag?"
"Ay, ay, sir, but the schooner Shark and the sloop of war Ontario
are to be sent across for cruising."
"Ah!"
"And Seth Upham's sold the brig."
"Sold it!" Arnold exclaimed. For the moment both he and I thought
that Willie was lying to us.
"Ay, ay, sir. To be delivered in Africa. Half the money down, and
half on delivery."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Why, sir," said the crafty youngster, who understood better than
either of us the various subterfuges to which African traders
resorted in order to elude searching cruisers, "all they have to do
to change registry is to say she's delivered to the new owners, and
fly a new flag and show the bill of sale."
"Go on, go on. Must I drag the story from you word by word?"
"Captain North, sir, said he'd be hanged first; and Mr. Gleazen said
he'd be hanged anyway; and ain't that worth two bits?"
Arnold flung a coin to the grasping little wretch, and he went out
and closed the door behind him.
It was dark just outside our stateroom, and neither Willie nor we
had been able to see anything that might have been there. For half a
minute after Willie left us, while he was feeling his way toward the
cabin, all was still. Then he suddenly shrieked so wildly that we
leaped from our berths.
There was a sound of crashing and bumping. Even wilder shrieks
filled the air, and we heard a curious chattering and mumbling.
Something fell against the stateroom door and cracked a panel, the
door flew open, and in toppled Willie with Pedro's monkey grasping
him firmly by the throat from its perch on the little fellow's
shoulders.
"Help, help!" Willie shrieked. "Lord save me! It's the devil! Help!
I repent! I repent!" And he tripped and fell with a crash.
As he fell, the coin flew out of his hand, and the monkey, seeing
the flash of silver, leaped after it, picked it up, fled like a lean
brown shadow through the door, and was gone we knew not where.
To this day I am not able to make up my mind whether the child's
anger or his fear was the greater. Turning like a flash, he saw what
it was that had attacked him; yet he made no move to pursue the
beast, and from that time on he regarded it with exceedingly great
caution and nimbly and prudently betook himself out of its way.
Canny, scheming, selfish Willie MacDougald!
At peep of dawn we got up our anchors and set sail and put out to
sea, carrying with us heavy knowledge of perils and dangers that
encompassed us, and sad memories of our old home in Topham, of our
old friends in trouble, of high hopes that had fallen into ruin.
It comforted me to see Abraham Guptil working with the crew. He
stood in good repute with every man on board, from Matterson and
Gleazen to little Willie MacDougald, who now was in the steerage
watching with great, round eyes all that went on about him. Good Abe
Guptil! He, at least, concealed no diabolical craft beneath an
innocent exterior.
I thought of Sim Muzzy. Poor Sim! Since he had disappeared that
night in the clutches of the press-gang, nothing that we had been
able to do had called forth a single word of his whereabouts. He had
vanished utterly, and though neither Arnold nor I had ever felt any
great affection for the garrulous fellow, we both were sincerely
grieved to lose an old companion thus unhappily.
Now, as our sails filled, we swept past the Merry Jack and Eleanor,
and the sight came to me like a shock of ill omen. The black
disgrace of her lawless trade, the brutal men who manned her, the
sinister experience that had followed so closely our call upon her
captain, all combined to make me feel that the shadow she had cast
upon us was not easily to be evaded.
It was good to turn back once more to solid, substantial Gideon
North, firm, wise Arnold Lamont, and kindly, trustworthy Abe Guptil.
On them and on me Uncle Seth's fortunes and my own depended, if not
indeed our very lives.
Mr. Matterson handled the brig from the forecastle and handled her
ably. Not even Captain North, who watched him constantly with
searching eyes, could find a thing of which to complain. His almost
feminine voice took on a cutting quality that reached each man on
board and conveyed by its hard, keen edge a very clear impression of
what would happen if aught should go astray. But there was that
about him which made it impossible to trust him; and Gleazen,
seeming by his airs far more the owner than my poor, cowed uncle,
stood by Gideon North and looked the triumph that he felt.
So we passed between the castle and the battery and showed our heels
to Cuba and set our course across the sea and lived always on guard,
always suspicious, yet never confirming further our suspicions,
until, weeks later, the lookout at the masthead cried, "Land ho!"
The low, dark line that appeared far on the horizon, to mark the end
of an uncommonly tranquil passage, so pleasantly in contrast to our
voyage to Cuba, deepened and took form. There was excitement forward
and aft. Gleazen and Matterson clapped hands on shoulders and roared
their delight and cried that now,--they were vile-mouthed, profane
men,--that now neither God nor devil should thwart them further.
Through the ship the word went from lip to lip that yonder lay the
coast of Guinea.
It had become natural to us in the cabin to align ourselves on one
side or the other. Gleazen and Matterson stood shoulder to shoulder,
and Gideon North and Arnold Lamont and I gathered a little farther
aft. We acted unconsciously, for all of us were intent on the land
that we had raised; and my poor uncle, apparently assuming neither
friend nor enemy, leaned against the cabin all alone. His face was
averted and I could catch only a glimpse of his profile; but I was
convinced that I saw his lip tremble.
Yonder, in truth, lay the coast of Guinea, and there at last every
one of us was to learn the secret of that mad expedition which had
so long since set forth from the little New England town of Topham.
[Illustration]
IV
THREE DESPERATE MEN
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XV
THE ISLAND
To the dark land on the sky-line, we swiftly drew nearer, and
presently saw a low shore where a thread of gleaming white, which
came and went, told us unmistakably that great seas were breaking.
Of the exact point that we had reached on the coast we still were in
doubt, for our charts were poor and Captain North suspected the
quadrant of having developed some fault of a nature so technical
that I neither understood it at the time nor now remember its name;
so we hove to, while Gleazen and Matterson and Gideon North, and
eventually Mr. Severance, of whom I saw less and thought more seldom
than of any other man in the cabin, put their heads together and
argued the matter.
Mr. Severance was a good enough man in his place, I suppose, but he
was too indolent and self-centred, and too sleepily fond of his
pipe, to command attention.
For all the headway that the four seemed to be making, they might
have argued until the crack of doom, as far as I could see, when
from the masthead came the cry, "Sail ho!"
Matterson and Gleazen faced about, as quickly as weasels on a stone
wall, and Gideon North was not much behind them.
"Where away?"
"Off the larboard bow!"
"What do you make her out?" Captain North demanded.
"As yet, sir, she's too far off to be seen clearly."
I had known that we were sailing dangerous seas, but nothing else
had so vividly brought our dangers home to me as did the scene of
desperate activity that now ensued. Hoarse orders went booming up
and down the decks. Men sprang to braces and halyards. For a moment
the foresail, newly let fall, roared in the wind, then, clapping
like thunder, it filled, as the men tailed on tack and sheet, and
catching the wind, stiffened like iron. Wearing ship, we set every
stitch of our canvas, and with a breeze that drove us like a
greyhound through the long, swiftly running seas, went lasking up
the coast of Africa, as, intently training glasses across the
taffrail, we waited to see more of the strange vessel.
Notwithstanding our feverish efforts to elude her, she had drawn
slowly nearer, and we made out that she was a schooner and as fleet
as a bird. For a time there was talk of the armed schooner Shark,
which our own government was reported to have sent out to cruise for
slavers.
It was with grim interest that we watched her every manoeuvre. Our
men forward would constantly turn their heads to study her more
closely, and those of us aft kept our eyes fixed upon her. Swift as
was the Adventure, it was plain from the first that the schooner was
outsailing her in a way that seemed almost to savor of wizardry.
"I swear I can see the hangman's knot in her halyard," Gleazen
cried, and roundly braced his oath. "Never before did I feel such an
itching on my neck."
At that Gideon North sternly said, "If she's a government vessel,
gentlemen, I can assure you that we will not run from her. We have
committed no crime; we carry no contraband. It is not government
vessels I fear."
"There's reason in that, too!" Gleazen muttered. "Yes, I'd as soon
swing, as go over the side with my throat slit." Then, caustically,
he added, "No! Oh, no! We've no contraband, you say. So we haven't.
But we have enough water-casks for three hundred men, and lumber for
extra decks, and shackles and nigger food."
Gideon North flamed red and started to respond angrily; but
Matterson, with a sly smile, turned the argument off by saying
lightly, "If she's the Shark she's sailing under false colors. See!
She's broken out the flag of Spain."
"Humph," Captain North grunted, "she's a trader at best--"
"In either case, Captain North, she is outsailing us, for all our
Baltimore bow and grand spread of canvas," Matterson interposed.
"But never fear, Captain North, Gleazen and I have a way with us. We
have no wish to meet with any ships of war, but from mere pirates
and slavers we are not, I beg to assure you, in any great danger."
"Humph! The devil looks well after his own."
"The devil," Matterson retorted with an ironical smile, "is not so
bad a master as some men would make him out to be."
Leaning on the rail, we silently watched the swift, strange
schooner. Above the horizon, so perfectly did the bright canvas with
the sun upon it blend into the background of sky, we could see only
the black shadows that appeared on the sails just abaft the masts
and stays; but her hull made a clean, bright line against the vivid
blue of the sea, and against that same blue the foot of her mainsail
stood out as sharp and white as if cut from bone. She continued to
gain on us surely all that afternoon, but our apprehensions, which
grew keener as she drew nearer, were allayed when she stood out to
sea and gave us as wide a berth as we desired. She was a rarely
beautiful sight, when, in the early evening, still far out at sea,
she passed us; and remembering the Merry Jack and Eleanor in Havana
harbor, I could not bear to think that so graceful a craft might
carry sordid sights and smells.
After a time, as the light changed, her sails turned to a slate-gray
touched with dull blue, and with a great blotch of purple shadow
down the middle, where mainsail merged into staysail and foresail,
and foresail into jib. So grim, now, did she appear in the gathering
darkness, that I could have believed almost anything of her. And now
she was gone! Lost to sight! Vanished into the distant, almost
uncharted waters of the great gulf! Only the memory of her marvelous
swiftness and of the changing light on her sails was left to
us--that and the memory of one more angry encounter with Gleazen and
Matterson.
That night, while we lay in those long slow seas which roll in upon
the African coast, the two spent hours by the taffrail in low-voiced
conversation, and Gideon North sat below over his charts and papers,
and Arnold and I strolled about the deck, arm in arm, talking of one
project and another. But my uncle, Seth Upham, the man who owned the
Adventure, paced the deck alone in the moonlight, now with his head
bent as if under the weight of a heavy burden, now with his head
erect and with an air of what seemed at some moments wild defiance.
An odor of tobacco drifted back to us on the wind from where the
carpenter and the sailmaker were smoking together, and we heard the
voices of men in the forecastle.
When, at daybreak, we resumed our course up the coast, we knew that
we were near the end of our journey, for Gleazen and Matterson were
constantly conferring together and with Gideon North; and a dozen
times in two hours, one or the other of them charged the masthead
man to keep a smart lookout.
Now Gleazen would lean his elbows on the rail and search the
horizon; now he would hand the glass to Matterson and stride the
deck in a fury of impatience. Below, the log-book lay open on the
cabin table at a blank page, on which there was a rough
pencil-sketch of coast and a river and an island. On a chart, which
lay half open across a chair, someone had drawn a circle with a pair
of compasses, half on land and half on sea; and when Arnold silently
drew my attention to it, I saw that in the circle someone had
penciled the same sketch that I had seen on the blank page of the
log-book.
Coast, river, and island! We studied the sketch in silence and
talked of it afterward.
That evening, for the first time in many hours, we came on Captain
North alone by the rail.
"Someone has drawn an island on the chart," said Arnold, slowly.
Gideon North growled assent.
"Well?" said Arnold.
"It would seem that the blithering idiots don't know its bearings
within a hundred miles, and yet they expect me to bring it straight
aboard. One says thus and so; t'other says so and thus. Gleazen
talked loudest and I took his word first--like a fool, for he's no
navigator. I'd not put such foolishness beyond Seth Upham, but the
others ought to know better. Aye! And they do know better."
"What island?" I demanded.
He shot a keen glance at me.
"Hm! Have they said naught to you?"
"Not a word."
Arnold was smiling.
"Nor to you?" Gideon North demanded, seeing him smile.
"Nor to me."
"Then," said he, "you two know less than I, and I know little
enough."
"If you know more than we, pray tell us what you can?"
"After all," said he, "I only know that we are looking for an
island, and that when we find it the deviltry is yet to begin--" He
smiled grimly. "We'll yet have a chance to see sparks fly from those
weapons Gleazen hung in the cabin. I hear he's a clever man at the
smallsword."
When he said that, Captain North looked at Arnold and me as if to
question us.
"Clever?" I replied. "Yes, he's clever, though--"
I then saw that Arnold was smiling. I remembered seeing him smile
when Gleazen and I were fencing on the green. I remembered his
saying that he had not been laughing at me. And now he was smiling
again!
I stammered with embarrassment and clumsily concluded, "But--but not
so very--perhaps not very clever."
In the waist I heard Gleazen call in a low voice, "Masthead! You
there, wake up!"
"Ay-ay, sir," came the man's reply.
"Not so loud," said Gleazen. "Have you seen no lights--no land?"
"No lights, sir, and no land but the coast yonder, which we've seen
these two days."
I could just make out that Gleazen was leaning on the bulwark and
staring into the northeast.
"Did you hear that?" Captain North asked in a whisper.
We both had heard it.
"I'm thinking," Captain North presently muttered, "that we're like
to see more land than will be good for us. Mark the sky to
westward."
It was banked with clouds.
The island, when we found it, which we did early next day, proved
to be low and flat and marshy. Behind it, exactly according to the
sketch in the log-book and on the chart, lay the mouth of a river.
On the mainland in each direction, as far as we could see, and on
the bar at the mouth of the river, and on the outer shore of the
island, which seemed to be in the nature of a delta, although with
deep water behind it where the flow of the river appeared to have
kept a Y-shaped channel open, a great surf broke with muffled roar;
and in the channel a ruffle of choppy waves indicated that stream
and tide combined to make a formidable current.
As we bore down on it, Gleazen and Matterson and Seth Upham drew
apart and stood smiling as they talked together in undertones. But
Captain North and Mr. Severance and some of the older sailors were
studying sky and wind and currents, and their frowns indicated that
much was amiss.
To me, watching Gleazen and Matterson, it seemed strange that men
who but a little while ago had been so fiercely eager should all at
once become as subdued as deacons before the communion table; and it
was only when I edged around until I could see Gleazen's face that I
suspected the wild glee that the man was restraining. The light in
his eyes and the change in his expression so fascinated me that for
the moment I almost forgot Arnold Lamont and Gideon North and the
alliance that bound us together, almost forgot my poor uncle and his
wild hopes, almost forgot the very island whose low and sedgy shores
we were approaching.
"Gentlemen," cried Captain North,--his voice startled me as much as
those whom he addressed,--"would you wreck this vessel by keeping me
here on a lee shore with heaven only knows what weather brewing?
Look for yourselves at those clouds in the southwest. If this
harbor, of which you were talking yesterday, is within fifty miles
of us, we must run for it. If not, we must stand off shore and
prepare to ride out the storm."
"The harbor, Captain North," Matterson returned, his light voice
hard with antagonism, "is much less than fifty miles from here. You
will lay by for one hour while we go ashore on that island yonder;
then I will pilot you to harbor."
"_Mister Matterson!_" said Captain North calmly, turning on the
giant of a man beside him, "are you mate or master?"
"Captain North," Matterson very quietly replied, "I am mate of this
vessel, and as mate I do not dictate. Have I not worked faithfully
and well on this voyage? Have I not carried out every order of
yours?"
It was true, for to the surprise of Gideon North and Arnold and
myself, he had made a first-class mate.
"But I also am a friend of the owner and as friend of the owner, I
spoke just now, forgetting my place as mate, I ask you to pardon
me."
In his words and his manner there was something so oily and
insincere that from the bottom of my heart I distrusted him, and so,
obviously enough, did Gideon North. But the man's sudden change of
front took the weapons, so to speak, out of the captain's hands; and
before he could reply Matterson said, "Mr. Upham, what are your
wishes in the matter?"
I looked first at my uncle, then I looked back at Matterson, and as
I looked at Matterson, I caught a glimpse over his shoulder of Neil
Gleazen, who was staring at Uncle Seth with a scowl on his brow and
with his lips moving. Turning again to my uncle, I once more saw on
his face, now so weak, the pathetically timid expression that I had
come to know so well.
"If there's no immediate danger--" he began.
"There's none at all!" Matterson and Gleazen cried with one voice.
"Then let us go ashore, say for merely half an hour."
Captain North, with a shrug as of resignation, put the trumpet to
his lips and gave orders that brought the brig into the wind with
sails ashiver.
"Come, lads," Gleazen cried to Arnold and me, "the more the
merrier."
So into the boat we climbed, and I for one was pleased to find that
Abe Guptil had an oar.
It was about half a mile from the brig to the island, and when we
reached it and hauled out the boat, I pushed ahead of the others.
Climbing from the edge of the water up the little incline at the
head of the beach, I saw first of all, on the farther shore a
quarter of a mile away, the ribs and broken planking of a wrecked
ship. Then, before I had taken another step, I saw some little
creature running through the grass and looked after it eagerly, to
discover what strange kind of animal would inhabit so barren and
remote an isle.
At first I saw only that the animal was long and gray. Then it came
out into plain sight, and I saw that it was a rat--an ordinary rat
such as I had seen by the hundreds in old barns and in old ships.
And how, I wondered, had an ordinary rat, such as might slink along
the wharves at Boston, come to live on that lonely island? Before an
answer occurred to me, I saw another running away in a different
direction, and another and another. I stopped short and looked about
me. Here, there, everywhere were rats. The island was peopled with
them. With big gray rats! Then I looked at the bones of that wrecked
ship, which stuck up out of the water, and knew that I had found the
answer to my question. They were rats from that ship; they had come
ashore when she was wrecked.
What they lived on, I never knew; but there they had flourished and
multiplied and formed in the midst of those blue seas a great rat
empire.
"Rats!" I heard Gleazen exclaim. "Pfaw! How I hate them!"
Throwing sticks ahead of him to drive away the lean, gray vermin, he
started across the marshy land toward the old wreck, and the rest of
us fell in behind him.
Of us all, Matterson showed the least repugnance for the multitude
of snaky little beasts that swarmed around us at a distance and
watched us with angry eyes as black as shoe buttons.
And now we came to the wreck and saw a sight that filled me with
horror. In the hold, into which we could look through holes between
the ribs and between the beams where the waves had torn away the
spar deck, there were five human skeletons chained by their
ankle-bones to the timbers. Yet, so far as there was any outward
sign, I was the only one to see the skeletons.
Matterson and Gleazen looked long and sadly at the old hulk, and
Gleazen finally said, "She's done for and gone, Molly. There's not a
thing left about her that's worth salving."
Matterson gloomily nodded. "Mr. Upham," said he, "we lost two
hundred prime niggers that night."
I turned away from them, as they stood there talking, and went back
to the boat. It would be good, I thought while I waited, to leave
the island forever.
Whatever the outcome of their talk may have been, the rising wind
presently brought them back to the boat in a hurry. We launched her,
and tumbled aboard, drenched from head to foot, and after a lively
struggle came up alee of the brig. It was plain that we must soon
seek shelter, for already the storm was blowing up and the waves
came charging down upon us in fierce, racing lines.
"Yonder island," Matterson was saying, at the same time marking a
diagram on the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other,
"yonder island is part of the delta of the Rio Polo. It runs so--and
so--and all but the island is washed away. You see, do you not,
gentlemen? If Captain North will run straight so,--northeast by
east, say,--holding his bearings by the angle of ripples where you
see the current veer, and when we are four cables' lengths from the
breakers give me the wheel, I will take her over the bar."
"Mr. Matterson--"
"The responsibility is mine, Captain North, by the owner's orders."
"Ah, Mr. Upham," said the captain, with a wry smile, "and is this
the kind of support you give me?"
Not one word did my uncle say.
* * * * *
I had seen Pedro's monkey for a while playfully swinging from rope
to rope and later scratching its ear as it sat on the companion
hatch; but I had not seen it go below, nor had any of the others. To
this day no one knows just how it evaded us, for it was forbidden
the cabin, and every man on board had orders to head it off if it
showed any inclination to go there. Yet the mischievous beast did
slip below, and for once succeeded in catching Willie MacDougald off
his guard.
Willie, it seems, had been engaged in the praiseworthy occupation of
spying on Neil Gleazen, and had one eye firmly fixed to the keyhole
of the cabin door when the monkey calmly jabbed teeth and claws into
the luckless boy's leg.
His yell startled every man on deck; but far more than it startled
us did it startle the man in the cabin, who had thought himself safe
from peeping eyes.
First we heard Willie yelling with all the power of his brazen
little throat; then the cabin door was flung open with a bang; then
suddenly Willie and the monkey literally flew out of the
companionway and alighted on deck.
The fall was short and neither was much hurt. But when each tried to
escape from the other, both started to run in the same direction and
Willie, tripping, fell on the monkey. At that, the monkey grabbed
Willie's head with its front claws, raked its hind claws across his
face, then snatching out two good handfuls of hair, fled
triumphantly aloft.
Gleazen burst out on deck at that very instant, and seeing nothing
of Willie who--luckily for him!--had fallen out of sight round the
corner of the cabin, started into the rigging, swearing to skin the
monkey alive.
Meanwhile Matterson was like to have died laughing at Willie
MacDougald,--and, indeed, so were the rest of us!--for between anger
and fear, and with half a dozen long scratches across his cheeks, he
was in a sad state of mind. I tell you, any ideas of his innocent
childhood that we may have entertained completely vanished before
the flood of oaths that the little wretch was pouring out, when
Gideon North collared him and sent him below with stinging ears.
And now, since all that takes so long to tell happened quickly, the
breakers were close aboard, when Gleazen, who had followed the
scapegrace monkey to the mizzen royal yard, roared in that great
voice of his:--
"Sail ho! By heaven, there's a cruiser in the offing."
He came down the rigging like a cat, bawling orders as he came, and
at the same time Gideon North was giving counter-orders. It seemed
for a moment that in that scene of confusion, which suddenly from
comedy had changed to the grimmest of grim earnest, we should go on
beam-ends into the surf.
Seas such as I had never dreamed of were breaking on the bar before
us. Overhead a storm was gathering. In the offing, it was reported,
there sailed a strange and hostile ship. And in the brig Adventure
there were contradictory orders and tangled ropes and men working at
cross purposes.
Say what you will against Matterson in most respects, in that
emergency he was the man who saved us. Throwing the helmsman from
the wheel so violently that he fell clean over the companion ladder
and down to the spar-deck, he seized the wheel and cried in a voice
as hard as steel, "Gleazen, be still! Be still, I say! Now, Captain
North, with head yards aback and after yards braced for the
starboard tack, we'll make it."
Captain North, with an able man at the wheel,--to pay the devil his
due,--gave orders in swift succession and the brig came back on her
course and rose to meet the breakers. How Matterson so surely and
confidently found the exact channel, I do not know. But this I do
know: he took the brig in through the breakers without the error of
as much as a hair's breadth, straight in along the channel, with
never a mark to guide him that I could see, except the belt of tidal
chop and the eddies of the intermingling currents, to the
comparative quiet of the mouth of a river that led away before us
into the mazes of vast swamps and tangled waterways, where mangroves
and huge interweaving, overhanging vines and sickly sweet flowers
grew in all the riotous luxury of tropical vegetation.
To me the calm river seemed an amazing haven from every danger that
we had encountered outside. But not so to Matterson.
Looking back at the thundering breakers, he thoughtfully shook his
head.
"Well," said Gleazen significantly, "if worst comes to worst, we can
fight."
"If worst comes to worst."
"Well?"
Matterson shook himself like a dog. "It's the niggers," he said in a
low voice. "If them infernal witch doctors get wind of us!"
Gleazen stared a long time into the mangroves.
"It ain't as if we could take an army," Matterson continued. "We've
got to take only them we _know_--_know_, mind you. What'd our lives
be worth if all these here--" he waved his hand at the crew
forward--"if all these here knew. It would pay 'em well to knock us
on the head."
Still Gleazen stared silently into the tangled swamp.
"It would pay 'em well," Matterson repeated.
CHAPTER XVI
STRANGEST OF ALL
Even had I not suspected already that Matterson had brought vessels
into the mouth of that river many times before, I could not have
doubted it after seeing him bring the Adventure through the narrow
channel across the bar, and up to the mouth of the river itself. I
marveled that, having been more than a year away from it,--how much
more than a year I did not know,--he dared even attempt the passage.
But whatever his faults, indecision and fear were not among them,
and he had justified his bold course by bringing us safely within
the sheltering bar, where the lookouts reported minute by minute
every movement of the suspicious distant sail, which approached
until from the deck we could see her courses, and then wore ship to
haul off shore before the storm caught her.
"Bah! The cruising curs!" Matterson scornfully exclaimed. "Captain
North, shall I continue to serve as pilot and take the brig up the
river?"
"Since up the river it seems we are to go," Captain North returned
stiffly, "I place the helm and all responsibility in your hands, Mr.
Matterson." With that he folded his arms and, with a nod to Seth
Upham, withdrew to the weather-rail.
My poor uncle!
Never was there merer figurehead than he as owner of the brig
Adventure. It was pathetic to see him try to maintain his dignity
and speak and answer smartly, even sharply as of old, when every man
on board knew that if that reckless, high-handed pair, Gleazen and
Matterson were at any time to cease tolerating him, his life would
be worth no more than the flame of a snuffed candle. He must have
been perfectly well aware of the weak part he had played, yet he
held up his head and boldly returned Gideon North's glance and nod.
Meanwhile Matterson had climbed to the masthead and with glass at
eye was studying the stranger. Now he came slowly down again, and
said to Gleazen, "She's bearing off in good faith to ride out the
storm, Neil. What say? Shall we anchor here behind the bar?"
Gleazen shook his head.
"There's fair shelter," Matterson persisted.
Gleazen waved his hand at the black sky. "But not shelter enough,"
he said.
"If we go up the river," said Matterson in a low voice, "the news
will spread from here to the hills."
Gleazen smiled unpleasantly. "Look off the larboard bow," he said.
We all turned, as did Matterson, and I for one, at first, saw
nothing except the vines and great trees on which fell the shadows
of the premature twilight that foreran the storm. But Matterson
cried out, and Arnold Lamont, seeing my blank expression, touched my
arm and pointed at a dark lane of water and said, "See--there--there!"
Then I saw something moving, and made out a canoe. In the canoe was
a big black negro, with round eyes and flat nose and huge,
puffed-out lips. The negro was paddling. Then I saw something else.
I could not believe my eyes. I turned to the others, and knew by
their faces that they and Arnold had seen it, too, and that Seth
Upham had not.
Then Gleazen, who was looking hard at Matterson, said with an oath,
"The beer is spilt. It's up the river for us."
And Matterson nodded.
In that canoe, which had already swiftly and silently disappeared
among the mangroves, I had seen a white girl.
I cannot describe her to you now as she then appeared in the canoe,
sitting in front of the great, black canoeman. It was long ago, and
even at the time I was so startled, so amazed, that I saw only her
white face and great dark eyes looking out at me from the shadowy
recesses of the swamp.
I felt as if I had been set down suddenly in the midst of a fairy
story. I strove against a sense of mystery and danger, a thousand
vague terrors.
I cannot tell you what the girl looked like; yet, though I seem to
deal in contradictions, I have never forgotten that white frightened
face and those dark eyes, which had disappeared as mysteriously as
they had come.
Then, as the sails filled and the Adventure fell off and got
steerage-way and slipped up the great, swift river, Matterson spun
the wheel with his own hands this way and that.
At first the shores were low and sedgy and covered deeply with
mangroves; but soon the river widened into a vast mirror, in which
we saw reflected towering trees of numberless varieties, with a
trailing network of vines and flowers, and from among the leaves,
which were unbelievably large, spears of bamboo and cane protruded.
As the wind at our backs drove us slowly up stream, notwithstanding
the swifter current where we passed through the narrows, we saw
plantains, bananas, oranges, lemons, and tall palms. Then between
the trunks we saw fields of rice; and then, as we turned a bend
where the river once more widened, we saw a settlement before us.
In the centre of a clearing stood low houses built of cane and
thatched with grass, mud huts grouped here and there, and a large
enclosure for some purpose of which I was ignorant. Could the girl
I had seen in the swamp have come thither? On all sides people were
running this way and that, some of them white, but most of them as
black as midnight. So small did the settlement appear, and so
sharply was each figure outlined, that it looked for all the world
like a toy village in a shop window, or like such a tiny model of a
foreign town as sailors sometimes bring home from distant ports.
As the anchor gripped the bed of the river, and the men, spraddling
out on the footropes and leaning over the yards, clewed up the sails
and hauled in the great folds of canvas, the Adventure brought up on
her cable and lay with her head into the current.
Matterson and Gleazen who had ordered a boat launched and were
standing in the gangway, now turned and called to Uncle Seth, who
responded by walking toward them with as haughty a manner as if he
were heart and soul in their councils and their plans. All three of
them got into the boat and there talked for a while in undertones.
Then they called Willie MacDougald to come tumbling after them, and
all together they hastily went ashore, where I saw that a crowd had
gathered to meet them; then the storm, which had so long been
threatening, broke with a roar of wind and rain, and Arnold and I,
going below, had the cabin for a time to ourselves.
Arnold sat down by the cabin table and looked around at ports and
doors, and at the dueling swords on the bulkhead, and up at the
skylight on which the storm was fiercely beating.
"You, too," he said, with a quiet smile, "you, too, Joe, look around
at the cabin of this good brig. It has not been a pleasant place to
live, but I do believe there are times coming when we shall wish
ourselves back again in this very spot."
"And what have you learned now of our friends' plans?" I asked.
"One does not have to learn so much, Joe."
"But what?"
Arnold, I knew, was smiling at my impatience, although the light was
so nearly gone that I saw him, when he bent forward, only as a
deeper shadow in the darkness. Yet the ports and the skylight still
were clear enough to be reflected in his eyes when he leaned very
close to me, and whatever his doubts, I saw that he showed no sign
of fear.
"They talked yesterday and to-day--in Spanish--of the men they call
Bud and Bull, who share the secret that has brought us all the way
from Top--Hark!"
Arnold half rose. I myself heard a soft step. When Arnold lifted his
hand I saw his knife, now drawn, so far as I knew, for the first
time in apprehension of treachery. Then the step--so soft and
low--sounded again. I reached for my own pistol. The sound was
repeated yet again. It was just outside the door. Then into the
cabin crept a low ambling creature, which we both knew at once must
be Pedro's monkey.
Arnold laughed quietly and sat down again and breathed deeply.
"They have discovered--something," he whispered, as if we had
suffered no interruption.
"That I know well," I said. "But what?" I believed that I, too, had
ferreted out the secret, but I was not yet willing to hazard my
surmises.
"Sh!" He raised his hand to warn me. "Do you not guess?" he
whispered. "Try! Until they have got what they have found to the
sea, you and I are safe. They must have men to help them who will
not turn and rob them. They do not believe in the saying about honor
among thieves."
"Come," I cried, "stop speaking in riddles. Tell me!" Then, thinking
of Cornelius Gleazen as I first had seen him, with the rings
flashing on his fingers, I popped out a word that began with D.
Arnold smiled and nodded.
"Well," I returned, "speak up and tell me if such a voyage as we
have come upon is not a far-fetched manner of approaching such an
errand as you have described."
"In a sense, yes. In a sense, no. They are after other things, too.
This good vessel, as we have remarked before, is well found for the
trade."
Suddenly, he gave me a start by beginning to whistle a lively tune
and to drum on the table. His quick ear had detected another step in
the companionway. As the step drew near, the monkey, which in our
absorption we had quite forgotten, pattered toward the door and
slipped out.
"What's that? Who's here? Who passed me then?" It was Captain North.
Arnold struck a spark into tinder and lighted a candle.
"And what, pray, are you two doing here in the dark?" the captain
demanded.
"We are passing time with talk of our good friends, Gleazen and
Matterson," said Arnold.
With an angry exclamation, Captain North took the chair opposite us.
"Well," said he, "matters have turned out as any sane man might have
known they would. That precious little scamp of a cabin boy will
tell you no more tales, Lamont."
"You mean--"
"I'll wager half my wages for the voyage that you and I have seen
the last of him. The monkey betrayed the little scamp after all."
Although I knew that Willie MacDougald's innocent and childlike face
masked a scheming, rascally mind, I could not so calmly see the
little fellow go, soul and body, into the power of such men as
Gleazen and Matterson, or perhaps worse; and although neither Arnold
nor Gideon North, appraising Willie at his true worth, cared a straw
what became of him, I was so troubled by his probable fate that I
did not listen to the others, who were talking coolly enough about
our own predicament, but, instead, got up and walked around the
cabin.
It seemed very strange to listen to the roaring wind and driving
rain and yet feel the brig lying quiet underfoot in the strong, deep
current of the river. Now I sat down and listened to a few sentences
of their talk; now I got up and once more paced the cabin. For a
while I thought about Willie MacDougald; then I thought of the
dangers that surrounded us all, and of poor Uncle Seth, once so bold
and arrogant, now become little better than a cowardly, pitiful
wretch; then I thought of the girl I had seen in the jungle, and
strangely enough the memory of her face seemed at once to quiet my
wilder fancies and to enable me to think more clearly than before.
Becoming aware at last that the storm was passing, I went on deck
and saw lights in the clearing where the houses stood. The wind,
which had come upon us so suddenly and so fiercely, was subsiding as
suddenly as it had arisen, and a deep calm pervaded river, clearing,
and jungle. I had not waited ten minutes before I heard the boat on
the water.
"I swear," I heard Gleazen say in an angry, excited voice, "I swear
they're lying to us. Bud'll tell us. News travels fast hereabouts.
Bud'll be here soon."
They came on board, one at a time, all but Willie MacDougald. Of him
there was neither sign nor word. I started forward to question them,
then stopped short. Something in their attitude froze and repelled
me. Of what use were questions--then, at any rate? For a moment
they waited in the gangway, then, all together, they went aft.
Leaving them and moving to the farther side of the brig, I looked a
long time into the dark, tangled jungle. The clouds had gone and the
stars had come out and the dying wind spoke only in slow, distant
soughs among the leaves. So blackly repellent was the matted and
decaying vegetation, through which dark veins of stagnant water ran,
and so grimly silent, that I could not keep from shuddering with a
sort of childish horror. Surely, I thought, human beings could not
penetrate such depths. Then, almost with my thought, there came
across the dark and fever-laden waters of the great swamp, out of
the black jungle night, a thread of golden melody. Someone in that
very jungle was whistling sweetly an old and plaintive tune.
