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  Porto Bello Gold

  BY

  ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH

  NEW YORK
  BRENTANO’S
  PUBLISHERS

  Copyright, 1924, by
  ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH

  _All rights reserved_

  First printing, August, 1924
  Second printing, September, 1924

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  _OTHER NOVELS_

  _BY_

  ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH

  _HISTORICAL_

  THE DOOM TRAIL
  BEYOND THE SUNSET

  _ADVENTURE_

  THE TREASURE OF THE BUCOLEON

  To R. L. S.

  _Oh, Tusitala, you who lie
  “Under the wide and starry sky”
      On that Samoan hill,
  Think not this wretched, miswrought tale
  Is meant to breast the thundering gale
      Of your great art and skill--
  As well the humble trading bark
  Might sail to cloudland with the lark!
      Be patient, sir, until
  We meet on some far height of dreams
  And I explain just why it seems
      John Silver’s with us still,
  And all the raffish, ruffian crew
  That you and young Jim Hawkins knew--
      They burst Time’s dungeon-grill!_

FENLEY HUNTER, Esq.,
  Flushing,
     N. Y.

DEAR FEN:

You are responsible for some of the incidents in this roaring yarn,
and for that and other reasons it should be inscribed to you--who, in
your own person, lead a life as swaggeringly varied from the
existence of office, home and country-club as any character I have
created between these covers. If it detains you from the out-trail
for a night or two, persuades you to sample the pleasures of the
sheltered hearth, I shall be rewarded.

Yours,
    KING ARTHUR.

Babylon, N. Y.,
    Feb. 9, 1924.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I My Father’s Secret
  II The One-Legged Man and the Irish Maid
  III A Caller in the Night
  IV An Inkling of the Plot
  V Aboard the Brig
  VI Tall Ships and Lawless Men
  VII Murray’s Plan
  VIII A Wicked Old Man’s Dream
  IX The Island
  X Hostages
  XI Peter Plays at Bowls with Destiny
  XII The Treasure Ship
  XIII Trouble Boards the _Royal James_
  XIV The Dead Man’s Chest
  XV Suspicions
  XVI Treachery
  XVII The Storm
  XVIII Disaster
  XIX The Attack on the Stockade
  XX Prisoners
  XXI Flint’s Way
  XXII “Fetch aft the Rum, Darby McGraw!”
  XXIII Cap’n Bill Bones
  XXIV Home

PORTO BELLO GOLD

CHAPTER I

MY FATHER’S SECRET

I was in the counting-room, talking with Peter Corlaer, the chief of
our fur-traders--he was that very day come down-river from the
Iroquois country--when the boy, Darby, ran in from the street.

“The Bristol packet is in, Master Robert,” he cried. “And, oh, sir,
the watermen do say there be a pirate ship off the Hook!”

I remember I laughed at the combination of awe and delight in his
face. He was a raw, bog-trotting bit of a gossoon we had bought at
the last landing of bonded folk, and he talked with a brogue that
thickened whenever he grew excited.

“For the packet, I do not doubt you, Darby,” I answered. “But you
must show me the pirate.”

Peter Corlaer chuckled in his quiet, rumbling way, his huge belly
waggling before him beneath his buckskin hunting-shirt, for all the
world like a monster mold of jelly.

“_Ja_, _ja_, show us der pirates,” he jeered.

Darby flared up in a burst of Irish temper that matched his tangled
red hair.

“I would I were a pirate and had you at my mercy, you butter-tub!” he
raged. “I’ll warrant you’d tread the plank!”

Peter gravely unsheathed his hunting-knife, seized Darby’s flaming
locks and despite his wriggles went through the motions of scalping
him.

“If I tread der plank, first I take your hair, _ja_,” he commented.

“Not if I had my growth,” snapped Darby.

“T’ree growths you must get to fight me, Darby,” rejoined Peter
placidly. “You better ask Mr. Ormerod dot he let you come with me
into the Iroquois country. We make a forest-runner out of you--_ja_!
Dot’s better than a pirate.”

Darby contemplated this, drawing a circle on the floor with the toe
of one boot.

“No,” he decided finally. “I’d rather be a pirate. I know nothing
of your forest, but the sea--ah, that’s the life for me! And sure, a
pirate has more of traveling and adventure than a forest-runner, with
none but red savages and wild beasts to combat. No, no, Master
Peter, I am for the pirates, and I care not how soon it may be.”

“It will be long, not soon, Darby,” said I. “Have you done the
errands my father set you?”

“Every one,” answered he.

“Very well. Then get you into the store-room and sort over the pelts
Peter fetched in. Even a pirate must work.”

He flung off with a scowl as I turned to Peter.

“My father will wish to know the packet has arrived,” I said. “Will
you go with me to the Governor’s? The Council must be on the point
of breaking up, for they have been sitting since noon.”

Peter heaved his enormous body erect. And I marveled, as always
after a period of absence, at his proportions. To one who did not
know him he seemed a butter-tub of a man, as Darby had called him--a
mass of tallow, fat limbs, a pork-barrel of a trunk, a fat slab of a
face upon which showed tiny, insignificant features grotesquely at
variance with the rest of his bulk. His little eyes peered
innocently between rolls of fat which all but masked them. His nose
was a miniature dab, above a mouth a child might have owned.

But under his layers of blubber were concealed muscles of forged
steel, and he was capable of the agility of a catamount. The man had
not lived on the frontier who could face him bare-handed and escape.

“_Ja_,” he said simply. “We go.”

He stood his musket in a corner and slipped off powder-horn and
shot-pouch the while I donned hat and greatcoat, for the air was
still chilly and there was a scum of snow on the ground. We passed
out into Pearl Street and walked westward to Hanover Square, and
there on the farther side of the Square I spied my father, with
Governor Clinton and Lieutenant-Governor Colden.

And it made my heart warm to see how these and several other
gentlemen hung upon his words. There had been those who slandered
him during the uproar over the ’45, for he was known to have been a
Jacobite in his youth; but his friends were more powerful than his
enemies, and I joy to think that he was not the least influential of
those of our leaders who held New York loyal to King George when many
were for casting in our fortunes with the Pretender.

He saw Peter and me as we approached and waved us to him, but at the
same moment there was a slight disturbance on the eastward side of
the Square, and another little group of men came into view
surrounding a grizzled, ruddy-cheeked old fellow, whose salt-stained
blue coat spoke as eloquently of the sea as did his rolling gait. I
could hear his hoarse, roaring voice clear across the Square--

“--ran him tops’ls down; ---- my eyes, I did; and when I get to port
what do I find, but not a King’s ship within----”

My father interrupted him:

“What’s this, Captain Farraday? Do you speak of being chased? I had
thought we were at peace with the world.”

Captain Farraday discarded the listeners who had attended him so far
and stumped across the Square, bellowing his answer in tones which
brought shopkeepers to their doors and women’s heads from upper
windows.

“Chased? That I was, Master Ormerod, by as ----, scoundrelly a
pirate as flouts the King’s majesty i’ the ----”

Here he perceived who accompanied my father. Off came his hat, and
he made an awkward bow.

“Your sarvent, your Excellency! My duty, Master Colden! But I have
no words to withdraw, for all I did not see who was near by to hear
me. Aye, there is more to be said, much more; and matters have come
to a pretty pass when the rascals come north to these ports.”

Peter Corlaer and I joined the little group of merchants who were
with the Governor, and the other curious persons hovered as close as
they dared.

“But I find this hard to give credence to, captain,” said Governor
Clinton pleasantly enough. “Pirates? In these latitudes? We have
not been bothered by such of late.”

Captain Farraday wagged his head stubbornly.

“That’s true enough, I grant your Excellency; and since the peace we
have not been bothered by French privateers, neither. But the day’ll
come we fight the French again, and then the letters of marque will
be scouring the Atlantic north and south. And by the same token,
sir, I bid you remember the pirates are always with us, and clever
devils they are, too; for if they find their trade falling off in one
part they are away at once elsewhere. And the first you know of them
is a score of missing ships and a mariner like myself lucky enough to
give them the slip.”

“You may be right,” acknowledged the Governor. “Tell us more of your
experience. Did you have sight of the ship which pursued you?”

“Sight? Marry, that I did; and uncomfortable close, your Excellency.
She came up with a so’easter two days past, and at the first I made
her out for a frigate by the top-hamper she carried.”

“A frigate?” protested Master Colden. “So big as that?”

“Aye, sir, my master! And if I have any eye for a ship’s lines and
canvas she was none other than the _Royal James_ that chased me three
days together when I was home-bound from the West Indies in ’43.”

“That would be the vessel of the fellow known usually as Captain
Rip-Rap,” spoke up my father, and there was a quality in his voice
which led me to regard him closely.

It was manifest that he labored in the grip of some strong emotion;
but the only indication of this in his face was a slight rigidity of
feature, and none of the others marked it. I was the more amazed
because my father was a man of iron nerves, and also, though his
earlier years had been starred with a series of extraordinary
adventures, so far as I knew, he had had nothing to do with the sea.

“True for you, Master Ormerod,” answered Captain Farraday; “and since
Henry Morgan died there hath not lived a more complete rogue. One of
my mates was taken by him off Jamaica ten years gone and cites him
for a man of exquisite dress and manners that would befit a London
macaroni, God save us! And moreover, is as arrant a Jacobite as ever
was. Witness the name of his ship.”

“I have heard he sails usually in company,” remarked my father.

“He works with John Flint, who is no less of a rascal, albeit
rougher, according to those unfortunates who have fallen in his path.
Flint sails in the _Walrus_, a tall ship out of Plymouth that was on
the Smyrna run before she fell into his hands. Betwixt them they are
a pretty pair.

“Did you ever hear, gentles, how they sank the Portuguese line-ship
off Madeira for naught but the pleasure o’ destruction? Aye, so they
did. They ha’ the metal to hammer a brace of King’s ships. But they
are wary of such.

“Portuguese, Frenchies, Spaniards or Barbary corsairs they will
assail, but they will not stop for a powder-blow with his Majesty’s
people. Why? I know not, save ’tis never for lack o’ daring.
Mayhap they know if they ever did my Lords of the Admiralty, that
take small account of the sufferings of us poor merchantmen--always
saving your Excellency’s presence--would be stirred to loose a fleet
of stout frigates against ’em.”

Captain Farraday stopped perforce for breath, and Governor Clinton
seized the opportunity to ask with a smile:

“Captain Rip-Rap did you call your pursuer? What manner of name is
this?”

The merchantman shrugged his shoulders.

“Nobody knows, sir. But ’tis the only name he goes by. I ha’ heard
that years past--oh, it may be twenty or more--he stopped a
home-bound Chesapeake packet, and when the master was haled aboard
the first question he asked was ‘did he have any rip-rap in his
cargo?’ For it seems he is singularly partial to that mixture of
snuff. And now, I ha’ been told, his own men give him this name, for
even they do not know for certain that to which he was born.

“’Tis said he was a gentleman who suffered for his political
convictions, but that is as like to be a lie as the truth. All I
know is that he chased me in past the Hook, though the _Anne_ showed
him a clean pair o’ heels and had run him tops’ls down wi’ sunrise
this morning. And when I made the harbor, ’twas to find there was
not a King’s ship to send after him.”

“Yes,” nodded the Governor; “the _Thetis_ frigate sailed for home
with dispatches a week ago. But I will send express to Boston where
Commodore Burrage lies and bid him get to sea without loss of time.
I sympathize with your feelings, Master Farraday, and certes, ’tis
beyond toleration that such scoundrels as Rip-Rap and Flint should be
permitted to flout his Majesty’s Government so openly. Doubt not,
our good commodore will make them rue the day.”

“But doubt it I must, your Excellency,” returned Captain Farraday
with sturdy independence. “An express to Boston, say you? Humph!
That will require two days or three. Another day to put to sea. Two
days, or it may be three, to beat south. Why, my masters, in a
week’s time Rip-Rap and Flint will have wrought whatever fiendish
purpose they have in view and be off beyond reach.”

“Mayhap, mayhap,” said the Governor with a touch of impatience. “But
’tis the best I can do.”

And with Lieutenant-Governor Colden and the rest he made to move off.
Only my father lingered.

“You have letters for me, Captain Farraday?” he asked.

“Aye, indeed, sir--from Master Allen, your agent in London. I was on
my way to deliver ’em. And a goodly store of strouds, axes, knives,
beads, tools, flints and other trade-goods to your account.”

“I will accept the letters at your hands, and even save you the trip
to Pearl Street, captain,” replied my father. “My son, Robert, here,
will visit you aboardship in the morning and take measures to arrange
for transshipping your cargo.”

“I ha’ no quarrel with such terms,” rejoined Captain Farraday,
fishing a silken-wrapped packet from his coat-tail pocket. “Here you
are, Master Ormerod. And I’ll be off to the George Tavern for a bite
of shore food and a mug of mulled ale.”

My father fidgeted the packet in his hands for a moment.

“You are certain ’twas Captain Rip-Rap who chased you?” he asked then.

“I’d swear to his foretops’ls,” answered Farraday confidently. “Mark
you, my master, when I first sighted him I made sure he was a King’s
ship, and I lay to until he was abeam. Then I saw he showed no
colors--and moreover, there was that about him, which I’ll own I can
not put a name to, made me suspicious. So I hoisted colors. And
still he showed none. I fired a gun, and wi’ that he bore up for me,
and I made off, wi’ every sail set; aye, until the sticks groaned.
For I knew he was up to no good purpose, and I made certain that he
was Rip-Rap.

“As I said afore, he chased me once in ’43, and Jenkins he took off
Jamaica in the snow _Cynthia_ out o’ Southampton, when Flint was for
drowning the lot o’ them; but Rip-Rap, in his cold way, says there
was no point to slaying without purpose, and they turned ’em loose in
the longboat. And there’s none left ‘on the Account’ that sail in a
great ship fit to be a King’s frigate, save it be Rip-Rap--Flint’s
_Walrus_ is a tall ship and heavy armed, but hath not the sail-spread
o’ the _Royal James_. Jenkins says _she_ was a Frenchman, and ’tis
to be admitted she hath the fine-run lines the Frenchies build.”

My father was hard put to it to make head against this flow of talk,
but at last he succeeded.

“It was my understanding,” he said, “that Captain Rip-Rap disappeared
from the West Indies during the late war.”

Captain Farraday shrugged his shoulders.

“Like enough. There were too many cruisers o’ both sides at large in
those seas to suit him. But now he knows we ha’ back the piping
times of peace--and when nations are at peace your pirates reap their
harvest. You may lay to that, Master Ormerod.”

“’Tis not to be questioned,” assented my father. “I give you thanks,
captain. Pray call upon me at your leisure, and if I can be of any
service to you I am at your command.”

