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                   THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY

                    _and Other Tales of Pirates_

                         BY A. CONAN DOYLE

    NEW YORK
    GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

    COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913,
    1914, 1918, 1919,
    BY A. CONAN DOYLE

    COPYRIGHT, 1910,
    BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

    COPYRIGHT, 1911,
    BY ASSOCIATED SUNDAY MAGAZINES, INC.

    COPYRIGHT, 1908,
    BY THE MCCLURE COMPANY

    COPYRIGHT, 1900, 1902,
    BY THE S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY

    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

TALES OF PIRATES

I CAPTAIN SHARKEY: HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT'S CAME HOME

II THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK

III THE BLIGHTING OF SHARKEY

IV HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY

V THE "SLAPPING SAL"

VI A PIRATE OF THE LAND (ONE CROWDED HOUR)

TALES OF BLUE WATER

VII THE STRIPED CHEST

VIII THE CAPTAIN OF THE "POLESTAR"

IX THE FIEND OF THE COOPERAGE

X JELLAND'S VOYAGE

XI J. HABAKUK JEPHSON'S STATEMENT

XII THAT LITTLE SQUARE BOX

THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY

_and Other Stories of Pirates_

TALES OF PIRATES

CAPTAIN SHARKEY: HOW THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT KITT'S CAME HOME

When the great wars of the Spanish Succession had been brought to an end
by the Treaty of Utrecht, the vast number of privateers which had been
fitted out by the contending parties found their occupation gone. Some
took to the more peaceful but less lucrative ways of ordinary commerce,
others were absorbed into the fishing-fleets, and a few of the more
reckless hoisted the Jolly Rodger at the mizzen and the bloody flag at
the main, declaring a private war upon their own account against the
whole human race.

With mixed crews, recruited from every nation they scoured the seas,
disappearing occasionally to careen in some lonely inlet, or putting in
for a debauch at some outlaying port, where they dazzled the inhabitants
by their lavishness and horrified them by their brutalities.

On the Coromandel Coast, at Madagascar, in the African waters, and above
all in the West Indian and American seas, the pirates were a constant
menace. With an insolent luxury they would regulate their depredations
by the comfort of the seasons, harrying New England in the summer and
dropping south again to the tropical islands in the winter.

They were the more to be dreaded because they had none of that
discipline and restraint which made their predecessors, the Buccaneers,
both formidable and respectable. These Ishmaels of the sea rendered an
account to no man, and treated their prisoners according to the drunken
whim of the moment. Flashes of grotesque generosity alternated with
longer stretches of inconceivable ferocity, and the skipper who fell
into their hands might find himself dismissed with his cargo, after
serving as boon companion in some hideous debauch, or might sit at his
cabin table with his own nose and his lips served up with pepper and
salt in front of him. It took a stout seaman in those days to ply his
calling in the Caribbean Gulf.

Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship _Morning Star_, and yet
he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the
falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the
guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt's was his final port of
call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old
England. He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he
had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red
pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet
edge of the tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands,
touching here and there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy
and outrage.

Captain Sharkey, of the 20-gun pirate barque, _Happy Delivery_, had
passed down the coast, and had littered it with gutted vessels and with
murdered men. Dreadful anecdotes were current of his grim pleasantries
and of his inflexible ferocity. From the Bahamas to the Main his
coal-black barque, with the ambiguous name, had been freighted with
death and many things which are worse than death. So nervous was Captain
Scarrow, with his new full-rigged ship and her full and valuable lading,
that he struck out to the west as far as Bird's Island to be out of the
usual track of commerce. And yet even in those solitary waters he had
been unable to shake off sinister traces of Captain Sharkey.

One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely as
they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black and
wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship. He
was from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole
survivor of a schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful Sharkey.

For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift beneath
a tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his late
captain to be thrown into the boat, "as provisions for the voyage," but
the seaman had at once committed them to the deep, lest the temptation
should be more than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge frame,
until, at the last moment, the _Morning Star_ had found him in that
madness which is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for
Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this
big New Englander was a prize worth having. He vowed that he was the
only man whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an obligation.

Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the
pirate was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the
seaman's mind as he watched the agent's boat shooting out from the
custom-house quay.

"I'll lay you a wager, Morgan," said he to the first mate, "that the
agent will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his
lips."

"Well, captain, I'll have you a silver dollar, and chance it," said the
rough old Bristol man beside him.

The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
sprang up the ladder.

"Welcome, Captain Scarrow!" he cried. "Have you heard about Sharkey?"

The captain grinned at the mate.

"What devilry has he been up to now?" he asked.

"Devilry! You've not heard, then! Why, we've got him safe under lock and
key here at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be
hanged to-morrow morning."

Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken
up by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through
the break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the
front of them with a radiant face turned up to heaven, for he came of
the Puritan stock.

"Sharkey to be hanged!" he cried. "You don't know, Master Agent, if they
lack a hangman, do you?"

"Stand back!" cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was
even stronger than his interest at the news. "I'll pay that dollar,
Captain Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet.
How came the villain to be taken?"

"Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide, and
they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the ship.
So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried,
but our good little governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it.
'He's my meat,' said he, 'and I claim the cooking of it.' If you can
stay till to-morrow morning at ten, you'll see the joint swinging."

"I wish I could," said the captain, wistfully, "but I am sadly behind
time now. I should start with the evening tide."

"That you can't do," said the agent with decision. "The Governor is
going back with you."

"The Governor!"