I heard the three, Gleazen, Matterson, and my uncle, turn to listen.
By lantern light I saw their faces as they looked intently toward
the jungle. So still had the brig now become, that I actually heard
them breath more quickly.
Then Neil Gleazen cried, "By the Holy, that's either Bud O'Hara or
his ghost."
With both hands cupped round his mouth, he was about to send a
hoarse reply roaring back across the river, when Matterson clutched
his hand.
"Be still," he whispered. "Here's the answer."
And he, in turn, sent back the answering phrase of that singularly
mournful and haunting ballad: "I Lost my Love in the Nightingale."
CHAPTER XVII
THE MAN FROM THE JUNGLE
Very slowly Matterson whistled that old tune, "The Nightingale," and
very slowly an answer came back to us; then a long silence ensued.
The black water of the marsh rose and fell. We could hear it
whispering softly as it washed against the tangled roots of the
mangroves, and once in a while I could distinguish the long, faint
rasp of some branch or vine that dragged across another. But except
for those small noises, the place was as still as a house of death;
and as we watched and waited, the feeling grew upon me that we must
be in the midst of a dream.
Then something moved and caught my eye, and a canoe silently shot
out upon the river. With a swish and swirl of paddles, she came
alongside us and stayed for a moment, like a dragon-fly pausing in
its flight, then shot silently back the way she had come. I had seen
against the water that there were three men in the canoe when she
came; but when she slipped back into the mangroves, I saw that there
were only two.
Before I had time to question the reason of all this, I saw a man's
head rise above the bulwark and knew that he had sprung from the
canoe to the chains while the little craft so briefly paused.
Climbing over the bulwark and dropping to the deck, the man said in
low, cautious voice, "Is it Neil I've been hearing? And Molly?"
"Here we be, Bud, us two and Seth Upham."
"And sure, do this fine vessel be ours, Neil?"
"Ours she is, along with Seth Upham. Come, Bud, here is Mr. Upham,
who has joined in with us and gets a half-and-half lay, and here--"
"O Neil," the mysterious newcomer drawled, "would he be comin' for
naught short of half shares? And where's Molly? Ah, Molly, you've
been long away."
They all were shaking hands together.
"And now," said Matterson, "what news of Bull?"
"Of Bull, is it?" the man replied. "Sure, he's sitting on the chest
o' treasure. Warnings they give us, that the hill is haunted and all
such. Spirits, you know, Neil; spirits, Molly. Sure the niggers know
more about them things than we do--indeed they do. It's not I would
go agin them rashly. But I fixed 'em, lads."
"How?" asked Matterson softly.
"Bull laughed at them fit to kill,--which is his way, as you'll
remember,--but not I. Says I, 'Laugh if you will; 't is well to be
fearless since you're the one to stay.' But I did for him better
than the stiff-necked rascal would do for himself. That night I
hunted me out an old master wizard and paid him in gold, and didn't
he give me a charm that will keep spirits away?"
To hear a sober white man talk of charms with all the faith of a
credulous child amazed me. I had never dreamed there could be such a
man. Pressing closer, I took a good look at this queer stranger, and
saw him to be a short, broad fellow, with a square jaw and a face so
intelligent that my amazement became even greater.
He, in turn, saw me looking at him, and half in a drawl, half in a
brogue, asked, "Now who'll this one be?"
"He's the young man that came with Mr. Upham," Gleazen replied.
"Is he fearless?" asked the strange Bud. "And is he honest?--Aye,"
he rather testily added, "and is he, too, to share half-and-half?"
To that Gleazen returned no answer, but the man's tone made me think
of Gleazen himself roaring drunk and staggering away from Higgleby's
barn, of Matterson with his voice hardened to a cutting edge, of the
master of the Merry Jack and Eleanor, and of the adventurous night
when we parted from poor Sim Muzzy. I tell you honestly, I would
have given every cent I had in the world and every chance I had of
fortune to have been fifteen hundred leagues away.
Turning to Matterson, the man went on: "'T is not discreet for the
like o' you two to come sailing in by broad daylight with all sail
set. Now why couldn't ye ha' come in a boat, say, and let the brig
lie off the coast. Then we could 'a' met secret-like and 'a' got
away and up the river with no one the wiser. Sure, and there's not a
soul in a thousand miles, now, that ain't heard a tale o' Neil and
Molly."
"The storm was hard upon us," said Matterson.
"And a cruiser lay in the offing," said Gleazen.
"It would be possible, then," the man returned, "that ye're not as
big--not _quite_ as big fools as I took ye to be."
Then, as if all had been arranged beforehand, while Matterson and
the strange man and Uncle Seth went below to the cabin, Gleazen took
me by the arm and led me away from the others.
"Joe," he murmured,--and I saw a new, eager glint in his
eyes,--"Joe, there's great times coming. I've made up my mind I can
trust you, Joe, and I'm going to make you my lieutenant. Yes, sir,
I'm going to make you an officer."
I wondered what kind of story he would tell next, for by this time I
knew him far too intimately to be deceived by his brazen flattery.
It was singularly trying for me, man grown that I was, to be treated
with an air of patronage that a stripling would have resented, and
there were moments when I was like to have turned on Gleazen with a
vengeance. But I waited my time. It was not hard to see that my
patience need not endure interminably.
"You, Joe, are one of us," he continued, "and we're glad to take you
into our confidence. But these others--" he waved his hand
generally--"we can't have 'em know too much. Now we're going
to-night to get things sized up and ready, and what I want to know,
Joe, is this: will you--as my lieutenant, you understand--take
Arnold and Mr. Severance and Captain North ashore to call on Mr.
Parmenter?"
"But who," I asked, "is Mr. Parmenter?"
"He's an Englishman, Joe, and if you can sort of convey to him--you
know what I mean--that we're after hides and ivory, purely a matter
of trade, it'll be a good thing, Joe. Mind you, as my lieutenant,
Joe."
Never had I been so _Joe'd_ in all my life before. When Gleazen had
gone, I fairly snorted at my sudden and easy honors. Evidently he
told much the same story to the others, except Captain North, with
whom Gleazen himself very well knew that such a flimsy yarn was not
likely to prevail, and to whom Uncle Seth, accordingly, entrusted
some genuine business; and half an hour later we gathered at the
rail to go ashore.
"Now, then," Captain North said peremptorily, in such a way that I
knew he was entirely unaware of my recent appointment as Gleazen's
lieutenant, "now then, lads, into the boat all hands together."
"One moment!" I cried. "I forgot something." And with that I ran
back.
In changing my jacket in honor of the call we were to make, I had
left my pistol behind me. Of no mind to put off without it, I
hurried down to my stateroom.
Passing through the cabin, I saw that the four men, Gleazen,
Matterson, the strange Bud, and my uncle, were drawing up around the
great table, on which they had carelessly thrown a pack of cards.
They gave me frowns and hard looks as I passed, and I heard them
muttering among themselves at the interruption; but with scarcely a
thought of what they said, I left them to their game.
No sooner had our boat crunched on the shore than on all sides black
figures appeared from the darkness, and landing, we found ourselves
surrounded by negroes, who pressed upon us until we fairly had to
thrust them back with oars. It was the first time I had set foot on
the continent of Africa, and the place and the people and the
circumstances were all, to my New England apprehension, so
extraordinary and so alarming that I cast a reluctant glance back at
the dim lights of the Adventure. But now a door opened, and I saw in
the bright rectangle a white man in European clothes; and we went up
and shook his hand,--which seemed for some reason to displease him,
although he did not actually refuse it,--and were ushered into a
large room with a board floor and chairs and tables and pictures,
for all the world as if it were a regular house.
"Under some circumstances I should no doubt be glad to meet you,
gentlemen," he said, with cold reserve, "for no ship has visited us
for more than three months. But we hereabouts are not friendly to
slavers."
"Nor are we," Gideon North retorted.
"I think, sir," said Arnold Lamont, soberly and precisely, "that you
mistake our errand."
He looked at us a long time without saying more, then he quietly
remarked, "I hope so."
His cold, measured words repelled us and set us at an infinite
distance from him.
We looked at one another and then at him, and he in turn studied us.
We four--for Mr. Severance had accompanied us, although as usual he
scarcely opened his mouth--saw a man whose iron-gray hair indicated
that he was a little beyond middle age. The lamp that burned beside
him revealed a strong, rather sad face; the book at his elbow was a
Bible. It came to me suddenly that he was a missionary.
"You give us chill welcome, sir," said Gideon North. "What, then,
will you have us do to prove that we are not what you believe us?"
"Your leaders who were here a little while ago," our host replied,
"tried their best to prove it--and failed. Indeed, had I not seen
them, I should more readily believe you. It is not the first time
that I have seen some of them, you must remember."
Gideon North bit his lip. "Have you considered," he asked, "that we
may not be in accord with them?"
"A man must be known by the company he keeps."
"We are in _neither_ sympathy nor accord with them."
"It is a virtue, sir, no matter what your circumstances, to be at
least loyal to your associates. If you so glibly repudiate your
friends, on what grounds should a stranger trust you?"
At that Gideon North got up all hot with temper. "Sir," he cried, "I
will not stay to be insulted."
"Sir," the man returned, "I have insulted, and would insult, no
one."
"Of that, sir," Gideon North responded, "I will be my own judge."
"Captain North," said Arnold, "have patience. One moment and we--"
Turning in the door, which he had reached in two strides, our
captain cried hotly, "Come, men, come! I tell you, come!"
Mr. Severance followed him in silence; Arnold stepped forward as if
to restrain him, and I, left for a moment with the missionary,
turned and faced him with all the dignity of which I was master.
"I am sorry that you think so ill of us," I said.
"I am sorry," he replied, "to see a youth with an honest face in
such a band as that."
I could think of no response and was about to turn and go, when I
suddenly remembered our lost cabin boy.
"Can you, in any case," I asked, "tell me what has become of our
cabin boy, Willie MacDougald?"
"Of whom?"
"Of Willie MacDougald--the little fellow that came ashore to-day?"
"Did he not return to the brig?"
"No."
The man stepped forward.
"No," I repeated, "I have not seen him since."
"Then," he returned, "you are not likely ever to see him again."
"What do you mean?" I demanded. "What has happened? Where is he?"
Getting no answer, I looked around the room at the chairs and tables
and pictures,--they had an air of comfort that made me miserably
homesick,--and at the well-trimmed lamp from which the light fell on
the Bible. Then I turned and went out into the darkness.
What had befallen that hardened little wretch? Where under the
canopy of heaven could he be? I cared little enough for the mere
fate of Willie MacDougald; but as a new indication of the extremes
to which Matterson and Gleazen would go, his disappearance came at a
time that made it singularly ominous.
As I stood, thus pondering, on the rough porch from which I was
about to step down and stride into the darkness, where I could make
out the figures of negroes of all ages moving restlessly just beyond
the light that shone from the windows, I received such a start as
seldom has come to me. A hand touched my arm so quietly that for a
moment I nearly had an illusion that that miserable little sinner,
Willie MacDougald, had returned from the next world to haunt me in
this one; a low voice said in my ear, "Stay here with us."
I turned. Just beside me stood the girl whom I had seen in the
canoe.
"Stay here," she repeated. "They have gone."
I stammered and tried to speak, and for the first time in my life I
found that my tongue was tied.
A step rustled in the grass just under the porch; something touched
the floor beside my foot; then a huge black hand brushed gently over
my shoe and up my leg, and a black, grotesque face, with rolling
eyes and round, slightly parted lips, looked up at me, so close to
my hand that unconsciously I snatched it away lest it be bitten.
Startled nearly out of my wits by this amazing apparition, I gave a
leap backward and crashed against the wall, at which the absurd
negro uttered a shrill whistle of surprise.
The girl tossed her head and stamped her foot, and spoke to the
negro in a low voice, which yet was clear enough and sharp enough to
send him without a sound into the darkness.
For a moment the lights from the window shone full upon her, and I
saw that she was proud as well as comely, and spirited as well as
generous. The toss and the stamp showed it; the quick, precise voice
confirmed it; and withal there was a twinkle of kindliness in her
eyes that would have stormed the heart of a far more sophisticated
youth than I. Such spirit is little, if at all, less fascinating to
a young man than beauty; and when spirit and beauty go hand in hand,
he must be a crabbed old bachelor indeed who can withstand the pair.
Whatever my theories of life, as I had long since revealed them to
Arnold Lamont, I was no Stoic; and though at the time I was too
excited to be fully aware of it, I thereupon fell, to the crown of
my head, in love.
As the negro vanished, she turned on me with that same, queenly lift
of her head.
"Well, sir, will you stay?"
"Why should I stay?" I managed at last to ask.
She looked me straight in the eye, "You're not of their kind," she
replied. "Father himself thinks that."
For the moment I was confused, and thought only of Arnold and Gideon
North.
"You and he are wrong," I stiffly responded. "I _am_ their kind, and
I am proud to be their kind."
"Oh," she said, "oh! I beg your pardon."
A hurt look appeared in her eyes and she stepped back and turned
away.
All at once I remembered that she had never seen Arnold and Gideon
North; that she had not meant them at all; that she had meant
Gleazen and Matterson. It was at the tip of my tongue to cry out to
her, to call her back, to tell her the whole truth about our party
on board the brig Adventure. I had drawn the very breath to speak,
when Gideon North's voice summoned me from the darkness:
"Joe, Joe Woods! Where are you?"
"Here I am," I cried. "I am coming." Then, when I turned to speak to
the girl, I saw that she had gone.
I stepped off the porch, tripped, stumbled to my knees, got up
again, and strode so recklessly down through the dark to the river
that, before I knew I had reached it, I was ankle-deep in water.
"Well, my man," cried Gideon North, "you seem to be in a hurry now,
though you were long enough starting."
Without a word, I got into the boat and took off my shoes and poured
out the water. It irritated me to see Arnold looking at me keenly
and yet with gentle amusement. I had come to have no small respect
for Arnold's unusual insight.
All the way back to the brig my head was in such a whirl that, for
the first time in my waking moments since we left Cuba, I completely
forgot the one fundamental object for which we three were working,
to save as far as possible poor Seth Upham and his property from the
hands of Cornelius Gleazen and his fellows. Instead I kept hearing
the voice that had said, "You're not of their kind," kept seeing the
face that I had seen there in the dim light--not at all clearly, yet
clearly enough to see that it had a sweet dignity and that it was
good to look upon.
The boat bumping against the brig woke me from my dreams. Scrambling
aboard, I left my shoes in the galley to dry by the stove and ran
aft in my stocking feet, and down below. In my eagerness to get dry
shoes and stockings I quite outstripped the others, who were
loitering in the gangway.
It was with no thought or intention of surprising the four men in
the cabin that I burst in upon them on my way to my own stateroom.
They had pushed cards and chips to one side of the table and had
gathered closely round it. In the centre, where their four heads
almost met, was a handful of rough stones, which for all I knew
might have been quartz.
That I had done anything to anger them, when I came down so
unceremoniously, I was entirely unaware; but O'Hara, the newcomer,
sweeping the stones together with a curse, covered them with his
hands; Gleazen faced about and angrily stared at my stockinged feet;
and Matterson, rising in fury, snarled through his teeth, "You
sniveling, sneaking, prying son of a skulking sea-cook, I swear I'll
have your heart's blood!"
Before I could turn, the man dived at me straight across the table.
I raised my hands to fend him off, with the intention of shoving his
head into the floor and planting my feet on the back of his neck;
stepped back, tripped and fell. I saw Gleazen lift a chair to bring
it down on my head--even then I thought of the irony of my being his
"lieutenant"! I saw that wild Irishman, Bud O'Hara, laughing like a
fiend at my plight. Then I flung up my feet to receive the blow, and
seizing the legs of the chair, twisted it over between Matterson and
myself, and got up on my knees. Then in came the others.
Spinning on his heel, Matterson, his jaw out-thrust, stood squarely
in the path of Gideon North.
"You are hasty," I said. "I came in to get my shoes."
"Ah," said Bud O'Hara, in biting sarcasm, "and then 't was in the
eyes of us that you was looking for trouble."
"It was, indeed," I retorted.
"And perhaps you didn't see what was going on," he persisted.
"I did not," I replied, not knowing what he meant.
They looked doubtfully at one another, and then at me, and presently
Gleazen said, "Then we're sorry we used you rough, Joe."
Meanwhile, I now perceived, the handful of stones had disappeared.
All this time my uncle had sat in his chair, looking like a man in a
nightmare, and had raised neither hand nor voice to help me. In a
way, so amazing was his silence, it seemed almost as if he himself
had struck me. I could scarcely believe it of him. When I looked at
him in mingled wonder and grief, his eyes fell and he slightly
moistened his lips.
CHAPTER XVIII
A WARNING DEFIED
The brig Adventure, two thousand miles from home, lay now in the
strong, silent current of a great tropical river, which seemed to me
to have an almost human quality. In its depth and strength and
silence, it was like a determined, taciturn man. I felt keenly its
subtle fascination; I delighted to picture in my mind its course all
the way from the mysterious hills far inland, of which Pedro and
Gleazen and Matterson told stories filled with trade and slaves and
stirring incidents, down to the low, marshy shore, which had already
cast a spell upon me.
For months since that fearful night when we five fled from Topham,
Arnold and Gideon North and I had been holding ourselves ready at
every moment to stand up against Gleazen and Matterson and meet them
man to man in behalf of my poor, deluded uncle, who now would go
slinking about the deck, now would make a pitiful show of his old
pompous, dictatorial manner. But when I burst in upon them in the
cabin, there had been that in their manner, even after their anger
spent itself, which told me more plainly than harshest words that
the time for action had come very near.
To Arnold, when we were alone in our stateroom, I said, "What would
you think, were I to load my pistols afresh?"
He looked curiously at me.
"You think," said he, slowly, "that there is already need?"
"I do," I replied.
I felt a new confidence in myself and in my own judgment. I
regarded our situation calmly and with growing assurance. Although I
did not then realize it, I know now that I was crossing the
threshold between youth and manhood.
He gravely nodded.
"It is a wise precaution," he said at last, "although I prophesy
that they will use us further before the time comes when we must
fight for our lives."
So we both slept that night with new charges in the pistols by our
heads, and Arnold, very likely, as well as I, dreamed of the utterly
reckless, lawless men with whom we were associated. I question,
though, if Arnold thought as much as I of the stern man in the cane
house on the riverbank, or if he thought at all of the girl whose
white face and dark eyes I could not forget.
For another day we continued to lie in the river; but the brig, alow
and aloft, bustled with various activities. We sorted out firearms
on the cabin floor, and charts and maps on the cabin table, and on
the spar-deck we piled a large store of provisions. And in the
afternoon Matterson took Captain North in the quarter boat down to
the mouth of the river, and there taught him the bearings of the
channel.
Side by side Arnold and I watched all that went forward, here
lending a hand at whatever task came our way, there noting keenly
how the stores were arranged.
"Well, sir," said Arnold, quietly, when Captain North for a moment
stood beside us in preoccupied silence, "are we about to load a
cargo of Africans?"
"I assure you I'd like to know that," the captain replied, with one
of his quick glances.
Uncle Seth gave me an occasional curt word or sentence--he was in
one of his arrogant moods; Matterson talked to me vaguely and at
length of great times ahead; O'Hara watched me with hostile and
suspicious glances. And still Arnold and I, whenever occasion
offered, put our heads together and made what we could of the
various preparations. Our surmises, time showed, were not far wrong.
And all this while I had watched the clearing ashore and had seen
neither the missionary nor any other white man.
When, in the evening, all hands were ordered aft, we on the quarter
deck looked down and saw the men standing expectantly to hear
whatever was to be said. A thousand rumors had spread throughout the
vessel, and of what was really afoot they knew less, even, than
Arnold and I. There was Abe Guptil with his kindly face upturned,
Pedro with his monkey on his shoulder and what seemed to me a
devilish gleam in his eye, and all the rest. As they gathered close
under us, the light from the lanterns slung in the rigging revealed
every one of them to my curious gaze.
"Men," said Captain North, quietly, "Mr. Gleazen has asked me to
call you together. There are certain things that he wishes to tell
you."
As the grizzled old mariner stepped back, Cornelius Gleazen
advanced.
His beaver, donned for the occasion, was tilted over his eye as of
old; his diamonds flashed from finger and throat; he puffed great
clouds of smoke from his ever-present cigar.
"Lads," he cried in that voice which seemed always so fine and
hearty and honest, "lads, that there's no ordinary purpose in this
voyage, all of you, I make no doubt, have heard. Well, lads, you're
right about that. It is no ordinary purpose that has brought us all
the way from Boston. You've done good work for us so far, and if you
keep up the good work until the end of the voyage has brought us
home again to New England, we ain't going to forget you, lads. No,
sir! Not me and Mr. Matterson and Mr. O'Hara--oh, yes, and Mr.
Upham! We ain't going to forget you."
Reflectively he knocked the ash from his cigar. Leaning over the
rail, he said, as if taking all the men into his confidence, "All
you've got to do now, lads, is stand by. Captain North will take the
brig to sea for one week. There's a reason for that, lads, a good
reason. At the end of the week he will bring the brig up off the
mouth of the river, and some fine morning you'll wake up and find us
back again.
"Meanwhile, lads, we're going to make up a little party to go
exploring. Me and Mr. Matterson, Mr. O'Hara, Mr. Upham, and Pedro
and Sanchez are going. And we are going to take John Laughlin with
us, too. It's going to be a hard trip, lads, and you'll none of you
be sorry to miss it. Now, then, lay to and load this gear into the
boat. Be faithful to your work, and you'll be glad when you see what
we're going to do for you."
As he turned away, proud of his eloquence, there was a low rumble of
voices.
I looked first at Gleazen and Matterson and O'Hara; then I looked at
poor Seth Upham, once as proud and arrogant as any of them.
Remembering how in little ways he had been kind to me,--how, since
my mother died, his dry, hard affection had gone out to me, as if in
spite of him,--I pitied the man from the bottom of my heart. Surely,
I thought, he must not go alone into the wilds of Africa with such
men as were to make up Gleazen's party.
No one had spoken, except in undertones, since Gleazen; some one, I
thought, must speak promptly and firmly.
For a moment, as I looked at the hard faces of the men whom I must
oppose, my courage forsook me utterly; then the new confidence that
had been growing within me once more gave me command of myself.
Whatever should come of my effort, I was determined that my
mother's brother should have at least one honest man beside him. To
reason out all this had taken me the merest fraction of the time
that it takes to read it.
Stepping suddenly forward, I said in a voice so decided that it
surprised me as much as anyone, if not more:--
"Mr. Gleazen, I desire to go with you."
"And I," said Arnold Lamont.
"You young pup," Gleazen bellowed, "who are you to desire this or
desire that?"
"Then," said I, "I _will_ go with you."
"You will not," he retorted.
I saw out of the corner of my eye that Matterson and O'Hara were
looking at me keenly, but I never let my gaze veer from Gleazen's.
"Mr. Gleazen," I said boldly, "Arnold Lamont, Abe Guptil, and I are
going to take the places of Pedro, Sanchez, and John Laughlin."
He swore a round oath and stepped toward me with his fists clenched,
while the men below us fairly held their breath. In a fist fight the
man could have pounded me to a pulp, for he was half as heavy again
as I; but at the thought of poor Uncle Seth with all his property
tied up in that mad venture, with his happiness and his very life in
the absolute power of that band of godless reprobates, something
stronger than myself rose up within me. At that moment I verily
believe I could have faced the fires of hell without flinching.
Thinking of the old days when Uncle Seth and my mother and I had
been so happy together and of how kind he had been to me in his own
testy, abrupt, reserved way, I stepped out and shook my fist in
Gleazen's face.
Before he could say another word, I cried, "So help me, unless we
three go with you and those three stay, we'll keep Seth Upham back
and sail away in the Adventure and leave you here forever."
Never before could I have spoken thus lightly of what my uncle
should, or should not, do. The thought made me feel even more keenly
how helpless the poor man had become, and confirmed me in my
purpose.
It was on the tip of my tongue to add that Gideon North was to come,
too, but I thought of how essential it was that someone whom
we--Arnold and I--could trust should stand guard upon the brig, and
said nothing more, which probably was better, for my words seemed to
have struck home.
When I threatened to sail away with the Adventure, Gleazen glared at
me hard and murmured, with a respect and admiration in his voice
that surprised me, "You young cock, I didn't think you had it in
you."
Throwing overboard the butt of his cigar, which made a bright arc in
its flight through the darkness and fell into the water with a smart
hiss, he smiled to himself.
Matterson whispered to O'Hara, who touched Gleazen's arm. I thought
I heard him say, "Too honest to make trouble," as they drew apart
and conferred together, glancing now and then at my uncle; then
Gleazen nodded and said, "Very well, Joe"; and I knew that for once
I had come off victorious.
At least, I thought, we are strong enough to stand up for our rights
and Uncle Seth's.
The men quietly turned away and went forward, a little disappointed
that the trouble had blown past and the episode had come to naught.
But it had added one more issue to be fought out between Cornelius
Gleazen and myself; and though it was over, it was neither forgotten
nor forgiven.
I had gone into the waist, where I was watching the arms and
provisions that the men were loading into the boat we were to take,
when I heard a voice at my ear, "I guess--ha-ha!--you come back with
plenty nigger, hey?"
It was Pedro with his monkey riding on his shoulder. The beast
leered at me and clicked its teeth.
"No," I replied, "of that I am sure. We are not going after any such
cargo as that."
"I wonder," he responded. "I t'ink, hey, queer way to get nigger--no
barracoon--go in a boat. But dah plenty nigger food below. Plenty
lumber. Plenty chain'. What you get if not nigger?"
I said nothing.
"Maybe so--maybe not," Pedro muttered. His earrings tinkled as he
shook his head and moved away.
I was surprised to observe that for the moment all work had stopped.
Seeing that O'Hara was pointing into the swamp, I stepped over
beside him to ascertain what had caught his attention, but found the
darkness impenetrable.
"I'm telling ye, some one's there," O'Hara muttered with an oath.
I saw that Gleazen and Matterson were on the other side of him.
Now the men were whispering.
"Sh!"
"See there--there--there it goes!"
"What--Oh! There it is!"
I myself saw that something vague and shadowy was moving
indistinctly toward us down one of the long lanes of water.
Suddenly out of the swamp came a piercing wail. It was so utterly
unhuman that to every one of us it brought, I believe, a nameless
terror. Certainly I can answer for myself. It was as if some
creature from another world had suddenly found a voice and were
crying out to us. Then the wail was repeated, and then, as if
revealed by some preparation of phosphorus, I indistinctly saw, in
the dark of the swamp, an uncouth face, black as midnight, on which
were painted white rings and patches.
For the third time the cry came out to us; then a voice shrieked in
a queer, wailing minor:--
"White man, I come 'peak. Long time past white man go up water. Him
t'ief from king spirit. Him go Dead Land.
"White man, I come 'peak. We no sell slave. White man go him country
so him not go Dead Land. White man, I go."
The dim, mysterious face drew away little by little and disappeared.
A single soft splash came from the great marsh, then a yell so wild
and weird that to this very day the memory of it sometimes sets me
to shivering, as if I myself were only a heathen savage and not a
white man and a Christian.
Three times we heard the wild yell; then far off in the fastnesses
of the swamp, we heard an unholy chanting. It was high and shrill
and piercing, and it brought to us across the dark water suggestions
of a thousand terrors.
I felt Bud O'Hara's hand on mine, and it was as cold as death.
CHAPTER XIX
BURNED BRIDGES
"By Heaven!" O'Hara gasped, "the voice has spoke."
"Aye, so it has," said Gleazen slowly.
"Neil, Molly, sure and we'd best put out to sea. This is no time for
us, surely. A month from now, say, we could slip in by night with a
boat--"
"O'Hara," said Matterson's light, almost silvery voice, "have _you_
turned coward?"
"No, not that, Molly! 'T is not I am scairt of any man that walks
the green earth, Molly, but spirits is different."
"Spirits!" Matterson was softly laughing. "I didn't think, O'Hara,
_you'd_ be one to turn black."
"Laugh, curse you!" O'Hara cried hotly. "If 'twas you had seen a
glimmer of the things I've seen with my own two eyes; if 't was you
had seen a man die because he went against taboo; if 't was you had
seen a witch doctor bring the yammering spirit back unwilling to a
cold body; if 't was you had seen a man three weeks dead get up and
dance; if 't was you had seen a strong man fall down without the
breath of life in him at all, and all for nothing else but a spell
was on him, maybe then you'd believe me. I swear by the blessed
saints in heaven, it's throwing our lives away to go up river now;
and all I've got to say for Bull is, God help him!"
The others were looking at O'Hara curiously. The lantern light on
their faces brought out every scar and wrinkle and showed that
strong passions were contending within each of them.
"It ain't spirits that worries me," said Gleazen, at last, "and it
ain't niggers. It's men." He now seemed quite to shake off the spell
of the strange voice. "What say, Seth?" He turned to my uncle.
To my surprise, Seth Upham rose manfully to the occasion. "Spirits?"
he cried. "Nonsense!"
O'Hara uneasily shifted his feet. "Ah, say what you like, men," he
very earnestly replied, "say what you like against spirits and
greegrees and jujus and all the rest. I'll never be one to say
there's nothing in them, nor would you, if you'd seen all that I
have seen. And I'll be telling you this, men: that voice we heard
then was speaking the thoughts of ten thousand fighting niggers up
and down this river."
"Pfaw!" said Gleazen, stretching his arms. "Niggers won't fight."
"That from you, Neil!"
I never learned just what lay behind O'Hara's simple thrust, but
there was no doubt that it struck a weak link in Gleazen's armor,
for he flushed so deeply that we could see it by lantern light.
"Well, now," said he, with a conciliatory inflection, "of course I
meant it in moderation."
All this time Arnold and Gideon North and I stood by and looked and
listened.
Now, with a glance at us, Matterson said shortly, "Come, come!
Enough of that. All hands lay to and load the boat."
"I've warned ye," said O'Hara.
"At midnight," said Matterson, "_we'll_ go _up_ the river, and
Gideon North'll take the brig _down_ the river. Come morning
there'll be no stick nor timber of us here. They'll bother no more
about us then."
"Ye'll never fool 'em," said O'Hara.
Matterson turned his back on him, and the work went forward, and for
an hour there was only the low murmur of voices. The boat, now
ready for the journey, rode at the end of her painter, where the
current made long ripples, which converged at her bow. Here and
there, lights shone in the clearing and set my imagination and my
memory hard at work, but elsewhere the impenetrable blackness of a
cloudy night blanketed the whole world. And meanwhile the others
were holding council in the cabin.
"I think," Arnold Lamont said, "that Matterson and Gleazen
underestimate the ingenuity and resources of that black yelling
devil."
"So they do," said Abe Guptil. "So they do, and I'd be glad enough
to be back home, I tell you."
What would I not have given to be sleeping once more in Abe's
low-studded house beside our wholesome northern sea!
Now the others came from the cabin. They walked eagerly. Their very
whispers were full of excitement. Even Uncle Seth seemed to have got
from somewhere a new confidence and a new hope, so smartly did he
step about and so sharply did he speak; and the faint odor of brandy
that came with them explained much.
We climbed down into the loaded boat and settled ourselves on the
thwarts, where Abe Guptil and I took oars.
"It's turn and turn about at the rowing," Matterson announced.
"We've a long way to go and a current dead against us."
I saw Gideon North looking down at us anxiously, and waved my hand.
Then someone cast off, and we pulled out into midstream and up above
the brig, where we held our place and watched and waited.
Soon we heard orders on board the brig. Sails fell from the gaskets
and shook free. The men began to heave at the windlass. The brig
first came up to the anchors, then, with anchors aweigh, she half
turned in the current.
Now orders followed in quick succession. We could hear them rigging
the fish tackle and catching the hooks on the flukes of the anchors.
Blocks rattled, braces creaked, the yards swung from side to side
according to the word of command. The sails filled with the light
breeze, and coming slowly about, the Adventure gathered steerage-way
and went down the river as if she were some gigantic water bird
lazily swimming between the mangroves. We watched her go and knew
that we seven were now irrevocably left to fend for ourselves.
When Gleazen whispered to us to give way, we bent to the oars with a
will. For better or for worse, we had embarked on the final stage of
our great quest.
The lights in the clearing fell astern. The tall trees seemed to
close in above us. Alone in the wilderness, we turned the bow of our
boat toward the heart of Africa.
That we had set forth in complete secrecy on our voyage up river we
were absolutely confident. What eyes were keen enough to tell at a
distance that the brig had left a boat behind her when she sailed?
Gleazen now laughed derisively at O'Hara. "You'd have had us sail
away, would you? And wait a month? Or a year, maybe, or maybe two.
Ha, ha!"
"Don't you laugh at me, Neil," O'Hara replied. "We're not yet out o'
the woods."
At the man's solemn manner Gleazen laughed again, louder than
before.
As if to reprove his rashness, as if to bear out every word O'Hara
had said, at that very moment the uncanny yell we had heard before
rose the second time, far off in the swamp. Three times we heard the
yell, then we heard the voice, faint and far away, "White man, I
come 'peak. White man boat him sink. White man him go Dead Land."
Three times more the wordless wailing yell drifted to us out of the
darkness; then we heard a great multitude of men wildly and savagely
laughing.
Never again did Cornelius Gleazen scoff at O'Hara. His face now, I
verily believe, was grayer than O'Hara's. He turned about and stared
downstream as if he could see beyond the black wall of mangroves.
"Now what'll we do?" he gasped, with a choking, profane ejaculation.
"Did you hear that?"
Had we heard it! There was not one of us whom it had not chilled to
the heart. Our own smallness under those vast trees, our few
resources,--we had only the goods that were piled in the boat,--our
unfathomable loneliness, combined to make us feel utterly without
help or strength. But it was now too late to return. So we bent to
our oars and rowed on, and on, and on, against the current of the
great river.
The only help that remained to us lay in our own right hands and in
the mercy of divine Providence. Would Providence, I wondered, help
such men as Gleazen and Matterson and O'Hara?
Nor was that the only doubt that beset us. Although the three
accepted us, and in actual fact trusted us, they made no attempt to
conceal their enmity; and I very well knew that, besides danger from
without our little band, Arnold, Abe, and I must guard against
treachery from within it.
[Illustration]
V
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XX
UP STREAM
Pulling hard at our oars, we rowed up the river, along the shore and
so near it that the shadows of the mangroves almost concealed us. My
breath came in quick, hard gasps; the sweat started from my body and
dripped down my face; every muscle ached from violent exertion. As I
dizzily reeled, I saw, as if it were carved out of wood or stone,
Gleazen's staring, motionless face thrust forth squarely in front of
my own. Then I flopped forward and Gleazen himself caught the oar
from my hands.