Captain Farraday stumped off toward the George, a tail of the curious
at his heels, and I grinned to myself at thought of the strong drink
they would offer him in return for his tale. There was no chance of
his being sober inside the twenty-four hours.

My father nodded absently to Peter, who had stood throughout the
entire conversation, his flat face sleepily imperturbable.

“I like it not,” he muttered, as if to himself.

Peter gave him a quick look but said nothing.

“Is there anything wrong, father?” I asked.

He frowned at me, then stared off at the housetops in a way he had,
almost as if he sought to peer beyond the future.

“No--yes--I do not know.”

He broke off abruptly.

“Peter, I am glad you are here,” he added.

“_Ja_,” said Peter vacantly.

“You have not looked at your letters yet,” I reminded him.

“I have no occasion to,” he retorted. “There is that which--But the
street is no place for such conversation. Come home, my boy; come
home.”

We set off over the snowy ground, and the people we passed bowed or
bobbed their heads to my father, for he was a great man in New York,
as great as any after the Governor; but he walked now with his eyes
upon the ground, immersed in thought. And once again as we turned
into Pearl Street he muttered--

“Nay, I like it not.”

Darby McGraw met us at the door, and from his wild gaze I knew him to
be half-expecting to behold the pirates hot-foot at our heels.

“Have you performed your tasks, Darby?” questioned my father as the
lad backed into the counting-room on the right of the entrance hall.

“Yes, master.”

“Be off with you, then. I wish not to be disturbed.”

“See can you find us late news of the pirates, Darby,” I added as he
slipped by.

He answered me with a merry scowl, but my father spun on his heel.

“What mean you by that, Robert?” says he.

I was nonplussed.

“Why, naught, sir. Darby is daft on pirates. He----”

Peter Corlaer shut the room-door upon the Irish boy and came toward
us, moving with the swift stealth that was one of his most
astonishing characteristics.

“_Ja_, he does not know,” he said.

“What?” challenged my father.

“What you andt I know,” returned the Dutchman calmly.

“So you know too, Peter?”

“_Ja_.”

I could restrain my impatience no longer.

“What is this mystery?” I demanded. “I thought I knew all the
secrets of the business; but sure, father, I never thought to hear
that we were concerned as a firm with pirates!”

“We are not,” my father answered curtly. “This is a matter of which
you know nothing, Robert, because until now there has been no
occasion for you to know of it.”

He hesitated.

“Peter,” he went on, “must we tell the boy?”

“He is not a boy; he is a man,” said Peter.

I flashed my gratitude to the fat Dutchman in a smile, but he paid me
no attention. My father, too, seemed to forget me. He strode up and
down the counting-room, hands under the skirts of his coat, head
bowed in thought. Tags of phrases escaped his lips:

“I had thought him dead-- Strange, if he bobs up again-- Here is a
problem I had never thought to face-- Mayhap I exaggerate--it cannot
have significance for us-- Certes, it must be accident----”

“_Neen_, he comes for a purpose,” interrupted Peter.

My father stayed his walk in front of Peter by the fireplace wherein
blazed a heap of elm logs.

“Who do you fancy this Captain Rip-Rap to be, Peter? Speak up! You
were right when you said Robert is no longer a boy. If there is
danger here, he deserves to know of it.”

“He is Murray,” replied Corlaer, his squeaking voice an incongruous
contrast with his immense bulk.

“Andrew Murray!” mused my father. “Aye, ’twould be he. I have
suspected it all these years--held it for certainty. But I made sure
when he failed to show himself after the last war that Providence had
attended to him. It seems I was wrong.”

“Whoever he is, this pirate can not do harm to us in New York,” I
made bold to say.

“Be not too sure, Robert,” adjured my father. “He happens to be your
great-uncle.”

He reached up to the rack over the fireplace and selected a long clay
pipe, which he stuffed with tobacco the while I was recovering from
my astonishment.

“Your uncle?” I gasped then.

Corlaer hauled forward a couple of chairs, and we all sat in the
circle of the firelight, my father on one side of me and Peter on the
other. The evening was drawing on apace, and the room was aswarm
with shadows a few feet from the hearth. My father stared long into
the leaping heart of the flames before he answered me.

“No; your mother’s,” he said finally.

“But he was the great trader who conducted the contraband trade with
Canada!” I cried. “I have heard of him. ’Twas he established the
Doom Trail to enable him to supply the French fur-traders with goods
to wean the far savages from us! You have told me of him yourself,
as hath Master Colden. ’Twas he whom you and Corlaer and the
Iroquois fought when you broke down the barriers of the Doom Trail
and won back the fur-trade for our people. Why, ’twas then
you--you----”

I knew the deep feeling my father still had for my long-dead mother,
and I scrupled to stir his memories. He himself took the words from
my lips.

“Yes, ’twas then I came to love your mother. She--she was not such
as you would expect to find allied by any ties with so great a
scoundrel. But she was his niece--past doubt, Robert. She was a
Kerr of Fernieside; her mother had been Murray’s sister. Kerr and
Murray were out together in the ’15; Kerr fell at Sheriffmuir. His
widow died not long afterward, and Murray took poor waif Marjory.

“He did well by her--there’s no denying that. But he always intended
to use her to further his own designs. He had a cold eye for the
future, with no thought except of his own advantage, and if I-- But
there’s no need to go into that. You know, Robert, how Corlaer and
the Seneca chief, Tawannears--he who is now the Guardian of the
Western Door of the Long House--and I were able to smash the vast
power Murray had built up on the frontier.

“We smashed him so utterly, discrediting him too withal, that he was
obliged to flee the province; and even his friends, the French, would
have none of him--at least, aboveboard. I have always fancied he
still served their interests at large; for he is at bottom a most
fanatical Jacobite, and eke sincere in a queer, twisted way. Aye,
there is that about him which is difficult to understand, Robert.
Himself, he hath no hesitation in believing he serves high purposes
of state in all he does.”

“But a pirate!” I exclaimed.

“Oh, that is nothing to him!”

“Not’ing,” agreed Peter. “He was a pirate on der landt.”

“Only a madman could lay claim to serving the State as a pirate,” I
objected.

“You speak with overconfidence,” rebuked my father. “There are men
alive today who can remember when Morgan and Davis and Dampier and
many another brave fellow of the same kidney lived by piracy and
served the King at one and the same time. Some of ’em were hung in
the end, and Morgan died a knight. It can be done.”

“How?”

“Consider, my boy! Murray--your great-uncle, mind you!--is a
Jacobite. For our present Government he hath only hatred and
contempt. Any means by which that Government was undermined would
seem to him justifiable as aiding to bring about its downfall. Look
to the fantastic humor of the man in naming his ship the _Royal
James_!”

“If he be, indeed, the man you think he is,” I returned, none too
well pleased with the thought of having a pirate for a great-uncle.
My father laughed kindly, and tapped me on the knee with his free
hand.

“I know how you feel, dear lad,” he said. “’Twas so identically your
mother talked. Bless her heart! We were fresh married when the
precious rascal sent us by one of his tarry-breeks that necklace
which lies now in my strong-box--the loot of some Indian queen
mayhap. Afterward--after she had died--when you were scarce
breeched--he sent again; those silver plates upon the sideboard in
the dining-room. Dishonestly come by, of course; but what was I to
do? I could not cast them in the river, nor did I know how to return
them to him. And after that again came a third messenger, this time
with no more than a letter in which he condoled with me upon the loss
of her whom we had both reverenced above all others!

“Then, I admit, I could have strangled him, for had he been
successful in his plans he would have mated her with a Frenchman who
was servant to the Foul Fiend. Yet in his way he cared for her, and
he took much interest in all she did. By hook or crook he had word
of us, however far he wandered. He knew when you were born. He knew
when she died. And now that you have reached manhood he shows his
sails outside Sandy Hook. I do not know what it means, Robert, but I
like it not! I like it not!”

“But we are not at sea,” I protested. “We are in New York. There
are soldiers in Fort George. Commodore Burrage will be down from
Boston anon. What can a pirate ship, what can two pirate ships,
effect against us? Why, the city train-bands----”

“’Tis not force I dread,” my father cut me off. “’Tis the infernal
cleverness of a warped mind.”

“_Ja_,” agreed Peter.

My father thrust the stem of his pipe toward him.

“You feel it, too, old friend?” he cried then.

“If Murray is here he means no goodt,” the Dutchman answered
ponderously. “No pirate comes nort’ in der coldt weather for just
fun. _Neen_! Here is too much danger; no places to run andt hide.”

“Aye, you have the right of it,” assented my father. “And there have
been those who claimed New York town was not so innocent of pirates
as might appear upon the surface. Murray and his like must sell the
goods they steal, and to that end they require connections with
traders here and elsewhere. In Governor Burnet’s time we used to
watch the Whale’s Head Tavern and other like hang-outs of the more
desperate sort, but I am bound to admit we caught no bigger game than
an occasional mutineer or deserter. Yet I know there are merchants
in the town none too particular in their dealings, and not every ship
that makes port is as peaceful as she seems by any means.”

“At the least, sir, we are on the alert,” I said.

My father laughed, and Corlaer’s ridiculous, simpering giggle echoed
his grim mirth.

“An intelligent foe discounts so much upon launching his venture,” my
father answered. “Let us hope we have a modicum of luck to aid us.
Whatever plan Murray hath in trend ’twill come to us unexpected and
adroit in execution. But tush. There’s the dinner-bell. A truce to
foreboding!”

CHAPTER II

THE ONE-LEGGED MAN AND THE IRISH MAID

The next morning I was occupied for several hours in checking over
the needs of our trading-stations with Peter Corlaer, so that it was
the middle of the forenoon before I was able to leave the
counting-room to go aboard Captain Farraday’s ship and concert with
her people the lightering of that portion of the cargo which was
destined for our warehouse.

Darby McGraw eyed me so wistfully when I took my hat that I sent him
to the kitchen to secure a bag of fresh-killed chickens and Winter
greens, knowing such food would be welcome to sailors after a long
voyage, and bade him carry it to the dock. He was as pleased as if
he had been presented with his freedom, and skipped along whistling
like a skylark.

We walked down Pearl Street to Broad Street, where the landing-basin
indents the land; and I was passing on, with intent to secure a
wherry from the foot of Whitehall Street to row me out to the Bristol
packet, when Darby drew my attention to the soaring masts and tangled
cordage of a great ship lying at anchor in the East River anchorage.

“’Tis a frigate, Master Robert!” he exclaimed.

There was no mistaking the rows of painted gun-ports and the solid
bulwarks; and for a moment I fancied Commodore Burrage had
anticipated our needs. Then the flag at her mizzen truck rippled
out, and I beheld the red-and-gold banner of Spain.

“D’ye suppose he hath come after the pirate?” whispered Darby, all
agog.

“Not he,” I answered, laughing. “’Tis a Spaniard, and he and his
kidney are not hungry for pirate gore, Darby.”

“Whisht, but if he would only make to shoot off a cannon or two!”
sighed Darby. “Or maybe hang a poor soul at the yardarm the while we
watched. Oh, Master Robert, wouldn’t it be grand?”

“Go to,” said I, laughing again at the quaint fancies of the lad.
“You are as bloodthirsty as any pirate that sails the Spanish Main.”

“I’ll warrant you I am,” returned Darby sturdily. “I’d be a grand
pirate, I would--and I’d make naught of frigates, be they Spaniard or
King’s ship; aye, or Frenchies. I’d take ’em all!”

“Certes, you would,” I agreed. “But look, Darby! There’s another
strange vessel--beyond the frigate.”

I pointed to a battered little brig with patched and dirty sails and
a spatter of white showing in her black-painted hull where a
roundshot had sent the splinters flying.

“And he hath seen the pirates, or I am amiss,” I added. “His escape
must have been exceeding narrow.”

Darby’s eyes waxed as large as a cat’s in the dark.

“Whurra, whurra, do but look to the shot-hole in the side of him!
’Tis he will have made a noble prayer. And now will ye mock me for
saying there are pirates abroad, Master Robert?”

“Not I, Darby. Yon fellow has been closer to death than I like to
think of,” I answered.

“Now there was as true a word as ever was heard spoke,” proclaimed a
pleasant voice behind me. “And shows most unaccountable
understanding and humanitee, so it do, seeing as there’s precious few
landsmen as stop to figger out the chances a poor sailor must take
and never a thankee from his owners nor aught but curses from his
skipper, like as not. True as true, young gentleman. I makes you my
duty, and says as how, seeing I was one of them vouchsafed a
miraculous salvation, I hopes you’ll permit me to offer my most
humble thanks.”

I swung around to scrutinize the owner of the voice and saw a
handsome, open-faced man in the prime of life, big and strong of his
body, but with only one leg. The other, the left, had been lopped
off high up near the hip, and he supported himself upon a long crutch
of very fine-carved hardwood--mahogany, I afterward discovered. This
crutch he employed with all the dexterity of his missing limb. A
thong from a hole under the armpiece was looped around his neck, so
that when he chose to sit down his support could never fall out of
his reach; and in its butt was set a sharp spur of steel to give it a
grip upon rough ground or slippery decks.

While I looked at him and he was first speaking he hopped up beside
me with a confidential air that was very flattering to a young man
and impressed Darby even more than it did me.

“Are you from the brig yonder?” I asked curiously.

“Aye, aye, young gentleman, I am; and one of the miserable sinners as
was saved by an inscrootable Providence as takes no account o’ men’s
deserts, just or unjust, as the preachers’ sayin’ is. Out of
Barbaders, I am, in the brig _Constant_. Name o’ Silver, sir--John,
says my sponsors in baptism.

“But my mates most generally calls me ‘Barbecue’ ’count o’ my being
held a monstrous fine cook. And there’s a tale to that, young sir.
Ah, yes! This weren’t the first time I suffered at the hands o’ them
pirates that scourge and ravage the seas to the despite of poor,
honest sailormen.”

He lowered his voice.

“D’ye see this lopsided carcass of mine now? You do, says you. Yes,
yes; there ain’t no mistakin’ a one-legged man. And how do you
suppose I lost my left stick, eh? Can’t say, says you--nor it ain’t
strange, seein’ as we’ve never met afore this.

“Well, I’ll tell ye, sir. You ha’ a young face, and kind, and I can
see you take an interest in an unfortunate sailor-man’s sorrows--aye,
and this good lad wi’ ye, too--from Ireland, ain’t ye, my hearty? I
knowed it, I knowed it!

“But what was I a-sayin’? Oh, yes, to be sure. I was tellin’ ye of
my lost leg--and glad I am it wasn’t my flipper as went. ’Cause why,
says you? ’Cause a man can set himself to makin’ good a lost leg,
which ain’t no use for nothin’ except walking.

“But a hand now? Figger it out, my master! No hand, and ye can’t
work, ye can’t fight, ye can’t scarcely eat. That’s why I says I’m
lucky.”