We had taken the gig for our expedition, because it was light and
fast; but although we carried four oars, we used only two of them,
mainly because it had been Gleazen's whim to load our baggage
between the after thwarts, so that while two men rowed for
comparatively short spells, the others could take their ease in bow
and stern. And indeed, had our plan to set forth with utmost secrecy
not gone awry, it would have been a comfortable enough arrangement.
I had not dreamed that Gleazen was so strong; he set a stroke that
no ordinary oarsman could maintain; and when Abe Guptil lost time
and reeled on the thwart, Matterson slipped into his place and
fairly lifted the boat on the water.
Of course we could not keep up such a pace for long; but the hard
work in a way relieved our anxiety, as hard work does when one is
troubled; and after each of us, including Uncle Seth, had taken his
turn at the oars until he was dog-tired, we settled down to a saner,
steadier stroke, and thus began in earnest the long journey that
was to be the last stage of our pilgrimage.
By watching the gray lane overhead, where the arching trees failed
to meet above the river, since it was literally too dark to see the
water, we were able to mark out our course; and skirting the tangled
and interwoven roots as nearly as we could, we doggedly fought our
way against the current to the monotonous rhythm of swinging oars,
loud breathing, and hoarse grunts. The constant whisper of the river
so lulled me, weary as I was, that by and by my head drooped, and
the next thing that I knew was a hand on my shoulder and a voice at
my ear calling me to take my turn at rowing.
I woke slowly and saw that Abe Guptil like me was rubbing his eyes,
and that my uncle and Arnold Lamont were lying fast asleep on the
bottom of the boat.
"Come, come," said Gleazen, quietly. "See, now! Mr. Matterson and
I've brought us well on our way. Come, get up and row till it is
fairly light. Wake us then, and we'll haul the boat up and lie in
hiding for the day."
Matterson handed over his oar without a word, and Abe and I fell to
our task.
As the dawn grew and widened in the east, we could see how thickly
the roots of the mangroves intertwined. From the ends of the limbs
small "hangers," like ropes, grew down and took root in the ground.
The trees, thus braced and standing from six to twelve feet in air
on their network of tangled, interwoven roots, were the oddest I had
ever seen.
After a time we came to a large stretch of bush, where innumerable
small palms were crowded together so thickly that among them an
object would have been completely invisible, even in broad day, at a
distance of six feet. In the midst of the bush a great tree grew,
and in the top of it a band of monkeys was swinging and racing and
chattering in the pale light. In an undertone I spoke to Abe about
the monkeys, and he, too, still rowing, turned his head to watch
them. Then, at the very moment when we were intent on their antics,
a new mood seemed to come over them.
I cannot well describe the change, because at first it was so subtle
that I felt it, as much as saw it, and I was inclined to doubt if
Abe would notice it at all. Yet as I watched the little creatures,
which had now ceased their chattering, I suddenly realized that the
boat was beginning to drift with the current. By common impulse,
attracted by the very same thing, both Abe and I had stopped rowing.
As I leaned forward and again swung out my oar, Abe touched my arm.
"Hush!" he whispered. "Wait! Listen!"
Pausing with arms outstretched, ready to throw all my strength into
the catch, I listened and heard a faint _crack_, as of a broken
stick, under the tree in which a moment since the monkeys had been
hard at play.
We exchanged glances.
I now realized that daylight, coming with the swiftness that is
characteristic of it in the tropics, had taken us unawares. The sun
had risen and found Abe and me so intent on a band of monkeys
playing in a tree, that we had neglected to wake the others.
I put out my hand and leaned over the bags to touch Gleazen, the
nearest of the sleepers, when Abe again pressed my arm. Turning, I
saw that his finger was at his lips. Although his gesture puzzled
me, I obeyed it, and we remained silent for a minute or two while
the current carried the boat farther and farther downstream.
Every foot that we drifted back meant labor lost, and I was so
sorely tempted to put an end to our silence that I was on the point
of speaking out, when, distinctly, unmistakably, we heard another
crackle in the bush.
"Pull," Abe whispered, "pull, Joe, as hard as you can."
I leaned back against my oar, heard the water gurgle from under it,
saw bubbles go floating down past the stern, and knew that by one
stroke we had stopped our drifting. With a second swing of the long
blades, we sent the boat once more up against the current. Now we
got back into the old rhythm and went on past the dense palms, until
we again came to the tangled roots of mangroves.
Laying hold of one of the roots, Abe whispered, "Wake 'em, Joe!"
They woke testily, and with no thanks to us, even though it was by
their orders that we called them.
In reply to their questions we told them the whole story, from the
strange hush that came over the monkeys to the second crackling
among the palms; but they appeared not to take our apprehensions
seriously.
"Belike it was a snake," said O'Hara, "a big feller, Them big
fellers will scare a monkey into fits."
"Or some kind of an animal," said Gleazen, curtly. "Didn't I say we
was to be called at daylight? When I say a thing I mean it." He
impatiently turned from us to his intimates. "How about it, Bud;
shall we haul up here for the day?"
"Belike it was only a snake," O'Hara replied, "but 'twas near,
despite of that. Push on, I say."
There was something in the expression of his face as he stared
downstream that made me even more uneasy than before.
"Not so! The niggers will see us in the open and end us there and
then," interposed Matterson. "Moreover, unless the place has
changed with the times, there's a town a scant three miles ahead."
"Belike 'twas only a serpent," O'Hara doggedly repeated, "but 'tis
no place for us here. Let us fare on just half a mile up stream
t'other side the river, in the mouth of the little creek that makes
in there, and, me lads, let us get there quickly."
As we once more began to row, I was confident that O'Hara's talk of
a great serpent was poppy-cock for us and for Uncle Seth, and that
in any case neither Gleazen nor Matterson nor O'Hara cared a straw
about a serpent half a mile away. At the time I would have given
much to know just what shrewd guess they had made at the cause of
that strange crackling; but they dismissed the subject absolutely,
which probably was as well for all concerned; and refusing to speak
of it again, they urged Abe and me to our rowing until at their
direction we bore across the current and slipped through the
trailing branches of the trees, and through the thick bushes and
dangling vines, into the well-hidden mouth of a little creek.
By then the sun was shining hotly and I was glad enough to lean on
my oar and get my breath.
* * * * *
All that day we lay in the thick vegetation of the creek, which to a
certain extent shielded us from the sun, although the warm, damp air
became almost unendurable. Much of the time we slept, but always one
or another of us was posted as a guard, and at high noon an alarm
called us to our weapons.
O'Hara, who happened to be standing watch, woke us without a sound,
one after another, by touching us with his hand.
For a while we saw only the great trees, the sluggish creek, the
slow river, and the interwoven vines; then we heard voices, and
into our sight there swept a long canoe manned by naked negroes, who
swung their paddles strongly and went racing past us down the river.
How, I wondered, had O'Hara known that they were coming? Human ears
could not have heard their voices as far away as they must have been
when he woke us.
It was evident, when the blacks had gone, that Matterson and O'Hara
had made sense of their mumbled gutteral speech.
"I warned ye," O'Hara whispered, glaring at Matterson and Gleazen.
"Had we waited, now, say only a month, they'd not be scouring the
river in search of us."
"Pfaw! Niggers with bows and arrows," Gleazen scornfully muttered.
"Yes, niggers with bows and arrows," O'Hara returned. "But I'd no
sooner die by an arrow than by a musket-ball."
"Die? Who's talking o' dying?" Gleazen whispered. And calmly laying
himself down again, he once more closed his eyes.
"Sure, and I'd not be one to talk o' dying," O'Hara murmured, as he
resumed his guard with a musket across his knees, "was not the curse
o' rash companions upon me."
Matterson, holding aloof from their controversy, solemnly looked
from one of the two to the other. There was that in his eyes which I
did not like to see--not fear, certainly, but a look of
understanding, which convinced me that O'Hara had the right of it.
And now Seth Upham, who had followed all this so sleepily that he
did not more than half understand the significance of what had
occurred, as of old spoke up sharply, even pompously. In that
confused state between sleeping and waking his mind seemed to have
gone back to some mood of months before. "That's all nonsense,
O'Hara; we're safe enough. Gleazen's right." His words fairly
shattered the silence of the marshy woods.
He was the first of us to speak in an ordinarily loud voice, and
almost before he had finished his sentence a bird about as big as a
crow and as black as jet except for its breast and neck, which were
snowy white, rose from a tree above us, and with a cry that to me
sounded for all the world like a crow cawing, circled high in the
air.
Hot with anger, O'Hara struck Seth Upham on the mouth with his open
hand.
That it had been arrant folly for my uncle thus to speak aloud, I
knew as well as any other; and the bird circling above us and crying
out in its slow flight was liable to draw upon us an attack from
heaven only knew what source and quarter. But that O'Hara or any
other should openly strike the man who in his own way had been so
kind to me was something that I could not endure, and my own temper
flamed up as hotly as ever did O'Hara's.
Quick as a flash I caught his wrist, even before he had withdrawn
his hand, and jerked him from the thwart to his knees. With a
devilish gleam in his eye, he threw off my grip and clubbed his
musket.
Before I could draw my pistol he would have brained me, had not
Matterson, with no desire whatever to save me from such a fate, but
apparently only eager to have a hand in the affair, seized me from
behind, lifted me bodily from my seat, and plunged me down out of
sight into the creek.
Of what followed, I know only by hearsay, for I was too much
occupied with saving myself from drowning to observe events in the
boat. But the creek was comparatively shallow, and getting my feet
firmly planted on bottom, I pushed up my head and breathed deeply.
Meanwhile it seems that Arnold Lamont quietly thrust his knife a
quarter of an inch through the skin between two of Matterson's ribs,
thus effectually distracting his attention, while Abe Guptil deftly
caught O'Hara's clubbed musket in his hands and wrenched it away.
As I hauled myself back into the boat, Gleazen sat up and stared,
first at the others who, now that Matterson had knocked Arnold's
knife to one side, were momentarily deadlocked, then at me dripping
from my plunge, then at Seth Upham upon whose white face the marks
of O'Hara's hand still showed red.
"Between you," he whispered angrily, "you _will_ have half the
niggers in Africa upon us."
"He talked," O'Hara muttered, pointing at Uncle Seth.
"You struck him," I retorted.
"'Twas a bird told me they was coming by. 'Twill be that bird surely
will tell them we are here."
Arnold and Abe and I glared angrily at O'Hara and Matterson and
Gleazen, but by common consent we dropped the brief quarrel, and
when, after an anxious time of waiting, the canoe had not
reappeared, we again lay down to sleep.
Yet I saw that Uncle Seth's hand was trembling and that he was not
so calm as he tried to appear; and I knew that, although we might go
on with a semblance of tolerance, even of friendship, the rift in
our little party had grown vastly wider.
Waking at nightfall, we made our evening meal of such cooked
provisions as we had brought from the Adventure, and pushed through
the screen of dense branches, and out on the strongly running,
silent river. Again we bent to the oars and rowed interminably on
against the stream and into the black darkness.
That night we passed a town with wattled houses and thatched roofs
rising in tall cones high on the riverbank, and a building that
O'Hara said was a _barre_ or courthouse. In the town, we saw against
the sky, which the rising moon now lighted, a few orange trees and
palms, and under it, close beside the bank of the river, we
indistinctly made out a boat, which, Gleazen whispered, was very
likely loaded with camwood and ivory. We passed it in the shadow of
the opposite shore, rowing softly because we were afraid that
someone might be sleeping on the cargo to guard it, and went by and
up the river till the pointed roofs of the houses were miles astern.
O'Hara and Gleazen and Matterson talked together, and part of their
talk was bickering among themselves, and part was of the man Bull
who, all alone in the wilderness, was waiting for us somewhere in
the jungle, and part was in Spanish, which I could not understand.
But when they talked in Spanish, they looked keenly at Arnold and
Abe and me, and I found comfort then in thinking that, although
Arnold and I now had no chance to exchange confidences, he was
hearing and remembering every word of their conversation. And all
the time that I watched them, I was thinking of the girl at the
mission.
Remembering my talk with Arnold long ago, when I had expressed so
poor an opinion of all womankind, I felt at once a little amused at
myself and a little sheepish. Who would have thought that, at almost
my first sight of the despised continent of Africa, I should see a
girl whose face I could not forget? That when she spoke to me for
the first time, her low, firm voice would so fasten itself upon my
memory, that I should hear it in my dreams both sleeping and waking?
Poor Uncle Seth! Never offering to take an oar, never exchanging a
word with any of the rest of us, he sat with his elbows on his knees
and his head bowed. Gleazen and Matterson had dropped even their
unkindly humorous pretense of deferring to him. In our little band
of adventurers he who had once been so assertive, so brimful of
importance, had become the merest nonentity.
All that night we went up the river, and all the next day we lay
concealed among the mangroves; but about the following midnight we
came to a place where the banks were higher and the current swifter.
Here O'Hara stood up in the bow of the boat and studied the shore
and ordered us now to row, now to rest. For all of two miles we
advanced thus, and heartily tired of his orders we were, when he
directed us to veer sharply to larboard and enter a small creek,
along the banks of which tall water-grass grew right down to the
channel.
There was barely room for the boat to pass along the stream between
the forests of grass which grew in the water on the two sides; but
as we advanced, the tall grass disappeared, and the stream itself
became narrower and swifter, and the banks became higher. The
country, we now saw, was heavily timbered, and we occasionally came
to logs, which we had to pry out of the way before we could pass.
One moment we would be in water up to our necks, another we would be
poling the boat along with the oars, until at last we grounded on a
bar over which only a runlet gurgled.
There was a suggestion of dawn in the east, which revealed above and
beyond the wood a line of low, bare hills; but when I looked at the
wood itself, through which we must find our way, my courage oozed
out by every pore and left me wishing from the bottom of my heart
that I were safe at sea with Gideon North.
Piling all our goods on the bank, we hid the boat in the bushes and
made camp.
"Hard upon daylight, well be starting," said O'Hara, hoarsely.
"Sleep is it, you ask? Don't that give you your while of sleep? Be
about it. By dark, we'll reach him surely; and if not, we'll be in
the very shadow of the hill."
The man was all a-quiver with excitement. He jerked his shoulders
and twitched his fingers and rolled his eyes. Matterson and Gleazen,
too, were softly laughing as they stepped a little apart from the
rest of us.
I looked at Arnold.
He stood with one hand raised. "What was that?" he asked in a low
voice.
Very faintly,--very, very far away,--we heard just such a yell as we
had heard that night when in defiance of the wizard's warning we
left the Adventure.
Coming to our ears at the particular moment when we most firmly
believed that by consummate craft we had so concealed our progress
up the river as to escape every prying eye and deceive every hostile
black, it both taunted us and threatened us. Three times we heard
it, faintly, then silence, deep and ominous, ensued.
CHAPTER XXI
A GRIM SURPRISE
To sleep at that moment would have required more than human
self-control. Forgetting every personal grudge, every cause of
enmity, we huddled together, seven men alone in an alien wilderness,
and waited,--listened,--waited. I, for one, more than half expected,
and very deeply feared, to hear coming from the darkness that
ghostly voice which had cried to us twice already, "White man, I
come 'peak." But, except for the whisper of the wind and the ripple
of the creek, there was no sound to be heard.
The wind gently stirred the leaves, and the creek sang as it flowed
down over the gravel and away through the reeds. The moon cast its
pale light upon us, and the remote stars twinkled in the heavens.
The cries, after that second repetition, died away, and at that
moment did not come back. But our night of adventure was not yet at
an end.
O'Hara deliberately leveled his index finger at the bed of the
stream above us. "Sure, now, and there do be someone there," he
whispered. "Watch now! Watch me!"
Stepping forward, with a slow, tigerish motion, he slightly raised
his voice. "Come you out!" he said distinctly. Then he spoke in a
gibberish of which I could make no more sense than if it had been so
much Spanish.
Before our very eyes, silently, there rose from the undergrowth a
great negro with a spear.
Arnold Lamont gave a quick gasp and I saw steel flash in the
moonlight as his hand moved. Gleazen swore; Matterson started to
his feet; Abe Guptil came suddenly to a crouching position. But
O'Hara, after one sharply in-drawn breath, uttered a name and
whispered something in that same language, which I knew well I had
never heard before, and the negro answered him in kind.
For a moment they talked rapidly; then O'Hara turned to his comrades
and in a frightened undertone said, "The black devils know the
worst."
"Well?" retorted Gleazen, angrily. "What of it?"
"This"--O'Hara's leveled finger indicated the negro--"is
Kaw-tah-bah."
"Well?" Gleazen reiterated, still more angrily.
"The war has razed his village to the ground."
Matterson now stepped forward and looked closely into the negro's
face. Gleazen followed him.
"He laid down eight slave money," said O'Hara. "It was no good. They
knew he was our friend. His wives, his children, his old father, all
are dead."
Now Matterson spoke in the same strange tongue, slowly and
hesitantly, but so that the negro understood him and answered him.
"He says," O'Hara translated, "that Bull built the house on the
king's grave, and they feared him, because he is a terrible man; and
because they feared him they left him alone in his house and brought
the war to his friend, Kaw-tah-bah. Kaw-tah-bah's people are slaves.
His wives, his children, his old father, all are dead. But he did
not betray the secret."
Again Matterson spoke and again the negro answered.
"He says," cried O'Hara, "that Bull is waiting there on the hill by
the king's grave."
The negro suddenly uttered a low exclamation.
Standing as still as so many statues, we heard yet again that faint,
unearthly wail far off in the night, a wail, as before, twice
repeated. The third cry had scarcely died away, when the negro, with
a startled gasp, darted into the brush.
O'Hara raised his hand and called to him to come back; but, never
turning his head, he disappeared like a frightened animal.
Again we were alone in the wilderness.
To me, now, all that formerly I had understood only in vague outline
had become clear in every detail. I knew, of course, that, after
their own ship was wrecked, our quartette of adventurers had sent
Gleazen back to America, to get by hook or crook another vessel to
serve their godless purposes; and I knew that they had implicated my
deluded uncle in something more than ordinary slave trade. Their
talk of the man who had stayed behind for a purpose still further
convinced me that Arnold had been right; I remembered the rough
stones on the table in the cabin the night when I took the four by
surprise. But it was only common sense that, if our first guess were
_all_ their secret, they would have smuggled such a find down to the
coast, and have taken their chance in embarking in the first vessel
that came to port. There was more than that of which to be mindful,
and I knew well enough what.
"I say, now, push forward this very minute," cried O'Hara. "Better
travel a bad road by dark in safety than a good road by day that
will land every mother's son of us in the place where there's no
road back."
"The black devils are hard upon us," Gleazen cried. "Lay low, I say.
Come afternoon we'll sneak along easy like."
"I stand with Bud O'Hara," said Matterson, slowly. "It'll not be so
easy to hit us by moonlight as by sunlight."
"And once we're with Bull in the little fort that he'll have made
for us," Bud persisted, "we'll be safe surely."
"It is harder to travel by night," said Arnold. "But it is easier by
night than by day to evade an enemy."
The others looked at him curiously, as if surprised by his temerity
in speaking out; but, oddly, his seemed to be the deciding voice.
Working with furious haste, we sorted our goods and made them up
into six packs, which we shouldered according to our strength. But
as we worked, we would stop and look furtively around; and at the
slightest sound we would start and stare. Our determination to go
through to the end of our adventure had not flagged when at last we
gathered beside the thicket where we had concealed the boat; but we
were seven silent men who left the boat, the creek, and the river
behind us, and with O'Hara to guide us set off straight into the
heart of Africa.
O'Hara's long sojourn on the continent, which had made him a "black
man" in the sense that he had come to believe, or at least more than
half believe, in the silly superstitions of the natives, had served
him better by giving him an amazing knowledge of the country. That
he was following a trail he had traveled many times before would
have been evident to a less keenly interested observer than I. But
though he had traveled it ever so many times, it was a mystery to me
how he could follow it unerringly, by moonlight alone, through black
tangles of forest growth so dense that scarcely a ray stole down on
the deeply shadowed path.
Passing over some high hills, we came, sweaty and breathless, down
into a rocky gorge, along which we hurried, now skirting patches of
cotton and corn and yams, now making a long détour around a sleeping
village, until we arrived at a wood in a valley where a deep stream
rumbled. And all this time we had seen no sign whatever of any
living creature other than ourselves.
It was already full daylight, and throwing off our burdens, we flung
ourselves down and slept. Had our danger been even more urgent, I
believe that we could not have kept awake, so exhausted were we; and
indeed, we were in greater peril than we had supposed, for all that
day, whenever we woke, we heard at no great distance from our place
of concealment the thump of a pestle pounding rice.
Twelve hours of daylight would easily have brought us to our
destination. But it was slow work traveling in the darkness, and we
still had far to go. Pushing on again that night, we pressed through
a country thickly wooded with tall trees, many of which elephants
had broken down in order to feed on the tender upper branches.
As we passed them, I was thrilled to see with my own eyes the work
of wild elephants in their native country, and should have liked to
stop for a time; but there was no opportunity to loiter, and leaving
the woods behind us, we came at daylight to a brook, which had cut a
deep channel into dark slate rock and blue clay.
Here I conjectured that we should camp for another day, but not so:
our three leaders were strangely excited.
"Sure," O'Hara cried, pointing at a low hill at a distance in the
plain, "sure, gentlemen, and there's our port. Where's the man would
cast anchor this side of it?"
O'Hara, Gleazen, and Matterson stood at one side, and Arnold, Abe,
and I at the other, with my poor uncle in the middle. We had not
concerted to divide thus. Instinctively and unconsciously we
separated into hostile factions, with poor Seth Upham--neither fish,
flesh, nor fowl, as they say--standing weakly between us. But even
so, the enthusiasm of the three was contagious. Weary though we
were, we strongly felt it. We had come so far, all of us, and had
wondered so much and so often about our mysterious errand, that
now, with the end in sight, not one of us, I believe, would have
stopped.
Casting caution to the winds, we swung down into a wild country and
across the broad plain, where, after some three hours of rough hard
travel, we came to the foot of the hill. And in all this time,
except the patches of tilled land that we had passed, the towns that
we had avoided, the thumping of pestles and the occasional sounds of
domestic animals, we had seen and heard no sign of human life. It is
not strange that for the moment I forgot the threats that had caused
us such anxiety. Stopping only to catch our breath and drink and
dash over our faces water from a brook, we started up the hill.
O'Hara, ahead of us all, was like a mad man in his eagerness, and
Matterson and Gleazen were not far behind him. Even Uncle Seth
caught something of their frenzy and assumed an empty show of his
old pompousness and sharp manner.
Up the hill we went, our three leaders first, then, in nervous
haste, between the two parties literally as well as figuratively, my
uncle, then Arnold and Abe and I, who were soon outdistanced, in
that fierce scramble, by all but Uncle Seth.
"Do you know, Joe," Abe said in a low voice, as he gave me a hand up
over a bit of a ledge, "I'd sooner be home on my little farm that
Seth Upham sold from under me, with only my crops and fishing to
look forward to, than here with all the gold in Africa to be got? I
wonder, Joe, if I'll ever see my wife and the little boy again."
"Nonsense!" I cried, "of course you will."
"Do you think so? I'm not so sure."
As we stood for a moment on the summit of the ledge, I saw that we
had chosen a rougher, more circuitous path than was necessary. The
others had gone up a sort of swale on our right, where tall, lush
grass indicated that the ground was marshy. It irritated me that we
should have scrambled over the rocks for nothing; my legs were
atremble from our haste.
"Of course you will," I repeated testily. Then I saw something move.
"See!" I cried. "There goes an animal of some kind."
While for a moment we waited in hope of seeing again whatever it was
that had moved, I thought, oddly enough, of the girl at the mission;
then my thoughts leaped back half round the world to little Topham,
and returned by swift steps, through all our adventures, to the spot
where we stood.
Now the others were bawling at us to come along after them, so Abe
and I turned, not having seen distinctly whatever animal there may
have been, and followed them up the hill.
"Here's the brook!" O'Hara cried, "the brook from the spring!"
He was running now, straight up through the tall grass beside the
tiny trickle, and we were driving along at his heels as hard as we
could go.
"Here's the clearing, and never a blade of grass is changed since I
left it last! O Bull! Here we are! See, men, see! Yonder on the old
grave is the house all wattled like a nigger hut! O Bull! Where are
you? But it's fine inside, men, I'll warrant you. He was laying to
build it good. He said he'd fix it up like a duke's mansion. O Bull!
I say, Bull!"
There indeed was the house, on a low mound, which showed the marks
of sacrilegious pick and shovel. The posts on which it stood were
driven straight down into the hillock. But in reply to O'Hara's loud
hail no answer came from that silent, apparently deserted dwelling.
O'Hara turned and, as if apologizing, said in a lower voice, but
still loud enough for us to hear, "Sure, now, and he must be out
somewhere."
Then he waited for us, and we gathered in a little group and looked
at the wattled hut as if in apprehension, although of course there
was no reason on earth why we should have been apprehensive.
"Well, gentlemen," said Arnold, very quietly, "why not go in?"
Not a man stirred.
O'Hara faced about with moodily clouded eyes. "Well, then," he
gasped, "he _would_ build it on the king's grave."
I am sure that my face, for one, told O'Hara that he only mystified
me.
"Sure, and he was like others I've seen. More than once I warned
him, but he didn't believe in nigger gods. He didn't believe in
nigger gods, and he built the house on the king's grave! On the
king's grave, mind you! He was that set and reckless."
"Gentlemen," said Arnold, again, very quietly, very precisely, "why
not go in?"
All this time my uncle, as was his way except in those rare moments
when he made a pitiful show of regaining his old peremptory manner,
had been standing by in silence, looking from one to another of our
company. But now he hesitantly spoke up.
"He has not been here for some time," he said.
Gleazen turned with a scornful grunt. "Much you know whether he has
or not," he retorted.
"See!" My uncle pointed at the door. "Vines have grown across the
top of it."
Gleazen softly swore, and Matterson said, "For once, Neil, he's
right."
Why we had not noticed it before, I cannot say; probably we were
too much excited. But we all saw it now, and Gleazen, staring at the
dark shadow of the leaves on the door, stepped back a pace.
"By Heaven," he whispered, "I don't like to go in."
"Gentlemen," said Arnold, speaking for the third time, ever quietly
and precisely, "I am not afraid to go in."
When he boldly went up to the house ahead of us, we, ashamed to hang
back, reluctantly followed.
To this day I can see him in every detail as he laid his hand on the
latch. His blue coat, which fitted so snugly his tall, straight
figure, seemed to draw from the warm sunlight a brighter, more
intense hue. His black hair and white, handsome face stood out in
bold relief against the dark door, and the green leaves drooped
round him and formed a living frame.
Setting his shoulders against the door, he straightened his body and
heaved mightily and broke the rusty latch. The hinges creaked
loudly, the vine tore away, the door opened, and in we walked, to
see the most dreadful sight my eyes have ever beheld.
There in a chair by the table sat a stark skeleton dressed in good
sound clothes. The arms and skull lay on the table itself beside a
great heap of those rough quartz-like stones,--I knew now well
enough what they were,--and the bony fingers still held a pen, which
rested on a sheet of yellow foolscap where a great brown blot marked
the end of the last word that the man they called Bull had ever
written. Between the ribs of the skeleton, through the good coat and
into the back of the chair in such a way that it held the body in a
sitting posture, stuck a long spear.
[Illustration: _There in a chair by the table sat a stark skeleton
dressed in good sound clothes._]
Of the seven of us who stared in horror at that terrible object,
Matterson was the first to utter a word. His voice was singularly
meditative, detached.
"He never knew--see!--it took him unawares."
O'Hara slowly went to the table, leaned over it, and looking
incredulously at the paper, as if he could not believe his eyes,
burst suddenly into a frenzy of grief and rage.
"Lads," he cried, "look there! My name was the last thing he wrote.
O Bull, I warned ye, I warned ye--how many times I warned ye! And
yet ye _would_, _would_, _would_ build the house on the king's
grave. O Bull!"
He drew the yellow paper out from under the fleshless fingers and
held it up for all of us to see, and we read in a clear flowing hand
the following inscription:--
MY DEAR O'HARA:--
Not having heard from you this long time, I take my pen in hand
to inform you that I am well and that despite your silly fears,
no harm has come of building our house on the sightliest spot
hereabouts. Martin Brown, the trader, from whom I bought the
hinges and fittings will carry this letter to you and--
There it ended in a great blot. Whence had the spear come? Why had
Martin Brown never called for the letter? Or had he called and gone
away again?
What scenes that page of cheap, yellowed paper, from which the faded
brown writing stared at us, had witnessed! It was indeed as if a
dead man were speaking; and more than that, for the paper on which
the man had been writing when he died had remained ever since under
his very hands, undisturbed by all that had happened. How long must
the man have been dead, I wondered. The stark white bones uncannily
fascinated me. I saw that the feather had been stripped from the
bare quill of the pen: could moths have done that? A knife could not
have stripped it so cleanly.
Abe Guptil, who had been prowling about, now spoke, and we looked
where he pointed and saw on the floor under a window the print of a
single bare foot as clearly marked in mud as if it had been placed
there yesterday.
"Hm! He saw that the job was done and went away again," said
Gleazen, coolly.
I stared about the hut, from which apparently not a thing had been
stolen, and thought that it was the more remarkable, because there
were pans and knives in plain sight that would have been a fortune
to an African black. The open ink-bottle, in which were a few brown
crystals, the pen, which was cut from the quill of some African
bird, and the faded letter, which was scarcely begun, told us that
the spear, hurled through the open window, had pierced the man's
body and snuffed out his life, without so much as a word of warning.
O'Hara unsteadily laid the letter down and stepped back. His face
was still white. "It's words from the dead," he gasped.
"So it is," said Matterson, "but he's panned out a noble lot of
stones."
As if Matterson's effeminate voice had again goaded him to fury,
O'Hara burst out anew.
"You'd talk o' stones, would ye? Stones to me, that has lost the
best friend surely ever man had? A man that would ha' laid down his
very life for me; and now the niggers have got him and the ants have
stripped his bones! O-o-oh!--" And throwing himself into a rough
chair that the dead man himself had made, O'Hara sobbed like a
little boy.
Matterson and Gleazen nodded to each other, as much as to say that
it was too bad, but that no one had any call to take on to such an
extent; and Gleazen with a shrug thrust a finger into that heap of
stones, slowly, as if he could not quite believe his senses,--little
_he_ cared for any man's life!--while those of us who until now
had been so hypnotized by horror that we had not laid down our packs
dropped them on the floor.
"Ants," O'Hara had said: I knew now why the bones were so clean and
white; why the feather was stripped from the quill.
From the windows of the hut, which stood in a clearing at the very
top of the hill, we could see for miles through occasional vistas in
the tall timber below us. The edge of the clearing, on all sides
except that by which we had approached it, had grown into a tangled
net of vines, which had crept out into the open space to mingle with
saplings and green shrubs. Half way down the hill, where we had
passed it in our haste, I now saw, by the character of the
vegetation, was the spring from which issued the brook whose course
we had followed.
Uncle Seth, who had been striving to appear at ease since the first
shock of seeing the single occupant of the house, came over beside
me; and after a few remarks, which touched me because they were so
obviously a pathetic effort to win back my friendship and affection,
said in a louder voice, "Thank God, _we_, at least, are safe!"
The word to O'Hara was like spark to powder.
Flaring up again, he shrieked, "Safe--_you!_--and you thank God for
it! You white-livered milk-sop of a country storekeeper, what is
your cowardly life worth to yourself or to any one else? You safe!"
He swore mightily. "You! I tell you, Upham, _there_--" he pointed at
the skeleton by the table--"_there_ was a _man_! You safe!"
Withered by the contempt in the fellow's voice, Uncle Seth stepped
back from the window, turned round, and, as if puzzling what to say
next, bent his head.
As he did so, a single arrow flew with a soft hiss in through the
window, passed exactly where his head had just that moment been, and
with a hollow _thump_ struck trembling into the opposite wall. There
was not a sound outside, not the motion of a leaf, to show whence
the arrow came. Only the arrow whispering through the air and
trembling in the wall.
Uncle Seth, as yellow as old parchment, looked up with distended
eyes at the still quivering missile.
"Safe, you say?" cried Gleazen with a hoarse laugh, still letting
those little stones fall between his fingers. The man at times was a
fiend for utter recklessness. "Aye, safe on the knees of
Mumbo-Jumbo!"
I heard this, of course, but in a singularly absent way; for at that
moment, when every man of us was staring at the arrow in the wall,
I, strangely enough, was thinking of the girl at the mission.
CHAPTER XXII
SIEGE
Much as I hated and distrusted Cornelius Gleazen,--and in the months
since I first saw him sitting on the tavern porch in Topham he had
given me reason for both,--I continually wondered at his reckless
nonchalance.
As coolly as if he were in our village store, with a codfish
swinging above the table, instead of a skeleton leaning against it,
and with a boy's dart trembling in a beam, instead of an arrow
thrust half through the wall--with just such a grand gesture as he
had used to overawe the good people of Topham, he stepped to the
door and brushed his hair back from his forehead. The diamond still
flashed on his finger; his bearing was as impressive as ever.
"Well, lads," he said,--and little as I liked him, his calmness was
somehow reassuring,--"there _may_ be a hundred of 'em out there, but
again there _may_ be only one. First of all, we'll need water. I'll
fetch it."
From a peg on the wall he took down a bucket and, returning to the
door, stepped out.
In the clearing, where the hot sun was shining, I could see no sign
of life.
Pausing on the doorstone, Gleazen shrugged his great shoulders and
stretched himself and moved his fingers so that the diamond in his
ring flashed a score of colors. He was a handsome man in his big,
rakehell way; and in spite of all I knew against him, I could but
admire his bravado as he turned from us.
Boldly, deliberately, he stepped down into the grass, while we
crowded in the door and watched him. After all, it seemed that there
was really nothing to be afraid of. The rest of us were startled and
angry when O'Hara suddenly called out, "Come back, you blithering
fool! Come back! You don't know them, Neil; I say, you don't know
them. Come back, I say!"
With a scornful smile Gleazen turned again and airily waved his
hand--I saw the diamond catch the sunlight as he did so. Then he
gave a groan and dropped the bucket and cried out in pain and
stumbled back over the threshold.
With muskets we sprang to guard door and window. But outside the hut
there was no living thing to be seen. There was not even wind enough
to move the leaves of the trees, which hung motionless in the
sunlight.
It was as if we were in the midst of a nightmare from which shortly
we should wake up. The whole ghastly incident seemed so utterly
unreal! But when we looked at Gleazen, we knew that it was no mere
nightmare. It was terrible reality. Blood was dripping from his left
hand and running down on his shoe.
Through his hand, half on one side of it, half on the other, was
thrust an arrow. A second arrow had passed just under the skin of
his leg.
From the door I could see the bucket lying in the grass where he had
dropped it; but except for a pair of parrots, which were flying from
tree to tree, there still was no living thing in sight.
The vine-hung walls of the forest, which reached out long tendrils
and straggling clumps of undergrowth as if to seize upon and consume
the space of open ground, stood tall and green and silent. The deep
grass waved in the faintest of breezes. Above a single big rock the
hot air swayed and trembled.
Without even wincing, Gleazen drew the arrow from his hand and,
refusing assistance, bound the wound himself.
Turning from the door, Arnold went to the table and touched an arm
of the skeleton, which fell toward the body and collapsed inside the
sleeve with a low rattle.
O'Hara raised his hand with an angry gesture.
"I mean no irreverence," said Arnold.
For a moment the two stood at gaze, then, letting his hand fall,
O'Hara stepped over beside Arnold, and they lifted the bones, which
for the most part fell together in the dead man's clothes, and laid
them by the north wall.
"And what," asked Matterson, curiously, "are you two doing now?"
Without answering, Arnold coolly swept the stones on the table
together between his hands into a more compact pile.
"Hands off, my boy," said Gleazen, quietly.
"Well?" Gleazen's words had brought a flush to Arnold's cheeks. He
himself was nearly as old as Gleazen and was quick to resent the
patronizing tone, and his very quietness was more threatening than
the loudest bluster.
"Hands off," Gleazen repeated; and raising his musket, he cocked it
and tapped the muzzle on the opposite side of the table. "This says
'hands off,' too." He glanced around so that we could see that he
meant us all. "Matterson, ain't there a sack somewhere hereabouts?"
But for the blood on his shoe and the stained cloth round his hand,
he gave no sign of having been wounded.
From under the table Matterson picked up a bag such as might have
been used for salt, but which was made of strong canvas and was
grimy from much handling.
"He was always a careful man," Gleazen remarked with a glance at the
skeleton heaped up in the shadow of the wall. "I thought he would
have provided a bag."
Gleazen and Matterson then, with pains not to miss a single one,
picked up the stones by handfuls and let them rattle into the bag
like shot.
"And now," said Gleazen, when the last one was in and the neck of
the bag was tied, "once more: _hands off!_"
Laying the bag beside the skeleton, he took his stand in front of
it, with Matterson and O'Hara on his right and left.
So far as the three of them were concerned, we might have been
killed a dozen times over, had anyone seen fit to attack us. But Abe
and I, all the time keeping one eye on the strange scene inside the
cabin, had kept watch also for trouble from without, and all the
time not a thing had stirred in the clearing.
"What," Matterson again asked, still watching Arnold curiously,
"what are you going to do now?"
Tipping the table up on one side and wrenching off one of the boards
that formed the top of it, Arnold placed it across a window, so that
there was a slit at the bottom through which we could watch or
shoot.
"Now, there's an idea!" Gleazen exclaimed. But he never stirred from
in front of the skeleton and the bag.
"There are nails in the table," said Arnold.
Matterson smiled, and taking the board in one hand, tapped a nail
against the table to start it, and with the thumb and forefinger of
the other hand drew it out as easily as if it had been stuck in
putty. "For a hammer," he said lightly, "use the butt of a musket."
"Look!" my uncle exclaimed: he was pointing at a good claw-hammer,
which hung over the door.
The hut fell far short of the duke's mansion that its luckless
builder had promised O'Hara, but it had a window in each of three
walls, and the door in the fourth, so that, by cutting a hole
through the door, we were able, after we had barricaded the
windows, to guard against surprise from any quarter without exposing
ourselves to a chance shot; and as we had brought four muskets, we
were able to give each sentry one well loaded.
The silence deepened. The air was fairly alive with suspicion. When
Uncle Seth nervously moistened his lips, we all heard him; and when
he flushed and shifted his feet, the creaking of a board seemed
harsh and loud.
"Well," said Gleazen, slowly, "I'll stand in one watch and Matterson
here will stand in the other. For the rest, suit yourselves."
Another long, uncomfortable silence fell upon us.
"Then," said Arnold, at last, "since no one else suggests an
arrangement, I would suggest that Mr. Matterson, O'Hara, Mr. Upham,
and I stand the first watch; that Mr. Gleazen, Joe Woods, and Abe
Guptil stand second watch; and in order to put four men in each
watch in turn, since we must have four to guard against surprise
from any direction, I suggest that each man, turn and turn about,
stands a double watch of eight hours. I myself will take the double
watch first."
"That is good as far as it goes," Matterson interposed in his light
voice. "But a single watch of two hours, with the double watch of
four, is long enough. A man grows sleepy sooner with his eye at a
knothole than if he is walking the deck."
Arnold nodded, "We agree to that," he replied.
"Lads," said Gleazen, quite unexpectedly, "let's have an end of hard
looks and hard words. Come, Joe,--come, Arnold,--don't take sides
against us and good Seth Upham. We're all in this fix together, and,
by heaven! unless we stand together and come out together, not one
of us'll come out alive."
The man now seemed so frank, and in the face of our common danger
so genial, that, if I had not still felt the sting of the flattery
by which he had deceived me so outrageously in the old days in
Topham, I should have been convinced that he was sincere in every
word he uttered. As it was, sincere or false, I knew that for the
moment he was honest. However his attitude toward us might change
when our troubles were past, for the time being we did share a
common danger, and it was imperative that we stand together. But to
speak of my poor uncle as if he were hand in glove with the three of
them and on equal terms exasperated me.
Seth Upham's face was drawn and anxious. It was plain that his
spirit was broken, and I believed, when I looked at him, that never
again would he make a show of standing up to the man who had
virtually robbed him of all he possessed.
"Sir," said Arnold Lamont, thoughtfully and with that quaint, almost
indefinable touch of foreign accent, "that is true. We might say
that we don't know what you mean by offering us a truce. We might
pretend that we have always been, and always shall be, on the
friendliest of terms with you. But we know, as well as you, that it
is not so. Since we share a common danger and since our safety
depends on our mutual loyalty, we, sir, agree to your offer. A truce
it shall be while our danger lasts, and here's my hand that it will
be an honest truce."
It was easy to see that Gleazen and Matterson were not altogether
pleased by his words. They would have liked, I think, to have us
apprehend the situation less clearly. But there was nothing to do
but make the best of matters; so Gleazen shook Arnold's hand, and we
took an inventory of our provisions, which were quite too few to
last through a siege of any length.
"To-morrow night, surely we can run for it," said O'Hara. "To-night
they'll watch us like hawks, but to-morrow night--"
Plainly it was that for which we must wait.
We divided our food into equal portions, each to serve for one
meal,--the meals, we saw, were to be very few,--ate one portion on
the spot and settled ourselves to watch and sleep. But before I fell
asleep I heard something that still further enlightened me.
"Now, why," asked Gleazen, sourly, as he faced the other two in the
darkness, "couldn't _one_ of you ha' stayed with Bull, even if the
other was fool enough to go a-wandering?"
Matterson quietly smiled. "Bud, here, swore he'd never leave him."
"We-e-ell," O'Hara drawled, irritably, "you was both of you too long
gone and Bull was set in his ways. It was 'Step this side,' and
'Step that!' And 'Those stones are yourn and those are mine and
those are for the company.' Says I at last, 'Them that you've laid
out for me, I'll take to the coast. Keep the rest of them if you
wish.' Says he, 'You'll leave me here to rot.' 'Not so,' says I. 'By
hook or by crook Neil will get the vessel surely, and Molly will
arrange the market surely, for they're good men and not to be turned
lightly off. Do you clean the pocket, and build the house. Surely
the pocket that has sent Neil home like a gentleman, and has sent
Molly west like a man of business, will provide us at least the
wherewithal to buy _one_ cargo. And with a cargo under our own
hatches,' says I, 'four fortunes will soon be made.' 'Do you go,'
says he, 'and I'll build a house like a duke's mansion to live in,
and dig the pocket out and make friends with the niggers, which
eventually we will catch, and four fortunes we will make.' So I come
away, and you two surely would 'a' done the same if you'd been in
my breeches instead of me; and then he went and built his house on
the king's grave!"
As I lay on the floor, not three feet from the skeleton and from the
round bag of quartz-like stones, through half-closed eyes I saw
against the door, beyond which the sun was shining with intense
heat, the great black shadow that I knew was Matterson, with a
musket across his knees; then, so exhausted was I, that I forgot the
grim object within arm's length of where I lay, forgot our feud with
Matterson and Gleazen and O'Hara, forgot every ominous event that
had happened since the Adventure had set sail four days before and
moved down the river toward the open sea, and, falling asleep,
dreamed of someone whom, strangely, I could not forget.
The sun had set and the moon was up when my turn came to go on
guard. Taking Matterson's musket and his place by the open door
where I could see all that went on without, but where no one outside
could see me in the dark of the hut, I settled myself with my back
against the jamb. In Matterson's motions as he handed me the musket
and went over by the skeleton and lay down, there was the same lithe
strength that he had revealed when he lifted himself to the taffrail
and boarded the Adventure in Havana harbor. I marveled that he could
endure so much with so little drain on his physical powers.
"Watch sharply, Joe, there's a brave lad," he said in his light
voice.
As he crossed the hut and laid his great body on the floor, so
slowly yet so lightly, I thought to myself that I had never seen a
lazier man. What a power he might have been at sea or ashore, had he
had but a tithe of Gleazen's bold effrontery! Although he had shown
none of Gleazen's passionate recklessness, he had given no sign of
fear under any circumstances that we had yet encountered. I
wondered if it were not likely that the man's very quietness, the
complete absence of such petulance as Gleazen sometimes showed,
sprang from a deep, well-proved confidence in his own might.
I was glad that it had fallen to me to guard the door rather than a
window. Whereas from the windows one could see only a short space of
rough open park and then the intermatted tangle of vines, from the
door the vista ran far down the hill to the open glade where, hidden
in deep grass, the spring lay. But though I sat with the musket
beside me for hours, and though the moon rose higher and higher,
revealing every tree and bush, in all my watch I did not see one
thing astir outside the hut.
I must repeat that we seemed to be living in a dream. We had seen no
enemy, heard no enemy. For all the signs and sights that those walls
of tangled creepers revealed to us, there might have been no human
being within a hundred miles. Yet from behind those walls had come
three arrows, and for the time being those three arrows locked us in
the hut as fast as if they had been bolts and chains and padlocks.
As I watched, I heard someone get up and walk around the hut; and
when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that it was my uncle. To my
surprise he was talking in a low voice. Now what, I wondered,
possessed him to stay awake when he might be sleeping.
"I must be getting home," I heard him say as he came nearer; and his
voice startled me because, although it spoke softly, it was the old
sharp, domineering voice that I had known so long and so well in
Topham; "I must be getting home. I don't know when I've stayed so
late at the store."
CHAPTER XXIII
SORTIE
Night and morning we got little rest. We ate another meal from our
slender store; but it was a fearful thing to see how few meals
remained; and though in part we satisfied our hunger, our thirst
seemed more unendurable than ever.
"Eat light and belt tight," O'Hara muttered. "Last night they was
watching like cats at a rat-hole. To-night surely they'll not be so
eager. It'll be to-night that we can make our dash to the river."
Once more the sun was shining on the green, open space around the
hut. A huge butterfly, blazing with gaudy tropical colors, fluttered
out from some nook among the creepers where it had been hidden, and
on slow wings sailed almost up to us, loitered a moment beside a
blue flower, and again took flight through the still air to the
opposite forest wall.
"If Neil Gleazen had as much brains under his hair as he has hair to
cover his head," Matterson softly remarked, "we'd have brought
enough food so that we'd not have to go hungry."
"Food!" Gleazen roared. "Food, is it? You eat like a hog, you
glutton. And who was to know that Bull would not have a house full
of food to feast us on? Who was to know that Bull would be dead?"
At that a silence fell upon us.
As usual, though we had agreed to a truce between our two parties,
Gleazen, Matterson, and O'Hara sat on one side of the room, the side
where the skeleton and the bag of pebbles lay, and Arnold, Abe and
I sat on the other, with poor Uncle Seth wandering about at will
between us.
There was that in my uncle's manner which I could not understand;
and as I watched him, Abe Guptil touched my elbow.
"Something queer ails Seth Upham," he whispered.
"I know it," I replied.
"I don't like to see him act that way."
"Nor I."
Abe regarded me thoughtfully. "Now ain't it queer how things turn
out?" he whispered. "I mind the day you come to my house and told me
I'd got to flit. It was a bitter day for me, Joe, and yet do you
know, I'd kind o' like to be back there, even if it was all to go
through again. I swear, though, I'd never sail again with Mr.
Gleazen."
There was something so ingenuous in Abe's way of saying that he
wished he had never come, that I smiled; but it touched me to
remember all that Abe and I had faced together; and Abe himself,
with keen Yankee shrewdness, added in an undertone, "It's all very
well for O'Hara to talk of making our break to-night. I'm thinking,
Joe, it is upon us a storm will break before we get free and clear
of this camp."
As the sun rose higher and higher, the sunlight steadily grew
warmer. The air shimmered with heat, and the house itself became as
hot, it seemed, as an oven over a charcoal fire. Sweat streamed from
our faces and, having had no water now for nearly twenty-four hours,
we suffered agonies of thirst.
Never were men in a more utterly tantalizing predicament. Whether or
not it was cooler outside the hut than within, it surely could have
been no hotter; and from the door straight down the hill to the
spring there led a broad, open path. The spring was only a short
distance away, and there was, so far as we could see, not a living
creature between us and cold water in abundance. Hour after hour the
green, deep grass around it mocked us. Yet in the wattled hut, under
the thatched roof, we were prisoners.
Three arrows, shot by we knew not whom, every one of them now in our
own hands, were the only warnings that we had received; but not a
man of us dared disobey the message that those three arrows had
brought.
The day wore on, through the long and dreary watches of the morning,
through the tortures of high noon, and through the less harsh
afternoon hours. We ate another of our few remaining meals and
watched the sun set and the darkness come swiftly. The shadows,
growing longer and longer, reached out across the clearing to the
trees on the opposite side; and suddenly, darkly, swept up the
eastern wall of the forest. As the light vanished, night enfolded
us. The stars that flashed into the sky only intensified the utter
blackness of the woods.
O'Hara uneasily stirred and stretched himself in the darkness like a
dog.
"Now, lads," he whispered, "now's the time to gather things
together. At two in the morning we'll run for it. Then's the hour
they'll be sleeping like so many black pigs."
Gleazen moved and groaned,--it was almost the first time that he had
yielded in the least to the pain of his wound.
"Can you travel by yourself, Neil?" Matterson asked. "Or shall I
carry you on my back?"
When it came to me that the question was no joke, that Matterson
actually meant it, I could not keep from staring at him in
amazement. He was a tremendous man, but there was something honestly
heroic in his offering to carry Cornelius Gleazen's weight back over
all those miles.
Gleazen smiled and shook his head. "Thanks, Mat," he replied, "but
I'll make out to scramble along."
The word "scramble," it seemed, caught Uncle Seth's attention, and
with a curt nod, he said, "Yes, scramble them; use them any way but
boiled. We can't sell cracked eggs in the store, but they're
perfectly good to use at home."
We all looked in amazement, and Gleazen, in spite of his pain,
hoarsely laughed.
"Why, Seth," he cried, "are you gone crazy?"
My uncle stared blankly at him and continued to pace the room.
In the silence that ensued, Gleazen's words seemed to echo and
reëcho; though they were spoken quietly, even in jest, their
significance was truly terrible.
"Gentlemen," said Arnold Lamont in a very low voice, "Seth Upham, I
fear, is not well. We must not let him stand guard. _We cannot trust
him!_"
"Name of heaven!" whispered Matterson, "the man's right. Upham is
turning queer."
As I watched my uncle, my mother's only brother, the last of all my
kin, a choking rose in my throat. He did not see me at all. He saw
none of us. In mind and spirit he was thousands of miles away from
us. I started toward him, but when his eyes met mine dully and with
no indication that he recognized me, I swallowed hard and turned
back.
Never was a night so long and ghastly! With all prepared for our
dash to the river, with Uncle Seth wandering back and forth, and
with the rest of us divided into three watches of two each, that
overlapped by an hour, so that four men were always on guard, we
watched and waited until midnight passed and the morning hours came.
When the moon was at the zenith, O'Hara woke Matterson, and we
gathered by the packs, which were made up and ready.
"Poor Bull!" said O'Hara, brushing his hand across his eyes. "Sure,
and I hate to leave him thus. If ever man deserved a decent burial,
it's him."
"If men got what they deserved," Gleazen briefly retorted, "Bull
would never have drove the ship on the island, and we'd never have
had to divide up this here find which Bull dug up for us, and Bull
would never have had to stand by the hill to get himself killed, in
the first place."
Each man had tied up his own belongings to suit himself, and had put
in his pocket his share of what little food was left. The different
packs stood in the middle of the hut, but it was noticeable that,
although each man was nearest his own, Matterson was eyeing
Gleazen's with a show of keener interest.
"Let me carry your bundle, Neil, you with a hole in your leg," he
said.
"No," Gleazen replied.
"I'll never notice the weight of it."
"Keep your hand off, Molly. I'll carry my own bundle."
"As you please."
Matterson turned away and stepped to one side.
All this I noticed, at first, mainly, if the truth be known, because
I saw how closely Arnold Lamont was noticing it, but later because
the manner of the two men convinced me that Gleazen's pack held the
bag that the others were so carefully guarding.
Now that our food was almost gone, there remained so very little
baggage of any kind for us to carry, that there was no good reason
that I could see for not putting our odds and ends of clothing and
ammunition into, say, two convenient bundles, at which we could take
turns during our forced march to the river, or, indeed, for not
abandoning the mere baggage altogether. But Gleazen, Matterson, and
O'Hara had planned otherwise. Having allotted to each of us his
share of the food that remained, and an equal seventh of our various
common possessions, they kept three of the muskets themselves, and
gave the fourth to poor Seth Upham, which seemed to me so mad an act
that I was on the point of questioning its wisdom, when Arnold
caught my eye and signaled me to be still.
Gathering in the door of the hut, we looked out into the silent,
moonlit glade that led down the hill and through the valley toward
the distant river.
"Are we all ready, lads?" Matterson asked in his light voice.
"Push on, Molly, push on," Gleazen replied.
Shouldering his pack, Matterson stepped out into the moonlight.
"Now, then," he whispered,--for although we were confident that no
enemy within earshot was then awake (it had not been hard for O'Hara
to persuade us to his own way of thinking), a spell of silence and
secrecy was upon us,--"it's straight for the river, lads, and the
devil take the hindermost. If you're too lame to travel, Neil, so
help me, I'll carry you."
"Push on!" Gleazen returned hoarsely. "Push on to the spring. After
that we'll talk if you wish."
"We're going home," I thought. Home, indeed! It seemed that at last
we had turned the corner; that at last we had passed the height of
land and were on the point of racing down the long slope; that at
last our troubles were over and done with. A score of figures to
express it leaped into my mind. And first of all, best of all, at
last we were to get water!
Arnold said sharply, "Come, Abe; come, Joe; step along."
Bending low, Matterson led the way, I followed close at his heels,
and the others came in single file behind me. Seven dark figures,
silently slipping from shadow to shadow, we left behind us the
hut,--we believed forever!--and headed straight down the hill to the
spring; for more than anything else we longed to plunge our faces
into cold water and drink until we had quenched our burning thirst.
Down the hill to the spring we went, slipping along in single file.
All night and all day, without a word, we had endured agony; for it
was by showing no sign of life whatever to those who were guarding
the hut from the forest that we hoped so to lull their watchfulness
that we could escape them just after midnight. And now we were eager
almost beyond words for that water which we had so vividly imagined.
As we darted into the tall grass, it seemed so completely assured
that I swung my pack from my shoulder and broke into a quick trot
after Matterson, whose long, swift strides, as he straightened up,
had carried him on ahead of me.
If a thousand people read this tale, not one of them, probably, will
know the full meaning of the word thirst; not one will understand
what water had come by then to mean to me.
I ran--I tried to run faster--faster! But as I dragged my pack
along, bumping at my knees, I was amazed to see Matterson stop. He
threw his musket to his shoulder. The hollow boom of it went rolling
off through the woodland and echoed slowly away into silence among
the mighty trees. Then he threw his hands up, and with a cry fell
into the grass, and lay so still that I could not tell where he had
fallen.
By the flash of his musket I and those behind me had for an instant
seen by the spring a grotesque figure dressed in skins and rags, and
painted with white rings and bars. When the flash died away, we
could see nothing, not even the waving grasses and the black trees
against the sky, because momentarily the sudden glare had blinded
us.
As if impelled by another will than mine, I drew back step by step
until I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the others. Whatever
quarrels we had had among ourselves were for the time forgotten.
"Now, by heaven," Gleazen gasped, "it's back to the hut for all of
us!"
"But Neil--now, Neil, sure now we can't run away and leave old
Molly," O'Hara cried.
"Leave him?" Gleazen roared. "We've got to leave him! Where is he?
Tell me if you can! Go find him if you like! Hark! See!"
With a thin, windy whistle a spear came flying out of the night and
passed just over Gleazen's shoulder and his pack. Another with a
soft _chug_ struck into the ground at my feet; then, my eyes having
once more become accustomed to the moonlight, I saw sneaking into
the clearing a score of dark, slinking figures.
"They're coming!" I cried. "They're cutting us off! Quick! Quick!"
In panic I started back to the hut, with the others at my heels.
When they saw the figures that I had seen, Gleazen and O'Hara both
fired their muskets, whereupon the figures disappeared and we,
deafened by the tremendous reports and blinded again by the bright
flashes, ran back as hard as we could go to the hut that so short a
time since we had eagerly abandoned; and with Gleazen limping in the
rear, fairly threw ourselves across the threshold.
Whether our gunfire had done any real damage, we gravely doubted;
and now we were both a man and a weapon short. But bitterest of all,
and by far the most discouraging, was our intense thirst.
"Ah, the black devils," O'Hara muttered between grinding teeth.
"Sure, and they planned all that--planned to let us get the water
almost between our lips and then drive us back here. The black
cowards, they dare not meet us man to man, though they are forty to
our one."
It was significant that no one spoke of Matterson. The silence as
regarded his name marked a certain fatalism, which now possessed
us--something akin to despair, yet not so ignoble as despair;
something akin to resolution, yet not so praiseworthy as resolution.
There seemed, indeed, nothing to say about him. Bull was dead, I
thought, and Matterson was dead; and even if the blacks dared not
rush upon us and take the hut by storm, they would soon kill us by
thirst. We had done our best; if worst came to worst, we would die
with our boots on.
Meanwhile queer low cries out in the forest were rising little by
little to shrill yells and hoots and cat-calls. If we could judge by
the sounds, there were hundreds of blacks, if not thousands.
"O Bull! You poor, deluded fool!" O'Hara cried. "Now why--why--_why_
did he go and build the house on a king's grave?"
Why indeed?
It was a fearful thing to hear those cries and yells; yet, although
we watched from door and windows a long while, we did not actually
see any further sign of danger, until Arnold Lamont, who was
guarding the door, said in a subdued voice, "Look--down the
hill--half-way down. Something has moved twice."
As we gathered behind him, he turned and with a quick gesture said,
"Do not leave the windows. Who knows what trick they may try upon
us?"
My uncle, who seemed for the moment to comprehend all that was going
forward, and Abe Guptil and Gleazen, went back to the windows,
although it was evident enough that their minds were not so much on
their own duty as on whatever it was that had caught Arnold's
attention.
"See!" said Arnold.
There was nothing down there now that seemed not to belong by nature
to the place, and I surmised that Arnold had seen only some small
animal. But that a black object, appearing and disappearing, had
revealed more to the others than to me, I immediately apprehended.
"It was fifty feet farther down the hill when I first distinguished
it," said Arnold.
O'Hara went over to my uncle and I heard him say, "Let me take your
gun, since it's loaded, Mr. Upham, and thank you kindly."
Returning, he sat down in the door beside Arnold, who had begun
meanwhile to load the empty musket that O'Hara had carelessly laid
aside. When the thing, whatever it was, moved again, O'Hara raised
the gun to his shoulder.
"Don't shoot!" Arnold whispered.
"And why not?"
The thing moved once more.
"Will ye look, now! It's come ten feet in this direction," O'Hara
whispered.
Now Arnold raised his own musket.
Again we saw the thing, but so briefly that neither Arnold nor
O'Hara had time to fire.
Suddenly O'Hara laid his hand on Arnold's shoulder and repeated
Arnold's own words:--
"Don't shoot."
"This time," Arnold whispered, "I shall shoot."
"Wait a bit, wait a bit!" O'Hara gently pressed down the muzzle of
the gun.
Meanwhile, you must understand, the yelling and hooting had first
grown loud and near, then had drawn slowly farther away. It was not
easy to let that creature, be it animal or human, come crawling up
the hill in the full light of the moon. As the cries died in the
distance, the thing moved faster and with less concealment, and I
fiercely whispered, "Shoot, Arnold, shoot!"
"Wait," he replied and lifted a restraining hand.
At the moment I could not understand why he did not do as I said;
but as the thing came out into open ground, the same thought that
had caused the two to hold their fire occurred likewise to me; and
now we saw that we were right.
The thing crawling up the hill was a man, and when the man came into
the open clearing directly in front of our camp, we saw that it was
Matterson.
Without a word, followed closely by O'Hara, who laid his gun on the
threshold, I leaped out past Arnold and ran down to Matterson and
helped him to his feet and led him groaning up to the hut.
[Illustration]
VI
FOR OUR VERY LIVES
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXIV
SPEARS IN THE DARK
"O-o-oh!" he moaned. "They got me. It's a wonder they didn't kill
me. But here I am along with old Neil Gleazen."
"Where's your bundle?" Gleazen demanded.
"Down in the grass by the spring."
"Let me tell you, Matterson, it's good I carried my own."
Matterson repressed another groan and made no answer.
Blood was running from a great gash above his ear and across his
cheek, which we hastened to bind to the best of our ability, and he
lay down on the floor with his head on his hand.
"I'm on the sick list," he said at last, "but I've had water, and if
those black sons of hell have not poisoned the spring, I'll call it
quits."
Matterson's face was a ghastly sight, and already blood had reddened
the strip of sacking round his head; but I believe there was not a
man of us who would not have taken his wound to have got his chance
at water.
"If only we could catch a king," Gleazen remarked thoughtfully.
"That's the way to end a war in Africa. Catch us a king and make
peace on him."
"That's one way surely to end a war," said O'Hara, darkly, "but not
this war."
"And why not this war?"
"Because," said O'Hara, "Bull built the house on a king's grave.
It's the _spirits_ that are offended."
Gleazen laughed unkindly.
"Aye, laugh," cried O'Hara, "that's all you know about spirits. Now
I'll tell ye, believe me or not as it pleases ye, that the spirit of
a nigger is a bad thing to cross. And care as little as ye please
for jujus and fetishes and nigger gods, the times are coming when
they'd serve you well if you'd not turned them off by laughing at
them."
"Spirits--" said my uncle in an undertone. "Hm! Hollands, Scotch,
and Rye. We must lay in more Hollands, Sim; the stock's getting low.
And while you are about it, we'd best take an inventory of our
cordials."
Gleazen fluently swore, and watched Seth Upham with a keen,
appraising look. There was no doubt that in his own wandering mind
my uncle was back again in his store in Topham.
"I'm thirsty," he said suddenly. "I must get a drink of water. Now
where's the bucket? Sim, where's the bucket?"
As he fumbled along the wall, we stared at one another with eyes in
which there was fear as well as horror. I swallowed hard. Poor, poor
Uncle Seth, I thought. What was to become of him? And indeed, for
the matter of that, of us all?
By this time I had come to see clearly that poor Seth Upham was in
no condition to stand up for his own rights, and that, whether or
not he could stand up for his rights, he had no chance of getting
them from that precious trio, his associates, without a stronger
advocate than mere justice.
They had promised unconditionally that half the profits of their mad
voyage should be his, and by that promise alone they had so cruelly
persuaded him to sell home and business and embark in their
enterprise. Now, deceived, bullied, flouted, he bade fair to lose
not only those gains which were rightfully his, but also his vessel,
his stores, and every cent that he had ventured. If there was to be
a copper penny saved for him, Arnold, Abe, and I must save it.
Through the rough, less pleasant memories of his abrupt, sharp
ways--and so often, even when he was in the abruptest and sharpest
of moods he had betrayed unconsciously, even unwillingly, his
thought of my future, for which he was building, as well as for his
own--there came memories of old days, when he and my mother and I
had lived so quietly and happily together in Topham.
I started up, all at once awakened from my reveries, with Abe's
dazed voice ringing in my ears. "Look! Look!" he cried. "Look
there!"
For the moment, in our horror at my uncle's condition, we had almost
forgotten our danger from without.
"Look!" Abe cried again. "In heaven's name look there!"
We crowded shoulder to shoulder by the window where Abe had
stationed himself and saw in the moonlit clearing a strange
creature, which came dancing and rolling along from the edge of the
forest. It was dressed in skins and rags. It was painted with big
white rings and bars. Now it began to utter strange whines and
squeals and whimpers, in an unearthly tone that it might have
produced by blowing on a split quill.
From the corner of my eye I saw that Matterson was biting his lip.
At my side I felt O'Hara violently trembling.
Out in the moonlight, where the swaying creepers cast dim, spectral
shadows, the gibbering, murmuring creature was coming nearer. Its
boldness was appalling. I had been brought up in a Christian country
and given a Christian education, but even to me that clumsy, dancing
wizard, with his unearthly squeals and cries, brought a
superstitious fear so keen that I could scarcely control my wits.
Small wonder that such tricks impose on credulous savages!
"Watch, now!" Gleazen said quietly. He leveled a musket across the
window-sill. "Spirits is it? I'll show them."
"Don't shoot," O'Hara cried. "Don't shoot, Neil, don't shoot!"
He reached past me toward Gleazen; but before he could lay hands on
the gun, Gleazen fired. A spurt of flame shot from the muzzle, and
as the report went thundering off into the forest the medicine
man--wizard--devil--call him what you will--seemed curiously to wilt
like a drought-killed plant, but more suddenly than ever plant
wilted, and fell in a crumpled heap in the moonlight.
"You fool!" O'Hara cried, "you cursed fool! First it was Bull that
built the house on a king's grave and now it is you that's killed a
devil!"
"He's dead enough," Gleazen calmly replied.
"Look!"
Here and there, along the edge of the forest, men darted into the
moonlight. They carried spears, which flashed now and then when the
moon fell just so on the points. First they gathered by the body of
the wizard and carried it back into the woods. We saw them, a little
knot of men with the heavy weight of the fallen mummer in their
midst, moving slowly to the wall of vines and through it into the
mysterious depths beyond. Then, coming slowly out again, they moved
back and forth before the hut as if to appraise our chances of
defending it. Then they once more disappeared.
All this time they had walked as if in a world of death. Although we
had seen their every gesture, we had not heard a sound loud enough
to rival the almost imperceptible drone of insects in the grass. But
now we heard again that grimly familiar, haunting, wild cry. Three
times we heard it, terribly mournful and prolonged; then we heard a
voice wailing, "White man, I come 'peak: white man all go Dead
Land."
The voice died away, a few formless shrieks and yells followed it,
and a silence, long and deep, settled upon the clearing.
Once more Arnold, Abe, and I stood on one side of the hut, and
Gleazen, Matterson, and O'Hara on the other, with poor Seth Upham
wandering aimlessly between us.
There was war within and without. There was almost no food. There
was no water at all. I thought, then, that I should never see the
town of Topham again; and--which oddly enough seemed even harder to
endure--I thought that I never again should see the mission on the
river.
"I swear," O'Hara whispered,--so clearly did I hear the words, as I
stood with one eye for the inside of the hut and one for the
outside, that I jumped like a nervous girl,--"I swear we've started
a war that will reach from here to Barbary before it's done. Hearken
to that!"
We heard afar off the throbbing of native drums, the roar of distant
angry voices, a strange chant sung in some remote African
encampment.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXV
CARDS AND CHESS
Hunger and thirst were stripping away the last vestige of our
pretended good-will, and our two parties glared at each other in a
sullen rage, which seemed visibly to grow more intense, until it was
the most natural thing in the world that Arnold should touch with
the toe of his shoe a board that ran from one end of the hut to the
other and divided the floor approximately into halves.
"That side," he said, "is yours. This side is ours. You shall not
cross that line. You shall guard the hut from that side; we, from
this."
Gleazen looked at Matterson, then at O'Hara, then both he and
Matterson nodded grim assent.
But although a board across the hut divided us into two hostile
camps, we shared a peril so imminent and so overwhelming that we
dared not for an instant relax our watchfulness toward our enemies
in the forest.
With one eye on our foes without and one on our foes within, we
settled ourselves for another night, which I remember by the agonies
of thirst that we endured; and with a certain grim confidence,
shared by both parties in the hut, that neither would betray the
other, since to do so would be to throw away its own one chance for
life, we watched and waited for the dawn.
And meanwhile we heard in the forest such a clamor and din as few
white men have ever been so unlucky as to hear. First, we heard
unseen people running about and furiously screaming; then, here and
there through the trees and vines we caught glimpses of flaming
torches, which they swung in great circles and again and again
touched to the ground. I was convinced that it preluded an attack,
and I screwed up my courage and fingered my pistols and tried not to
show my fear; but in a brief lull I learned from something that
O'Hara was saying to his companions that they were not preparing for
an attack; they were mourning for the wizard whom Gleazen had
killed, and with the flaming torches they were driving away evil
spirits. Now far down the valley we caught glimpses of moving
lights; and once in a while, through pauses in the nearer din, we
heard a distant droning, by which we knew that the blacks of the
countryside were converging upon us from the remotest districts,
along their narrow trails, in thin streams like ants. Minute by
minute the cries became more general, and rose to such a hideous
intermingling of wails and shrieks as I should not have believed
could issue from merely human throats.
By its volume and extent the uproar was an appalling revelation of
the number of those who had surrounded us, and I tell you that we
seven men in that hut in the clearing were properly frightened. It
seemed a miracle that they did not sweep over us in one great
irresistible wave and bear us down and blot us out. Yet such was
their superstitious fear of things they did not understand, that
from the cover of our frail little hut our few firearms still held
them at a distance.
Never dreaming that their own power was infinitely superior to ours,
attributing the death of their wizard to a witchcraft stronger than
his own, they circled round and round us under cover of the forest
and dared not come within gunshot.