The man attracted me by his originality, and I own frankly I would
have pressed him for further information whether Darby had been with
me or not; but ’twas Darby brought him back to the main point of
interest.

“Did ye see the pirates?” panted the lad in excitement.

John Silver drew himself erect upon his crutch and frowned out at the
shot-scarred brig.

“See ’em?” he repeated. “Well now, my lad, that depends. Aye, aye,
it all depends.

“This last time, d’ye mean? No, I can’t conscientiously say I seen
’em this time. In the matter o’ my leg ’twas different--and the time
Flint marooned me.”

“You know Flint then?” I broke in upon him.

He shook his head.

“Know him? Oh, no, young gentleman; I don’t know no bloody villains
like that. I ha’ seen ’em, yes--a sight too many of ’em, as ye might
say. And suffered most terrible at their hands; but I make no doubt
the Lord is decided I ha’ suffered my portion, seein’ that this last
time He delivered me safe and sound out o’ the scoundrels’ hands.”

“Was it off Sandy Hook they attacked you?” I inquired.

“Off Sandy Hook?” he repeated. “Maybe ’twas so, young gentleman. We
took small reckoning o’ where we were. Our one thought was to make
port whole and safe.”

“But I see they hulled you?” I pressed him.

“That?” he answered. “Oh, yes; but-- May I make bold to ask, sir,
ha’ other vessels been chased off New York port, do you know?”

I pointed to where Captain Farraday’s craft swung at her anchor a
scant quarter-mile above the brig.

“That Bristol packet ran the notorious Captain Rip-Rap tops’ls down
but yester-morning,” I told him.

His brows knit together in a frown, apparently of thought.

“Captain Rip-Rap you says it was! Blister me, young gentleman, but
that’s dreadful news. Well, well, well! A fortunate escape as ever
was. And ’tis good hearing that others was ekal lucky. But I dare
say the King’s ships will be after him by now?”

“No, there’s none nearer than Boston,” I answered. “’Twill be a week
at the least before we can hunt the scoundrels hence.”

He wagged his head dolefully.

“Blister me, but that’s ill news. Fortunate, indeed, I was to draw
clear. He was after me till darkness and sheered off more in fear o’
the sands than for aught else, I dare swear.”

“So it was yesterday he chased you?” I asked.

“To be sure, young sir. Wasn’t that what I told ye? Yesterday,
about the noon glass, he came a-thunderin’ up, and towards dusk he
could bring his bow-chasers to bear, and was for droppin’ a spar to
hinder us. But we took his shot in the hull, as ye see, and got off
safe in spite of all he could do.”

One of the wherrymen was sculling toward us along the shore, and I
waved to him to pull under the piling on which we stood.

“I must be off,” I said. “I congratulate you, Master Silver, on your
escape. Whatever dangers you may have encountered in the past, your
good luck was with you yesterday.”

He bobbed his head and pulled at his forelock.

“Thank’ee kindly, young gentleman. Here, sir, let me catch the
painter. Right! Will ye ha’ the basket on the thwart by ye? And
this nice lad here, doesn’t he go, too? No?

“Maybe then ye’d add a mite to your kindness and let me borry his
time for a half-glass or so for to show me a couple o’ landmarks I
must make in the town. I wouldn’t ask it of ye, sir, only as ye see,
I’m half-crippled in a manner o’ speakin’, and this is a strange port
to me, as plies usual to the West Injies.”

“Use the lad by all means,” I answered. “Darby, take Master Silver
wherever he wishes to go.”

Darby’s freckled face gleamed at the prospect of more of the company
of this one-legged sailorman, who talked so easily of pirate fights
and flights.

“Oh, aye, Master Robert,” says he. “I’ll help him all I know.”

“O’ course he will,” spoke up Silver. “I never seed a boy wi’ a
kinder face. A kind face means a kind heart, I always says, young
gentleman.”

My wherryman was on the point of laying to his oars when a sudden
thought caused me to check him.

“By the way, Master Silver,” I called, “it occurs to me that perhaps
Darby may be unable to serve you in all that you wish. Do you seek
any one in especial?”

He hesitated for just the fraction of a minute.

“Why, not especially in particklar, sir,” he answered at last. “I am
for the Whale’s Head Tavern, if ye happen to know o’ such a place.”

I nodded.

“’Tis in the East Ward close by. Darby can show you.”

He shouted renewed thanks and stumped off agilely on his crutch,
Darby strutting beside him with a comical pride.

Aboard the _Anne_ I found all in confusion. Captain Farraday, as I
had expected, had not returned since he landed the preceding
afternoon and undoubtedly was sleeping off an accumulation of divers
liquors in the George Tavern. The mate had gone ashore that morning
to search for him, and would probably take advantage of the
opportunity to emulate his skipper’s example. Master Jenkins, who
had missed drowning at the red hands of the redoubtable Rip-Rap and
Flint, was in charge of the ship. He was a melancholy, sour-visaged
East-countryman, who moved with a deliberation as pronounced as Peter
Corlaer’s, and inspecting the manifests with him was a tedious
business. I accepted an invitation to share his midday meal, and the
afternoon was gone when we concluded our work, agreed upon the time
of arrival of the lighters on the morrow and returned to the deck.

My wherry had been dismissed long ago, and he bade the bosun muster a
crew to row me ashore. Standing by the gangway, I commented idly
upon the two ships which had come in since morning.

“The brig had a close go of it with your friend Rip-Rap,” I remarked.

“Aye,” returned Jenkins glumly. “’Tis passing queer a Barbadan
should be fetching sugar and rum to New York. They leave that mostly
to the Yankees.”

“True,” I admitted; “yet there’s an exception to every rule.”

A silvery whistle-blast sounded on the deck of the Spanish frigate
up-stream.

“Too bad that’s not one of ours now,” I commented. “Rip-Rap should
have a dose of his own medicine.”

Master Jenkins expressed utter disapprobation without a wrinkle on
his features.

“They Spaniards!” he snorted. “What are they a-doin’ here anyway,
I’d like to know?”

“He may have been blown north on his crossing,” I hazarded.

Master Jenkins snorted a second time.

“He hasn’t started a rope. Mischief they’re up to. Never knowed it
to fail.”

“What kind of mischief?” I inquired.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Not knowin’, can’t say. But no good ever came from they Spaniards,
Master Ormerod, and ye may lay to that.”

Before I could answer him the bosun reported the small boat all clear
and lying at the ladder-foot, and I bade Master Jenkins a hasty good
evening, for his stolid pessimism became mighty irksome upon close
acquaintance.

As my boat straightened away from the Bristol packet’s side a barge
shot around the hull of the Spaniard and pulled after us, a dozen
brawny fellows tugging at the oars. A single cloaked figure sat in
the stern sheets beside the officer in command. The two boats made
the Broad Street slip almost together, and I leaped ashore, tossed
several coins to the sailors who had rowed me and started to walk
off, bent upon reporting to my father, who, I knew, would be provoked
by the length of time my errand had consumed. But I had not walked
far when a man called after me from the wharf-head.

“_Señor_! Sirr-rr-rah!”

I turned to face the coxswain of the frigate’s barge and a farrago of
Spanish gibberish of which I understood not a word. And upon my
saying as much, a second person stepped forward into the yellow glow
of an oil lanthorn which hung from a bracket upon a warehouse wall
hard by. ’Twas the cloaked figure of the barge, and instead of a
midshipman or under-officer the scanty light revealed a young woman
whose lissome grace was vibrant through the cumbersome folds of her
wrap. A single ejaculation of sibilant Spanish, and the coxswain was
hushed.

“Sir,” said she then in English as good as my own, “can you direct me
to the Whale’s Head Tavern?”

I could bring forth no better than a stammer in answer. She was the
second stranger that day to ask for the Whale’s Head, which my father
had remarked the previous evening for a noted resort of bad
characters; and certes, she appeared to be the last sort of woman who
might be expected to have anything to do with the kind of roistering
wickedness which went on there. Also, I could not forbear asking
myself how came so fair a maid aboard a Spanish frigate.

In the soft lanthorn-light she was anything but Spanish in her looks.
Dark, yes, with hair that shone a misty-black, but her eyes were as
blue as Darby McGraw’s, and her nose had the least suspicion of a
tilt to it. Her mouth was wide, with a kind of twist at the ends
that quirked up oddly when she laughed and drooped with a sorrow fit
to crack open your heart if she wept. And she was little more than a
child in years, with a manifest innocence which went oddly with the
question she had asked me.

A slim foot tapped impatiently upon the cobbles as I stared.

“Well, sir,” she said coldly, “does it happen you do not know English
better than Spanish?”

“N-no,” I managed to get out. “But--but the truth is, the Whale’s
Head is no place for such as you, mistress.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“I do not catch your meaning, perhaps,” she answered. “It is my
father I go to meet there.”

“But he would never favor your coming there at this hour,” I
protested.

She permitted herself a trill of laughter.

“You speak as if you had full knowledge of his ways,” she admitted.
“But the nuns at St. Bridget’s were telling me oft and oft how I was
going out into the wicked world, and sorra a look at wickedness have
I had yet. So I decided this evening I should have some savor of
adventure to make up for being cooped all these weeks in that horrid,
dirty old ship; and I made Don Pablo, who was officer of the deck,
call away a boat for me--and he wringing his hands and pleading would
I bring about his ruin.”

I laughed, myself, at the wonderful spontaneity of her mood. Faith,
I could imagine how the young dons aboard the frigate philandered
themselves sick over her.

“But that has naught to do with your going to the Whale’s Head
tonight,” I reminded her. “Indeed, you should never think of it.”

“I will be the judge of that,” she retorted, instantly haughty. “And
if my father is there I can come to no harm.”

“If he is,” I said. “I doubt you have mistaken his ordinary.”

“No, no,” she said decidedly. “I heard him speaking with them of it.
But it may be you are right, sir, and I will not be so ungrateful as
to flout a kindly stranger’s well-meant advice. Juan can go into the
tavern when we come to it, and I will bide outside. But somewhere I
must walk, for my feet are all dancey with the sway of the sea, and
we shall be away again with the tide in the morning. This is the
last dry land I shall tread in many a week.”

“If you will allow me, I’ll put you on your way for the Whale’s
Head,” I offered. “I must walk in that direction.”

“Sure, sir, it is a great favor you offer,” she answered. “I can not
but thank you.”

And she gave an order in Spanish which fetched the under-officer she
called Juan and one of his men out from the shadows. They fell in
behind us as we walked off along the line of the warehouses.

“You are upon a long voyage?” I ventured.

“You may well say so,” she cried. “From here to the Floridas, and
after that on to the Havana and the cities of the Main.”

“You will soon have no need to regret a lack of adventures,” I said.
“There are few men, let alone maids, who fare so far afield.”

“Ah, sir, that is what I like to think upon! I was near mad with
delight when my father came to the convent and took me from the
sisters. Until the ship’s decks were under my feet I could not
believe it was true that I was really free.”

“But you are never Spanish!” I said. “I ask not in idle curiosity,
though----”

Her laughter was like a chime of bells.

“Sure, they say I am as Irish as the pigs in the Wicklow hills where
I was born.”

And all of a sudden she was grave again.

“I am not knowing your politics, sir, but there’s maybe no harm in
just telling you my father was of those who opposed the Hanoverian
and fought for King James and Bonnie Charlie. And because his own
King can not employ him, he serves Spain.”

“It is not pleasant for an Englishman to think of all the brave
gentlemen must serve foreign monarchs,” I acknowledged. “But I hope
you will be happy in the Indies, mistress.”

“Oh, we shall not be staying there long,” she answered blithely. “My
father is an engineer officer, and he must inspect the fortifications
on the Main and elsewhere. We shall be returning to Spain within the
year. But look, sir! Is not that sign intended to be a whale’s
head?”

“Yes,” I said. “This is the tavern.”

One look at its flaring windows and the cut-throat gentry who
swaggered in and out of the low door convinced my companion that I
had not misrepresented the character of the place. She drew back to
the curb, and the corners of her mouth drooped sadly.

“Glory, what an ill hole!” she murmured. “Now for why would the
_padre_ come hither? Business, says he; but----”

And she shook her head with a vague doubting emphasis.

“I would not seem to be thrusting myself upon you, mistress,” I said,
“yet I am fearful your Spaniards can not make themselves understood.
Will it please you that I inquire within for your father?”

She considered, catching a corner of her lip betwixt white teeth.

“Troth, sir,” she answered finally, “I see not how I can avoid going
the deeper in debt to you.”

There was a moment’s pause.

“And how shall I----”

“Ay de mi!” she exclaimed with a bubble of laughter. “How stupid of
me to be forgetting I am just a maid off the sea to you. Ask for
Colonel O’Donnell, sir, and tell him his daughter waits without.”

And as I started toward the door she added gayly:

“It is not every girl could step upon a strange shore and find a
cavalier waiting to aid her. But what would Mother Seraphina say to
such brazenness? Ah, I can see her now! The blessed saints preserve
us, Moira! Have ye no manners or modesty into yourself at all? A
hundred Aves and the Stations of the Cross twice before you sup.”

Her voice was still ringing in my ears as I shouldered a drunken
sailor from my path, lowered my head to pass under the lintel of the
tavern’s entrance and so gained the hazy blue atmosphere of the
taproom, cluttered with tables, foul with smoke and stale alelees,
abuzz with rough voices bawling oaths and sea-songs.

It was the chorus of one of these songs which first distracted my
thoughts from the Irish girl outside--a wild, roaring lilt of blood
and ribaldry:

  “Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest--
    Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
  Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
    Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

I looked to the corner whence it came, and discovered the one-legged
sailor, John Silver, thumping the time with a pewter mug on the
table-top as he led the group around him, foremost amongst whom,
after himself, was Darby McGraw, flaming red mop standing out like a
buccaneer ensign, shrill voice carrying above the thundering basses
of his companions--as villainous a crew, to outward seeming, as I had
ever looked upon. I noted especially a pasty, tallowy-faced man,
whose shifty eyes were masked by a skrim of greasy black hair, and a
big, lusty, mahogany-brown fellow with a tarry pigtail, who evidently
found as much satisfaction in the song as poor, fuddled Darby.

Silver saw me almost as soon as I spotted him, and with a quick word
to the others, got to his feet and stumped across the room, dragging
Darby after him by the arm. His large, good-humored features were
wreathed in a smile tinged with mortification.

“So you come after him, Master Ormerod, did you?” he shouted to make
himself heard in the confusion. “And ashamed o’ myself I oughter be,
says you, and with reason, too. But I’m not one to lead a likely lad
astray, and all Darby’s had was good, ripe ale and two earsful o’
sea-gossip as’ll give him things to dream o’ for nights to come. I
shouldn’t oughter o’ let him come back, sir, but when he stuck that
red mop o’ his in the door an hour past I hadn’t the heart to send
him away. He’s come to no harm, so you won’t hold it against him for
a extry mug or two of ale; will you, sir?”