As day broke, and the sun rose like a ball of fire and blazed down
on us and doubled the tortures that we had suffered in the night, we
heard the drummers who had come to pound their drums by the body of
the dead wizard. The drumming throbbed and rolled in waves; bells
rang and hands clapped; and all the time there was shrieking and
wailing and moaning.
They drummed the stars down and the sun up, and when at noon there
had been no respite from the din, which by then fairly tortured us,
the other three, who had been talking together among themselves,
called us to the board across the hut for conference.
"Now, men," O'Hara began, "we'll make no foolish talk of being
friends together; surely we and you know how much such talk is
worth. But we and you know, surely, that if one party of us is
killed, the others will be killed likewise; for we are too few to
fight for our lives, even supposing as now that every man jack of us
is alive and bustling. Is not that so?
"Now, lads, there's a chance we can break through their line and run
for the river while the niggers is praying and mourning over that
corpse yonder."
O'Hara stopped as if for us to reply, and I glanced at Arnold, who,
meeting my glance, turned to Abe Guptil and thoughtfully said,
"Shall we take that chance, Abe?"
"Take any chance, is my feeling, Mr. Lamont. Chances are all too
few."
With a nod at O'Hara, Arnold replied, "We are agreed, I think. As
you say, there is a chance. You three shall go first. We will
follow."
"It's a chance," O'Hara repeated, almost stubbornly.
"We are in a mood for chances," Arnold returned. "But you three must
go first."
When O'Hara frowned, hesitated, and acceded, I wondered if he
thought we were gullible enough to let them come behind us.
Arnold was quietly smiling, but the others, as they gathered in the
door, were grave indeed. There was not one of us who did not know in
his heart that our hope was utterly forlorn. Only Arnold--time and
again I marveled at him!--sustained that amazing equanimity.
Gleazen shouldered his pack, but the others let theirs lie.
"How about the rest of the baggage?" Arnold asked, as composedly as
if he were setting out from the store in Topham upon a two days'
journey.
"Leave it to the devils and the ants," Matterson thickly retorted.
Both he and Gleazen were lame from their wounds and must have
suffered more than any of the rest of us. How they could face the
long, forced march, I did not understand; for though hunger and
thirst were my only troubles, my head swam when I moved quickly and
my limbs were now very light, now heavier than so much lead. But
Gleazen had long since shown his mettle, and Matterson, although he
staggered when he walked, set his teeth as he leaned against the
wall and waited to start.
If the truth were told, we had no real hope of getting away; and
immediately whatever desperate dreams we clung to were frustrated;
for, as we appeared in front of the hut and weakly started down the
hill, there came a sudden lull in the mad wailing over the dead
wizard; black warriors appeared on all sides of us, and a line of
them, like hornets streaming out of their nest, emerged from the
forest and massed between us and the spring.
"Come, men, it's back to the house," said O'Hara; and back we went,
each party to its own side as before, but each turning to the others
as if for what pitiful mutual reassurance there could be in such a
situation.
"There's war from here to the coast," Matterson muttered. "Such a
war as never was before."
The voice that issued from his dry throat was so thick and husky
that I should never have known it for the light, effeminate voice of
Matterson.
"It's bad," said Gleazen, "but so help me, they'll be cleaning out
old Parmenter and putting an end to the sniveling psalm-singers on
this river. And then, lads! Ah, then'll be great times ahead, if
once we get free and clear of this accursed hornets' nest."
In the face of our desperate danger, the man was actually exultant.
But I thought of the girl at the mission, and a dread filled my
heart, so strong that the room went black and I sat down, literally
too sick to stand.
With never a word poor Uncle Seth was pacing back and forth across
the hut. Of us all, he alone had the liberty of the entire place;
but it was a tolerant, contemptuous liberty that the others gave
him, and nothing else would have testified so vividly to the way he
had fallen in their regard.
It seemed incredible that this pale, gaunt, voiceless man, who
suffered so much in silence, who without comment or remark let
matters take their own course, who resented no indignity and aspired
to no authority, could be that same Seth Upham who had made himself
one of the leading men of our own Topham. And indeed it was not the
same Seth Upham! Something was broken; something was lost. In my
heart of hearts, I knew well enough what it was, but I could not
bear to put the thought into words. No man in my place, who had a
tender regard for old times and old associations, could have done
so.
There had been no life at all in our last attempt to leave the hut.
We faced the future now in the listlessness of despair. Still the
extraordinary situation continued unchanged. Apparently, so long as
we remained in the hut, we were to be ignored. It seemed as if the
black fiends must know how bitterly we were suffering as hour after
hour the clamor of their mourning rose and fell; as if they were
deliberately torturing us.
When Matterson sat down on the floor with his back against the wall,
and began to whittle out bits of wood from one of the legs of the
table, I watched him with an inward passion that I made no effort to
control. He, for one, was responsible for Seth Upham's sad plight,
but with a heart as hard as the blade of his knife he calmly sat for
hours whittling, and smiling over his work.
All that day we heard the tumult in the forest; all that day the sun
blazed down on the hut and doubled and trebled the tortures of our
thirst; all that day Seth Upham paced the hut in silence; and from
noon till late afternoon Matterson whittled at little sticks of
wood.
Piece by piece there grew before our eyes a set of chessmen. Rough
and crude though the men were, they slowly took the familiar shapes
of kings and queens and bishops and knights and pawns. When they
were done, Matterson hunted through the pockets of the coat that the
skeleton still wore, and found a carpenter's pencil, with which he
blackened half the men. Then, grunting with pain as he moved, he
drew a crude chessboard on the floor squarely in the middle of the
hut.
"Lamont," said he, "shall we play?"
Arnold smiled. "I will play you a game," he said.
And with that the two sat down by the board and tossed for white and
set up the crudely carved men, and began perhaps the most
extraordinary game of chess that ever two men played.
[Illustration: _And with that the two sat down by the board ... and
began perhaps the most extraordinary game of chess that ever two men
played._]
There was something admirable in their very bravado. While the rest
of us watched the clearing, every man of us suffering from thirst
and hunger, the tortures of the damned, those two, swaying sometimes
from sheer weakness, played at chess as coolly as if it were one of
the games that Arnold and Sim had played of old in my uncle's store
at Topham; and although to this day I have never really mastered
chess, I knew enough of it to perceive that it was no uneven battle
that they fought. As the pawns and knights advanced, and the bishops
deployed, and the queens came out into the board, the two players
became more and more absorbed in their game, which seemed to take
them out of themselves and to enable them to forget all that had
happened and was happening.
Indeed, it well-nigh hypnotized those of us who were only watching.
The ghastly calm of the two, the fierceness with which they fixed
their eyes on each move, the coolness with which they ignored the
wild clamor, all helped to compose the rest of us, and by their
example they made us ashamed of revealing to one another the fears
we were struggling against.
"Neil," said O'Hara suddenly,--his harsh, hoarse voice startled even
the chess-players,--"shall we have a turn at cards? I do believe
there's a wonderful solace in such hazards."
"Cards!" Gleazen echoed. His own voice was stranger than O'Hara's.
"We have no cards."
From the pocket of the blue coat on the skeleton O'Hara drew out a
dingy old pack, which a dead man's fingers had placed there.
"Sure, and I know where to find them," he said. "Never did Bull
travel without them."
With that the two squatted on the floor, and shuffled the cards with
a pleasant whir, and dealt and played and dealt again.
It was as if our party had suddenly been transported back to Topham.
Such nonchalance was almost beyond my understanding. Matterson, by
his cool, bold defiance of danger, seemed to have aroused emulation
in every one of us; and Gleazen, always reckless, now talked as
lightly and gayly of the games as if it were a child's play to while
away the dull hours of a holiday afternoon.
For the time, abandoning the agreement that neither side should
trespass on the other's half of the hut, Abe and I watched from
window to window lest the blacks take us by surprise, and now and
then we would see someone observing the hut from under the trees a
long gunshot away. But although the wails and yells and moans and
the constant drumming over the dead wizard never ceased, no man came
from the cover of the vines into the clearing.
Now Arnold precisely and clearly said, "Check."
Matterson swore and snapped his fingers and moved.
Again Arnold moved, and again he said, "Check!"
Matterson bent over the board and frowned. After a long delay he
moved once more.
Instantly Arnold moved again and in his calm voice repeated,
"Check!"
Matterson looked up at him with a strange new respect in his eyes.
"You win!" he cried with an oath. "You've done well. I didn't think
you could. You _are_ a chess-player."
"I have played a good deal," Arnold quietly replied.
"You have played with better men than Sim Muzzy."
"Yes." For a moment Arnold hesitated, then he added: "I have beaten
at chess a great man. It was like to have cost me my sword and my
head."
"Your sword?" Matterson repeated slowly. "Your sword and your head?"
There was a question in his voice, but Arnold did not answer it.
Returning a curt, "Yes," as if regretting that he had said so much,
he brushed Matterson's chessmen together, and looked out of the door
and down the long slope at the tall green grass beside the spring,
which seemed as far away from us as did our own well, thousands of
miles away in Topham.
And still Gleazen and O'Hara played on. Time and again we heard the
whir of shuffling and the slap of cards flung on top of one another.
Now the sun was setting. The swift twilight came upon us and faded
into darkness, and the card-players also stopped their game.
CHAPTER XXVI
AN UNSEEN FOE
All day Seth Upham had scarcely said a word. From dawn until dark he
had paced the hut, apparently buried deep in thought. Only his
gaunt, pitiful face revealed the extent to which he shared our
tortures.
Now for the first time in all that day, to our surprise, he spoke;
and his first words confirmed every fear we had felt for him.
"The boys ought not to make so much noise," he said. "I must speak
to the constable about it."
Matterson softly swore and shifted the bandage on his face. Gleazen
significantly looked over at me. Abe Guptil stood with his mouth
open and stared at Seth Upham.
Never boys of a New England town made such an uproar as was going on
outside. Those wails and yells and hideous drummings and trumpetings
were African in every weird cadence and boisterous hoot and clang.
Then, as if the first words had broken a way through his silence,
Seth Upham began to talk in a low, hurried voice; and however
reluctant we had hitherto been to believe that he was mad, there was
no longer any hope for him at all. The man had lost his mind
completely under the terrific strain that he had endured.
Small wonder when you think of all that had happened: of how, for
Cornelius Gleazen's mad project, he had thrown away a place of honor
and assured comfort back in Topham; of how he had been driven deeper
and still deeper into Gleazen's nefarious schemes by blackmail for
we knew not what crimes that he had committed in his young-manhood;
of how, even in that alliance of thieves, he had fallen from a place
of authority to such a place that he got not even civil treatment;
of how he had lost reputation, livelihood, money, and now even his
vessel.
"I declare, we must put in another constable," he muttered. "Johnson
can't even keep the boys in order--In order, did you say? Who else
should keep the place in order?--O Sim, if only you had wits to
match your good intentions! How can you expect to keep books if you
can't keep the stock in order?--" He stopped suddenly and faced the
door. "Hark! Who called? I declare, I thought I was a lad again."
Moment by moment, as he paced the hut, we watched his expression
change with the mood of his delirium,--sometimes I have wondered if
the fever of the tropics did not precipitate his strange
frenzy,--and moment by moment his emotions seemed to become more
intense.
Now, pursuing that latest fancy, he talked about his boyhood and
told how deeply he repented of the wicked life he had led as a young
man; told us, all unwittingly, of unsuspected ambitions that had led
him from wild ways into sober ones, and of his youthful
determination to win a creditable place in the community; told us of
the hard honest work that he had given to accomplish it. Now he
revealed the pride he had taken in all that he had succeeded in
doing and building, and--which touched me more than I can tell
you--how he had counted on me, his only kinsman, to take his place
and carry on his work. All this, you understand, not as if he were
talking to us or to anyone else, but as if he were thinking out
loud,--as indeed he was,--merely running over in his own mind the
story of his life.
Now he reverted again to his repentance for the wicked youth that he
had lived. And now, suddenly, his manner of speaking changed, and
from merely thinking aloud he burst out into wild accusation.
"The dice are loaded," he cried,--his voice was hoarse and strained
with the agonies that he, like all of us, had endured and was still
enduring,--"the dice are loaded. I'll not play with loaded dice,
Neil Gleazen!"
At that Gleazen gasped out a queer whisper.
But already Seth Upham's mind was racing away on another tack.
"Aye, loaded with the blessed weight of salvation. Didn't my old
mother, God bless her, teach me at her knee that a man's soul can
never die? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name--"
Staring at him in horror, we saw that he was not blasphemous. The
words came reverently from his weak lips. He simply was mad.
Suddenly in a high-pitched voice, he began to sing,
"Low at Thy gracious feet I bend,
My God, my everlasting friend."
He sang three stanzas of the hymn in a way that appalled every one
of those three men who of us all, I think, were least easily
appalled--indeed, I think that for once they were more appalled than
the rest of us; certainly none of them had Arnold's composure or
Abe's obvious, almost overpowering sympathy for poor Seth Upham.
Then he stopped and faced about with eyes strangely aflame. In his
manner now there was all his old imperiousness and something more,
an almost noble dignity, a commanding enthusiasm, which, whether it
came from madness alone or whether it had always been in him, got
respect even from Matterson and O'Hara.
"I am going to meet my God face to face at the throne of Judgment,"
he cried.
It was the first time in days that he had addressed us directly, and
he spoke with a fierce intensity that amazed us; then, before we
guessed what was in his disordered mind, before a man of us could
stop him, he stepped outside the door and flung his arms straight
out like a cross, and with his head thrown back marched, singing,
into the darkness.
"By Heaven!" Gleazen gasped, "he has set sail now for the port of
Kingdom Come!"
We who remained in the hut, where a spell of silence had fallen,
could hear him strongly and clearly singing as he strode down the
long, dark vista toward the spring:--
"Lo what a glorious sight appears
To our believing eyes!
The earth and seas are past away,
And the old rolling skies!"
It may seem strange to one who reads of that fearful night that we
did not rush after him and drag him back. But at the time we were
taken completely by surprise, literally stupefied by the
extraordinary climax of our days and nights of suffering and
anxiety; and even then, I think,--certainly I have later come to
believe it,--we felt in our inmost hearts that it was kinder to let
him go.
He went down the hill, singing like an innocent child. His voice,
which but a moment before had been pathetically weak, had now become
all at once as clear as silver. And still the words came back from
the tall grass by the spring, where creatures ten thousand times
worse than any crawling son of the serpent of Eden lay in wait for
him:--
"Attending angels shout for joy,
And the bright armies sing,
Mortals, behold the sacred feet;
Of your descending King."
Then the song quavered and died away, and there came back to us a
queer choking cry; then the silence of the jungle, enigmatic,
ominous, unfathomable, enfolded us all, and we sat for a long time
with never a word between us.
The wailing and drumming over the body of the dead wizard had
suddenly and completely ceased. At what was coming next, not a man
of us ventured to guess.
Gleazen was first to break that ghastly silence. "They got him," he
whispered. For once the man was awed.
"No," said Arnold Lamont, very quietly, "they have not got him.
Unless I am mistaken, his madness purged his soul of its black
stains, and he went straight to the God whose name was on his lips
when he died."
Of that we never spoke again. Some thought one thing; some, another.
We had no heart to argue it.
Poor Uncle Seth! What he had done in his youth that brought him at
last to that bitterly tragic end, perhaps no other besides Cornelius
Gleazen really knew, and Cornelius Gleazen, be it said to his
everlasting credit, never told. But for all that, I was to learn a
certain story long afterward and far away. Not one man in hundreds
of thousands pays such a penalty for blasphemous sins of his mature
years; and whatever Seth Upham had done, however dark the memory, it
had been a boy's fault, which he had so well lived down that, when
Cornelius Gleazen came back to Topham, no one in the whole world,
except those two, would have believed it of him.
In that grim, threatening silence, which enfolded us like a thick,
new blanket, we forgot our own quarrel; we almost forgot the very
cause for which we had risked, and now bade fair to lose, our lives.
We were six men, two of us wounded, three of us arrant desperadoes,
but all of us at least white of skin, surrounded by a black horde
that was able, if ever it knew its own power, to wipe us at one
blow clean off the face of the earth. Now that the terrible thing
which had just happened had broken down and done away with every
thought of those trivial enmities that fed on such unworthy motives
as desire for riches, our common danger bound us, in spite of every
antagonism, closer together than brothers. By some strange power
that cry which had come back to us when Seth Upham's song ended not
only enforced a truce between our two parties, but so brought out
the naked sincerity of each one of us, that we knew, each and all,
without a spoken word, that for the time being we could trust one
another.
Gleazen, always reckless, was the first to break the silence. From
the wall he took down a pewter mug, which the dead man they called
Bull had hung there. Pretending to pour into it wine from an
imaginary bottle, he looked across it at Arnold.
"This is not the vintage I should choose for my toast," he said with
a wry mouth, "but it must serve. Yes, Lamont, it must serve." He
raised the mug high. "In half an hour we'll be six dead men. I
drink--to the next one to go."
Arnold coolly smiled. Pretending to raise a glass and clink it
against the mug, he, too, went through the pantomime of drinking.
I was not surprised that Abe Guptil was staring at them, his lips
parted, or that his face was pale. Although drunk only in
make-believe, it was a toast to make a man think twice. I drew a
deep breath; I could only admire the coolness of the two.
Yet now and then there flashed in Arnold's eye a hint of resourceful
determination such as Gleazen probably never dreamed of, a hint of
scorn for such theatrical trickery.
We were all on our feet now, standing together in our silent truce,
when we heard for the last time that sound, so unhappily familiar,
the long-drawn wailing cry that, whenever the wizard spoke, had
preceded and followed his harangue. Coming from the dark forest
beyond the clearing, it brought home to us more vividly than ever
the ominous silence that had ensued since Seth Upham fell by the
spring. Then that familiar, accursed voice, faint but penetrating,
came from the wall of vines:--
"White man, him go Dead Land!
"White man, him go Dead Land!
"White man, him go Dead Land!"
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FORT FALLS
"Now, by the holy," O'Hara whimpered, "it's fight for our lives, or
hand them away like so many maundy pennies."
"Fight, is it?" Gleazen roared. And forgetting his stiff wounds, he
sprang to his feet. "Load those guns! Name of heaven, be quick!"
Why at this particular time the bawling voice of the native should
thus have called us to action is not easy to say, for you would
think that, having become familiar with it, we should have regarded
it with proverbial contempt. But we knew that the deadlock could not
last forever; Seth Upham's fate was all too vivid in our minds; and
I really think that, in the strange voice itself, there was more
than a hint of what was to follow.
Forgotten now was the edict that one party should stay on one side
of the hut, the other on the opposite side. Forgotten, even, was the
bag of stones in Gleazen's pack. Armed with every weapon that the
hut afforded, we stood behind door and window and saw a sight that
appalled the bravest of us.
Straight up the hill from the spring where they had killed Seth
Upham there streamed a raging black horde. The rising moon shone on
their spears and revealed the endless multitudes that came hard at
the heels of the leaders. Their yells reverberated from wall to wall
of the forest and even, it seemed to us, to the starry sky above
them.
As we fired on them, the streamers of flame from our guns darted
into the night and the acrid smoke drifted back to us. But though
they faltered, this time they came doggedly on. Already in the
moonlight we could distinguish individuals; now we could see their
contorted features alive with rage and vindictiveness. That they
would take the hut by storm, there was not the slightest doubt; nor
was there a ray of hope that we should survive its fall.
It was a long, long way from Topham to that wattled hut in a
clearing on the side of an African hill, and in more ways than one
it was a far call from Higgleby's barn. But it was Higgleby's barn
that I thought of then--Higgleby's barn in the pasture, with a light
shining through a crack between the boards, and a boy scaling the
wall under the window; Higgleby's barn in the dark, with tongues of
flame running out from it through the grass. Truly, I thought in
metaphor, which was rare for me, the fire that sprang up so long ago
in Higgleby's barn had already killed Seth Upham, and now it was
going to enfold and engulf us all.
Then I thought of the mission on the river, and the girl whom I had
seen first among the mangroves, then in the darkness on the mission
porch. Did the war actually reach to the coast? And would the war
wipe out "old Parmenter" as Gleazen had said? By heaven, I thought,
it would not and it should not!
All this, of course, takes far longer to tell, than it took to go
coursing through my mind. In the time it took to think it out, not
one black foot struck the ground; not one left the ground. Before
that racing army of negroes had advanced another step, the answer
had come to me; and now, no longer the boy who had climbed in idle
curiosity the wall of Higgleby's barn, but a man to think and act, I
cried from my dry throat:--
"Out of the back window, men! O'Hara, help me brace the door! Out of
the window and over the hill!"
With an oath Gleazen cried, "He's right! They're all coming on us up
the hill! The back way's our only chance!"
O'Hara, in spite of my call for help, led the way out of the back
window; but Arnold paused to jam chairs and boards against the door;
and Gleazen, ever reckless, stooped in the darkness and picked
something up. As we sprang to the window, he came last of all, and I
saw that he, the only one to think of it in that hour of desperate
peril, was of a mind to bring his pack--the pack that had held the
thing for which we had left our homes and crossed the seas. I saw
Matterson clinging to brave Abe Guptil's shoulder, and striving
desperately, with Abe's help, to keep pace with O'Hara, who in all
this time had not got so much as a scratch. I saw the forest wherein
lay our sole hope of safety, and terribly far off it seemed. Then I
rolled out into the moonlight, and ran as if the devil were at my
heels.
Almost at once I heard Gleazen come tumbling after me, and gasp with
a frightful oath that the pack had caught and he had left it.
As we ran, we kept, as far as possible, the house between us and the
blacks, and so intent were they on attacking our little citadel,
that for a moment or two they overlooked our flight.
We heard their cries as they battered down the door, their eager
shouts, their sudden silence, and then the fierce yell of discovery
when they saw us in the moonlight. It occurred to me then that, but
for my poor uncle's death down by the spring, which had very likely
caused them to break their circle and gather there in the open, we
should not have had so easy a time of it when we fled over the hill
behind the hut. Weak though we were, despair was a mighty stimulus
and we ran desperately for the woods; but although we had got a
fair start, the pack was now yelping in full cry on our trail.
The pitiful futility of it all, I thought. Seth Upham was dead--the
stones were lost--we ourselves were hunted for our lives! As I
staggered after the others straight into the wall of almost
impenetrable vines, I turned in the act of wriggling through it and
let fly with my pistol. Compared with the muskets, the pistol made a
dainty little spit of fire and sound, but it served to delay the
foremost negroes, and with our scanty hopes a little brighter for
their hesitation, I struggled on to come up with the others.
It was well for us, after all, that O'Hara had taken the lead. Say
what you will against him, the man knew the country. First, guided
by the general lay of the land, he led us down the hill, through
rocks and brush, straight to a stream where we drank and--warned by
Arnold Lamont--fought against the temptation to drink more than a
tiny fraction of what we desired.
Revived by the plunge into water, we turned and followed O'Hara up
the stream-bed, bending low so that no onlooker could see us,
climbed a great precipitous hill down which the stream tumbled in
noisy cascades that hid every sound of our flight, drank again, and
kept on up into the rocks away from the water. Not daring to raise
our heads above the dry bed of the rainy-season torrent along which
we now hurried, we never once looked back down the slope up which we
had toiled, panting and puffing and reeling; but behind us, far
behind us now, we could hear the shrieks and yells of the
disappointed savages, who, having outflanked the timber into which
we disappeared, and having wasted many minutes in beating through
it, a manoeuvre that their wholesome respect for our firearms had
much delayed, had now come out on the brow of the rocky declivity
leading down to the creek, and were losing much time, if we could
judge by their clamor, in arguing which way we were likely to have
gone.
I wonder if the whole performance to which we owed our lives was not
characteristic of the natives of the African coast? If therein did
not lie just the difference between a people so easily led into
slavery and a people that never, whatever their weaknesses have
been, have yielded to their oppressors? It all happened long ago,
and it was my only acquaintance with black warfare; but surely we
could never thus have thrown American Indians off the scent.
It seemed to me, then, that we had made good our escape and could
run straight for the river, and in my enthusiasm I said as much. But
Arnold and Abe Guptil shook their heads, and O'Hara significantly
raised his hand. "Hark!"
I listened, and realized that an undertone of sound, which I had
heard without noticing it, as one hears a clock ticking, was the
rumble of drums miles and miles away. While I listened, another drum
far to the north took up the grim throbbing note, then another to
the east. Then, mingling with the swelling voice of all the
drums,--how many of them there were, or in how many villages, I had
not the vaguest notion,--I heard human voices down the hill on our
right, and after a time other voices down the hill on our left. I
then knew that however stupid our pursuers might seem, to reach the
river was no such easy task as I had hoped.
For an hour we lay hidden among the rocks, with the world spread out
before us in the moonlight. Here and there were small points of
fire, which shone as if they were stars reflected on water,--we
knew, of course, that there was no water, and that they must,
therefore, be lights of village or camp,--and twice, at a distance
of half a mile, men passed with torches. But for the most part we
lay shoulder to shoulder, with only the moon and the twinkling
points of light to awaken our meditations.
I thought of Uncle Seth dead in the grass by the spring down to
which he had gone so bravely. I thought of the hut in which, so far
as we knew, still lay the skeleton and the bag of pebbles. And while
I was thinking thus, I heard to the southeast the sound of gunshots.
First came several almost together like a volley, then another and
another, then two or three more, and after that, at intervals, still
others.
O'Hara looked first at the sky and then in the direction of the
shooting. "They're attacking a trader's caravan," he said. "There'll
be white men in it, surely. The thing for us to do, my lads, is to
join up with them. They'll have food."
"Aye, but how?" asked Gleazen.
As if in answer to his question,--a terribly discouraging
answer!--we heard, when we stopped to listen, coming up to us out of
the night from every side, near and far, the throbbing of drums.
"Aye, 'how?'" O'Hara repeated.
"Can we not," I asked, "work down toward them and break through the
blacks?"
"The war has gone to the coast by now, and they are attacking all
comers. But it's us they're keen on the trail of, all because Bull
built his house on a king's grave and a blithering idiot killed a
devil. 'Tis true, Joe. If we could work down toward them, come three
o'clock in the morning, it might happen even as you say."
There were no torches, now, to be seen; no voices were to be heard.
There were only the fixed lights shining like stars and the steadily
throbbing drums. Whether or not, back on our trail, the blacks were
still hunting for us, we did not know; but by all signs that we
could see, they were settling quietly down for the remainder of the
night.
"And if it don't happen like you say," O'Hara added as an
afterthought, "we'll be nearer the river surely, and there may be
hope for us yet."
At that he looked at Gleazen and smiled, and Gleazen softly laughed
and nudged Matterson, at which Matterson swore, because Gleazen's
elbow had touched a wound. Then they all three looked at one another
and laughed; and remembering the board in the centre of the hut and
the law that neither side should trespass on the part allotted to
the other, I heartily wished that we had another such board and
another such law. We had agreed upon our truce under the stress of
great danger. Take away that danger, I thought, and there would be
nothing to keep the old coals of hate from springing into flame
anew.
Down from the hilltop we went, slowly picking our way among the
boulders, to still another brawling stream at the foot. There we
drank and waited and reconnoitred, and finally, convinced that we
were in no immediate danger, pushed on after our guide, O'Hara.
He first led us down the ravine and through a wild and wooded
country; but within two miles the sound of drums, which had become
louder and nearer, warned us of a village ahead, and, leaving the
stream, we climbed a hill, passed through scattered patches of
plantains and yams, from which we took such food as would dull the
edge of our hunger, came down again into dense timber, worked our
way through it, and emerged at last into an open space above a broad
plain.
And all this long way faithful Abe Guptil had half carried, half
dragged the great body of Matterson, who fought hard to keep up with
the rest of us and strove to regain the strength that his wound had
taken from him, but who despite his bravest efforts, still was sadly
weak.
As well as we could judge by the interminable drumming, there were
villages on our right and on our left and behind us. By the stars we
estimated that it was still an hour before dawn, and by lights on
the plain we guessed at the location of the camp of which we had
come in search.
We had already wandered so far from the road by which we had come to
the mountain, that it seemed as if only a miracle could bring us
back to the place on the river where we had left our boat; but in
that respect O'Hara was no mean worker of miracles, for his years in
Africa had given him an uncanny judgment of direction and distance.
"Yonder will be the river," he said, pointing slightly to the left;
"and yonder will surely be the camp where we heard guns firing.
Below there'll be a road and the camp will be on the road. I know
this place; I've been here before."
With that he once more plunged down the steep declivity and through
a growth of scrubby trees to a great prairie, where, even as he had
said, a road ran in the direction that our journey led us. Fire not
long since had burned over the meadow, and spears of grass from
fifteen to twenty feet high had fallen across the road and tangled
and twisted so that most of the time we had to bend almost double as
we walked. But in that early morning hour there were no travelers on
the road except occasional deer, which went dashing off through the
grass; and it crossed many streams into which we plunged our hot
faces. With water for our thirst and plantains for our hunger, we
fared on, until, just as dawn was breaking, we came in sight of the
red coals of a fire.
O'Hara raised his hand and we stopped. "The niggers are ahead of
us," he whispered. "Beyond the niggers will be the caravan surely,
and beyond the caravan there'll be more niggers."
"The question, then, my friends," said Arnold, slowly, "is whether
to go round them and on alone, or to go through the blacks and take
our chances on a friendly reception from whoever is camping just
ahead."
"That," said O'Hara, "is the question."
"There's no doubt but they're traders," Gleazen muttered. "We'll
have to fight before we reach the river. The more on our side, the
merrier, I say, when it comes to fighting."
By our silence we assented.
Arnold raised his hand. "It is by surprise, gentlemen, or not at
all. Are you ready?"
Breathing hard, we pressed closer together.
"Quickly, then! Together, and with speed!"
Arnold's voice snapped out the orders as if we were a company of
military. There was something so commanding, so martial, in his
manner and carriage, yet something that fitted him so well and
seemed so much a part of his old, calm, taciturn, wise way, that I
felt a sudden new wonder at him, a feeling that, well though I
thought I had known him, I never had known him.
Then, brought all at once into action by the energy and force of his
command, as was every one of the others, I started at the word as
did they. Together we ran straight through the camp of sleeping
blacks,--so strong was Matterson's spirit, so great his eagerness,
that he now kept pace with us almost without help,--straight past
the coals of their campfire, over the remnants of their evening
meal, over their weapons and shields strewn in the road, and on
toward their picket-line. As they woke behind us, bewildered, and
groped to learn the cause of the sudden disorder, and realized what
was happening, and started up with angry cries, we leaped, one
after another, actually leaped, over a black sentry nodding at his
post, over a frail barrier that they had thrown up to conceal their
movements, and charged down upon a threatening stockade behind which
lay the caravan.
That the caravan kept better watch than their besiegers, we learned
first of all; for even as we leaped the barricade and came racing
down the road, a gun went off in our faces and a cry of warning
called the defenders from their sleep.
"Don't shoot!" O'Hara yelled. "We're white men! Don't shoot!"
All now depended on the men of that caravan. Were they friends or
foes, honest men or thieves, we had cast the dice, and on that throw
our fate waited.
I heard Gleazen bellowing in Spanish and Arnold Lamont calling in
French; then up I came with Matterson and Abe to the crude, hasty
rampart of mud and grass, and over I tumbled upon a man who cried
out in amazement and raised his gun to strike me down, only to
desist at the sight of my white face, which was no whiter than his
own. Arnold was ahead of me; Gleazen and Matterson came in, almost
at the same moment; then came Abe; and last of all, dumb with
terror, O'Hara, who had tripped and fallen midway between the two
barricades and had narrowly escaped perishing at the hands of the
negro guards.
In we came and about we turned, side by side with the strange
whites, and when the hostile spearmen showed signs of rushing upon
us, we gave them balls from musket and pistol to remember us by, and
they faltered and drew back. But that the end was not yet in sight
the thudding of their drums and the growing chorus of their angry
yells unmistakably told us.
"Ha! Dey t'ink dey git us yet," one of the strangers cried, hearing
me speak to Arnold in English. "Dis one beeg war. Where he start,
who know? Dey fight, how dey fight! Dey come down upon us--whee!
Gun, spear--when we start we have feefty slave. Ten we loos' before
war hit us so we know and hit back. Ha! Dis one beeg war!"
"How far, tell me," gasped O'Hara, "has the fighting gone?"
"Leesten!" The stranger lifted his hand. "Hear dem drum? One
here--one dar--one five mile 'way--one ten mile 'way! Oh, ev'ywhere
dem drum! Hear dem yell! How far dis war gone--dis war gone clean to
Cuba! Dis one beeg war, by damn!"
"Has the war," I cried, "reached the mission on the river?"
"Ha! You t'ink you see dat meession, hey? Dat meession, he fall down
long since time, I'll bet. One good t'ing dat war he do."
If only I had never seen the girl by the river, I thought. If only I
could have forgotten her! I turned away. Yet even then I would not
have spared one iota of my brief memories of that girl with the
strong, kind face and quiet voice. If I never saw her again, I still
had something to hold fast. How many times, since Seth Upham went
down to die by the spring, had I thought of that girl as one of the
few people whom I should be glad to see again, and how many times
had I wished that she did not think so ill of me!
"Tell me, you man, where from you come?" the stranger now asked.
"You come _pop_! So! Whee!"
At that Gleazen spoke in Spanish, and the man turned like a cat
taken unawares and looked at him with shrewd, keen eyes. Then
Matterson came up to them and likewise began to talk in Spanish,
and others crowded round them.
Arnold, after listening for a moment, drew me to one side. "See," he
murmured.
Following his gesture, I looked around the camp and saw, in the
middle of the clearing, thirty or forty cowering negroes bound fast
by bamboo withes. Behind them and mingling with them were bullocks
and sheep and goats. Moving restlessly about in the light of
earliest morning were numbers of male and female slaves; and on
every side were baled hides and bundles of merchandise: ivory, rice,
beeswax, and even, it was whispered, gold.
"I fear, my friend," Arnold said in an undertone, "that our hosts
are more to the taste of Gleazen than of ourselves."
"You have heard them talking," I whispered. "Tell me what they
said."
"Only," replied Arnold, "that _we_ have a ship and _they_ have a
cargo; that it will be to our mutual advantage to join forces."
I looked again at the captive negroes, and again thought of the girl
at the mission and of the evil that she had attributed to me.
"To join forces," I said,--and in my excitement I spoke aloud,--"in
trading human beings? Not that!"
The others turned.
"What are you two talking about?" Matterson asked quickly in his
light voice.
"Of one thing and another," I replied, flushing.
"Come," said Gleazen, boldly, "let us _all_ talk together."
"Dis one beeg war!" the trader cried. "To fight--eet is all we can
do. Fighting we go, da's what me, I say. See! Sun, he come up!"
"To that," said Arnold, "we all agree. We, sir, will go with you and
fight by your side."
"Good! Me, I's happy. You brave men. Dis one beeg war, but we make
plenty war back again."
Then he cried out orders in Spanish, and the camp woke to the
activities of the new day; and while some of us held off the blacks,
the rest of us ate our morning meal in the first golden sunlight of
the dawn, with a hum and bustle of packing and harnessing and
herding going on around us.
But all the time the drums beat, and far away we would hear now and
then calls and shouts that made the strange trader and Gleazen and
O'Hara exchange significant glances.
As with loaded muskets we fell in to guard the caravan, and the
porters lifted their bundles, and the herders goaded their beasts,
and the captive negroes started hopelessly on the road to the river,
and the sudden hush of voices made the trample of feet seem three
times louder than before, we heard guns behind us.
"Ha! Dose trade gun, hey?" the trader cried, and fell into Spanish.
Wheeling his horse, he anxiously looked back along the road.
One thing for which we had crossed the sea was lost in a hut overrun
by an army of vengeful savages. There was no fortune left for us, I
knew, unless it were a fortune gained by bartering human souls; and
at that, which lay at the real bottom of all Neil Gleazen's schemes,
my heart revolted. What chance should we have had of saving for Seth
Upham his ship and what money was left, even if he had lived? Small
chance, I admitted.
All day we drove on in a forced march, leaving the war to all
appearances far behind us and stopping only at noon, by a clear cold
stream in the forest, to eat a hasty meal; and at nightfall,
crossing another stretch of prairie, we came to still another
forest.
"Here," the trader cried, "here ees one fine leetle river! Here we
camp one leetle while! Den we go--like fire--when midnight come,
mebbe we see one beeg river!"
That we, who had come the night before from the house on the king's
grave, were ready to rest, I can assure you. Never in all my life
have I been so heavy with weariness, nay, with downright exhaustion,
as on that evening at the edge of that African forest.
The very beasts were weary after the long day's march. The trader's
horse hung its head. The bullocks and goats and sheep plodded on
before their noisy herders and scarcely quickened their pace at
thrust of goad or snap of whip. The captive negroes, wretched
creatures doomed to the horrors of the infamous middle passage in
the hold of some Cuban or Brazilian slave-ship, wearily dragged
along, their chins out-thrust, their hands lashed behind them. The
traders' own slaves, bending under the weight of hides and rice and
ivory, stumbled as they walked, and even the white men themselves,
who had done nothing more than ride or walk over the road, breathed
hard and showed drawn faces as they eagerly pushed on or
apprehensively looked back.
Into the woods we pressed, thanking in our hearts the Divine
Providence that here at least there was no throb of drum, no howling
of black heathen, no war at all. The aisles between the great trees
were cool and green and inviting. The river rippled over rocks and
suggested by its music the luxury of bathing; fruits were to be had
for the picking, and there was no doubt in my mind that our hosts
would butcher a sheep for the evening meal.
Water, food, and sleep at that moment seemed more desirable than all
the dominions of Africa; and water, food, and sleep, I was
confident, were but now at hand. Into the forest we marched, for
once relaxing the watchfulness that we had maintained since sunrise,
and down the trail to the creek that we could hear murmuring on its
way over the rocks and through the underbrush. And there, at the end
of our long day's journey, the bushes suddenly blossomed in flame.
Guns boomed in our very faces. Up and down the creek fire flashed in
long spurts. The wind brought to our nostrils the stinging smell of
powder-smoke. Men and beasts were thrown into wild confusion. In the
dim light of the forest I saw coming at us from all sides, naked men
armed with trade guns and bows and spears and lances. Louder than
the shouts and curses behind us, rang the exultant yells before us.
CHAPTER XXVIII
DOWN THE CURRENT
When I was a boy in school, I one day ran across a translation of
Homer's Iliad and carried it home and read it afternoons for a week.
During those days I lived in the great pictures of the battles on
the plains of Troy, and though afterwards I had seldom thought of
them, they had never quite faded from my memory.
It was far indeed from Homer's Iliad to an ambush in an African
forest; but the fight that ensued when we walked into that hornets'
nest of black warriors nevertheless brought Homer's story vividly to
my mind. The spears, I think, suggested the resemblance; or perhaps
the wild swiftness of the fight. First an arrow came whistling
through the air and struck one of the men on the throat and went
through his neck half the length of the shaft. He spun round,
spattering me with dark blood that ran from a severed vein, and went
down under the feet of the bullocks without a word. Then the
bullocks turned, stampeded by the sight and smell of blood, and
crowded back upon the sheep and goats, and the porters dropped their
burdens and tried to run. O'Hara threw up his musket and shattered
the skull of a huge black who came at him with a knife like the
blade of a scythe, and, himself stooping to pick up the knife,
grappled with another and died, shrieking, from a spear-thrust up
under the ribs. Then one of the porters hurled a bundle at a man who
was about to cut him down, and the bundle broke and a shower of
yellow gold scattered in front of us, whereupon there was a short,
fierce rush for plunder.
Side by side with Arnold Lamont and Gleazen, emptying my pistol into
the crowd, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the blacks were
cutting their way into the heart of the caravan for slaves and
booty.
Imagine, if you can, that motley horde which had rushed upon us out
of the wood. Some, naked except for loin cloths, brandished spears
and howled like enraged maniacs; some, in queer quilted armor and
helmets with ostrich plumes, clumsily wielded trade muskets; some
advanced boldly under the cover of shields and others, ranging
through the underbrush, kept up a desultory flight of arrows. It was
primitive, unorganized, ferocious war.
"_Mon dieu_, what a spectacle!" Arnold exclaimed; then, "Now, my
friends, quick! To the left! While the thieves steal, we yet may
escape!"
Up from the mêlée, streaked with blood and dust, now came the
trader. "All, all ees gone!" he wailed, and waved his arms and
shrieked and stamped and cursed and jabbered on in Spanish.
Had our enemies been content to delay their plundering until they
had killed us all, not one of us would have escaped to tell the true
story of that bloody day. But at the sight of a rich caravan and
loose gold, the blacks, in the twinkling of an eye, were fighting
among themselves.
"Quick!" again cried Arnold's voice, strangely familiar in the midst
of that grotesquely unreal uproar, and as amazingly precise as ever.
"Quick, gentlemen! It is our only chance."
And with that, he, Gleazen, Matterson, the trader, Abe, and I took
to our heels into the bushes. The woods behind the line of the
ambush appeared to be deserted. At the foot of a ravine ran the
creek. We crossed it by a rude bridge of branches, hastily and
silently climbed the opposite bank, and stole off quite unobserved.
A hundred yards farther on, at the sound of a great thrash and
clatter, we dove into the undergrowth and lay hidden while a band of
blacks tore past us to the scene of battle. But getting hastily up
as soon as they were out of sight, we resumed our headlong retreat.
Every bush and tree darkly threatened us. Great rocks, deeply clothed
in moss and tumbled so together as to form damp holes and caves,
at once tempted us by their scores of hiding-places and filled us
with apprehension lest natives might have hidden there before us.
But as if we were playing the old game of follow-my-leader, we
scrambled up and down, and in and out, and always hard ahead, until
we again heard before us a rumble of voices and pounding feet, and
a second time, desperately, flung ourselves into the undergrowth
and lay all atremble while half a hundred naked negroes, armed with
bows and clubs and spears, came trotting, single file, like wolves,
and passed us not fifty feet away.
As they disappeared, and while we still dared not move, I saw
something stir not five English cubits from my face. I caught my
breath and stared at the thing. Ten feet ahead of it; the leaves and
ferns rustled, and twenty feet ahead of it then, twitching, it
disappeared. I broke out from head to foot in sweat. Unwittingly, we
had thrown ourselves down within hand's reach of a great serpent.
Whether or not newly gorged, and so too sleepy to resent our
nearness, it moved slowly away through the quivering undergrowth.
When we had put a mile between ourselves and the plundered caravan,
Matterson turned with an oath. "Poor Bud!" he said in his hard,
light voice. "At least, we'll hear no more of jujus and devils and
king's graves."
Gleazen shrugged and turned to the trader. "How far is the river?"
he asked.
"Mebbe one mile--mebbe two."
"Do you, sir, know the road?" Arnold asked.
The trader nodded and spread his hands as if in despair. "Know heem?
I know heem, yes! T'ree, ten, fifty time I come with slave and ivory
and hide--now all gone! Forty prime slave all gone! Ev'ytheeng
gone!"
Gleazen grunted.
"Let us go to the river," said Arnold.
"Heem reever go by town," wailed the trader. "Heem beeg town! Walls
so high and strong!"
"Ah, that is another matter," said Arnold. "But let us go forward at
all events. We may, for all that we can tell, strike the river below
the town."
So forward we went in the darkness, and a slow, tedious journey it
was, particularly for Abe and me, who helped Matterson along as best
we could; but we avoided the town by the sound of drumming that
issued from behind its walls, and having helped ourselves to fruit
from the patches of cultivated land that we passed, we at last
emerged from the darkness of the woods into the half light of a
great clearing, and saw a vast, black, living surface on which
strange lights played unsteadily. It seemed unbelievable that it
really could be the same river that we had left so long ago,--in the
sense of all that had happened, so very long ago,--and yet I knew,
as I watched Gleazen and Matterson, that it must be the same. The
black, swift current recalled to my mind the toil that we had
expended in coming so far to so little purpose. In which direction
the creek lay that we had entered on our way to the ill-fated hut, I
had not the remotest idea; but I looked a long time downstream
toward the mission.
Bearing around in a rough half-circle, we worked slowly down the
bank, until the walls of the town itself were before us, at a safe
distance.
"Our boat," said Matterson, grimly, "is fifty miles away."
"Wait here," said I. "There'll be canoes under the town. I'll get
one."
Gleazen made a motion as if to go himself, but Arnold shook his
head. "No; let Joe go first. He will learn where the canoes are, and
do it more quietly than we."
They all sat down by the edge of the water, and, leaving them, I
went on alone. It took all the courage I could muster; but having
rashly offered, I would not hesitate.
For one thing, it gave me time to think, and in a sense I desired to
think, although in another sense it came to me that I was more
afraid of my own thoughts than of all the walled towns in Africa.
The living nightmare through which we had passed had left me worn in
body and mind. That Uncle Seth, upon whom once I had placed every
confidence, should have died so tragic a death, now brought me a
fresh burst of sorrow, as if I realized it for the first time. It
seemed to me that I could hear his sharp yet kindly voice speaking
to me of little things in our life at Topham. I thought of one
episode after another in those earlier days, some of them, things
that had happened while my mother was alive; others, things that had
happened after her death; all, things that I had almost forgotten
long before. My poor uncle, I thought for the hundredth time--my
poor, poor uncle!
Then suddenly another thought came to me and I straightened up and
stood well-nigh aghast. By the terms of my uncle's will, of which
more than once he had told me, all that had been his was mine!
The river silently swept down between its high banks, past me who
stood where the waves licked at my feet, past the black walls of the
town, which stood like a sentinel guarding the unknown fastnesses of
the continent of Africa, past high hill and low gravel shoal and
bottomless morass, past pawpaw and pine palm and mangrove, to the
mission and the sea.
There I stood, as still as a statue, until after a long time I
remembered my errand and, like one just awakened, continued on my
way.
I found a score of canoes drawn up on the beach under the town, and
very carefully placing paddles by one that was large enough for our
entire party, I cautiously returned to the others and reported what
I had done. Together we all slipped silently along the shore to the
canoes, launched the one that I had chosen, and with a last glance
up at the pointed roofs of the houses and the sharpened pickets of
the stockade, silently paddled, all unobserved, out on the strong
current and went flying down into the darkness.
It had been one thing to row up stream against that current. It was
quite another, and vastly easier, even though three of us were
entirely ignorant of handling such a canoe, to paddle down the swift
waters of midstream. Exerting always the greatest care to balance
the ticklish wooden craft, which the blacks with their crude adzes
had hewn out of a solid log, we sent it, even by our clumsy efforts,
fairly flying past the trees ashore; and as it seemed that we had
struck the river many miles below the creek where we had left our
boat, we had hopes that the one night would bring us within striking
distance of the open sea. Indeed, I found myself watching every
point and bend, in hope that the mission lay just beyond it.
Estimating that daylight was still two hours away, we drew in shore
at Gleazen's suggestion, to raid a patch of yams or plantains.
"A man," he said arrogantly, but with truth, "can't go forever on an
empty stomach."
Luckless venture that it was--no sooner did the canoe grate on the
beach than a wakeful woman in a hut on the bank set up a squealing
and squalling. As we put out again incontinently into the river, we
heard, first behind us, then also ahead of us, the roll of those
accursed native drums.
To this very day I abhor the sound of drumming. It has a devilishly
haunting note that I cannot escape; and small wonder.
We swept on down the current, but now, here and there, the
river-banks were alive with blacks, and always the booming of drums
ran before us, to warn the country that we were coming. Once, as we
passed a wooded point, a spear flew over our heads and went hissing
into the water, and I was all for putting over to the other bank.
But Arnold, who could use his eyes and ears as well as his head,
cried, "No! Watch!"
All at once, under the dark bank of the river, there was screaming
and splashing and floundering. The torches that immediately flared
up revealed what Arnold, and now the rest of us, expected to see,
but they also revealed indistinctly another and more dreadful sight:
on the shore, running back and forth in great excitement, were many
men; but in the troubled water a negro was struggling in vain to
escape from the toils of a huge serpent, which was wrapping itself
round him and dragging him down into the river where it had been
lying in wait.
To me, even though I knew that that very negro had been watching for
a chance to waylay us, the sight of the poor fellow's horrible death
almost overcame me.
Not so with Matterson and Gleazen.
With a curse, Matterson cried, "There's one less of them now." His
light voice filled me with loathing.
And Gleazen softly laughed.
On down the river we went, with flying paddles, and round a bend.
But as we passed the bend, I looked back, and saw coming after us,
first one canoe, then two, then six, then so many that I lost all
count.
How far we had come in that one night, I had little or no idea; but
it was easy to see by the attitude of those who knew the river
better than I, that the end of our journey was close at hand.
Glancing round at our pursuers, Gleazen spoke in an undertone to
Matterson, and both they and the trader studied the shore ahead of
us.
"A scant ten miles," Gleazen muttered; "only ten miles more."
I felt the heavy dugout leap forward under the fierce pull of our
paddles. The water turned away from the bow in foam, and we fairly
outrode the current. But fast though we were, the war fleets behind
us were faster. By the next bend they had gained a hundred yards, by
the next, another hundred. We now led them by a scant quarter of a
mile, and if Gleazen had estimated our distance rightly, they would
have had us long before we could reach port. But suddenly, all
unexpectedly, round the next bend, not half a mile away, the mission
sprang into sight.
There it stood, in the early morning sun, as clean and cool and
still as if it were a thousand miles away from Africa and all its
wars.
"Give me your pistols," Arnold cried; and when we tossed them to him
and in frantic haste resumed our paddling, he coolly renewed the
priming and one by one fired them at our pursuers.
That the negroes had a gun we then learned, for they retorted by a
single shot; but the shot went wild and the arrows that followed it
fell short, and our pistols cooled their eagerness. So we swept in
to the landing by the mission, and beached the canoe, and ran up
the long straight path to the mission house as fast as we could go,
while the black canoemen paused in midstream and let their craft
swing with the current.
The place, as we came rushing up to it, was so quiet, so peaceful,
so free from any faintest sign of the terrible days through which we
had passed, that it seemed as if, after all, we had never left it;
as if we were waking from a troubled sleep; as if we had spent a
thousand years in the still, hazy heat of that very clearing. The
face in the window, the opening door, only intensified that uncanny
sense of familiarity.
The door opened, and the man we had seen before met us. His eyes
were stern and inhospitable.
"What?" said he. "Must you bring your vile quarrels and vile wars to
the very threshold of one whose whole duty here is to preach the
word of God?"
"Those," cried Arnold, angry in turn, but as always, precise in
phrase and enunciation, "are hard words to cast at strangers who
come to your gate in trouble."
"Trouble, sir, of your own brewing," the missionary retorted. "What
you have been up to, I do not know. Nor have I any wish to save your
rascally necks from a fate you no doubt richly merit."
"Your words are inclusive," I cried.
"They certainly include you, young man. If you would not be judged
by this company that you are keeping, you should think twice or
three times before embarking with it."
"Father!" said a low voice.
My heart leaped, but I did not turn my head. Down the river, manned
by warriors armed to the teeth, came more canoes of the war. Behind
them were more,--and more,--and still more.
"Come, come, you sniveling parson," Gleazen bellowed, "where are
your guns? Where's your powder? Come, arm yourself!"
The man turned on him with a look of scorn that no words of mine can
properly describe.
"You have brought your dirty quarrel to my door," he said in a grim,
hard voice. "Now do you wish me to fight your battles for you?"
Steadily, silently, the canoes were swinging inshore. I saw negroes
running into the clearing. On my left I heard a cry so shrill and
full of woe that it stood out, even amid the ungodly clamor of the
blacks, and commanded my attention.
The man stepped down from the porch.
"This," he said, turning, "is a house of peace. I order you to leave
it. I will go down and talk with these men myself."
"You'll never come back alive!" Matterson cried, and hoarsely
laughed.
At that the missionary, John Parmenter, merely smiled, and, afraid
of neither man nor devil, walked down toward the river and fell dead
with a chance arrow through his heart.
There was something truly magnificent in his cold courage, and
Gleazen paid him almost involuntary tribute by crying, "There, by
heaven, went a brave man!"
But from the door of the house the girl suddenly ran out. Her face
was deathly white and her voice shook, but as yet there were no
tears in her eyes.
"Father!" she cried, and ran down the path, where occasional arrows
still fell, and bent over the dead man.
"Come up, you little fool," Gleazen shouted. "Come back!" Then he
jumped and swore, as an arrow with a longer flight than its fellows
passed above his head.
The canoes were drawing in upon the shore, very cautiously,
deliberately, grimly, in a great half-moon, and more of them were
arriving at every moment.
I leaped from the porch and sped down beside the girl.
"Come," I cried, "you--we--can do nothing for him."
"Is it you?" she said. "You--I--go back!"
"Come," I cried hoarsely.
"Don't leave him here."
I bent over and lifted the body, and staggering under its weight,
carried it up into the house and laid it on the couch in the big
front room.
All this time the noise within and without the mission was
deafening. The blacks on the river were howling with fury, and those
ashore, who had not already fled to the woods, were wailing in grief
and terror. Gleazen and Arnold Lamont had joined forces to organize
a defense, the one raving at the arrant cowards who were fleeing
from first sight of an enemy, while the other turned the place
upside down in search of arms. And still the blacks on the river
held off, probably for fear of firearms, though there were
indications that as their numbers grew, they were screwing up their
courage to decisive action.
The girl, suddenly realizing the object of Arnold's search, said
quietly, "There are no weapons."
Arnold threw his hands out in a gesture of despair.
"If you wish to leave," she coldly said, "there is a boat half a
mile downstream. You can reach it by the path that leads from the
chapel. No one will notice you if you hurry."
"Then," I cried, "we'll go and you shall come with us."
Gleazen spoke to the trader in Spanish.
Abe Guptil was beside me now and Arnold behind me. We three, come
what would, were united.
A louder yell than any before attracted our attention, and
Matterson, who stood where he could see out of the window, called,
"They're coming! Run, Neil, run!"
At that he turned and fled, with the others after him.
I stopped and looked into the girl's gray eyes.
"Come!" I cried, "in heaven's name, make haste!"
I had clean forgotten that the dead man by whom the girl was
standing was her father; but her next words, which were spoken from
deepest despair, reminded me of it grimly.
"I will not leave him," she said.
"You must!"
"I cannot."
"What," said I, "would he himself have had you do?"
Her determination faltered.
"Come! You cannot do anything more for him! Come."
She shook her head.
"Then I shall stay," I said.
"No," said she, and I saw that there was a change in her manner
toward me. "You will go and I--I--"
Then she whistled and cried, "Paul! Paul!"
The great black Fantee servant whom I had seen with her in the canoe
on that day when first we met, appeared suddenly.
"Come," she said.
I now saw that Arnold Lamont was running back to the door of the
room.
"Quick!" he called. "_Mon dieu_, be quick!"
He stepped aside and let her go through the door first.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE FIGHT AT THE LANDING
As we ran down the footpath, we heard them after us like hounds on
the trail, and I tell you, it galled me to run from that cowardly
pack. Oh, for one good fight, I thought! For a chance to avenge Seth
Upham, who lay miles away beside the spring at the king's grave, to
avenge the stern man who had fallen so bravely in front of the
mission! For a chance to show the black curs that we would and could
meet them, though the odds against us were a hundred to one! A
chance to hold our own with them in defiance of their arms and
numbers!
The hot pride of youth burned in my cheeks, and I was actually
tempted to turn on them there and then; but now I thought of
something besides myself, of something besides Seth Upham's rights
and my own: I thought of the girl who ran ahead of me so lithely and
easily. Be the hazards what they might, be the shame of our retreat
ever so great, she must not, while one of us lived, be left to that
herd at our heels.
So, running thus in headlong flight, out we came on the river bank.
There was a boat on the river, made fast to a peg on the bank, and
there was a long canoe drawn up in the bushes. But at a great
distance, where a narrow channel led through the mangroves, we saw
titanic waves rolling on the bar in shining cascades from which the
sun was brightly reflected, and which, one after another, hurled ton
upon ton of water into a welter of foaming whirlpools. And over the
lifting crests of the surf we saw, standing offshore, the topsails
of a brig. The prospect of riding that surf in any boat ever built
gave me, I confess without shame, a miserably sick feeling; and as
if that were not enough, in through the mangroves to the shore in
front of us shot three canoes of the war, and cut us off from the
river.
Our time now had come to fight. With blacks behind us and blacks
before us, we could no longer double and turn. The river, we knew,
was alive with the canoes of the war. Already the black hornets were
swarming through the woods and swamps around us. Three times now we
had eluded them; this time we must fight. Our guns were lost and
only pistols were left. No longer, as in that fatal hut on the
king's grave,--in my heart I cursed the bull-headed stupidity of the
man who built it and who had paid but a fraction of the price with
his own life!--could we hold them at a distance by fear of firearms.
Their frenzy by now brooked no such fear. To the brig, whose
topsails we could descry miles off shore, we must win our way; there
lay our only hope.
I thought of the voice of the wizard--"White man him go Dead Land."
Verily to the door of his Dead Land we had come; and it seemed now
that we must surely follow Bull and Seth Upham and Bud O'Hara and
many another over the threshold.
"Men," said Arnold Lamont,--and his voice, calm, precise, cutting,
brought us together,--"stones and clubs are not weapons to be
despised in an encounter hand to hand."
"Have into 'em, then!" Gleazen gasped. "All hands together!"
"Mademoiselle," said Arnold, "keep close at our heels."
The girl was beside me now. Her eyes were wide, but her lips were
set with a courage that rose above fear. "Come," she cried, and set
my heart beating faster than ever, if it were possible, "they're
upon us from the rear!" Then she spoke to her great negro in a
language that I had never heard, and came close behind us when we
charged down on the blacks ahead.
I fired my pistol and saw that the ball accounted for one of our
enemies. I reeled from a glancing blow on the head, which knocked me
to my knees; but, rising, I lifted a great rock on the end of a
rope, which evidently the girl or her father had used for an
anchor,--never negro tied that knot!--and swinging the huge weapon
round my head, brought down one assailant with his shoulder and half
his ribs broken. Now Arnold fired his pistol; now Matterson pitched,
groaning, into the boat. Now, with my bare hand, I parried a
spear-thrust and, again swinging my rock, killed a negro in his
tracks.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw that the girl had shoved the canoe
into the water. She was calling to us eagerly, but neither I nor the
others could distinguish her words.
As Gleazen, with an oath, cut the painter of the boat and leaped
into her, the impulse of his jump carried her ten feet out from
shore; and instantly thrusting out the oars, he started to row away
with Matterson and desert us.
"Come back, you yellow cur!" Arnold cried.
The trader, who had fought industriously but to no great purpose,
now ran down the bank and, flinging himself full length into the
river, caught the stern of the boat, with outstretched fingers, and
dragged himself into her, and at the same moment Abe Guptil,
obviously with the intention of holding the boat until the rest of
us should have a chance to embark, too, not of saving himself,
fought his own way aboard and, in spite of violent efforts to lay
hands on the oars, was carried, protesting, away.
It is not to be thought that Gleazen had the remotest notion of
saving _our_ lives. Having got rid of Arnold and me, he could, as he
very well knew, do what he pleased with the brig when once he had
silenced Gideon North. But although he had every desire not to help
us, he in truth did help us in very spite of himself: no sooner did
he appear to be getting safely out into the river, than the blacks,
who had us all but at their mercy, suddenly bent every effort to
keep him, too, from escaping.
"Let them go! Let them go! Oh, will you not come this way?"
It was the girl again. There was not a drop of cowardly blood in her
veins. She, in the bow of the canoe and her big black servant in the
stern, held the craft against the bank.
Taking advantage of the momentary respite that we got while the
enemy was putting after Gleazen, Arnold and I fairly trembling in
our haste--Arnold missed his footing and plunged waist-deep into the
river--climbed in after them.
All this, which has taken a long time to tell, happened like so many
cracks of the whip. Each event leaped sharply and suddenly at the
heels of another, so that it was really but a few seconds--at all
events less than a minute--after our arrival at the shore when we
found ourselves gliding swiftly and noiselessly through a tiny
channel among the mangroves, of which Gleazen had never dreamed. A
turn of the paddle carried us out of sight of the struggle behind
us, and it now appeared that, once out of sight, we were likewise
out of mind.
"Mademoiselle," said Arnold, with a manner at once so deferential
and in itself so proud, that it puzzled me more than a little,
"shall we not paddle? Permit me to take your place."
"Thank you, no," she said.
"It is not fitting--" he began.
"I know the canoe, the river and the surf," she said. "It is _safer_
that I keep the paddle."
And to my surprise, as well as Arnold's, she did keep it and handled
it in a way that would have shamed our efforts had we been permitted
to try. It was a strange thing in those days, when most women laced
tightly, and fainted gracefully if ever occasion required, and
played at croquet and battledore and shuttlecock, to see a slender
girl swing a paddle with far more than a man's deftness and skill to
make up for what she lacked of a man's strength. But though she
appeared so slender, so frail, there was that in her bearing which
told us that her life in that wild place had given her muscles of
steel. The big Fantee, too, drove the long craft ahead with sure,
powerful strokes; so we shot out of the mangroves, out of the mouth
of the river, into the full glare of the sun.
For a time the sails of the brig had grown small in the distance,
but already we saw that she had come about and was standing in
again. Why, I wondered, did Gideon North not anchor? Why should he
indefinitely stand off and on? How long had he been beating back and
forth, and how long would he continue to wait for us if we were not
to come? We were long overdue at the meeting-place.
"To think," I said, "that now we can go home to Topham!"
"To Topham?" said Arnold. There was a question in his voice. "I
should be surer of going home to Topham if we were rid of Gleazen.
Also, my friend, we must ride that surf to the open sea."
The negro in the stern of the canoe now spoke up in gutturals.
"See!" Arnold cried.
Looking back up the river, we saw Gleazen and Abe Guptil, whom we
had outdistanced by our short cut, now rowing madly downstream. Big
and heavy though the boat was, they rowed with the strength that
precedes despair, and sent her ploughing through the river with a
wake such as a cutter might have left. In the stern beside the
trader lay Matterson; and though his face, we could see, was
streaked with blood, he menaced the negroes upstream with a loaded
pistol. Arrows flew, and then a long spear hurtled through the air
and struck the bow of the boat. But for all that, they bade fair to
get clean away, and none of them appeared aware that we had slipped
ahead of them in the race for life.
Now we in the canoe had come to the very edge of the surf, where the
surge of the breakers swept past us in waves of foam. Beyond that
surf was the open sea, the brig and safety. Behind it were more
terrors than we had yet endured. For a moment the canoe hung
motionless in the boiling surge; then, taking advantage of the
outward flow and guided and driven by the hands of the great negro
and the white, slender girl, she shot forward like a living
creature, rose on the moving wall of an incoming wave, yielded and
for a brief space drew back, then shot ahead once more and passed
over the crest just before the wave curled and broke.
I heard a cry from behind us and knew that the others had discovered
us ahead of them.
Turning, as we pitched on the heavy seas at a safe distance from the
breakers, I watched them, too, row into the surf. I faintly heard
Matterson's pistol spit, then I saw Gleazen drive the boat forward,
saw her hesitate and swing round, lose way and go over as the next
wave broke.
Then we saw them swimming and heard their cries.
As a mere matter of cold justice we should, I am convinced, have
left that villainous pair, Matterson and Gleazen, to their fate.
They had been ready enough to leave us to ours. Their whole career
was sown with fraud, cruelty, brazen effrontery, and downright
dishonesty. But even Arnold and I could scarcely have borne to do
that, for the trader was guiltless enough according to his lights,
and Abe Guptil was struggling with them in the water.
The girl, turning and looking back when she heard their shouts,
spoke to the great negro in his own language. The canoe came about.
Again we paused, waiting for a lull. Then we shot back on the crest
of a wave, back down upon the overturned boat, and within gunshot of
the flotilla of canoes that were spreading to receive us.
As we passed the wallowing boat I leaned out and caught Gleazen's
hands and drew him up to the canoe. The negro cried a hoarse
warning, and the canoe herself almost went over; but by as clever
use of paddles as ever man achieved, the girl and the negro brought
us up on an even keel, and Arnold and I lifted Gleazen aboard, half
drowned, and gave a hand to Abe Guptil, who had made out to swim to
the canoe. Of Matterson and the trader we saw no sign.
Then Abe, himself but newly rescued, gave a lurch to starboard, and
with a clutch at something just under water, was whipped, fiercely
struggling to prevent it, clean overboard.
We could neither stop nor turn; either would have been suicide.
Would we or would we not, we went past him and left him, and drove
on in the wash of the breaking waves down upon the grim line of
canoes.
To them we must have seemed a visitation. When I sit alone in the
dark I can see again in memory, very clearly, that white girl, her
eyes flashing, that great, black Fantee, his bared teeth thrust out
between his thick lips. The long breakers were roaring as they swept
across the bar and crashed at slow intervals behind us. In those
seething waters the fiercest attack would have been futile; the very
tigers of the sea must have lain just beyond the wash of the surf,
as did the war. To one who has never seen a Fantee on his native
coast, the story that I tell of that wild canoe-ride may seem
incredible. It was an appalling, horrifying thing to those of us who
were forced passively to endure it, who a dozen times were flung to
the very brink of death. And yet every word is true. Though I could
scarce draw breath, so swiftly did we escape one danger only to meet
another, the big black, trained from childhood to face every peril
of the coast, with the white girl paddling in the bow, brought the
canoe through the surf and shipped no more than a bucket of water.
And then that negro and that slim girl turned in the surge, as
coolly as if there were no enemy within a thousand miles, and
started back, out again through the surf, to the Adventure.
Were we thus, I thought, to lose Abe Guptil, whom but now we had
rescued--good old Abe Guptil, into whose home I had gone long since
with the sad news that had forced him to embark with us on Gleazen's
mad quest? The thunder of the seas was so loud that I could only
wait--no words that I might utter could be heard a hand's-breadth
away.
For a moment the canoe hung motionless on the racing waters as a
hummingbird hangs in the air, then she shot ahead; and up from the
sea, directly in her path, came a tangle of bodies. Leaning out,
Arnold and I laid hands on Abe and Matterson; and while the negro
held the canoe in place, the girl herself reached back and caught
that rascal of a trader by the hair. Now tons of water broke around
us and the canoe half filled. Now the big negro, by the might of his
single paddle, drove us forward. The wash of water caught us up and
carried us on half a cable's length; the negro again fairly lifted
us by his great strength; we went in safety over the crest of the
next wave, then as we drew the last of the three into the canoe, we
began to pitch in the heavy swell of the open sea.
With our backs turned forever on the war, we paddled out to meet the
brig. Our great quest had failed. We had left a trail of dead men,
plundered goods, and a broken mission. But though all our hopes had
gone wrong, though Gleazen had lost all that he sought, there was
that in his face as he lay sick and miserable in the canoe which
told me that he had other strings for his bow; and when I looked up
at the brig, I vowed to myself that I would defend my own property
with as much zeal as I would have defended my uncle's.
"See!" Arnold whispered. "Yonder is a strange ship!"
I saw the sail, but I thought little of it at the time. I had grown
surprisingly in many ways, but to this very day I have not acquired
Arnold Lamont's wonderful power to appraise seemingly insignificant
events at their true value.
I only thought of how glad I was to come at last to the shelter of
the brig Adventure, how strangely glad I was to have brought off the
girl from the mission.
And when we came up under the side of the brig and saw honest Gideon
North and all the others on deck looking down at us, the girl let
her paddle slide into the water and bent her head on her hands and
cried.
VII
THE LONG ROAD HOME
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXX
THE CRUISER
Matterson, Gleazen and the trader, Arnold, Abe and I, and the white
girl and her great black servant, all were crowded into a frail
dugout, which must long since have foundered, but for the marvelous
skill of the big Fantee canoeman and the sureness and steadiness
with which the girl had wielded her paddle. And now the girl sat
with her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking as she
sobbed; and the big black, awed and frightened by the nearness and
strangeness of the good Adventure, was looking up at the men who had
crowded to the rail above him. As the brig came into the wind and
lay beside the canoe, her yards sharply counter-braced, the long
seas rose to the gunwale of our heavily laden and waterlogged little
craft, and she slowly filled and settled.
We should have perished there and then, within an arm's length of
the solid planks that promised safety, had not Gideon North acted
promptly. As the canoe settled and the water rose, I suddenly found
myself swimming, and gave the bottom of the canoe a kick and plunged
forward through the water to reach the girl and hold her up. At the
same moment, indistinctly through the rush of the waves, I heard
Captain North giving orders. Then I saw Abe beside me, swimming on
the same errand, and heard someone spluttering and choking behind
me; then I came up beside the girl and, seizing one slender wrist,
drew her arm over my shoulder and swam slowly by the brig.
There was no excitement or clamor. The canoe, having emerged half
full of water from those vast breakers on the bar, yet having made
out to ride the seas well enough until the girl and the negro
stopped paddling, had then quietly submerged and left us all at once
struggling in the ocean.
Blocks creaked above us and oars splashed, and suddenly I felt the
girl lifted from my shoulders; then I myself was dragged into a
boat. Thus, after ten days on the continent of Africa, ten such days
of suffering and danger that they were to live always as terrible
nightmares in the memory of those of us who survived them, we came
home to the swift vessel that had belonged to poor Seth Upham.