“I did not come after him,” I answered; “but as I am here he had best
return home with me. Where did you get my name, Silver?”

He pulled his forelock knowingly.

“Why, from Darby, o’ course, sir--not that anybody on the water-front
couldn’t ha’ told me, seein’ what a kind-hearted, friendly young
gentleman you are. But asking your pardon for the liberty, sir, can
I serve you in any way?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I am seeking a Colonel O’Donnell.”

I fancied a flicker of surprise stirred the bluff friendliness
mirrored in his face. He stared around the room.

“Never heard o’ the gentleman, sir, which ain’t surprizin’, seein’ I
was never here before this morning, myself; but I ran into some old
shipmates of mine as gave me the run o’ the place, and it may be I
can find out for you from one o’ them. Just you wait here a shake,
Master Ormerod, and I’ll see what I can do.”

This seemed the wisest course, inasmuch as it was apparent there was
nobody in the taproom of the quality of Colonel O’Donnell, so I
nodded assent; and as Silver stumped away, threading a nimble passage
in and out of the crowded tables, I asked Darby what he had been
doing. Somewhat to my astonishment, the boy lapsed into sullenness
and answered in monosyllables. Only once he revealed a flare of
interest, when I remarked:

“That was a sufficiently devilish song you were singing, Darby.”

“That it was!” he exclaimed. “Whisht, whiles singing it ye can
_feel_ the blood a-dripping from your cutlass.”

“And who were the others singing with you?”

The sullen look covered his face like a curtain.

“Oh, just shipmates.”

“Of yours?”

“No, of Master Silver’s.”

“What are their names?”

“I know not.”

“Oh, come now, Darby!”

“Well, the one he calls Bill Bones and the other Black Dog--but
there’s no meaning in nature in that last.”

Silver had disappeared through a door at the rear in company with one
of the drawers, and now he came swinging in again on his crutch,
ahead of a tall, lantern-jawed man in a rich dress of
black-and-silver, whose gold-hilted sword claimed the gentleman.
This man Silver ushered to me with a crudely hearty courtesy.

“Here’s luck, Master Ormerod,” he called when he was within earshot.
“My friend had heard tell the colonel was above-stairs. This here’s
the young gentleman I spoke of, your honor. My duty to ye both,
sirs, and always pleased to serve.”

And off he swung on his crutch again to be received with acclamations
by his cronies in the corner.

The lantern-jawed man gave me a keen glance, almost a suspicious
glance, I should have said. He had a nervous manner, and there was a
kind of restless glow in his eyes.

“Well, sir?” he said. “I understand you desired speech with me?”

“If you are Colonel O’Donnell----”

He nodded curtly.

“--I am to tell you that your daughter awaits you outside,” I
concluded.

He was genuinely startled.

“My daughter? But who are you, sir, who act as her guardian?”

I was nettled, and did not hesitate to show it.

“She asked me the way hither when she came ashore,” I retorted, “and,
deeming it scarce probable that you would care to have her enter the
taproom, I even offered my services to fetch you forth to her.”

I saw now his resemblance to her, for the corners of his mouth
twitched down in the same way her’s had. And he muttered something
like a curse in Spanish.

“It seems I am beholden to you, sir,” he answered stiffly. “She is a
child, and vastly ignorant of the world, and I must be both father
and mother to her.”

I bowed and stood aside to make room for him to pass out.

“Master Ormerod, the seaman called you, did he not?” continued
O’Donnell. “Perhaps, sir, you will permit an older man to compliment
you upon an honorable deportment.”

A slightly pompous tone invaded his speech.

“I am not unfamiliar with the chief centers of our Old World society,
Master Ormerod, and I have the honor to hold the office of
chamberlain to a monarch, who, though he may not be named upon
English soil, will some day recover the estate a usurper has deprived
him of. I need say no more, I am sure.”

“I understand, sir,” I replied. “And may I suggest that Mistress
O’Donnell is awaiting you?”

He brushed by me with a click of impatience, and Darby and I followed
him to the street, Darby thrilled anew by the sight of his luxurious
habit, the five-pound ruffles that covered his wrists and the worked
hilt of his sword. As we all three emerged, Mistress O’Donnell
darted up to her father and caught at the lapels of his coat.

“Ah, _padre_,” she cried in a brogue that clotted and slurred her
words, “you’ll not be holding it against me because I wearied of the
ship and would feel the earth crumbling underfoot, and me so lonely
for lack of you I was near to weeping the while I sat in my cabin
with naught to do but read my Hours!”

He wilted, as must any man have done, flinging his arm around her
with a gesture that verged on the theatrical.

“Tush, tush, Moira,” he rebuked her gently; “’twas unbecoming in you,
and in Spanish lands such conduct would lead to trouble. See that
you do it not a second time. I will give you in charge of Juan; and,
having had your taste of freedom, you must return aboard, for I have
matters yet requiring my attention. Ah, yes, and you must thank this
gentleman properly for his gallantry. Master Ormerod, my dear! His
father is a great merchant of this town.”

Mistress O’Donnell swept me a willowy curtsey, and as I bowed
acknowledgment I wondered where he had secured such exact information
about me. He had seemed totally ignorant of who I was when we met.

“Sure, I’ll not be after trying to thank you,” says my lady to me
with a twinkle in her eye. “For I couldn’t find the words would
express my gratitude. But for you, ’tis an awful fool I’d have made
of myself this quarter-hour past.”

Colonel O’Donnell hemmed reprovingly.

“Let it be a lesson to you, my girl. My thanks to you again, Master
Ormerod. My compliments to your father, if it please you. Good
night, sir.”

I understood that he wished to be rid of me, and accepted the cue.

“Good night, sir,” I replied. “And a fair voyage to you, mistress.
If I can be of further service, pray command me.”

“No, Master Ormerod, here our paths diverge,” she answered softly,
and placed her hand upon her father’s arm.

A moment later I was hurrying north and west, Darby McGraw chattering
beside me, for the lady’s bright beauty seemed to have scoured the
sulkiness from his spirits.

“Ah, there was the lovely, gracious maid for ye, Master Robert!” he
cried. “Did ye hark to the song in her voice? And did ye see the
blue in her eyes, like lake-water with green fields all around and
the sun shining faint? She’s the breath of the Ould Sod; and oh,
whirra, it’s never more I’ll see it, for they say I’m to be a pirate.”

“You talk nonsense,” I returned harshly.

“Nonsense?” he repeated. “It’s a grand word, nonsense, Master
Robert. But whisht, now, ye’ll say a good word for me with the old
master, won’t ye?”

I told him I would, mostly to stop the clacking of his tongue; and he
skipped high like a colt that has just had its first meal of oats.

“She put the comether on ye, that elegant young maid,” he continued.
“She had a way with her, she did. Aye, for her I’d give over being a
pirate.”

“We’ll never see her again, Darby,” I said. “She’ll be beyond the
Caribbees a few weeks hence, and we plodding at our tasks here in New
York.”

He gave me a shrewd glance.

“Indeed, and it’s a wiser man than the Pope can see beyond the weeks,
Master Robert,” says he.

A CALLER IN THE NIGHT

We sat late at dinner that night, for my father must needs have me
repeat at length the tale of my experiences during the day, revealing
a perturbation unusual in him, although Peter Corlaer ate on with
placid solemnity, scarce a flicker of interest in his little eyes
that were almost buried behind their ramparts of flesh.

“I have heard of this Colonel O’Donnell,” said my father when I had
made an end. “He was in Scotland with Prince Charles--one of the
Irish crew who bogged a promising venture, if what men say be true.
I marvel at his temerity in landing here, for there must be a price
upon his head in England. Doubtless he was consorting with some of
our Jacobite sympathizers at the Whale’s Head--a fitting place for
such an intrigue!

“The captain of the frigate called upon the Governor this morning, so
Master Colden told me, with a cock-and-bull story of a mistake in his
reckoning that took him north of his course. I smell the taint of a
Jacobite plot! Your gloomy friend Jenkins had the right of it.
Never trust a Spaniard when he comes with pretense of friendship.”

“Mistress O’Donnell said they were for the Floridas,” I protested.
“Sure, they are not far out of their course.”

My father smiled for the first time.

“The little maid would have no knowledge of her father’s purpose.
And if she did-- No, no, lad, I had my share of plotting in my
youth. Our Jacobites are a pernicious lot.”

“Yet you, yourself, were one of them,” I pointed out, a thought
maliciously.

His face darkened.

“True, and I learned by experience. Set that to my credit, Bob.
Britain is greater than any king or any family. ’Tis the country,
not the man, must be considered. And Britain fares better under
Hanoverian George than she ever did under a Stuart Charles or James.”

I was still unconvinced.

“But certes, sir, ’tis in no sense strange for the Spaniards to
dispatch an engineer to inspect their fortifications this side the
Atlantic.”

“An Irish engineer officer?”

My father smiled again.

“’Tis to be wondered at. But there! In such a devious business we
might not hope to reach the truth, nor am I greatly concerned
thereat. Most Jacobite plots are ill-planned sallies by desperate,
misguided men. No, boy, what irks me most is the tidings you had of
the one-legged sailor. Silver, you called him? Yes, I like it not
to hear the pirates are outside our harbor. It hath the look of
daring beyond the ordinary. If Murray----”

The door behind me opened, and I saw my father’s jaw drop. Peter, at
my right hand, let his eyelids blink, then went on quietly cracking
nuts between his huge fingers.

“Did I hear you call me, Ormerod?”

The voice from the doorway had a chill, level quality that was as
resonant as the tolling of a bell.

“‘If Murray’-- I _thought_ I heard my name?”

I screwed around in my chair. There in the doorway stood the most
remarkable figure I had ever seen. A large man, straight as an arrow
despite the years that had planted crow’s feet so thickly about his
eyes, his square shoulders showed to advantage the exquisite
tailoring of the black velvet coat he wore. His small-clothes were
of a fine yellow damasked silk, and his stockings of silk to match.
Diamonds flashed from the buckles of his shoes, his fob, his fingers
and the hilt of his dress-sword. A great ruby glowed in the Mechlin
jabot that cascaded from his throat. Over his arm hung a cloak, and
under his elbow was tucked a hat cocked in the latest mode.

But it was the memory of his face that abided with you. The features
were all big and strongly carved; the nose was a jutting beak above a
tight-lipped mouth and a jaw that was brutally square; the eyes were
a vivid black, flecked with tawny lights. His hair was of a pure,
silvery whiteness and drawn back, clubbed and tied with a black
ribbon. His cheeks and brows were furrowed by a maze of wrinkles,
yet the flesh seemed as firm as mine. In every way he suggested
breeding, gentility, wealth; but there was a combined effect of
sinister power and predatory will, a hint of ruthless egotism which
took no account of any interests save his own.

He acknowledged my prolonged stare with a slight bow, mildly derisive.

“Your son, Ormerod?” he continued. “My grandnephew? Robert, I
think, you named him, for the redoubtable Master Juggins of London,
who aided you to start life anew after you had contrived to wreck
yourself upon the rocks of a foresworn Jacobite career.”

My father rose slowly to his feet.

“Yes, he is my son, Murray. It is neither his fault nor mine that he
is also your grandnephew. As to his name, Robert Juggins was a
better man than you or I, and you can not inspire my son against me
by hinting at hidden chapters of my early life. He knows that I was
deluded into serving the Stuarts, and lived to learn that country
comes before king. We were talking of that before you entered.”

The man in the doorway nodded his head.

“I seem to remember that became a topic of some interest to
you--after the Jacobites hounded you from France and the Hanoverians
drove you from England. Ah, well, I can commend a philosophical
adaptability in face of adversity. ’Tis a trait I have had occasion
to practise, myself.”

He let the door swing to, and stepped behind me to the left side of
the table, where there was a vacant chair.

“I would not seem discourteous,” he remarked suavely. “I note
another old friend, Ormerod--or perhaps I should say an old enemy.
Permit me to observe, Corlaer, that you wear well with the years--as
well as myself, indeed.”

Peter squeezed a hickory-nut between his forefinger and thumb and
looked up vacantly into Murray’s face.

“_Ja_,” he said.

“Lest you should be tempted by some misapprehension,” pursued Murray,
“I may inform you that I have every reason to suppose myself safe
from any measures you might take against me. I know well the
dangerous swiftness of wit Peter conceals beneath that flat face of
his, and I should not like to see him hurt----”

“_Ja_, you bet,” giggled the Dutchman.

“I assure you such is the fact,” answered Murray. “I hope to do what
I have come here for tonight without injuring anybody, and if you
gentlemen will listen to me quietly for a few moments I am confident
that the issue will be harmless for all of us.”

He cast his cloak and hat upon a chair by the fire, and put his hand
upon the vacant one betwixt my father and me.

“May I?” he asked.

My father, still standing, said nothing; and Murray, with a shrug,
accepted the silence for consent, sank gracefully into the seat and
drew a golden snuff-box, studded with brilliants, from a pocket.

“With your permission,” he said, springing the cover.

A fragrant whiff of snuff-tobacco tickled my senses as he offered it
generally.

“’Tis excellent stuff,” he remarked. “Ripe Rip-Rap. What? None of
you? Ah, then----”

He dusted a pinch under his nostrils, inhaled and daintily used his
handkerchief, a lace-edged morsel such as women carry.

My father leaned forward across the table, a blaze of hatred in his
face.

“’Tis true, then!”

Murray regarded him in some surprize.

“True? My dear sir, I assured you ’twas Rip-Rap.”

My father turned to Peter and me.

“After I told you--about this man, Robert--I hoped that I was
wrong--that I had done him an injustice. But now he has convicted
himself out of his own lips.”

Murray gently deposited the snuffbox upon the table in front of him.

“Ah,” he murmured. “I see! You were referring to my nickname, or,
shall we say, _nomme de guerre_?”

My father laughed bitterly.

“_Nomme de guerre_! Name of a pirate! But let us have it, fair and
openly, Andrew Murray. Are you Captain Rip-Rap?”

“I suppose most people would agree with your description,” replied
Murray; “although personally I prefer the word buccaneer. It is
susceptible to so much wider use, and there is about it a suggestion
of---- However, we are not interested here tonight in the more
abstruse branches of etymology. I am the person popularly known on
the high seas as Captain Rip-Rap, and I fancy I might have logical
grounds for arguing that if any disgrace adheres to me by that
admission, ’twas you, Ormerod, who drove me to the practise of what
you call piracy.”

“’Tis like you to take that tone,” said my father. “I drove you from
the practise of what amounted to piracy on the land. There is no
difference in the way you earn your livelihood today, Murray. You
were an outlaw, and you are an outlaw.”

“I fear you are incapable of doing me justice,” sighed Murray. “You
should know that I have always labored to serve higher ends than the
mere sordid pursuit of money, such as has possessed you and those
like you.”

He wagged his head sadly.

“I had hoped better of you, Ormerod. You are of good blood, man.
’Sdeath, do you never think on what you lose by playing the small
colonial merchant here?”

“I think better of the estate I won unaided, with my bare hands and
wits, than of the manor I lost in England through youthful folly,”
rejoined my father. “But I never thought to hear a pirate prate of
the blessings of birth. Phaugh!”

Murray’s face purpled, and a Scots burr crept into his speech.

“No man challenges my birth,” he shouted. “I am of better blood than
you. I trace my lineage to James V. I quarter my arms with the
Douglases, the Homes, the Morays, the Keiths, the Hepburns, aye, and
with the oldest clans beyond the Highland Line!”

“I have heard so before,” commented my father drily.

Murray breathed deeply, obviously fighting for self-control.

“Let it pass!” he exclaimed with a magnificent gesture. “What doth
it signify? I am what I am, sir--and the day comes when I shall
stand as high as the highest.”

He drew himself up very erect in his chair, but my father answered
with the same dry scorn:

“That too I have heard before. Once, I mind, you expected to be a
duke by exploiting ill-gotten gains with Jacobite intrigue. Aye, you
would have ruined your country, sold her to the French like enough,
all for a peerage. Now, I suppose, you would do it again.”

“What would you?”

Murray flicked a pinch of snuff into his nostrils.

“The luck was against me, although you, yourself, and silent Peter
there, know how close to success I came.”

“_Ja_,” squeaked Peter, still busy crushing nuts and slowly crunching
their meats.

“I have had the Devil’s own luck,” Murray went on, heedless of the
Dutchman. “In the ’45 I was half the world away, for there were too
many cruisers abroad in the Caribbees for my comfort. Before I could
get back the Prince had played and lost. A shame! With me----”

“With you he would have been sold to Government for the thirty
thousand pounds reward that Cumberland offered.” said my father.

Murray looked hurt.

“I have been accused of much,” he replied; “but never of disloyalty
to King James or his sons.”

“True,” assented my father; “you could never earn anything by it.
Your opportunities all came from the other direction.”

“Your words are unjust, sir,” said Murray with a hauteur he had not
shown previously. “Indeed, if matters fall out, as I anticipate, I
shall soon give proof which can not be ignored of my devotion to the
Good Cause. I am preparing a combination which----”

He swung around suddenly upon me.

“But I am forgetting my main purpose!” he cried. “Stand up,
grandnephew, and let me have a look at you.”

I would not have heeded him, but my father said quickly:

“Do as he asks you, Robert. I’d not have him think you are crooked
in the legs.”

So I stood.

“A likely build,” he remarked warmly. “You favor your father, I
see--save in the face, it may be. There you are your mother, my maid
Marjory. Ah, sweet chit, would she were with us now! A sad loss; a
sad loss, lad!”

The expression which came to my father’s face was terrible in its
intensity of passion. He leaned closer to Murray, white to the
cheekbones, his nostrils pinched in.

“Murray,” he said, “make an end of such talk! As you value your
life, mention her not again. I know not what cards you hold up your
sleeve here, but if we all die in the next moment I will slay you as
you sit if you profane her memory with your foul tongue.”

Murray stared up at him coolly and took a pinch of snuff.

“Ah, well, you were always prejudiced,” he answered. “I-- But it
serves no purpose to reopen old wounds. I am of one mind with you
there. Yet tell me this: Have you poisoned the boy’s mind against
me?”

My father dropped back into his seat with a sour grimace.

“Poisoned his mind?” he repeated. “I told him no more recently than
yesterday who and what you were. You brought that upon yourself by
pursuing your rascally trade in these seas. Until then the boy did
not so much as know that you existed--as his relative.”

My great-uncle--I was gradually beginning to think of him as
such--pondered this news, head on one side, peering from my father to
me and back again.

“I see, I see,” he murmured. “Humph! I fear his mind hath been
corrupted. But I am not surprized. No, no! I prepared for this.”

“For what?” demanded my father.

Murray leaned abruptly across the table.

“I will be frank with you, Ormerod--and with Nephew Robert here. I
am somewhat in difficulties----”

“If ’tis money--” began my father.

My great-uncle’s gesture was sufficient check to this.

“I am not in difficulties for money, although I am like to be in
difficulties shortly in connection with an embarrassing quantity of
it. In fine, sir, I am upon the point of launching the coup of my
career, one which will entail consequences of a stupendous character,
and in the end, I venture to predict, echo in throne-rooms and
chancelleries. Aye, kingdoms shall----”

He broke off.

“It is not necessary that I should go into that. Suffice it for the
present if I say that I am in the position of a man who has partially
tamed an unwieldy band of wild animals. My own ship I can rely upon
up to a certain point, but I have associated with me----”

“That would be Flint?” interjected my father.

“I am flattered by the knowledge of my affairs which you display,”
replied my great-uncle with one of his courtly inclinations. “Yes; I
had occasion, when I first went to sea, for a competent navigator.
Flint served me in that capacity until I became independent, and I
then fitted him out with his own ship. We have cruised in company
since. I am not betraying a professional secret when I add that he
is a man whose undoubted force of personality is offset by a certain
turbulence and crudeness of wit which make him difficult to
handle--increasingly difficult to handle, I may say. I foresee
trouble with him in the future in connection with the coup to which I
have already refered.”

“And is it your idea,” inquired my father sarcastically, “that we
should undertake to assassinate this man for you--out of the kindness
of our hearts, as it were, and to stimulate the practise of piracy?”

Murray shook his head, wholly undisturbed.

“I never remove a man I can use,” he answered. “Flint is still
useful. No, I require a young man to stand at my elbow and assist me
in curbing unruly spirits. I promise a great future for such.”

“Command of his own pirate craft, no doubt?” pressed my father.

“That would be an offer to draw most stout youths,” returned my
great-uncle. “Bah, what is piracy, that you and your kind prate
against it, Ormerod? Is it any worse in character than four-fifths
of the business practised in this world? What are you and those like
you but men who seek to deprive others of their lawful gains that you
may add to your stores what the others possessed? I take from the
wealthy, who can afford to lose, what they have dishonestly got, more
often than not, and much of what I win I contribute to the Cause to
which you gave your first loyalty.”

“An admirable code of ethics,” observed my father.

“’Tis as good as any I have discovered,” agreed Murray smoothly.
“You called me an outlaw a few minutes past. I can not deny it. I
am an outlaw because I worked in my own way to reëstablish my lawful
king. You, who once served that king in exile, turned against him
and ruined me, made an outlaw of me. Well, I do what I may; and
since Morgan’s day no man has played the game so successfully, as any
seaman would tell you.”

“I’ll vouch for that,” said my father. “But come to the point. What
will you have? That I should apprentice Robert to you to be
indentured a good, honest, trusty and skilful pirate?”

“Even so.”

My father sat back in his chair.

“I’ll not,” he said.

Murray treated himself to a pinch of snuff.

“What does our young man himself say?” he asked.

“I say that you offer me no inducement,” I answered as shortly as I
could.

“’Odslife,” he swore. “No inducement? My dear nephew, I offer you
an open, bracing life--for a brief space; a share in a brave venture;
an opportunity to rehabilitate your family, to rise to place, title
and honor.”

“On a pirate’s deck?” I jeered.

“From a pirate’s quarterdeck,” he corrected me gravely. “I am on my
last cruise. The _Royal James_ is to vindicate her name. Aye, in
years to come she will be regarded as a shrine of loyalty and
devotion, and to have sailed with Andrew Murray in her---- Why, sir,
who remembers to-day of Robin Hood aught but that he was true to King
Richard in adversity?”

The man’s surety was amazing.

“This passes all reason,” said my father wearily. “You must be
insane.”

“Not at all,” retorted my great-uncle. “I am the leading
practitioner of my profession. Winter, Davis, Roberts, Bellamy, all
the more noted--ah--pirates of recent years, were small fry compared
to me. You would find it difficult to credit me did I inform you of
my takings----”

“Blood-money!” roared my father. “Thieves’ money!”

“Ah, that unfortunate point of view of yours again,” protested
Murray. “I tell you, Ormerod, you stand in the boy’s way.”

“He is not a boy, but a man,” snapped my father. “And able to judge
his own course.”

“So be it.”

My great-uncle turned to me once more.

“It appears this decision is left betwixt us two, Nephew Robert,” he
said. “So I must inform you that I am determined to have your aid in
any event--by force, if you will not accompany me reasonably.”

There was a snap as a Brazil-nut split apart in Peter’s grip. Murray
waved an airy hand in his direction.

“’Tis true that you are the most powerful man I ever met, Corlaer,”
he remarked; “yet I urge you not to attempt violence. I have
sufficient men in the house to overpower you, and I should not
hesitate to slay Ormerod or you at need. The boy is the only one of
you three whose life hath value to me.”

“He means it, Peter,” said my father. “Keep your hands down.”

“_Ja_,” squeaked Peter.

“You were ever a wise man, Ormerod,” resumed my great-uncle. “I
venture to congratulate you upon the soundness of your judgment. Now
for you, Nephew Robert. Come with me you shall, but I prefer that
you come willingly. Therefore I lay before you these inducements:
Firstly, we sail upon a venture which hath a color of State business,
although a strict legalist would denounce it piratical--you see, I
endeavor to deal honestly by you after my fashion; secondly, no harm
is intended to you; thirdly, the rewards of our project will be
singularly rich; fourthly, I design to exploit the advantages which
shall accrue to me solely for your benefit--you, Robert, are my heir,
and if I have need of you in the execution of my coup, nonetheless I
shall be able to repay you for whatever you do in my behalf a
hundredfold, both materially and otherwise. I am, after all, your
nearest kin after your father, and I say in all humility my
assistance is not to be despised.”

From his manner you would have reckoned he was offering me the
governorship of a province, at the least; and the undeniable charm of
the man invested his words with a glamour which was augmented by the
virility of his person--and this notwithstanding my fast-rising
hatred of him.

“I won’t go willingly,” I answered. “Even did your arguments tempt
me, I should resent your threat of compulsion.”

“Admirably spoken,” he applauded. “Egad, I perceive you have the
proper spirit. You are exactly the lad I require.”

I rose, whipped to wrath by the insolence of his assurance.

“I am the lad you’ll not get,” I shouted. “Call in your bravos, and
I’ll tear their throats out for you.”

“Gently, gently,” he remonstrated. “My bravos, as you term them, are
not lambs, Nephew Robert, and I must warn you that the killings would
not be all on the one side. If you value your father, stand fast.”

And he drew from a waistcoat pocket a silver whistle, which he placed
to his lips. A thin blast piped through the room, and a dozen hairy
seadogs surged in from hall and kitchen. Raps on the two windows
indicated that others mounted guard outside.

Peter Corlaer’s little pig-eyes swept the invaders with a single
glance, but he did not suspend for a second his steady crushing and
munching of nuts. My father’s face was a mask of mingled rage and
fear--not fear for himself, but for me. He stared at the savage
figures, the bared cutlasses, the ready pistols, almost with unbelief
in the reality of his vision. And certes ’twas a weird spectacle in
that orderly house in the town we of the province looked upon as the
most advanced in the colonies--and became to me the more weird as I
glimpsed next the hall door a grim mahogany face and a hangman look
beneath a skrim of black hair, and behind the two a familiar carroty
head.

“Ho, there, Darby!” I called out. “What are you doing in such
company? Did you know those men for pirates, when you drank with
them at the Whale’s Head?”

“Sure, they ha’ taken me into their crew,” he answered brazenly.

“Have you turned pirate, Darby?” says my father, seeing him for the
first time.

“Oh, aye,” said Darby with a swagger. “I’m as cruel wicked as any.”

“And ’twas you let them into the house and betrayed your master!”
returned my father sadly. “I had not expected this of you, Darby.
Have we not been kind to you?”

Darby wiggled uncomfortably.

“Oh, aye; main kind, Master Ormerod,” he admitted. “But they would
ha’ had ye, whether or no. Sure, they’re a grand, tricksy crew. And
anyway, ye see, I was born to be a pirate. My troth, I was!”

Murray laughed pleasantly.

“’Tis a valiant youth, and should go far,” he observed. “Moreover,
he speaks the truth when he says we should have won our way in to you
without his aid. The accommodation was convenient, but by no means
essential.

“Where is Silver, Master Bones?” he added.

The man with the mahogany face touched his hat.

“John was seeing to it the sarvants was all secure, sir,” he
answered. “Here he is now.”

A gap appeared in the ranks by the kitchen door, and the one-legged
man I had met on the water-front that morning stumped in on his long
crutch, as cheerfully serene as any honest householder.

“Was you askin’ for me, captain?” he said. “We just finished up
behind there--all gagged and roped, Bristol-fashion, safe for a day,
sir.”

And to me----

“My duty, Master Ormerod, and I hopes we’ll know each other better
soon.”

“I find we shall need a cart, John,” said my great-uncle.

“Rambunctious, is he?” answered Silver with a wink. “Well, we has it
all ready, and the tarpaulin over it, right here in the garding under
the blessed apple-trees. ’Tis only a step to the boats, to be sure.”

My father turned very pale.

“You--you-- My God, Murray, you can’t kidnap the boy this way!
Think! There are troops in Fort George. Once the hue and cry is
raised you’ll be----”

“But it will not be raised,” replied Murray calmly. “I regret it,
but we shall be obliged to tie up you and Peter so that you will be
incapacitated until some kind friend happens to call on the morrow.
By that time we shall be at sea.”

“You are mad!” cried my father. “Every frigate on the station will
be after you.”

My great-uncle chuckled mildly.

“That is an old sensation. I have known it for twenty-odd years.”

I snatched up the chair upon which I had been sitting and brandished
it over his head.

“Call off these scoundrels of yours or I’ll batter out your brains,”
I snarled.

“John,” he said, ignoring me, “you will be so kind as to pistol the
elder Master Ormerod if his son launches a blow at me.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Silver.

And he leveled a weapon at my father. I knew, without looking behind
me, that Peter and I were covered by other men. It was Peter who
spoke first.

“Put down der chair, Bob,” he ordered quietly.

The man called Black Dog cast the noose of a rope over his head and
jerked his arms close to his side.

“_Neen, neen,_” objected Peter, and with no visible effort he snapped
the hempen strands.

A gasp went up from the room, and there was a hasty retreat from his
neighborhood.

“Pistol that man, if you must,” called Murray; “but use your
cutlasses, if possible.”