To the story that we told, first one talking, then another, all of
us excited and all of us, except Arnold Lamont, who never lost his
calm precision and the girl who did not speak at all, fairly
incoherent with emotion, Gideon North replied scarcely a word.
"The black beasts!" Gleazen cried in a voice that shook with rage.
"I'd give my last chance of salvation to send a broadside among them
yonder."
"Ah, that's no great price," Matterson murmured sourly. "I'd give
more than that--many times more, my friend. Think you, Captain
North, that a man of spirit would soon forget or forgive such a
token as this?" And he pointed at the raw wound the spear had left
on his face.
Gleazen stepped close beside him. "Hm! It's sloughing," he said.
"It's hot and it throbs like the devil," Matterson replied.
Arnold also came over to Matterson and looked at the wound.
"It needs attention," he commented. "It certainly is not healing as
it should."
Matterson raised his brows angrily. "Let it be," he returned.
With a slight lift of his head, Arnold faced about and walked slowly
away.
As Matterson angrily glared from one of us to another, the group
separated and, turning, I saw our guest standing silently apart.
"Captain North," I said slowly, "this lady--"
He did not wait for me to finish.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," he cried. "You shall have my own
stateroom. I should have spoken before, but that sail troubles me."
Thereupon others turned to study the sail, which was bearing down on
us, although still some miles away; but I continued to watch the
guest whose presence there in the Adventure seemed so strange as
almost to savor of magic, as she tried to thank Gideon North.
"Don't say a word," he cried. "Not a word! Remember this: I've a
wife and daughters of my own, and I wish they were on board to make
things comfortable for you. But all we can do, I'm afraid, is give
you a chance to make yourself comfortable. Our cabin boy's gone. He
went ashore with those damnable villains yonder and never came
back."
"A little boy?" she suddenly asked.
"Aye."
"A wicked little rascal?" A strangely roguish light flashed across
her face and she smiled as if in spite of herself.
Gideon North's chuckle grew into a wide grin. "Ma'am, that's Willie
MacDougald to a T. But what do you know of him?"
"He ran away from them, and came to us when they had gone up-river,
and said that they were going to beat him, and told a terrible
story of the wrongs he had suffered. But he could not abide our ways
any more than we his,--such a time as he led us with his swearing
and thieving and lying!--and when a boat from the American cruiser
came ashore while you were gone, he told the men such a story of
your search for slaves and of all your gear and goods, they vowed to
capture you if they lay off the coast a year and a day, and they
laughed at his wretched oaths and made much of him and took him on
board. And then--then--" It seemed the thought of all that had
happened since swept upon her in a wave almost as overwhelming as
one of those breakers through which we had fought our way; for she
suddenly turned white and tried to fight back her tears, and for the
time could speak no more.
"Come, Joe, look alive now!" Captain North roared, trying to mask
his kind heart and lively emotions with a pretense of fierceness.
"Fetch hot water from the galley to my stateroom! Have the cook
bring aft hot coffee and a square meal. I'll take you below myself,
ma'am, to show you the way, and I now order you to help yourself to
all you need for comfort. Off with you, Joe!"
All this time the cook had been gaping from the galley door at what
had been going on aft; and so eager was he to get a nearer view of
the young lady who had come mysteriously out with us from the river,
and to gather up new threads of the extraordinary story Abe Guptil
had told forward, that, although he was the laziest Yankee who ever
commanded a galley stove, he set out at a dead run aft, with a
coffee-pot in one hand and a pail of hot water, which at every
moment threatened to spill and scald him, in the other.
Captain North at once came on deck again and found the rest of us
still intent on the approaching ship, which with all her canvas
spread was bearing down upon us like a race-horse. The cook, on his
way forward, paused to survey her. The watch, now glancing anxiously
aft, now studying the stranger, was standing by for whatever orders
should be forthcoming.
"Sir," said Arnold, "she means trouble."
"We've waited too long already," Captain North replied. Raising the
trumpet he cried, "Call up all hands, there, Mr. Severance!"
A moment later he looked keenly at Matterson. "Mr. Matterson," he
said, "you are exhausted."
"I _am_ a little peaked," Matterson said thoughtfully, "a little
peaked, but not exhausted."
"Will you take your station, sir?"
"I will." Still in his wet clothes and cautiously touching his
inflamed wound, Matterson went forward to the forecastle. There was
something soldierly in his promptness. It was so evident that his
strength was scarcely equal to his task, that for his hardihood,
little as I liked him, I freely gave him credit.
"Mr. Gleazen," said Captain North, "I am afraid we must show her our
heels."
"If I could lay my hands on the lean neck of William MacDougald,"
Gleazen growled, "I'd wring his head clean off."
"She unquestionably is bearing down on us."
"She is."
"And she knows--"
"She knows," cried Gleazen, "all that Willie MacDougald can tell her
of casks and farina and shackles and lumber for extra decks."
"And of false papers with which you so carefully provided yourself?"
Gideon North's face all this time was as sober as a judge's, but
now I saw that he was deliberately tormenting Gleazen with the
various preparations the man had made for that unholy traffic in
slaves.
Although Gleazen himself by now perceived it, his wrath turned on
our erstwhile cabin boy rather than on Gideon North. He swore
vilely. "Aye," he cried, "we must run--run or hang. And all for the
word of a prying, cursing, eavesdropping young rooster that I might
have wrung the neck of, any day for months past. If ever I lay hands
on his ape's throat--"
"I gather, sir," Captain North dryly interposed, "you'll use him
harshly."
With that he turned his back on Gleazen and raised his trumpet:--
"Lay aloft and loose the main to'g'l'ants'l.--Man the to'g'lant
sheets and halyards.--Some of you men, there, stand by the clewl'nes
and braces." For a moment he stood, trumpet at lips, watching every
motion of the men; then, as those on the yards loosened the sail, he
thundered, "Let fall!--Lay in!--Sheet home!" Then, "Hoist
away!--Belay the halyards!"
As we crowded on sail, the brig leaned before the wind, and for a
time we hoped that we were gaining on the stranger; but our hopes
were soon dispelled.
It seemed queer to run from our own countrymen, but run we did all
that afternoon, through the bluest of blue seas, with white clouds
flying overhead and low lands on the horizon.
In another sense I could not help feeling that Gideon North himself
showed quite too little anxiety about the outcome of the race. Yet,
as time passed, even his face grew more serious, and all that
afternoon, as we braced the yards and so made or shortened sail as
best to maintain our speed at every change of wind, an anxious
group watched from the quarter-deck of the Adventure the swift
vessel that stood after us and slowly gained on us, with her canvas
spread till she looked on the blue sea for all the world like a
silver cloud racing in the blue sky.
The nearer she came, the graver grew the faces about me; for, if the
full penalty of the law was exacted, to be convicted as a slaver in
those days was to be hanged, and in all the world there was no place
where a vessel and her men were so sure to be suspected of slaving
as in the very waters where we were then sailing. The track of
vessels outward bound from America to Good Hope and the Far East ran
in general from somewhere about the Cape Verde Islands to the
southeastern coast of Brazil; that of vessels homeward bound, from
Good Hope northwest past St. Helena and across the Equator. Thus the
western coast of Africa formed, with those two lines that vessels
followed, a rough triangle; and looking toward the apex, where the
two converged, it served as the base. In that triangle of seas, as
blue as sapphire and as clear, occurred horrors such as all human
history elsewhere can scarcely equal. There a slaver would leave the
lanes of commerce, run up to the coast one night, and be gone the
next with a cargo of "ebony" under her hatches, to mingle with the
ships inward or outward bound; and there the cruisers hunted.
The faces of the crew were sober as the man-of-war, cracking on
every stitch of canvas, came slowly up to us at the end of the
afternoon. We all knew then that even to keep a safe lead until
sunset, it would do us precious little good; for in a clear
starlight night our pursuer could follow us almost as well as by
day. Arnold Lamont was inscrutable; Gideon North was gravely silent;
Matterson and Gleazen were angry and sullen; and the luckless
trader, who had escaped from his ambushed caravan only to find
himself in a doomed vessel, was yellow with fear. There was not a
man, forward or aft, who did not know the incalculable stakes for
which we were racing. Pedro with his monkey on and off his shoulder
as he worked, Abe Guptil with his nervous, eager step, and all the
others, each showing the strain after his own manner, leaped to the
ropes at the word of command or fidgeted about the decks in the
occasional moments of inaction.
Of our passenger I had thought often and with ever keener anxiety.
How the fast-approaching end of our race would affect her future I
could only guess, and really I was more anxious for her than for
myself. But from the moment she went below neither I nor any of the
others saw sign or glimpse of her, until, just at sunset, I ran
thither to fetch the leather-bound spyglass whose lower power and
greater illumination lent itself best to night work.
As I clattered down the companionway, I heard someone dart out of
the cabin. But when I entered, the girl, as if she had been waiting
to see who it was, came back again, so eager for news from above
that she could no longer remain in hiding.
"Tell me, sir," she said, lifting her head proudly, "has the cruiser
overhauled us yet?"
"Not yet," I replied.
She stood as if waiting for whatever else I had to say; but my
tongue for the moment was tied.
"If they do?" she said as if to question me.
"Heaven help us!"
"Come," she cried with some asperity, "don't stand there staring
like a gaby! Tell me everything. Have not I a right to know?"
"If you wish," I replied, stung by the scorn in her voice. "The
chances are that, if we are caught, some of us will hang. Which of
us and how many, is a debatable question."
She thought it over calmly. "That is probably true. I think,
however, that I shall have something to say about which ones will
hang."
That was a phase of the matter which had not occurred to me. It gave
me a good deal of relief, until I met her eyes regarding me still
scornfully, and realized what an exhibition of myself I was making.
I had been assertive enough hitherto, and I had not lacked
confidence where females were concerned; I remembered well the one
who so long before had come into my uncle's store in Topham, and how
Arnold had smiled at the scorn that I had accorded her. But this
young lady somehow was different. She had a fine, quiet dignity that
seemed always to appraise me with cool precision. She had shown,
once at least, a flash of humor that indicated how lightly, in less
tragic circumstances, she could take light things. Now and then she
had dealt a keen thrust that cut me by its truth.
And yet she treated me kindly enough, too. She had seemed almost
glad to have me at her side when we ran together from the mission.
"Mistress--" I began; then stopped and clumsily stammered, "I--I
don't know your name."
"My name?" With the hint of a smile, but with that fine dignity
which made me feel my awkwardness many times over, she said, "I am
Faith Parmenter."
Another pause followed, which embarrassed me still more; then,
awkwardly, I reached for the night glass. Things were not happening
at all as I had dreamed.
"You're long enough finding that glass," Captain North growled when
I handed it to him. "Aye, and red in the face, too."
I was thankful indeed that the approach of the ship, which had
sailed so swiftly as to overhaul even our Baltimore brig, gave him
other things to think about.
By now the race was almost over. I heard Gleazen talking of
bail--of judges--of bribes. I saw the man Pedro twitching his
fingers at his throat. I saw Arnold Lamont and Gideon North watching
the stranger intently, minute after minute. Taking in our
studding-sails and royals, we braced sharp by the wind with our head
to westward. At that our pursuer, which had come up almost abreast
of us but a mile away, followed our example, sail for sail and point
for point, whereupon we hauled up our courses, took in topgallant
sails and jib, and tacked.
When the stranger followed our manoeuvre, but with the same sail
that she had been carrying, she came near enough for us to see that
her lower-deck ports were triced up. When we tacked offshore again,
she hauled up her mizzen staysail and stood for us; and fifteen
minutes later she hauled her jib down, braced her headsails to the
mast, and rounded to about half a cable's length to the windward of
us on our weather quarter. We had already heard the roll of drums
beating the men to their stations, and now Captain North, his glass
leveled at her in the half light, cried gloomily:--
"Aye, the tampions are out of her guns already!"
"Ship ahoy!" came the deep hail. "What ship is that?"
"Train your guns, Captain North!" Gleazen cried fiercely; "train
your guns!"
"Mr. Gleazen," Gideon North retorted, with a stern smile, "with one
broadside she can blow us into splinters. Our shot would no more
than rattle on her planks."
"Ahoy there!" the deep voice roared, now angrily.
"The brig Adventure from Boston, bound on a legitimate trading
voyage to the Guinea coast," Captain North replied. "Where are you
from?"
To his question they returned no answer. The curt order that the
speaking-trumpet sent out to us was:--
"Standby! We're sending a boat aboard."
We were caught by a cruiser, and there was evidence below that would
send us, guilty and guiltless alike, to the very gallows if the
courts should impose on us the extreme penalty.
Up to this point we had not been certain of the nationality of our
pursuers. Too often flags were used to suit the purpose of the
moment. But there was now no doubt that the uniforms in the boat
were those of our own countrymen.
With long, hasty strides, Gleazen crossed the deck to the captain.
In his face defiance and despair were strangely mingled. He was
nervously working his hands. "Quick now," he cried. "Haul down the
flag, Captain North. Break out the red and yellow. Throw over the
papers. Over with them, quick!"
"I am not sure I wish to change my registry," Gideon North quietly
returned.
Gleazen swore furiously. "You'll hang with the rest of us," he
cried.
"I think, sir, that I can _prove my_ innocence."
"The casks and shackles will knot the rope round your stiff neck.
Aye, Captain North, you'll have a merry time of it, twitching your
toes against the sunrise."
In fury Gleazen spun on his heel. For once, as his teeth pulled
shreds of skin from his lips, the man was stark white.
We heard the creak of blocks as the ship lowered her boat, heard the
splash of oars as the boat came forging toward us, saw in the stern
the bright bars of a lieutenant's uniform.
There was not one of us who did not feel keenly the suspense. So
surely as the boat came aboard, just so surely would the searchers,
primed for their task, no doubt, by that vengeful little wretch,
MacDougald, find whatever damning evidence was stowed in the hold;
and I was by no means certain that, in the cold light of open court,
we who had fought against every suggestion of illegal traffic could
prove our innocence. But to Gleazen and Matterson the boat promised
more than search and seizure. Whether or not the rest of us effected
our acquittal, for those two a long term in prison was the least
that they could expect, and the alternative caused even Gleazen's
nonchalance to fail him. It is one thing, and a very creditable
thing, to face without fear the prospect of an honest death in a
fair fight; it is quite another, calmly to anticipate hanging.
Still Gleazen stood there in the fleeting twilight, opening and
closing his hands in indecision. Still Captain North waited with
folded arms, determined at any cost to have the truth and the truth
only told on board his brig.
The brig slowly rose, and fell, and rose, on the long seas. The men
stood singly and in little groups, waiting, breathless with
apprehension, for whatever was to happen. A cable's length away, the
cruising man-of-war, her ports triced up, her guns run out and
trained, rolled on the long seas in time with the brig. We had
thought, when we escaped from the enfolding attack of the African
war, that all danger was over. Now, it seemed, we must face a new
danger, which menaced not only our lives, but our honor.
The boat now lay bumping under the gangway.
"Come, pass us a line!" the lieutenant cried.
Suddenly Gleazen woke from his indecision. Stepping boldly to the
rail, he called down in his big, gruff, assertive voice:--
"You men had better not come on board. Mind you, I've given you fair
warning."
"What's that you're saying?"
"You better not come on board. We've got four cases of smallpox
already, and two more that I think are coming down."
The men in the boat instantly shoved off, and a dozen feet away sat
talking in low voices. Obviously they were undecided what to do.
To most of us Gleazen's cool, authoritative statement, that the most
dread plague of the African coast, the terror alike of traders,
cruisers, and slavers, had appeared among us--a downright lie--was
so amazing that we scarcely knew what to make of it. I must confess
that, little as I liked the means that he took, I was well pleased
at the prospect of his gaining his end. But Gideon North, as he had
been prompt to shatter at the start Gleazen's first attempt at
fraud, promptly and unexpectedly thrust his oar into this one.
"That, gentlemen, is not so," he called down to the boat. "We have
as clean a bill of health as any ship in the service."
"Come, come, now," cried the young officer. "What's all this?"
"I'm telling you the truth, and I'm master of this brig."
With his hands at his mouth Gleazen, half-pretending to whisper,
called, "We're humoring him. He won't admit he has it. But what I've
told you is God's honest truth."
Captain North started as if about to speak, then seemed to think
better of it. Folding his arms, he let the matter stand.
I think he, as much as any of the rest of us, was relieved when the
boat, after hesitating a long time, during which we suffered keenest
anxiety, made about and returned to the ship. Still we dared not
breathe easily, lest the commanding officer, refusing to accept his
subordinate's report, order a search at all costs. But five minutes
later it appeared that, whatever their suspicions may have been,
they had no intention of running needless risks, for they came about
and made off up the coast.
Small wonder that they acted thus! The bravest of captains must have
stopped three times to think before ordering his men to dare that
terrible disease, the worst scourge of those seas, the terror alike
of slavers and cruisers, on the bare word of such as Willie
MacDougald that he would find contraband.
I have often wondered whether Willie MacDougald was on board the
ship, and whether he was responsible for the chase. In the light of
all that I heard, I rather think he was, although none of us who
searched the decks of the other vessel caught so much as a glimpse
of him. But if so, it must have disappointed him deeply that his
revenge failed to reach Cornelius Gleazen and Pedro's monkey; and
seeing the monkey, which had eluded its owner and strayed aft,
perched in the rigging and malevolently eyeing Gleazen himself, I
laughed aloud.
Then I saw that it was no time for laughing, for Gleazen and Gideon
North were standing grimly face to face, and Arnold and Matterson
and the trader were gathering close around them.
Out of the rumble of angry voices, one came to me more distinctly
than any of the others:--
"Mr. Gleazen, it is time that we settled this question once and for
all. If you will come below with me, we can reach, I am sure, a
decision that will be best for all of us in the Adventure."
It was Captain North who spoke. As he moved toward the companionway,
I saw that Arnold Lamont was beckoning to me.
CHAPTER XXXI
A PASSAGE AT ARMS
Across the cabin table was spread the big, inaccurate chart of the
west coast of Africa, on which Captain North had penciled the
rat-infested island and the river.
Seeing it now for the first time since he had returned to the brig,
Gleazen planted one finger on the picture of the spot where we had
found the wrecked ship with the bones of the drowned slaves still
chained to her timbers. "Pfaw!" he growled. "If only _she_ was
afloat! There was a ship for you! Given her at sea again, handsome
and handy, two good men would never 'a' lost their lives. Given that
she was not beyond repair, and we might yet kedge her off and plank
her and caulk her and rig her anew."
"She's done," said Matterson languidly. "Forget her." He laid his
head on the table and closed his eyes.
"Molly!" There was a new note of concern in Gleazen's voice. He
leaned over and shook the man.
"Let me be," said Matterson.
"Gentlemen," Gideon North interposed, "we are dodging the issue."
"Well?" Gleazen angrily raised his head. "There is no issue. We'll
sail for the Rio Pongo, lay off and on till the first dark night,
then take the cargo that a friend of ours will have ready. Thence,
Captain North, we'll sail for Cuba. _I'll_ give the orders now, and
_you'll_ carry them out."
"How long," I cried hotly, "have you been giving orders on board
this vessel?"
He turned and glared at me. "If you want facts, Joe, I'll give them
to you: I've been giving orders aboard this vessel from the day we
sailed from Boston until now--aye, and seeing that they were obeyed,
too, you young cub. But if you want fancies, such as are suitable
for the young, I've owned the brig only since Seth Upham went mad
and got himself killed."
"You own the brig?"
"Yes, I own the brig."
"You lie!"
That he merely laughed, enraged me more than if he had hit me.
"You lie!" I repeated.
"Next," said he, "you'll be telling me that Seth Upham owned her."
"That I will, indeed, and it is a small part of what I'll be telling
you."
"Well, he didn't."
The man's effrontery left me without words to retort.
"He didn't," Gleazen said again. "Him and I went into this deal
share alike. Half to him and half to me and my partners. Ain't he
dead? Well, then I keep my half and Molly, here, who is all the
partner I've got left now, gets the other half. Ain't that plain? Of
course it is. It would be plain enough if we'd got clear with the
fortune that was ours by rights. And because we lost the fortune,
it's all the plainer that we ought to get something for our
trouble."
"But, Mr. Gleazen," Arnold interposed, "supposing there were a grain
of truth in what you say,--which there isn't,--the rest of us, Joe
and Abe and I, still have a sixth part in it all."
"That," cried Matterson, bursting into the controversy before
Gleazen could find words to meet this new argument, "that is stuff.
The sixth part was to come out of Seth Upham's lay; and Seth Upham
is dead, so he gets no lay. Therefore you get not a bit more than
the wages you signed on for; and if you signed on for no wages, you
get nothing."
"I can promise you, Matterson," Gideon North said with a smile,
"that nothing of that kind goes down under my command."
"Then you're likely not to keep your command."
The trader, glancing shrewdly from one to another, had edged over
beside Gleazen, but now Arnold spoke, as ever, calmly and
precisely:--
"Let all that go. About that we do not as yet care. It is a matter
to be argued when the time comes. But--what will you take on board
for a cargo at Rio Pongo?"
As if Arnold's question implied permission for him also to have his
say, the trader spread both hands in a gesture of despair at such
ignorance as it manifested.
"'What weel you get?' Ah, me--"
"Yes, what will you get?" Arnold reiterated, quietly smiling at the
irony of his question.
"We'll get a cargo all right when we get there," Gleazen asserted.
"We'll let it go at that. Captain North, bring the brig about on a
course, say, of approximately west by north." He bent over the
chart. "That will be about right. As for the wind--"
"Captain North," said I, "you will do nothing of the kind. Unless we
can get an honest cargo, you will head straight back to Boston and
sell the Adventure for what she'll bring."
"'What weel you get?'" the still amazed trader cried again. "You
weel get--"
"As for you, Joe,--" Gleazen momentarily drowned out the man's
voice,--"you'll get into trouble if you're not careful."
"For you, Mr. Gleazen, I don't care the snap of my finger. I'll have
my property handled in the way I choose."
For a moment Gleazen glared at me in angry silence, and in that
moment, the trader found opportunity to finish his sentence, which
he did with an air of such pleasure in the tidings he gave, and all
the time so completely unconscious of the subtler undercurrents of
our quarrel, that to an unprejudiced observer it would have been
ludicrous in the extreme.
"You weel get--_niggers_! Such prime, stout, strong niggers! It ees
a pleasure always to buy niggers at Rio Pongo. Such barracoons! Such
niggers!"
Although for a long time we had very well known the hidden real
object of Gleazen's return to Topham and of the mad quest on which
he had led us, this was the first time that anyone had frankly put
it into so many words. The anger and defiance with which our two
parties eyed each other seemed moment by moment to grow more
intense.
"Well, there's no need to look so glum about it," said Gleazen at
last. "Half the deacons in New England live on the proceeds of rum
and notions, and they know well enough what trade their goods are
sold in. You may talk all you will of the gospel; they take their
dollars, when their ships come home. Your Englishman may talk of his
cruisers on the coast and his laws that Parliament made for him; but
when the bills come back on London for his Birmingham muskets and
Liverpool lead and Manchester cotton, he don't cry bad money and
turn 'em down. Why, then, should we? Where there's niggers, there'll
be slaves. It's in the blood of them."
"Be that as it may," I retorted, "not a slave shall board this
vessel."
"It appears," Gleazen slowly returned, "that this brig, which is a
small craft at best, is not big enough for both of us."
"Not if you think you can give yourself the airs of an owner."
"Hear that, you! 'Airs of an owner!' Well, I am owner, I think--yes,
I will give you a greater honor than you deserve." Suddenly he
leaned over and roared at me, "Get down on your knees and apologize,
or, so help me, I'll strike you dead on the spot."
Quicker than a flash I reached out and slapped him on the face--and
as I did so I remembered the time when O'Hara had slapped Seth
Upham.
With his hand half drawn back as if to seize a chair for a cudgel,
he stopped, smiled, spun round and reached for the pair of swords on
the bulkhead. Extending the two hilts, he smiled and said, "I shall
take pleasure in running you through, my friend."
"Not so fast!" It was Arnold who spoke. "I, sir, will take first a
turn at the swords with you."
"_In_ your turn, Mr. Lamont," Gleazen retorted with an exaggerated
bow. "Meanwhile, if you please, you may act as second to Mr. Woods."
"Come, enough of this nonsense," cried honest Gideon North, "or I'll
clap you both into irons. Dueling aboard my vessel, indeed!" He
looked appraisingly from one of us to the other.
"I will fight him," I coolly replied.
"You will, will you?"
"I will."
Soberly Gideon North looked me in the eye. Already Gleazen,
Matterson, Arnold, and the others were moving toward the
companionway. This happened, you must remember, in '27; dueling was
not regarded then as it is now.
"I am afraid, my boy, it will not be a fair fight."
"It will be fair enough," I replied.
Rising, Captain North brought out his medicine chest.
I followed the others on deck, as if the little world in which I was
moving were a world of unreality. All that I knew of swordsmanship,
I had learned from Cornelius Gleazen himself; and though I felt that
at the end of our lessons I had learned enough to give him a hard
fight, it was quite another matter to cross swords that carried no
buttons, and to believe that one of us was to die.
There was only starlight on deck, and Captain North stepped briskly
forward to Arnold and Matterson, who were standing together by a
clear space that they had paced off.
"Gentlemen," said he, "if they were to wait until morning--"
"There would be more light, to be sure," Arnold returned, "but the
disadvantage is common to both."
Gleazen grumbled something far down in his throat, and I cried out
that I would fight him then as well as any time.
"If a couple of lanterns were slung from the rigging," Matterson
suggested. He moved slowly and now and then touched the hot skin
around his wound; but although it still troubled him, he appeared to
be gaining strength.
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when two men came running
aft in response to Captain North's sharp order. Lanterns were
lighted and slung, and Cornelius Gleazen and I, with sword in hand,
faced each other across a length of clean white deck.
It was a long way from friendly combat on the village green at
Topham to the bout I now waited to begin, and both for Cornelius
Gleazen and for myself the intervening months had piled up a
formidable score to be settled. Waiting in silence for our seconds,
Arnold and Matterson, to clear away some coiled ropes, we watched
each other with a bitter hate that had been growing on his part, I
am convinced, since the days when first he had seen me working in my
uncle's store, and on mine, certainly, ever since I had become aware
of the growing conviction that the friendship he had so loudly
professed for me was absolutely insincere.
He had cheated, robbed, browbeaten, and, to all practical ends,
killed, my uncle. He stood there now, scheming by every means in his
power to kill and rob me in my turn. And if he succeeded!--I thought
of the girl to whom Gideon North had given up his stateroom. How
much did she know of all that was going forward? There had been only
one door between her and the quarrel in the cabin. And what fate
would be left for her, if I should fall--if Gleazen should override
Gideon North and Arnold Lamont? Truly, I thought, I must fight my
best.
"And, sir," I heard Arnold saying, "if you are able to bear arms
after your bout with Mr. Woods, it is to be my turn and you shall so
favor me."
"That I will," Gleazen replied with a wry smile.
I know truly, although I do not understand the reason for it, that
after an unusually dramatic experience it is likely to be some
trifling, irrelevant little thing that one remembers most vividly.
And singularly enough it is a tiny patch on Arnold's coat that I now
most clearly recall of all that happened then. I noticed it for the
first time when Arnold was speaking; I do not remember that I ever
noticed it again. Yet to this day I can see it as clearly as if I
had only to turn my head to find it once more before my eyes,
slightly darker than the body of the coat and sewed on with small
neat stitches.
Now Arnold was beside me. "Steady your blade, my boy," he said.
"Fence lightly and cautiously."
The two swords circled, flashing in the lantern-light, and we came
on guard in a duel such as few men have fought. The rolling deck at
best gave us unsteady footing. As the lantern swung, the shadows
changed in a way that was most confusing. Now we were all but in
darkness; now the light was fairly in our eyes.
This, I thought, can never be the old Neil Gleazen with whom I used
to fence. He was craftier, warier, more cautious now than I had ever
seen him, and I took a lesson from him and restrained the
impetuousness of the attack I should have launched had foils been
our weapons. Now he lunged out like a flash, and all but came in
past my guard. I instantly replied by a riposte, but failed to catch
him napping. Again he lunged and yet again, and for the third time I
succeeded in parrying, but all to no purpose so far as opening the
way for a counter-attack was concerned.
Now I saw the spectators only as black shadows standing just out of
the range of my vision. With every sense I was alert to parry and
lunge. Now it seemed very dark except for the light of the lanterns,
although before we began to fence, the starlight had seemed
uncommonly bright and clear. The whole world appeared to grow dark
around me as I fought, until only Cornelius Gleazen was to be seen,
as if in the heart of a light cloud. Now I all but eluded his guard.
Now I drew blood from his arm--I was convinced of it. I pressed him
closer and closer and got new confidence from seeing that he was
breathing harder than I.
For a moment,--it is a thing that happens when one has concentrated
his whole attention on a certain object for so long a time that at
last it inevitably wavers,--for a moment I was aware of those
around me as well as of the man in front of me. I even heard their
hard breathing, their whispered encouragement. I saw that Matterson
was standing on my right, midway between me and Gleazen. I saw a
sudden opening, and thrusting out my arm, drove my blade for it with
all the speed and strength of my body. That thrust, too, drew blood;
there was no doubt of it, for Gleazen gave a quick gasp and let his
guard fall. Victory was mine; I had beaten him. My heart leaped, and
lifting my sword-hand to turn off his blade, I attempted a reprise.
I knew by the frantic jerk of Gleazen's guard that he was aware that
I had beaten him. I was absolutely sure of myself. But when I
attempted to spring back and launch the doubled attack something
held my foot.
I gave a quick jerk,--_literally my foot was held_,--I lost my
balance and all but went over. Then I felt a burning in the back of
my shoulder and sat down on deck with the feeling that the lanterns
were now expanding into strange wide circles of light, now
concentrating into tiny coals of fire.
First I knew that Gideon North was bending over me with his medicine
chest; then I took a big swallow of brandy and had hard work to keep
from choking over it; then I felt cool hands, so firm and small that
I knew they could belong to only one person in the Adventure; then I
saw Arnold Lamont, sword in hand, facing Cornelius Gleazen.
Now why, I wondered, had I been unable to withdraw my foot.
Matterson had been all but in my way. He must have thrust out his
own foot!
"Arnold," I cried incoherently, "beware of Matterson! He tripped
me!"
Arnold looked down at me and smiled and nodded.
"Sir," I heard him saying, as if miles away, "you have beaten a man
years younger than yourself by a foul and treacherous trick. I shall
kill you."
"Kill me?" Gleazen arrogantly roared. "It would take a swordsman to
do it."
To that Arnold replied in a foreign tongue, which even then I knew
must be Spanish. I was no competent witness of what was taking
place; but cloudy though my mind was, I did not fail to see that
Arnold's taunt struck home, for both Gleazen and Matterson angrily
swore.
"In Spanish, eh?" Gleazen sneered. "So this is the leaky spigot! No
more tales, my fine fellow, shall trickle out through your round
mouth, once I have measured your vitals with cold steel."
Into my spinning brain there now came a sudden memory of my bout
with Arnold long, long ago, when I had gone at him just as
arrogantly as ever Neil Gleazen was doing now. I tried to cry out
again and could not. I laughed, which was all my strength permitted,
and wearily leaned back, and through eyes that would almost close in
spite of me, saw Arnold advance under the swinging lantern so
swiftly that his sword was like a beam of light flashed by a mirror.
His blade sped through Gleazen's guard: Gleazen dropped his sword,
staggered, and fell with a crash.
I heard Arnold say, "Sir, I am more clumsy than I knew. The rolling
deck has saved your miserable life, since I cannot kill a wounded
man. But if my hand were in practice, no ship that ever rolled would
have turned that thrust."
Then a great uproar ensued, and I knew nothing more until I opened
my eyes in the cabin, where a hot argument was evidently in
progress, since oaths were bandied back and forth and there were
hard words on all sides.
"As representatives of Josiah Woods, who owns this brig," I heard
Arnold say, "Gideon North and I will not permit you, sir, or any
other man, to ship such a cargo."
The reply I did not understand, but I again heard Arnold's voice,
hot with anger.
"We will _not_ sail again to that den of pirates and slavers and the
iniquitous of all the nations of the world, Havana. If you do not
wish to go to Boston,--" he hesitated,--"we will use you better than
you deserve. For a profitable voyage, we might compromise, say, on
South America."
Of what followed I have no memory, for I was weaker than I realized,
from loss of blood. The cabin went white before my eyes. The voices
all dwindled away to remote threads of sound. I seemed to feel
myself sway with the motion of the ship, and opened my eyes again
and saw that I was being carried. Then I once more felt cool hands
on my forehead, and leaning back, seemed to sink into endless space.
I forgot Topham and all that had happened there; I forgot Africa and
every event of our ill-fated venture; I even forgot the brig and the
duel, and I almost forgot my own identity. But as I existed in a
sort of dream-land or fairyland somewhere between waking and
sleeping, I did not forget the girl who had come with me out of
Africa; and even when I could not remember my own name, I would find
myself struggling in a curiously detached way to connect the name
Faith, which persisted in my memory, with a personality that
likewise persisted, yet that seemed a thing apart from all the world
and not even to be given a name.
CHAPTER XXXII
WESTWARD BOUND
At the time I did not know whether it was two days or ten that I lay
in that borderland of consciousness. But as I emerged from it into a
clearer, more real world, I saw now the girl, now Arnold, now Gideon
North, passing before me and sometimes pausing by my berth. One day
I found myself eating broth that someone was feeding to me. The
next, I saw that the girl was my nurse. The next, I asked questions,
but so weakly that I could no more than murmur a faint protest when
she smiled and turned away without answering.
So it went until a time when my voice was stronger and I would not
be put off again. Seizing her sleeve and feebly holding it, I cried
as stoutly as I was able, "Tell me--tell me where we are and all
that has happened."
What she saw through the open port, I could only guess; if it was
possible to judge by her face, she saw more than mere sea and sky,
with perhaps a wandering sea bird; but she turned and quietly said,
"We are at sea, now, and all is going well, and when you are
stronger, I'll tell you more."
"Tell me now!" I demanded.
I would have said more, but I felt that my voice was failing and I
did not wish her to perceive it.
She hesitated, then impulsively turned.
"Just this: you are getting well fast, and he is getting well
slowly. We have gone from the coast and the Gulf of Guinea, and are
off for South America."
Then she went away and left me, and I was troubled by the sadness
of her face, although she had had enough, heaven knew! to make her
sad.