“_Neen_,” said Peter again. “We don’t fight.”

“We might as well be killed now as let them carry off Bob,” said my
father with a sob in his voice.

“_Neen_,” said Peter a third time. “Deadt, you stay deadt. Perhaps
Bob gets away from them some time. Better he be with Murray than he
be deadt.”

“Intelligently logical,” commented Murray. “I commend the sentiment
to you, Nephew Robert.”

Peter’s little eyes glinted toward him.

“I go with Bob,” he said.

“No, no,” denied Murray quickly. “You were not invited, friend
Peter.”

“If I don’t go, Robert don’t go,” replied Peter. “Andt you don’t go.
Perhaps I don’t kill you, but if there is shooting you don’t get
away. _Ja_!”

Murray contemplated this speech.

“Your proposition then,” he said, “is that you insist upon sharing my
nephew’s new career or else will endeavor to secure the deaths of all
of us, including his and your own?”

“_Ja_!” answered Peter.

“You may come,” decided my great-uncle. “Your muscles should prove
useful. John, I fancy we shall require triple bonds on this
prisoner.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” assented Silver. “We ha’ plenty o’ stout manila.
One o’ you lads run back and get those coils I left by the stove.
That’s the proper spirit, Darby. Always willin’. You’ll make a rare
hand, you will. And how about makin’ fast that gentleman as is goin’
to stay behind, captain?”

Murray looked at my father, and from him to me.

“Have you reconciled yourselves to what I may justly style the
inevitable?” he inquired suavely.

My father collapsed into his chair with a groan.

“If you will not suffer the boy to be hurt!” he exclaimed.

“My word of honor to that,” returned my great-uncle very seriously.
“His comfort and safety rank ahead of my own, Ormerod, for I
anticipate that he is to achieve all those triumphs which fate denied
me. ’Tis true I hope to sample them briefly, but--” and for the
first time a shadow clouded his face--“I am, as you doubtless know,
in my sixty-fourth year, and a fickle Providence, regarding the
divinity of which I am inclined to share the skepticism of the French
philosophers, is scarce likely to indulge me in a very prolonged
extension of life’s span. Nor indeed would I have it otherwise. I
feel no inclination for the senility of extreme age.”

My father eyed him with unaffected puzzlement.

“You are a strange man, Murray. I would I might understand you.”

“You can not, so why concern yourself? Well, time passes. We must
be off. Do you submit?”

My father bent his head.

“Yes--for his sake, ---- you! Robert, no violence. We are in a coil
we can not escape for the present; but rest assured I will do
everything I can to secure your release.”

My great-uncle motioned Silver forward.

“Make Master Ormerod as comfortable as possible, John,” he
instructed. “Yes, tie him in his chair. By the way, Ormerod,
touching your last observation, I would remind you that every shot
fired at my ship will be as likely to strike Robert as another.
Accept my advice, and leave well enough alone. Within a year,
possibly--two, at most--the boy will be safe and advanced in fortune
beyond your wildest dreams.”

“Let me have him back as he is--’tis all I ask,” groaned my father.

Murray took snuff.

“A highly correct attitude, sir,” he remarked. “Have you more to
say? Very well, John; you may affix the gag. No, not that
gunnysacking. Here is a silken kerchief will do. And now, friend
Peter, we turn to you--and you, Nephew Robert. I would these
precautions were unnecessary. Let us trust your inclinations will
become more friendly toward me upon closer acquaintance.”

CHAPTER IV

AN INKLING OF THE PLOT

My poor father’s face, with the tears standing in his eyes, was the
last object I saw in the wan light of the guttering candles. The
next moment my captors lugged me into the darkness of the garden and
pushed me upon a hand-cart such as was used to fetch up the frailer
kinds of merchandise from the docks. Peter’s immense body already
occupied most of the cart’s cramped space, and I was squeezed
precariously between him and the near side, the which Silver
perceiving he prodded Peter into a more restricted compass and then
spread a tarpaulin over both of us.

“There ye are, my gentlemen,” he said cheerfully. “Safe as a round
of beef and a side o’ pork, says you--and you says right. Ah,
captain, we’re ready here whenever you are, sir.”

“Proceed then, John,” answered my great-uncle’s voice. “You remember
the way? The Green Lane,[1] ’tis called. Four men should be
sufficient to accompany you. I will go on by another street with the
rest of our party.”

[1] Maiden Lane.

“Don’t ye worry yourself, captain,” returned Silver.

Footsteps thudded away on the gravel, and I heard the scratching of
the one-legged man’s crutch as he stumped in front of us and the cart
jolted forward. They evidently went out the back way into a little
alley, where their exit was least likely to be observed, and paused
while Silver reconnoitred the Green Lane from its cover.

“Not a sail in sight,” he said presently. “Dash my buttons what a
night! Precious dark it is, and I’m main glad we didn’t fetch Pew
along, with his bleared deadlights to hold us back. Come along,
Black Dog. Yarely, my hearties! If this breeze keeps up----”

We emerged into the Green Lane, heading toward the East River, and a
thrill tickled my spine as I heard the chanting tones of old Diggory
Leigh, our ward watchman.

“Ten o’clock of a clear, dark night, and the wind in the nor’west.
And all’s well!”

“Easy, all!” whispered Silver’s voice. “Push on, ye swabs; push on!
But hold your gab. I’ll do the talking.”

The steel piece on the butt of his crutch tinkled on the cobbles as
he stumped ahead of the cart.

“Ho there, shipmate,” he hailed cordially. “And does you do this the
whole, livelong night?”

Diggory’s lanthorn-stave jingled on the ground. “I do,” he returned
in pompous tones. “What keeps you abroad so late? Y’are seafaring
men, I judge.”

“Now I calls that clever,” protested Silver with unconcealed
admiration. “You sees us in the dark, and straight: off you says,
‘seafaring men.’ I can see you’re a vigilant watchman, shipmate.
I’d hate to be a neefarious fellow in your town. Blow my
scuttle-butt, I would!”

Diggory’s appreciation of this tribute was mirrored in his voice.

“’Tis essential that our citizens be protected,” he answered. “Yet
there are those who have accused me of sleeping on watch.”

“Skulkers, they be--low-lived skulkers as ever was,” Silver assured
him. “I know how you feel. Here we’ve been a-workin’ since sunup,
a-shiftin’ cargo and stowin’ it aboard, and I’ll lay you a piece of
eight the captain never so much as sarves out a extry noggin o’ rum.”

Diggory’s stave jingled again as he sloped it over his shoulder.

“The wisest men are not always those in authority, friend,” he said.
“Ye might think, from the way some of the Corporation talk, ’twas
they bar the night-walkers and wastrels from the city’s streets!
Bah!”

And his wailing voice receded into Pearl Street.

“What are you night-walkers and wastrels a-sniggerin’ about?”
demanded Silver of his following. “George Merry, I’ll lay into you
with my crutch. Put some heft behind this here blessed cart. Ain’t
ye ashamed o’ yourselves, a-laughin’ at a brave, hard-workin’
watchman as keeps wicked pirates from liftin’ your goods?”

A few hundred feet farther on we rattled off the cobbles on to the
planked surface of a wharf.

“That you, John?” growled a voice.

“Aye, aye, Bill. Where’s the captain?”

“Gone off in the jollyboat. That ’ere Spanish Irisher is a-waitin’
him aboard.”

I heard Silver curse under his breath.

“What was you sayin’, John?” asked the other man.

“What I was sayin’ don’t signify, but what I was thinkin’ was that
there’s a deal o’ mystery in this business,” answered Silver with an
edge to his tone. “But there! Why should I consarn myself as am no
more’n quartermaster o’ the old _Walrus_? You’re Flint’s mate, Bill,
and if it don’t tickle your dignity to risk your neck without knowin’
what the stake is, why should I complain?”

The other man, whom I now identified as the very brown-faced fellow
who had been sitting with Darby in the Whale’s Head, replied with a
string of oaths.

“----!” he wound up. “Flint hisself don’t know much more’n you and
me.”

“He’ll take a lot for a sizzlin’, gut-cuttin’ fire-eater,” rejoined
Silver. “I’m ---- if I’d eat the humble-pie as is his reg’lar diet.
Look at what we been through already! First off we leaves a safe
hangout and a rich cruisin’-ground by Madagascar. Then we barges off
from an ekally safe lay on the Main. And his bloomin’ lordship, not
trustin’ his own crew, calls a fo’csle council aboard the _Walrus_
and asks for volunteers to go with him into New York!”

“No, no,” struck in Bones--I could tell him by his voice, which was
of a peculiarly hectoring, rasping timbre. “’Twas Flint would have
him take _Walrus_ men along, not trustin’ what he was up to. I heard
what was said, John, for Flint had me into the cabin at the end.

“‘If you won’t say no more, Murray, you won’t,’ says he. ‘I know you
well enough for that. And as for your ---- political combinations
they mean nothin’ to me ’nless there’s money in ’em for my pocket.
But I say flatly I won’t trust you by your lone in New York; no, nor
with only men of your own choosin’. How do I know you maybe won’t
sell me for your pardon?’”

Silver pulled the tarpaulin from over our heads.

“If Flint said that ’twas the best speech he ever made,” he returned.
“All I knows is that Murray came on deck before us all and says as
how he has a mission of danger to perform and he knowed there was no
daredevils like the old _Walrus_ hands, and would a score volunteer?

“‘For what do we volunteer, captain, if I may make so bold?’ says I.

“‘A fair question merits a fair answer, John,’ says he. ‘And I’ll
say to all you lads I’m planning a cruise as’ll make the fortune of
the last one o’ you and set us in such a position that those as
desires to go ashore and enjoy their ease in comfort can look to
receiving free pardons.’

“‘Ah, yes, sir,’ says I; ‘but what might be the nature o’ this
cruise, and why does we go into New York, where there’s sojers, and
maybe King’s ships?’

“‘The sojers won’t hurt you, John,’ says he, ‘and if there’s King’s
ships we’ll try again. We are goin’ in for me to meet one man for a
talk under cover, and while I’m a-meetin’ of him we’ll crimp a likely
youth I have my eye upon.’

“And that was all I had out o’ him, Bill. I volunteered for blind
curiosity, hopin’ for to discover what he was up to, and I’m free to
say I’ve had my trouble for my pains.”

“You’re no worse off’n the rest o’ us,” growled Bones. “Belay that
guff, and get these carcases aboardship. If we miss the ebb there’ll
be ---- to pay. He’s no friend o’ mine, Murray; but he’s kept me in
rum and ’backy and spendin’-money since I joined up with him.”

“Give Flint some o’ the credit, Bill,” objected Silver.

“I give him plenty,” snarled Bones. “He’s a rare fighter, Flint is.
But he never had Murray’s head to plan--and he knows that as well as
me. Aye, for I’ve heard him say it.

“‘Curse me if I like to bob and prance for the old hellion, Bill,’
says he; ‘but he has the skill o’ the Fiend at our lay. He’s lasted
twice as long as me or any other.’”

“Skill is right,” admitted Silver. “D’ye mind, when we was
overhaulin’ the brig, he ran up alongside the _Walrus_ wi’ his
speakin’-trumpet out and hailed?

“‘Ahoy, _Walrus_!’ says he. ‘Don’t touch her spars or riggin’. Give
her a couple o’ round shot across her decks. We’ve got to get rid of
her crew, anyway.”

He chuckled enviously.

“But this isn’t gettin’ us all back to the _Walrus_, Bill,” he added.
“Here, George Merry, can’t you and your mates handle the big fellow?
Two to his head and two to his feet--and drop him easy or he’ll stove
in the boat. Now, my gentleman--” this to me--“we’ll pass you down,
too. You must pull a strong oar with the captain for him to be so
anxious to get you offshore hale and whole. It’ll be place and rank
for you, messmate, or a chance to swim wi’ the sharks.

“Where’s the red-headed little Irisher, Bill?”

“I sent him off with the captain,” replied Bones. “Down wi’ you,
John. We’ll cast off.”

From where I now lay, propped up in the bow with my head resting on
Peter’s huge stomach, I could see the wharf a few feet above and the
vague figures of the pirates and behind them the shadowy outline of
the warehouses and an occasional dim light. Silver--I knew him by
his height and a certain hunching of the shoulder under which he
rested his crutch--turned away as Bones addressed him.

“What of the cart?” he asked.

“That’s easy,” returned Bones.

And he gave it a shove that sent it splashing into the water off the
wharf’s end.

“No incriminatin’ evidence or what the lawyer sharks calls clues,”
remarked Silver. “A good job well done, Bill, if you asks me.”

He lowered himself to a seat upon the stringpiece of the wharf,
dropped the butt of his crutch to the forward thwart, felt about with
his one leg and came to rest in front of Peter and me. The crutch he
allowed to slip to the bottom of the boat, and in its place he took
an oar. Bill Bones found a seat in the stern sheets.

“All clear,” muttered Bill. “Give way.”

The oars fended off from the wharf, and the boat crept out into the
stream, where it felt the full strength of the tide, just beginning
to turn. The bow bounced up as the first wave hit it, and Peter,
beneath me, emitted a dismal groan through his gag. Silver, bending
diligently to his oar, looked over his shoulder.

“You would come, messmate,” he said. “’Tis nobody’s fault but your
own.”

Peter gave a convulsive wiggle which almost knocked me out of the
boat.

“Here, here,” admonished Silver. “That’s no way to act. D’ye want
to drown us all?”

Another groan from Peter, and he lay still.

“Look sharp,” called Bones. “The brig’s just ahead.”

A riding-light gleamed high above us in the velvet gloom. I heard
the faint _slap-slap-slap_ of water against an anchored hull. Other
lights appeared, the square pattern of stern windows, a great
lanthorn hung in the waist. A gruff hail reached us.

“Boat ahoy!”

“Bones comin’ aboard.”

“Aye, aye, Bill.”

As we rounded under her counter a couple of ropes rattled down to us,
and I heard the creaking of tackle and hoist. We ground against the
dripping black hull, and one of the oarsmen seized the rungs of a
ladder which dribbled in the waves.

“Make fast the young ’un first,” rasped Bones as he went up the
wooden rungs monkey-fashion.

“Aye, aye, Bill,” answered Silver, and I became conscious that the
one-legged man and another were knotting a loose rope beneath my
arm-pits. “All right, above there,” called Silver presently.

And to me as the block began to whine:

“Watch out for your head, my master. Up you go! All the sensations
as come to a poor, honest pirate as is hung in chains at Execution
Dock.”

The rope tautened; the unseen block whined louder; and I rose
involuntarily from my position across Peter’s belly. My feet were
jerked from a thwart, and I kicked the air. The grunts of men
hauling in unison floated from the brig’s deck, and as I rose faster
I commenced to swing like a pendulum.

And now I understood Silver’s warning as to my head, for I came into
violent collision with the brig’s hull and by mere luck escaped with
a bruised shoulder instead of a broken skull. I would have cried
out, I think, but the gag restrained me; and inside of a minute I was
dangling over the bulwarks, feet kicking frantically for standing
room. A man caught me by one arm and drew me inboard, shouting the
while to “slacken away!” and so I came down again with a bump that
was like to crack my knee-caps, deposited as so much cargo upon the
pitchy deck.

Dazed by treatment I had never sustained before, I stood heedless as
the ropes were unfastened beneath my arm-pits, my bonds slipped off
and the gag extracted from my aching jaws. I was just beginning to
take in the aspect of my surroundings when Corlaer’s cask of a body
topped the bulwarks, swung with ludicrous unconcern for an instant as
I dare say mine had done and then lurched in and crashed to the deck.
The Dutchman was purple in the face, with white spots dotting the
congested area of his cheeks, and gasping for breath. His stomach
heaved tumultuously as the gag was removed.

“What ails you, Peter?” I cried.

“Der water,” he moaned. “It makes me sick.”

And sick he was--violently.

I helped him to the side as a whistle trilled.

“Capstan men for’ard,” shouted a voice.

“What d’ye say?” called Bill Bones. “Who ordered the anchor up? The
longboat’s still alongside.”

“Captain’s orders,” rumbled the answer from the darkness. “Said to
cat the anchor, Bill, and get sail on her. We’m to start so soon as
the Spanisher goes off--his boat’s under the sta’b’d gangway.”

Bones ripped off an admirable stream of oaths.

“Might ha’ told me,” he complained. “Slack aft the longboat, a pair
o’ you. Is the jollyboat hove up? Aloft, topmen! Clear the braces.
John, you’d better take the helm. I s’pose his lordship’ll come up
to con us out when he gets good and ready, seein’ he’s the only one
o’ us as knows his way about this blasted harbor!”

“Aye, aye, Bill.”

Silver stumped out of the shadow for’ard into the glare of the big
lanthorn that swung from a lower yard of the mainmast over the waist.

“But what about our pris’ners?” Silver asked.

Mr. Bones cast an uneasy glance at us.

“I can’t have that there bloomin’ volcano a-muckin’ up the decks, let
alone cabin or fo’csle. Leave ’em be, John. They can’t do no harm,
and any man as goes into that water tonight will freeze before he
makes the shore.”

“Spoke most accurate,” Silver agreed in his cheerful way.

The rascal had a manner which contrived to invest whatever he said to
you--to any one--with the implication that you were the most
intelligent person he had ever had to do with and that it was an
honor to obey and serve you.

He disappeared aft now, and Bones with him. I heard the latter
continuing to shout orders; and there was a constant bustle of men
running back and forth over the decks, a clattering of ropes and
shrieking of falls and blocks. For-’ard sounded an ordered trampling
of feet and a chorus of rough voices bellowing the wild sea-song I
had heard in the Whale’s Head Tavern:

  “Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest--
    Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
  Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
    Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”

Corlaer, weak as a rag, sank in a heap of buckskin in a dark corner
by the bulwarks.

“_Neen, neen,_” he answered when I would have helped him. “Not’ings,
Bob. I get better by and by. Der salt water--it is always so with
me.”

“I’ll get you some rum,” I said firmly.

And, rising, I was on the point of seeking the nearest man to ask
where a drink might be obtained when footsteps clicked on the deck
behind me.

“They are a dangerous company,” said a voice with an unmistakable
brogue to it.

“What would you?” returned my great-uncle.

I could imagine the graceful shrug which went with the words.

“We could not employ his Majesty’s people in such a business. And
all things considered, my fellows can handle it far better and more
expeditiously.”

They passed through the rays of the lanthorn which swung from the
mainyard. Aye, the first speaker was Colonel O’Donnell. The little
Irish maid! His daughter. My father had been right in his
suspicions.

But what could be the tie of interest between a colonel in the Army
of the King of Spain and an outlaw who had defied the whole structure
of civilization? A Jacobite plot? It seemed preposterous!

“’Tis my daughter I was thinking of,” explained O’Donnell as they
reached the starboard gangway close by where I stood over Peter’s
prostrate form.

“Ah!”

My great-uncle went through his courtly formula of taking snuff, and
I watched him, fascinated.

“Your forebodings do you credit, _chevalier_. But you have no cause
for concern. For reasons which I need not go into I have with me
here men from the crew of my associate. On board the _Royal James_ I
think I may promise you and your daughter all the deference you might
receive upon a King’s ship. I will go so far as to say that I have
taken steps to secure you additional protection. My
great-nephew--and heir--of whom I have spoken to you, sails with me,
a fine youth who shall yet make his mark in the world.”

“But a woman on a pirate ship!” protested O’Donnell anew.

“My dear sir, Rule Four of the Code of Articles under which our
company is governed--does it surprize you that we have our own
laws?--forbids the taking and keeping of women as spoil aboard our
ships. We have had experience in the past of the evils which flow in
the wake of a struggle for women’s favors.”

“Shall you not flout your own rule if my daughter comes aboard?”
pressed the Irishman.

“She will not come as a prisoner, but as a guest,” returned Murray
blandly. “After all, colonel, the _Royal James_ is my ship--and in
that respect differs from most outlaw craft which are held by the
entire crew as a community. No, no; you need not concern yourself.”

“I like it not, I say!” persisted O’Donnell. “Why did you bid me
bring her? You were hot for her coming so soon as you heard I had a
daughter.”

“Would you have left her by her lone in a strange country?” answered
my great-uncle impatiently. “Tut, man, be sensible. Who would
suspect a man who had his daughter with him? ’Tis true this
enterprise is fraught with danger, but no maid can go through life
without sniffing peril. We will guard her as we shall the treasure.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” rapped O’Donnell as he climbed over the
bulwarks and felt for the ladder. “I am not proud of myself when I
think of her innocence. Holy saints, what a coil! Well, well, no
matter. I must be going, for the night wanes.”

“Yes,” assented Murray. “And stir your frigate’s captain to a swift
passage.”

The Irishman nodded.

“If necessary we’ll pass by the Havana. Luckily Porto Bello is the
_intendente’s_ chief worry. You’ll hover, then, off Moria Passage?”

“Aye, from the south tip of Hispaniola to the north of Porto Rico,
save it storms, when we’ll run for shelter in the Bay of Samana,
where the old buccaneers were wont to lie. Diego can find us. He
has done it before. Just give him ample time.”

“So soon as the _Santissima Trinidad_ has her orders Diego shall
know.”

He started to descend and then climbed back.

“She has heavy metal, Murray. Are you certain----”

My great-uncle laughed.

“Be at ease upon that point, _chevalier_. We could take two
Spaniards of the _Santissima Trinidad’s_ metal. I fear I must bid
you good evening, though. Hark!”

The bell of the Spanish frigate rang out eight times.

“Midnight!” exclaimed O’Donnell. “Can you be gone by dawn?”

“My dear sir,” returned my uncle lightly, “this brig will never be
seen again--anywhere--by anybody.”

O’Donnell shivered.

“Good night,” he said abruptly, and his head vanished behind the
bulwarks.

I heard the rattle of oars, a low order in Spanish, the steady splash
and spatter of rowers as the boat pulled away. My great-uncle
watched it for a moment, then turned toward where I stood.

“Well, Nephew Robert, what did you make of us?” he inquired.

I contrived to keep my voice level, for I would not give him the
satisfaction of supposing he had startled me.

“That you are engaged in deeper villainy even than my father feared.”

“You have a narrow-minded view of life,” he remarked. “However, ’tis
a defect can be remedied by experience. By the way, do not jump to
conclusions from what you overheard. You shall have the whole tale
anon, but until you possess a more intimate knowledge of the
situation you are better off in ignorance.”

“I am no pirate, nor shall I be.”

“Why make hasty statements, Robert?”

A hail came from Bones for’ard.

“Anchor a-cat, captain!”

“Very good, Master Bones,” replied my great-uncle. “You may trip,
and we will make all sail, if you please.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

Peter groaned dolefully at the fateful words, and Murray stepped
closer.

“What is that beside you, Robert?” he asked quickly. “Did our good
friend Peter come to harm?”

“The water’s motion sickens him.”

“Ah! Strange how the strongest men succumb to it. We will have him
carried below. I should have told you before this that I design to
make you both as comfortable as possible. You berth aft with me. On
the brig I can offer you very limited hospitality, but on the _Royal
James_ you shall have the comforts of an admiral.”

“I want no comforts,” I answered coldly. “Any comforts you may offer
me would be a mockery. My very being here is a discomfort most
insufferable.”

He stiffened.

“’Sdeath, sirrah! Bear in mind that I am your elder in years and
deserving of respect for my relationship.”

“To me you are a singularly bloody pirate, and that is all.”

“The injustice of youth!” he commented evenly. “I was the uncle and
tender guardian of the mother you never knew, Robert.”

“I share my father’s feelings upon that point,” I cried, and raised
my hand in a threatening gesture.

He did not stir.

“Your conversion will be quite as difficult as I had foreseen,” he
said. “No, you would gain naught by striking me. Impartially I may
recommend you to adopt an attitude which will secure you the maximum
of liberty and opportunity. Of what avail for you to force yourself
into confinement?”

“Sir,” I returned, “be convinced of this: The day you attack a
defenseless ship I will slay as many of you as I can and contentedly
die.”

It has a sound of theatricalism now, but I meant it at the time.

“I purpose nothing of that sort for you,” answered my great-uncle.
“And while I am tempted to argue you out of a position founded upon a
false ethical basis, I shall content myself with the observation that
you would do well to hold your temper in leash until you find a need
for its employment.”

He glanced overside.

“I see we are under way. I must ask you to excuse me for the
present, Robert. I am constrained to serve as pilot.”

He raised his little silver whistle, and its shrill call fetched
several of the crew aft.

“Aye, aye, captain.” It was Bones. “What’s your wish, sir?”

“Have this poor fellow--” Murray gestured toward Corlaer’s recumbent
form--“carried to one of the staterooms. Use him gently. Bid the
Irish boy--what’s his name? Oh, Darby!--bid Darby tend him and fetch
him what he requires.

“This gentleman, here--” he indicated me--“is my great-nephew, Master
Bones. It may be he will succeed me in command of the _Royal James_
some day, although he is not with us of his own wish as yet. He is
to have complete freedom except he undertake to achieve aught to our
disadvantage. Pass the word to the men, if you please.”

“That’s a queer lay,” growled Bones. “Is he friend or enemy,
captain?”

“An intelligent question,” replied my great-uncle. “We may call him
an enemy who is to be treated as nearly as possible as a friend.”

“Blasted if I see any sense in it,” affirmed Bones. “But whatever
you says, captain.”

“Exactly,” said my great-uncle.

And to me he added:

“Oblige yourself, Robert. There is a berth waiting for you, or you
may remain on deck and take a lesson in seamanship.”

I cast my eye astern at the lights of New York, so low, so scattered,
already so far away.

“I’ll go below and do what I may for Peter,” I decided.

“As you choose,” responded my extraordinary relative, and walked aft.

“Stir your stumps, ye lousy swabs,” roared Bones to his men. “Hitch
on to this here land-whale. ---- my lights and gizzard if I ever see
such a monstrous heap o’ human flesh! We’d oughter take him to the
South Seas and sell him to the canneybals. That’s all he’s good for.
Come on, young gentleman, you may be the captain’s nevvy or by-blow
or whatever ’twas he called ye, but everybody works on this ship.
Lend a hand.”

I obeyed him in silence, while he and the others cursed and
blasphemed with a fluency defying description. What a company!
Except in Murray’s presence they owned no discipline, accepted no
restraint. Palpably they hated as well as feared him, and I found
myself wondering how secure a hold he had upon their passions. Let
them once cast off the spell of his magnetism and superior
wickedness, and they would become so many irresponsible agents of
lust and destruction.

I shuddered and was glad of the hooded cabin-lamp as we stowed
Peter’s limp body into the constricted space of a bunk; gladder still
when they tramped away and left me alone with the Dutchman.

Through a porthole the lights of New York winked farewell to me. I
was as frightened as a child by himself for the first time in the
dark.

CHAPTER V

ABOARD THE BRIG

I woke with a ray of sunshine streaming across my face through the
thick, greenish glass of a deadlight and an odd feeling of
contentment. Mice were cheeping in the paneling at my elbow; the
timbers and planking of the hull were groaning and snorting; there
was a soothing swissh-ssh of divided waters; and the brig herself was
swaying easily in a following sea.

Corlaer was sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, and I was at
pains not to disturb him as I slipped to the floor, opened the door
and entered the main cabin. This was deserted save for the boy
Darby, who was curled up on the seat under the stern windows, peering
out at the brig’s creamy wake. He heard the door close after me and
swiveled round at once, landing lightly on his feet as if he had been
to sea for years.

“Och, Master Bob,” says he, “I thought ye’d never wake up. Ah, it’s
the grand, grand day. And do ye smell the brine in the air? It
makes the toes of your two feet dance, whether ye will or no--troth,
it does.”

’Twas impossible to nourish resentment against the boy for his
betrayal of us. He was as naturally lawless and unmoral as a young
wolf, but I could not resist a jeer at his recent transformation.

“And how does it seem to be a pirate, Darby?”

“Oh, fine! Sure, I always knew I wasn’t intended for a bond-boy to
run errands and carry bales. Ah, it’s the grand life, Master Bob!
They tell me himself--” he jerked his thumb toward the door of a
stateroom opposite that in which Peter and I were berthed--“is own
uncle to ye, and some day, if ye choose, ye can be as great as him.
Faith, and I know what my choice would be!”

“Is it your idea that pirates never work?” I inquired.

His face fell a trifle.

“Och, there’s work everywhere ye go, bad ’cess to it! It’s, ‘Darby,
lend a hand here!’ Or, ‘Darby, catch hold o’ this rope!’ Or,
‘Darby, fetch me a pannikin o’ rum!’ Darby this and Darby that the
night long.”

His face lightened again.

“But I’m to have my own cutlass and two pistols for my belt, and they
say I’m good luck.”

“Good luck? How’s that?”

“Sure, it’s my hair, I think. Flint--him that this crew sail with by
usual--he has a liking for a red-headed lad. Such as meself brings
him luck, so they swear, and Long John----”

“Who?”

“Long John--Master Silver, to be sure--him with the one leg we talked
to by the shore yesterday--he says I’ll go far with Flint.”