"So," I thought, "we have really abandoned the trade at last! And so
Arnold brought down Gleazen! And what of the trader and Pedro? And
what are our prospects of profit from a voyage to South America? And
what of Seth Upham and--"
Then it all came back to me, a thousand memories bursting all at
once upon my bewildered brain, and I lived again those days from the
hour when I first saw Neil Gleazen on the porch of the inn, through
the mad night when we left Topham behind us, through the terrible
seasickness of my first voyage, through the sinister adventure in
Havana, through all the uncanny warnings of those African witch
doctors, up to the very hour when Seth Upham threw wide his arms and
went, singing, down to die by the spring. I remembered our wild
flight, the battle in the forest, the race down the river, the fall
of the mission, and again our flight,--the girl was with us
now!--the affair of the cruiser, the quarrel, the duel, and the
voices that I heard as I lay on deck. Then I came to a black hiatus.
Memory carried me no further and I wearily closed my eyes, having no
strength to keep them open longer.
Next I knew that good Gideon North was standing over me, his hand on
my pulse; there was a sharp throbbing pain in my shoulder where
Gleazen's sword had struck home; I was vaguely aware that the girl
was sobbing.
Now why, I thought, should anything trouble her? It was not as if
she, like me, had come up against a wall that she could not pass. I
seemed actually to throw myself at that black rigid barrier which
cut me off from every event that followed and--my delirious
metaphors were sadly mixed--left me balanced precariously on a
tenuous column of memories that came to an end high up in a dark
open place, like the truck of a ship in a black, stormy night.
I heard Gideon North speaking of fever and my wound; then the
picture changed and the girl alone was sitting beside me. She was
singing in a low voice, and the song soothed me. I did not try to
follow the words; I simply let the tune lead me whither it would.
Then I went to sleep again, and when I woke my memory had succeeded
in passing the barrier that before had balked every effort.
Now I remembered things that had happened while I lay in my berth in
my stateroom. I put together things that had happened before and
after my duel. It was as if I reached out from my frail mast of
memories and found accustomed ropes and knew that I could go
elsewhere at will. I felt a sudden new confidence in my power to
think and speak, and when the girl once more appeared, I cried out
eagerly, even strongly, "Now I know what, who, and where I am."
At my words she stepped quickly forward and laid her hand on my
forehead. The fever had gone. With a little cry she turned, and I
heard her say to someone in the cabin, "His face is as cool as my
own!"
In came Gideon North, then, and in the door appeared Arnold.
"Bless me, boy!" Captain North cried, "you're on the mend at last."
"I think I am," I returned. "What happened to me?"
"Happened to you? A touch of African fever, my lad, on top of a
dastardly stab."
"Where's Neil Gleazen?" I cried.
"Oh, he's getting along better than he deserves. Our friend Lamont,
here, spitted him delicately; but he escaped the fever and has had
an easier time of it by far than you, my lad."
He once more counted my pulse. "Fine," he said in his heartiest
voice, "fine enough. Now turn over and rest."
"But I've been resting for days and days," I protested. "I want to
talk now and hear all the news."
"Not now, Joe. Well go away and leave you now. But I'll have cook
wring the neck of another chicken and give your nurse, here, the
meat. She has a better hand at broth, Joe, my boy, than ever a
man-cook had, and I'll warrant, two hours from now, broth'll taste
good to you."
So I went to sleep and woke to a saner, happier world.
In another week I was able to be up on deck and to lie in the open
air on cushions and blankets, where the warm sunshine and the fair
wind and the gentle motion of the sea combined to soothe and restore
me. It was good to talk with Arnold and Captain North, and with Abe
Guptil, who, at my request, was ordered aft to spend an hour with me
one afternoon; but why, I wondered, did I see so little now of Faith
Parmenter?
She would nod at me with a smile and a word, and then go away,
perhaps to lean on the rail and watch for an hour at a time the
rolling blue sea, or to pace the deck as if oblivious to all about
her.
On that night at the mission weeks before, when neither of us even
knew the other's name, she had spoken to me with a directness that
had even more firmly stamped on my memory her face as I had first
seen it among the mangroves. On that terrible day when her father
had gone out from the mission house to die, when dangers worse than
death had threatened us from every side, she had cast her fortunes
with Arnold's and with mine; in all the weeks of my pain and fever,
she had tended me with a gentleness and thoughtfulness that had
filled me with gratitude and something more. But now she would give
me only a nod and a smile, with perhaps an occasional word!
Why, Arnold and even old Gideon North got more of her time and
attention than did I. I would lie and watch her leaning on the rail,
the wind playing with stray tendrils of her hair, which the sun
turned to spun gold, and would suffer a loneliness even deeper than
that which I felt when my own uncle, Seth Upham, died by the spring
on the side of the hill. Could there be someone else of whom she was
always thinking? Or something more intangible and deeper rooted?
More and more I had feared it; now I believed it.
To see Cornelius Gleazen, his right arm still swathed in many
bandages and his face as white almost as marble, eyeing me glumly
from his place across the deck, was the only other shadow on my
convalescence. With not a word for me,--or for my friends, for that
matter,--he would stroll about the deck in sullen anger, for which
no one could greatly blame him. He had no desire now to return to
our home town of Topham; his bolt there was shot. We had refused him
passage to the port of lawless men where no doubt he could have
plotted to win back the brig and all that he had staked. Little
grateful for the compromise by which he gained the privilege of
landing on another continent, he kept company with his thoughts--ill
company they were!--and with Matterson. But more than all else, it
troubled me to see him watching Faith Parmenter.
As I would lie there, I would see him staring at her, unconscious
that anyone was observing him. He would keep it up for hours at a
time, until I did not see how she--or the others--could fail to
notice it; yet apparently no one did notice it. The man, I now
learned, and it surprised me, had a cat-like trick of dropping his
eyes or looking quickly away.
As I grew stronger, I would now and then stand beside her, and we
would talk of one thing and another; but without fail there was the
wall of reserve behind which I could not go. She was always
courteous; she always welcomed me; yet she made her reserve so plain
that I had no doubt that it was kindness alone which led her to put
up with me. Only once in all that westward voyage did I feel that
she accepted me as more than the most casual of acquaintances, and I
could see, as I thought it over afterwards, that even then it was
because I had taken her by surprise.
It came one night just when the sun was setting and the moon was
rising. The shadows on deck were long and of a deep umber. The
mellow light of early evening had washed the decks and all the lower
rigging in a soft brown, while the topsails were still tinted with
lavender and purple. We were running before a southeast wind
and--though I incur the ridicule of old sailors by saying it--there
was something singularly personal and friendly about the seas as
they broke against our larboard quarter and swept by us one by one.
I know that I have never forgotten that hour at the end of a fair
day, with a fair wind blowing, with strange colors and pleasant
shadows playing over an old brig, and with Faith Parmenter beside me
leaning on the taffrail.
We had been talking of trivial things, with intervals of deep
silence, as people will, especially in early evening, when the
beauty of the great world almost takes away the power of speech. But
at the end of a longer silence than any that had gone before it, as
I watched her slim fingers moving noiselessly on the rail, I
suddenly said, "Why do you never tell me about your own life? In all
this time you have not let me know one thing about yourself."
As she looked up at me, there was a startled expression in her
eyes.
"Do you," she said, "wish to know more about me?"
"Yes."
She looked away again as if in doubt; then, with a little gesture,
which seemed for the time being to open a gate in that wall of
reserve which had so completely shut her away from me, she smiled
and spoke in a low, rather hurried voice.
"My story is quickly told. I was born in a little town in Dorset,
and there I lived with my father and my mother and nurse, until I
was sixteen years old. My mother died then. The years that followed
were--lonely ones. It was no surprise to me--to anyone--when my
father decided to give up his parish and sail for Africa. We all
knew, of course, how bad things were on the West Coast. People said
our English ships still kept up the wicked trade. But they were
ships from Brazil and the West Indies, manned, I believe, by
Spaniards and Portuguese, that gave us the most trouble. There were
Englishmen and Americans now and then, but they were growing fewer.
We thought we were done with them; then you came. Even after you had
come, I told my father that you were not in the trade; but my father
already had seen _him_,"--she moved her hand ever so slightly in the
direction of Gleazen, who likewise was leaning on the rail at a
little distance,--"and he would believe no good of you. If only he
could have lived! But you came. And here am I, with only you and an
old black servant."
She looked up at me with a sudden gesture of confidence that made my
heart leap.
"I am glad you came," she said.
Her hand lay on the rail beside mine, but so much smaller than mine
that I almost laughed. She turned quickly with an answering smile,
and impulsively I tried to cover her small hand with my larger one.
Deftly she moved her hand away. "Are you so silly?" she gravely
asked.
At that moment I was quite too shy and awkward for my own peace of
mind. She seemed suddenly to have stepped away from me as on
seven-league boots. I certainly felt that she was angry with me, and
I ventured no more familiarities; yet actually she merely moved her
hand away and stayed where she was. There was that about her which
made me feel like a child who is ashamed of being caught in some
ridiculous game; and I think now that in some ways I was truly very
much of a child.
For a long time we watched in silence the rolling seas, which had
grown as black as jet save for the points of light that they
reflected from the stars, and save for the broad bright path that
led straight up to the full moon. But when the moon had risen higher
and had cast its cold hard light on the deck of the brig, Cornelius
Gleazen edged closer to us along the rail.
"Good-night," she murmured in a very low voice, and gave a little
shudder, which, I divined, she intended that I should see. Then,
with a quick, half-concealed smile, she left me.
All in all, I was happier that night than I had ever been before, I
believe, for I thought that we had razed the wall of her reserve.
But lo! in the morning it was there again, higher and more
unyielding than ever; and more firmly than ever I was convinced that
she had not told me _all_ her story; that there was someone else of
whom she was thinking, or that some other thing, of which I knew
nothing, preyed upon her.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE DOOR OF DISASTER
On the morning when we sighted land, I saw the big Fantee canoeman
standing in the waist and looking with eager eyes at the distant
shore. I suppose it was because I was still so weak that it did not
thrill me as my first glimpse of Africa had thrilled me. We had
known for some time that we were off the La Plata River by the
changed color of the water; but the shores that we now saw were mere
sandy beaches and low hills, which stretched, Captain North said,
from Cape St. Mary up the river itself; and I, having somehow got
the notion that I should see grand cliffs and mountains, was sadly
disappointed in them.
At about nine o'clock in the morning of that first day we passed an
island on which there were more seals than I had ever seen in any
one place; and at about eleven we came to a small town, whence with
light, fair winds we continued on our way up the river toward
Montevideo.
For our venture into unfamiliar waters we could not have desired
better weather than thus far prevailed; but about sunset the wind
rose and a dense fog blew in; whereupon Captain North decided to
haul off shore a few miles and anchor for the night, which we did
about fifteen miles below the city. The wind, meanwhile, was rising
to a gale. At eight o'clock, as it was still rapidly increasing, we
paid out a considerable length of cable, and the Adventure rode with
much less straining than before; but Captain North, I could see, was
by no means well pleased with our situation, and as we went below to
supper I overheard him say to Matterson, who continued to hold the
berth of chief mate, "Tend the cable with care, Mr. Matterson, and
keep a good lookout."
Whatever Matterson's reply, I lost it; but to this day I remember
his giant figure as he stood there on the quarter-deck, his jacket
buttoned tight up to his throat, his arms folded, with the wind
racing past his gray stubble of a beard. His strength was still
impaired by his wound, although at last it had healed clean; but
there was no sign of weakness in his bearing. In the dim light and
the rising gale he loomed up big, bold, and defiant.
Small wonder that I remember him as he looked then! It was almost
the last time I ever saw him.
We were five at the table that night,--Captain North, Gleazen,
Arnold, Faith, and I,--and Abe Guptil served us as steward.
With Mr. Severance in his own quarters asleep during his watch
below, and with the trader whom we had rescued sent unceremoniously
forward to keep company with the cook, we should have had a pleasant
time of it but for the presence of Gleazen, whose sullen scowl
dampened every word we spoke. Why the fellow ate with us instead of
waiting for Matterson, I am sure I do not know, unless it was sheer
perversity. Not one of us had a word to say to him, yet there he
sat, with his arm in a sling and the folds of bandages showing
through his waistcoat as broad ridges, now glaring at Arnold, now
eyeing Faith Parmenter; and his few words could have brought little
comfort even to him.
"How she pitches!" Arnold exclaimed, as wine from his glass fell in
a red blot on the cloth.
"This wind," said Gleazen gloomily, "puts me in mind of that little
yell Seth Upham gave when they got him." His voice sank almost to a
whisper.
Now, as the brig plunged, Abe Guptil stumbled while crossing the
cabin and fell to his knees, yet made out by a desperate effort both
to hold his tray upright and to keep the dishes from sliding off
against the bulkhead.
"Bravo!" cried Gideon North.
"Yes, sir," Abe replied, brightly, "that was a clever one and I'm
proud of it."
It had been impossible to teach him the manners of his new work, but
we cared little about that.
"Hark!" said Faith. "What was the noise?"
"Nothing, so far as I know," Captain North replied. "How she pitches
and jumps! Give me a ship under sail, steadied by the wind abeam."
"I've heard Bud O'Hara use them very words," said Gleazen.
Again silence followed the man's ill-chosen remark.
"When we have put our passengers ashore," Arnold began with a
significant glance at Gleazen, "shall we--"
"Captain North!"
Matterson's light voice calling down the companionway brought the
old mariner to his feet.
Gleazen, who had seemed to be on the point of making some
ill-tempered retort, slumped back in his chair as Captain North
rose.
"What will you have, Mr. Matterson?"
"I wish you'd come on deck, sir," came Matterson's reply. "I'm in
doubt whether or no we're drifting."
"Drifting?"
The old man went up with haste, and I followed close at his heels.
"I don't like the feel of the lead," he remarked, when, after
gaining the deck, he laid hands on the lead-line. "But what with the
current of the river and our pitching, I can't be sure. Are those
breakers to leeward?"
"I think, sir," Matterson replied, "that they are only the white
tops of the waves."
Matterson showed more genuine deference now than I had ever seen in
him before, which in itself went far to convince me that affairs
were going badly.
"They may be," the old man replied, "but I'm inclined to doubt it."
And with that he went aft over the stern into the boat.
Evidently the nearer view convinced him that they were indeed
breakers, for he returned with surprising agility.
"Call 'em up, Joe," he hoarsely cried, "every living soul. We're in
a bad way. You, Mr. Matterson, get ready another anchor and send men
to clear the cable tier below. Quick now."
I heard those in the cabin start to their feet when I called, and a
moment later Gleazen burst out and up the ladder. Behind him came
Faith, whom he had passed in his rush to the deck; then, a moment
later, Arnold, who had stopped to shake Mr. Severance out of a sound
sleep.
The white crests were nearer now, and approaching at a startling
speed. The roar alone told us they were breakers. A wave curled
along the rail and a torrent of foam cascaded over the bulwark,
washed the length of the deck, and eddied for a moment above the
scuppers.
The breakers were upon us and all about us. Their deafening roar
drowned out every sound in the brig. Then we struck. The man at the
wheel was thrown to his knees, but held his place. One or two men
succeeded in clinging to the rigging. The rest of us went tumbling
up against the rail.
I really did not understand the expression on Gleazen's face. I
simply could not yet comprehend the terrible danger in which we were
placed. To me, being no sailor, anything would have seemed possible
at sea; but now, when we were so near port,--indeed, actually in
sight of land,--it seemed utterly incredible that we could be in
deadly peril. But it was a terrible lesson that put an end to my
folly. A second blow followed the first shock of our striking, then
a third still heavier, then a sea broke clean across our bows,
carrying one poor wretch overboard and driving two more back to the
quarter-deck. With a fearful, despairing yell the luckless fellow
went past us and down, and as he did so I saw clinging to his
shoulders a frightened animal and knew that we had seen the last of
Pedro and his monkey.
The next sea broke over the whole weather side of the good
Adventure, and only by clinging fast to the rigging did any one of
us manage to retain his hold on the pounding wreck, which, desperate
though her plight was, represented our one chance for life.
Now in a voice that rose above the roar of the tempest Gideon North
thundered, "Cut away the masts! Cut away the masts!"
A lull followed, and for a moment we dared hope that, once the brig
was freed of all weight aloft, she would right herself and go over
the bar in such a way that we could let go our anchor on the farther
side and so bring her up again into the wind. But the lull brought
us only despair when the carpenter answered him by shrieking at the
top of his voice, "The axe has gone overboard."
So swiftly and so mightily had the succession of seas burst over us
that of all hands only ten or a dozen were left on board. I could
see them in a line clinging precariously to the weather-rail. At
first, in dazed horror, I thought Faith Parmenter was not there;
then, seeing someone drag her back through the wash of the sea, I
myself strove to reach her side. Another sea broke, and again she
almost went overboard; then I saw that it was Abe Guptil who was
holding her with the strength of two men. Then the great black
figure of the Fantee canoeman worked along the rail ahead of me and
took a place beside her, opposite to Abe, and helped to hold her in
the brig.
It was plain to every one of us what the outcome would have been had
not a cross-current now thrown the pounding hull at a new angle, so
that for a breathing-space those of us who were left alive had
opportunity to take other measures for safety. But the very wave
that did that also sent the masts by the board and, instead of
lightening us, cluttered the decks with a hopeless snarl of ropes
and canvas.
I was farther forward than the others, and so weak from my long
illness that for a moment I could only strive to recover my strength
and my breath. I saw them haul the filled boat up to the stern and,
by sheer strength and audacity, raise her clear of the breakers,
empty out half or two thirds of the water and let her go back again
into the sea, where she rode sluggishly.
Into that rocking boat, first of all, sprang Matterson. Close after
him scrambled the craven trader, and after him Neil Gleazen.
"Cast off!" I heard Matterson yell. "She'll founder with another
soul aboard her."
And off they cast, those three men, abandoning every one of the rest
of us to whatever end fate might hold in store.
That they should leave behind them those of us who had been from the
first their enemies was not surprising; but that they should abandon
thus, on a wreck that we all could see was doomed to break up in a
few hours, if not literally in a few minutes, a girl who had done
them no harm whatsoever, whose only fault lay in coming from quite
another world than theirs, was contemptible beyond belief, if for no
other reason than that she was but a young girl and they strong men.
I would not have believed it of even them. I could scarcely believe
my eyes when I saw them go. But as if to deal them a punishment more
fitting than any that we could devise, while the brig was pounding
in the breakers, a wave, sweeping clean over her, wrenched the
trysail boom about and parted the sheet and flung the boom in a wide
half-circle squarely on top of the boat, which it crushed to
kindlings. Whether or not it hit any of the three cowardly knaves a
direct blow, it left them struggling like so many rats in seas that
speedily carried them out of our sight into the darkness.
No doubt we should have seen more of their fate had our own plight
been less desperate; but the boom, as it swung down on the boat,
raked across the taffrail, and those of us who had been clinging
there in a long line, losing our hold on what up to that point had
represented to us our only chance for safety, threw our arms round
the boom and clung fast to that and with it were swept away from the
wrecked brig, straight through the breakers that foamed between us
and the shore. Holding the boom itself with one arm, I struggled to
give Faith what help I could with the other; but we must both have
been washed off the leaping spar, had not the big black Fantee
canoeman, who all this time had been working closer and closer to
his beloved mistress, plunged under the boom and, coming up on the
farther side, seized both her and me with a grip like a gorilla's.
Meanwhile Abe Guptil, as strong as a bear, in a flash had seen how
effective the Fantee's manoeuvre was, and had tried to duplicate it
for himself, Arnold, and Gideon North, who had been washed to the
farther end of the spar and nearly carried away from it. But he
only partly succeeded, for to him the water was not nearly so
natural an element as to the mungo, and he began his attempt later
and completed it more slowly.
Coming up on the far side of the boom, gasping and choking from a
wave that struck him squarely in the face, he clasped hands with
Arnold and tried to do so with Gideon North; but as his outstretched
arm groped for him, the sea tore the old sailor away and we five
were left alone on the long spar, two of us on one side and three on
the other, with arms and bodies locked around it.
Brave Gideon North! There was little time then to feel his loss; but
it was to grow upon us more and more and more in the weeks and
months to come. Stout-hearted, downright, thoughtful, kind--it is
very seldom that one gets or loses such a friend.
The spar rolled and turned as it swept toward the shore. Now we were
pounded and battered and almost drowned by the breakers; now we got
a chance to breathe and regain our strength as we came into deeper,
quieter water; now we were swept again through breakers that tossed
us, half drowned, into surging shallows. And so, holding fast to one
another, we were cast up on the shore in the darkness, where we
crawled away from the long waves that licked over the wet sand, and
sat down and watched and waited and watched.
Twice we heard someone calling aloud, and once I was sure that I saw
someone struggling toward us out of the surge. But though we
staggered down to the sea and shouted time and again, we got no
answer. Slowly the conviction forced itself upon us that we five and
some half a dozen sailors who had reached land before us were all
who were left alive of the passengers and crew of the brig
Adventure; that after all there was no hope whatever for Gideon
North, that bravest of master mariners.
To such an end had come Cornelius Gleazen's golden dreams! Through
suffering and disaster, they had led him to the ultimate wreck of
every hope; his own catastrophe had shattered the future of more
than one innocent man, and had caused directly the death of many
innocent men.
It was a wild dawn that broke upon us on that foreign shore. The
wind raged and the sea thundered, and black, low clouds raced over
our heads. To watch by daylight the terrible cauldron through which
we had come by dark was in itself a fearful thing; and beyond it,
barely visible through the surf, lay the broken hull of the
Adventure. So far as we could discover, there was no living creature
in all that waste of waters.
My dream of being a prosperous ship-owner lay wrecked beside the
shattered timbers of the Adventure; and knowing that, after all my
youthful dreams of affluence, I now was a poor man with my way in
the world to make, I felt that still another dream, a dearer, more
ambitious dream, likewise was shattered.
If when I owned the brig and had good prospects Faith Parmenter had
withdrawn behind a wall of reserve, if there had been someone else
whom she held in greater favor,--of whom she thought more
often,--what hope that I could win her now? Starting to walk away
from the others, I saw that she was ahead of me, staring with dark,
tearless eyes at the stormy sea. I stopped beside her.
"I suppose the time of our parting is near at hand," I began. "If I
can in any way be of service to you--"
"You are going to leave me _now_? _Here?_"
There was something in her breathless, anxious voice that brought my
heart up into my throat.
"Not leave you, but--"
"But the time of parting has come?" she said, with a rising
inflection. "It has found us in a wild and desolate place,"--she
smiled,--"more desolate and less wild than the place from which we
sailed. You came to me strangely, sir; you go as strangely as you
came."
"If I can be of any service to you," I blindly repeated, "I--"
Still smiling, she cut me short off. "I thank you, but I think I
shall be able, after all, to make shift. If someone--Mr. Lamont,
perhaps--will take me to some town where there is--an English
church--"
She still was smiling, but her smile wavered.
Could she, I wondered with a sort of fierce eagerness, have told me
_all_ her story? Was there, then, really nothing hidden?
"If you--" I began, "if I--"
Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed, and for the
first time I dared guess the truth.
At what I then said,--the words that opened the gate to the life we
two have lived together,--she smiled so brightly through her tears,
that for the moment I forgot the dark shore, the stormy seas, and
the terrible, tragic night through which we had passed.
There was a wealth of affection in Arnold's kind, thoughtful face
when we joined the others, and Abe Guptil and the big Fantee, Paul,
smiled at us--it was good to see their smiles after the sufferings
and sorrow that we all had passed through.
"If only Gideon North and Seth Upham were here now!" Abe cried.
"Poor Seth!" said Arnold. "What a price he has paid for one
passionate blow."
"What do you know?" I demanded.
Arnold gravely turned, "I _know_ little," he said. "But I have
guessed much."
"What have you guessed?"
"They say in Topham that Neil Gleazen left town in the night and Eli
Norton was found dead in the morning."
While he paused, we waited in silence.
"That, my friends, is why Gleazen for twenty years did not come
back. But I once heard Gleazen say, when the mood was on him to
torment Seth Upham, let people think what they would, that at least
he--Gleazen--_knew_ who killed Eli Norton."
"And you think that Seth Upham--"
He interrupted me with a Latin phrase--"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."
My poor uncle!
"You four," said Arnold thoughtfully, "will need money before you
once more reach Topham."
"But of course you are coming too," I cried.
"No, I fear that I should not be content to live always in Topham."
Taken aback by his words, I stared at him with an amazement that was
utterly incredulous.
"You are not coming back with us?"
"No." Arnold smiled kindly and perhaps a little sadly.
Unbuckling a belt that he had worn since I first knew him, he drew
it off and opened it, and I saw to my further amazement that it was
full of gold coins. "This," said he, "will go far to pay your
expenses."
"I cannot take gold from you," I cried.
"Do not be foolish, Joe. We are old friends, you and I, and this by
rights is as much yours as mine."
He thrust the belt into my hands. "It is all for you, but there is
enough for our good friend Abe, in case he parts from you before
reaching Topham."
"But you--"
"I have more. I am not, Joe, only that which I have pretended to be
in your uncle's store in Topham, where you and I have had happy days
together."
At my bewildered face, he smiled again.
"My real name, Joe, is old and not obscure. I am one of the least
illustrious sons of my house; but I myself have served on the staff
of the great Bonaparte.
"And that--" I could scarcely believe that honest Arnold Lamont was
saying these astounding things.
"That is why it has been necessary--at least advisable--for me to
conceal for so many years my identity. A man, Joe, does not tell all
he knows."
CHAPTER XXXIV
AN OLD, OLD STORY
It was spring when we came back to Topham. The sun was warm upon the
pleasant fields and gardens, and the blossoms on the fruit trees
were thick and fragrant. The loveliest days of all the year were
enfolding the pleasant countryside of New England in the glory and
peace of their bright skies and soft colors; and as the hired coach
that brought us down from Boston, with black Paul, at once proud and
uncomfortable in a new suit of white man's clothes, seated stiffly
high beside the driver, rolled along the familiar roads, I pointed
out to my bride the fair scenes among which my boyhood had been
spent.
From Montevideo, which we reached on the evening following the
wreck,--there an old English clergyman married us,--we had sailed to
New York as passengers in a merchant ship; but first we had taken
leave of those two good friends, Arnold Lamont, whom we were never
to see again, and Abe Guptil, who had bravely insisted on setting
out to build anew his fortunes by shipping as second mate of an
American bark then in port. From New York a second ship had given us
passage to Boston, whence we came over the same road to Topham that
I had traveled so long before with Arnold and Sim and Abe and Neil
Gleazen and my uncle.
We ought, I suppose, to have been a properly anxious young couple,
for of the great sum in gold that Arnold had so generously advanced
us only a small part remained, and what I should do in Topham, now
that Uncle Seth's store was in other hands, I had not the slightest
notion. The tower of golden dreams that poor Seth Upham had built
in idle moments had fallen into dust; Neil Gleazen's unscrupulous
quest had brought only ashes and bitterness; it was from the shadow
of a great tragedy that we came into that golden morning in spring.
But great as had been those things that Faith and I had lost, we had
gained something so deep and so great that even then, when in
discovering it we were so happy that the world seemed too good to be
real, we had not more than begun to appreciate the wonder and
magnitude of it.
Thus I came back to Topham after such a year and a half as few men
have known, even though they have lived a full century--back to
Topham, with all my golden prospects shattered by Gleazen's mad
adventure, but with a treasure such that, if all the gold in the
world had been mine, I would eagerly have given every coin to win
it.
With my bride beside me, her hand upon my arm, I rode into sleepy
little Topham, past my uncle's house where I had lived for many
happy years, past the store where Arnold and poor Sim Muzzy and I
had worked together, past the smithy where even now that old
prophet, the blacksmith, was peering out to see who went by in the
strange coach, and after all was failing to recognize me at the
distance, so changed was I by all that had befallen me, up to the
door of the very tavern where I had first seen Cornelius Gleazen.
There I handed my dear wife down from her seat in the coach, dressed
in a simple gown and bonnet that became her charmingly, and turned
and saw, waiting to greet me, the very landlord whom last I had seen
reeling back from Gleazen's drunken thrust.
At first, when he looked at me, he showed that he was puzzled; then
he recognized me and his face changed.
My fears lest the good man bear me a grudge for my share, small
though it was, in that villainous night's work, vanished there and
then. "You!" he cried, with both hands outstretched; "why, Joe! why,
Joe! We thought you were long since lost at sea or killed by
buccaneers--such a story as Sim Muzzy told us!"
"Sim Muzzy?" I cried. "Not Sim!"
"Yes, Sim!"
Then I heard far down the road someone calling, and turned and
saw--it was so good that I rubbed my eyes like a child waking from a
dream!--actually saw Sim Muzzy come puffing and sweating along, with
a cloud of dust trailing for a hundred yards behind him.
"Joe, Joe," he cried, "welcome home! Welcome home, Joe Woods!"
And as I am an honest man, he fell to blubbering on the spot.
"Things are not what they used to be," he managed at last to say.
"The new man in the store don't like the town and the townspeople
don't like him, and I've been living in hopes Seth Upham would come
home and take it off his hands. But who is this has come back with
you, Joe, and what's come of Seth Upham?"
At that I presented him to my wife, who received him with a sweet
dignity that won his deepest regard on the spot; and then I told him
the whole sad story of our adventures, or as much of it, at least,
as I could cram into the few minutes that we stood by the road.
"And so," I concluded, "I have come back to Topham with not a penny
to my name, save such few as are left from Arnold's bounty."
Sim heard me out in silence, for evidently his own trials had done
much to cure him of his garrulity, and with a very sad face indeed
he stood looking back over the village where we had lived and
worked so long together.
"Poor Seth Upham!" he said at last. "Well, there's nothing we can do
for him now. And as for Neil Gleazen, he's better dead than back in
Topham, for here he'd hang as sure as preaching. Jed Matthews, they
say, never moved a muscle after Neil hit him on the head. But as for
you, Joe, you're no penniless wanderer."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"There was all of fifteen thousand dollars on board the brig."
"What makes you think that?"
"Didn't I help Seth store it in his trunk? 'You're simple, Sim, and
honest,' he says to me. 'I'll not have another soul besides you know
this, but you're as honest as you are simple,' Them's the words he
said, and I was that proud of 'em that I've treasured 'em ever
since."
I thought of the papers and bags we had stored in the wagon that
night when we fled from Topham.
"He hid it well," I replied. "But even if he had not hidden it so
well, I fear that it would nevertheless be at the bottom of the La
Plata River, just as it now is, with the brig, and all the goods
that were on board her, and many men that sailed in her, good and
bad alike."
"But that is not all."
"Not all? What do you mean?"
"Seth Upham left money in the bank, and I've seen his will with my
own eyes. 'Twas found in the safe after we left town, and turned
over to Judge Fuller."
"But surely, what with buying the brig and taking all his papers,
which I looked over myself in the cabin of the Adventure and which
were lost, every one, when she broke up, he had nothing left. Why,
the brig must have cost a pretty penny."
"That may well be, Joe, but there's money in the bank, for all that.
Seth Upham had more money tucked away than most people would have
believed."
I thought this over with growing wonder. "I do believe, my love," I
said, "that we shall be able to make a fair start in the world after
all, and, which is more, repay certain debts at once."
Faith smiled as she looked up at me; then she turned and looked at
the quaint old town, which was spread before us in the sun.
CHAPTER XXXV
EHEU FUGACES!
Sim Muzzy's tale, when he bethought himself to tell it to us, was a
lively one in its own way, although it did not, of course, compare
with our African adventures. The press-gang that set upon us in
Havana had rushed him away to a Spanish ship, where he was kicked
about and cruelly abused, until, at peril of his life, he dropped
overboard in the dark and swam to an American schooner, whose
captain, hearing his story, took him on board and hid him in the
chain-locker until they were well on their way to Boston. Thence Sim
had set out on foot for Topham, where he had hired himself once
again to tend the store and had led a dog's life ever since.
That Sim was right about Uncle Seth's bank accounts and his will,
which left all to me, I learned before sunset that very day. The
sums were not large in themselves, and taken all together they were
small enough compared with the golden dreams my poor uncle had lived
in; but they assured Faith and me of comfort at least; and when that
evening I called upon the new storekeeper and found him so eager to
escape from a town where his short measures and petty deceits had
made him unpopular and discontented, that he was not in the mood to
haggle over the bargain, I bought back the store on the spot.
"There'll be happier days ahead, Sim," said I when I came out.
"O Joe, I'm sure of that," he replied, his face bright with smiles;
for he had overheard considerable of our discussion.
Within the week the papers were signed, and before a fortnight was
up Faith and I went out, arm-in-arm, on the old hill road and saw
the men break ground for the new house that we were to build.
Whether any of the others, unknown to Faith and me, had made their
way ashore on the night of the wreck, we never learned; but it was
virtually impossible that they should have done so without revealing
themselves to those of us who had ranged all that bleak coast the
next morning. For honest Gideon North we mourned as for one of the
dearest of friends, and of the rest we thought sometimes in the
years that followed. But none of them, except our own Abe, ever came
to Topham, nor did I ever go back to the sea.
Three letters at long intervals brought us news of Arnold Lamont;
and to the address that he gave in the first we sent with our reply
a draft for the sum that he had so generously lent us when on that
wild South American shore we four had set out to begin life anew.
They were good letters, and there was no note of complaint in them;
yet as I read them and thought of the Arnold Lamont whom I had known
so long and, all things considered, so intimately, I could not but
feel that in the cities of South America and, later, of Europe he
failed, whatever compensations there may have been, to find anything
like the peace and quiet happiness that he once had found in our New
England town of Topham.
The week before the walls of our new house were raised, Faith and I
drove together along a road that I had tramped on an autumn
afternoon, to the farm where Abe Guptil had lived in the days that
now seemed so long ago. We carried with us certain papers, which
changed hands in the kitchen where Abe and his little family had
slept the night when I was their guest; and so it happened that,
when Abe returned from his voyage and came to see me at the store
full of honest joy at my good fortune, I sent him off to his own old
home with the assurance that the terms by which he was to buy it
were such that he need never fear again to lose it.
As the town of Topham has grown around us, Faith and I have grown
into the town and with it; and although the black Fantee, Paul, who
remained the most faithful of servants, was a nine days' wonder in
the village, there now are few people left, I imagine, who know all
the wild, well-nigh unbelievable, yet absolutely true, story of the
year when we first met. A royal fortune may have been lost with Seth
Upham and Neil Gleazen in Gleazen's mad quest, but I can say in all
sincerity that from his quest I gained a fortune far beyond my
deserts.
THE END
[Illustration: THE COURSE OF THE BRIG ADVENTURE]
McGrath-Sherrill Press, Boston
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Great Quest" ***
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