I had to laugh at my own bemusement at the picture Darby’s remark
called up. Yesterday morning at this hour I had been laboring
industriously in the counting-room in Pearl Street. And how much had
happened since then! I harked back to my setting-forth for the
Bristol packet, the casual conversation with the one-legged
mariner--how skilfully he had pumped me and annexed Darby to his
plot!--the encounter with the Irish maid----

With this I curbed my recollections. Thought of Moira O’Donnell was
unpleasant, for I could not rid my mind of the suspicion that she
must be bound up in some way in the schemes her father worked at in
coöperation with my great-uncle.

But there! I found relief in this reflection. Certes, her father
could be no worse than my relative; and here was I, innocent of any
art or part in Murray’s devious ploys, yet tossed into the grip of
their mechanism as ruthlessly as if my life depended upon his
success. And perhaps it did. What more natural, then, than that she
was equally innocent? Aye, from the conversation betwixt the two
conspirators I had overheard the night before it appeared that she
was innocent, probably in greater ignorance of her father’s plans
than I, else how explain O’Donnell’s concern upon discovering the
character of the men with whom she was to be thrown in contact?

And this aroused a further recollection. What was it the lass had
said as we parted?

“Here our paths diverge.”

She would not have said that had she known all, for there had been no
necessity for the lie. Doubt not, she was in entire ignorance of the
black evil these two plotted! I was glad with a great burst of
exultation which must have shown itself in my face, for Darby
exclaimed:

“There was a good fairy flicked a wing over you, Master Bob! Glory,
but ye had the happy thought. Will ye throw in with us and be a
pirate chief? Troth, there’d be no better.”

“Not I, Darby; but I will have a bite to eat, if such there be aboard
a pirate craft.”

“Lashin’s of everything in nature,” rejoined Darby briskly. “Sit to
the table yon, and I’ll fetch it from the galley.”

The table was set and ready, not with coarse crockery and steel
forks, knives and spoons, but with dainty china, heavy silverware and
fine napery, too. I commented on this when Darby returned, balancing
smoking dishes and a jug of hot chocolate upon a tray.

“’Tis the way himself--” his thumb indicated the starboard stateroom
door--“will live. The best of everything he’ll have, and on his own
ship nigger slaves to serve him, and they in liveries like grand
gentlemen have. Whisht!”

His voice sank to a whisper.

“He’s a terrible unchancy fellow, yon, Master Bob. Not for all the
gold onzas Long John do be always talkin’ of would I ha’ _him_ for
uncle! No, no! I’ll sail with Flint, rather. The eye to him--and
the soft voice and quiet ways! And him as swift to cut your throat
or walk ye down the plank as Flint; aye, and swifter! I ha’ the
creepies on my back whiles I look at him.

“Flint, now, he’s main different, Long John says. He’ll swig rum wi’
any man, and if he wants your life ye’ll be in no doubt of that same;
and he curses better’n Bill Bones.”

“You seem to have experienced no trouble in becoming intimate with
your new companions, Darby,” I remarked.

“It’s me head does it,” returned Darby, unabashed. “As I told ye, it
brings good luck.”

“Not to me,” I retorted with a grin.

“And don’t ye be too sure,” he flashed. “We’ll maybe sail a long
ways together; and I’m your friend, Master Bob, for ye were never one
to let me be put upon in the counting-room.”

“Humph,” said I. “That is to be seen. Where is ‘himself,’ as you
call him?”

“Asleep in his berth. Troth, he was up until dawn conning the brig
through the harbor shoals.”

“Are we outside?”

“Sure, we’re by and beyond what they call Sandy Hook. There’s only
the wide ocean in front.”

“I’m for the deck then,” I answered. “Keep an ear on Master Corlaer,
Darby. If he craves food fetch him some of this chocolate.”

“Leave him to me,” said Darby confidently. “He’s another I like
fine. Wasn’t it him brought me the Injun scalp and the knife wi’
blood on it? Oh, ye must both turn pirate! We’d make a grand crew,
just the three of us.”

The companionway was empty, and I met nobody until I had climbed to
the deck. The brig was running free before a smart nor’west breeze,
and there was just enough of a sea to toss an occasional shower of
spray over the bows. The wind was booming in the hollow of the
sails, and the cordage sang like a great harp. Sea-birds were
circling the mast-tops and skimming the waves with occasional raucous
cries. And over all the sun cast a warm, golden radiance that held a
magic spell.

I understood now the contentment with which I had wakened, although
indeed ’twas passing strange that I so readily adapted myself to the
sea and its ways, seeing that all my life I had never been beyond the
waters of the inner harbor. Yet ’tis the fact I had no discomfort or
misgiving and even acquired instinctively the sailor’s tricks of
standing and walking, as was commented upon by no less an authority
than John Silver.

The deck was deserted for’ard. One man was lashed in the main
cross-trees, sweeping the entire circuit of the horizon with a
spyglass. Aft there were only Silver and another fellow at the
wheel. The one-legged man waved to me with his crutch from his seat
on the cabin skylight.

“Come and talk with Long John, Master Ormerod,” he called. “Where
did ye find them sea-legs o’ yourn? You walk like a blasted admiral,
no less.”

“I found them below,” I answered, for the life of me unable to resist
the scoundrel’s ingratiating manner. “Where are the rest of your
company?”

He laughed and winked at the man at the wheel, an awful-looking
creature, so heavy of shoulder as to appear deformed, with a green
shade over deeply sunken eyes that were all pitted around with tiny
blue scars.

“Ha, ha! Our young gentleman says to himself, says he: ‘Only two on
deck, one on ’em wi’ a single leg, t’other all but blind. And here’s
me as is young and sturdy.’ A clean field, says you, Master Ormerod;
but you’re failin’ to reckon on John’s crutch, which same can be a
very nasty weapon at need; and if Pew’s eyes don’t see far he can
shoot by ear as well as most o’ us by sight.”

I shook my head.

“Rascals as thorough as you, Silver, would never leave an opportunity
like that. ’Tis true I have had no sea-service, but I have fought
with the savages upon our northern frontier.

“I’ll not move until I see a clear path before me.”

He laughed uproariously at this.

“Now that ’ere’s a good joke on me! Might ha’ knowed you wasn’t as
open as your face. You’ll learn fast, you will, Master Ormerod.
I’ll lay four spade-guineas to that. Bear over just a p’int, Ezra,
matey. Aye, so!”

“Is that foretops’l drawin’ full, John?” asked the man with the green
eye-shade in a voice that was singularly soft.

Silver squinted aloft.

“She’ll do,” he decided.

“Would you mind telling me how a blind man can steer?” I inquired.

The man with the green eye-shade chuckled in a way to chill your
blood, so sardonic, so overpoweringly evil was the caliber of the
mirth it suggested.

“A poor, blind man has to earn his bread and ’backy somehow, young
sir,” he answered unctuously.

“Don’t go to makin’ up your mind Pew can’t see everything, Master
Ormerod,” said Silver, shifting his crutch. “I’d hate to have him
decide to take a shot at me. Steer? Well now, what’s needed in
steerin’? A strong arm, says you, and you says true. Also and
likewise, an ear for canvas. Lastly and leastwise, an eye for the
course.

“Any man can read a compass, young gentleman; but not every sailorman
can feel how his ship takes the wind and meet his rudder quick when
she wants meetin’. Pew can. Give him some one like me to play eyes
for him, and he’ll steer as straight a course as a packet-boat wi’ a
bonus on the voyage.”

“Are there many cripples in your crew?” I asked curiously.

“Cripples?” repeated Silver. “It all depends on what you might mean.
There’s cripples and cripples. Me and Pew now, we got ours in the
same broadside. ’Twas a Injyman wi’ a fighting master, and she stood
to us, board and board.”

He slapped the stump of his thigh.

“An eighteen-pounder did that. _Whoof_! Off she went. Pew, he was
rammin’ home a charge and leaned out through the port and caught the
flash of a carronade. ’Tain’t good for the eyes, nowise; but as I
was a-sayin’, don’t you ever go for to believe Pew can’t see. He’s
surprizin’, he is.

“But we was talkin’ of cripples. Yes, there’s cripples and cripples.
Some on ’em ye pays their screw----”

“Their what?” I interrupted.

“Their screw, the what d’ye call it--insurance money. So much we get
from the prize money extry for the hurt. Pew, he got a thousand
pounds, which same he blowed in three nights in St. Pierre. D’ye
mind, Ezra? I got eight hundred pounds for my leg--and fair enough,
if you asks me.

“And that eight hundred pounds I’ll gamble you ha’ stowed away in a
safe hole, John,” said Pew with a gentleness which gave the words a
peculiarly sinister significance.

Silver nodded almost complacently.

“What I gets, I keeps. I’m none o’ your free spenders, rich today,
poor tomorrow. Some day I’ll be retirin’ from piratin’, and then
I’ll aim to ride in my own coach and sit in Parleyment.”

“You’ll have to sail your own ship first, John,” said Pew, and the
remark was fraught with implications that made me turn cold at the
pit of my stomach.

It was as if you could see the trail of bloodshed and suffering
Silver would blaze to possess that ship and to exploit her to
advantage.

“And why not?” returned Silver vigorously. “We’ll name no names,
Ezra, but captains can’t live for ever. Some is aged and some soaks
theirselves in rum. You never know! You never know!”

“There’s Bill Bones, as has ideas on the subjeck,” remarked Pew.

And he contrived to make me feel the horror of a long-drawn-out feud
and rivalry.

“Yes, there’s Bill,” ruminated Silver. “Flint’s mate, is Bill.
Flint’s best pal, is Bill. Flint’s confeydantey, some says, is Bill.
Well, well! But we was talkin’ o’ cripples and how a blind man can
steer, which is a long way off from Bill, who isn’t neither crippled
nor blind, and maybe has hopes, so he has, when he remembers that.”

Pew laughed so coldly, with such demoniac inhumanity, that I
experienced a sudden fellow-feeling for Master Bones, distasteful as
I had found him--also, a pronounced desire to change the subject.
The bare proximity to such whole-souled, heartless cruelty was
unpleasant.

“Do you commonly indulge in exploits like yesterday’s, Silver?” I
asked.

He cocked his head on one side.

“Exploits? Yesterday? Meanin’ the disposition of yourself? We-ell,
no, sir; not reg’larly, I’d say, Ezra.”

“Not by a capful o’ onzas,” agreed Pew.

“I’m no man for makin’ trouble,” continued Silver, “but there’s them
as might say the captain was a mite rash.”

“Why don’t you call him by his name?”

Silver gave me an odd look.

“There’s some names as is better off unmentioned in conversation,” he
said. “We’ll call him the captain, wi’ your kind leave and
permission, sir.”

“Call him what you please,” I answered; “but I should think it was
insanity for men with your reputations to venture into New York.
Why, the second mate of that Bristol packet had seen Captain Murray,
and would have known him.”

“Ah!” said Silver, grinning. “But he didn’t see the captain, which
is more to the point, my master; nor he wouldn’t have had the chance
to see him in any case. ’Cause why? ’Cause the captain come ashore
most careful in the dusk wi’ his cloak around his face and three
stout hearties to fend off inquisitive strangers.”

“But the rest of you----”

“Now, Master Ormerod, what honest sailorman a-tremblin’ for his life
is goin’ to remember faces out o’ a crew o’ pirates he sees on a
shot-up deck? All he thinks of, says you, is a lot of villains as
has likely slaughtered his mess-mates and looted his ship, and quite
right. Why, I’ve been stood treat in Kingston by a skipper I’d
stripped two months past--but that was afore I lost my leg, which
bein’ in other seas ain’t as yet a mark of identification on me in
these parts.”

“And did you take this ship designedly to carry you into New York?”

“You might say truthfully she was the best fitted for it of several,”
he acknowledged. “Blow my other stick off if she was good for
anything else.”

“Not forty pounds in her,” mumbled Pew, twiddling the wheel-spokes.

“Her crew----”

Silver raised his eyebrows and gave me a slow wink.

“Poor unfortunates! ’Twas one time we couldn’t take chances.”

Pew’s chuckle trickled icily from under the eye-shade which cast a
green blur over his whole lower face.

“I suppose there is a hell for such as you,” I said, trying to keep
my voice steady.

“Some says there is and some says there isn’t,” answered Silver
reasonably. “No use to worry, says I.”

I was so wrought up that I think I must have come to blows with them
but for a fortunate diversion. Bones and several other men emerged
from the fo’csle hatch, yawning and stretching their arms, evidently
having just arisen from sleep. At the same moment Peter Corlaer
climbed from the cabin companionway, lurched for a moment, on his
feet and then staggered precariously toward the bulwarks. I started
for’ard to aid him, and Bones ran aft with a loud yell.

“Don’t ye spoil my decks, ye fat cow!” he shouted.

Poor Peter, regardless of both of us, seized a stay and clung to it
abjectly, quite helpless. Bones reached him first and gave him a
shove which sent him plunging into the scuppers head first.

“Get up,” snarled Bones, and dealt him a vicious kick with a heavy
sea-boot.

Peter groaned, and I caught Bones by the arm.

“---- you for a coward!” I shouted. “Captain Murray bade you use us
gently. Is this how you obey?”

He snatched free of me and yanked out a knife.

“Obey, ye lousy lubber!” he howled. “I’m Flint’s mate, and I’ll show
ye who can say obey to me. Get back there or I’ll cut your heart out
and eat it afore ye.”

I looked about me for a weapon, anxious to give him a lesson; but
there was not a sign of anything handy, and I backed away cautiously
from the menace of his knife. He had been drinking through the night
on top of liberal potations during the previous day, and the effect
was to render him quite insensible to any rule now that his passions
were aroused. Silver shouted to him to let us be, as did one or two
others; but his only answer was a string of the curses in which he
was so proficient, and he continued to circle after me.

For myself I was not greatly frightened, for, as it chanced,
knife-fighting was an art in which I was somewhat expert, thanks to
instruction from my father’s Indian friends; but I was concerned lest
the scoundrel make a dart at Peter and slay the Dutchman as he lay
inert. Judge of my amazement then when Peter swayed to his feet,
holding on to the bulwarks to pull himself erect. His face was
white, but he abandoned his support without hesitation and advanced,
crooked-legged, across the deck toward us.

“I take him, Bob,” he said.

I jumped between him and Bones in time to stop the pirate’s rush,
dodging a knife-thrust by the width of my coat-sleeve.

“Keep away, Peter,” I panted. “I can handle him. You can’t.
You’ll----”

“I take him,” repeated Corlaer.

He reached out his hand, grasped my shoulder and spun me from his
path as easily as if I had been a child. And I did not attempt to
return to his side, for I had felt the strength in his arm and knew
that I had no cause to question his ability to take care of himself
against any man, however armed.

Bones stared at him for a moment with a mixture of rage and surprize.

“D’ye want your ---- throat cut?” he sneered. “Here, turn your head
and I’ll take an ear instead. There’s naught in slaying a cow like
you.”

Peter said nothing, simply stood there before him weaponless, arms