"Yes. He's had a dispatch from Government to return without delay. The
fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has
been waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains."

"Well, well!" cried the captain, in some perplexity, "I'm a plain
seaman, and I don't know much of governors and baronets and their ways.
I don't remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it's in
King George's service, and he asks a cast in the _Morning Star_ as far
as London, I'll do what I can for him. There's my own cabin he can have
and welcome. As to the cooking, it's lobscouse and salmagundy six days
in the week; but he can bring his own cook aboard with him if he thinks
our galley too rough for his taste."

"You need not trouble your mind, Captain Scarrow," said the agent. "Sir
Charles is in weak health just now, only clear of a quartan ague, and it
is likely he will keep his cabin most of the voyage. Dr. Larousse said
that he would have sunk had the hanging of Sharkey not put fresh life
into him. He has a great spirit in him, though, and you must not blame
him if he is somewhat short in his speech."

"He may say what he likes and do what he likes so long as he does not
come athwart my hawse when I am working the ship," said the captain. "He
is Governor of St. Kitt's, but I am Governor of the _Morning Star_. And,
by his leave, I must weigh with the first tide, for I owe a duty to my
employer, just as he does to King George."

"He can scarce be ready to-night, for he has many things to set in order
before he leaves."

"The early morning tide, then."

"Very good. I shall send his things aboard to-night, and he will follow
them to-morrow early if I can prevail upon him to leave St. Kitt's
without seeing Sharkey do the rogue's hornpipe. His own orders were
instant, so it may be that he will come at once. It is likely that Dr.
Larousse may attend him upon the journey."

Left to themselves, the captain and mate made the best preparations
which they could for their illustrious passenger. The largest cabin was
turned out and adorned in his honour, and orders were given by which
barrels of fruit and some cases of wine should be brought off to vary
the plain food of an ocean-going trader. In the evening the Governor's
baggage began to arrive--great ironbound ant-proof trunks, and official
tin packing-cases, with other strange-shaped packages, which suggested
the cocked hat or the sword within. And then there came a note, with a
heraldic device upon the big red seal, to say that Sir Charles Ewan made
his compliments to Captain Scarrow, and that he hoped to be with him in
the morning as early as his duties and his infirmities would permit.

He was as good as his word, for the first grey of dawn had hardly begun
to deepen into pink when he was brought alongside, and climbed with some
difficulty up the ladder. The captain had heard that the Governor was an
eccentric, but he was hardly prepared for the curious figure who came
limping feebly down his quarter-deck, his steps supported by a thick
bamboo cane. He wore a Ramillies wig, all twisted into little tails like
a poodle's coat, and cut so low across the brow that the large green
glasses which covered his eyes looked as if they were hung from it. A
fierce beak of a nose, very long and very thin, cut the air in front of
him. His ague had caused him to swathe his throat and chin with a broad
linen cravat, and he wore a loose damask powdering-gown secured by a
cord round the waist. As he advanced he carried his masterful nose high
in the air, but his head turned slowly from side to side in the helpless
manner of the purblind, and he called in a high, querulous voice for the
captain.

"You have my things?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir Charles."

"Have you wine aboard?"

"I have ordered five cases, sir."

"And tobacco?"

"There is a keg of Trinidad."

"You play a hand at piquet?"

"Passably well, sir."

"Then up anchor, and to sea!"

There was a fresh westerly wind, so by the time the sun was fairly
through the morning haze, the ship was hull down from the islands. The
decrepit Governor still limped the deck, with one guiding hand upon the
quarter-rail.

"You are on Government service now, Captain," said he. "They are
counting the days till I come to Westminster, I promise you. Have you
all that she will carry?"

"Every inch, Sir Charles."

"Keep her so if you blow the sails out of her. I fear, Captain Scarrow,
that you will find a blind and broken man a poor companion for your
voyage."

"I am honoured in enjoying your Excellency's society," said the Captain.
"But I am sorry that your eyes should be so afflicted."

"Yes, indeed. It is the cursed glare of the sun on the white streets of
Basseterre which has gone far to burn them out."

"I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague."

"Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much."

"We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon."

"Ah, the rascal! There was no budging him, for he has a snug business
amongst the merchants. But hark!"

He raised his ring-covered hand in the air. From far astern there came
the low deep thunder of cannon.

"It is from the island!" cried the captain in astonishment. "Can it be a
signal for us to put back?"

The Governor laughed.

"You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be hanged this morning.
I ordered the batteries to salute when the rascal was kicking his last,
so that I might know of it out at sea. There's an end of Sharkey!"

"There's an end of Sharkey!" cried the captain; and the crew took up the
cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at
the low, purple line of the vanishing land.

It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the
invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was
generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial
and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge
and so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of
the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting
his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and
Governor smoked their long pipes and drank their claret as three good
comrades should.

"And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?" asked the captain.

"He is a man of some presence," said the Governor.

"I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil," remarked
the mate.

"Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions," said the Governor.

"I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his
eyes," said Captain Scarrow. "They were of the lightest filmy blue, with
red-rimmed lids. Was that not so, Sir Charles?"

"Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others!
But I remember now that the Adjutant-General said that he had such an
eye as you describe, and added that the jury were so foolish as to be
visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them. It is well for them
that he is dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and
if he had laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with
straw and hung him for a figure-head."

The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a
high, neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so
heartily, for they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who
sailed the western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be
their own. Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage,
and the Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that
the seamen were glad at last to stagger off--the one to his watch and
the other to his bunk. But when after his four hours' spell the mate
came down again, he was amazed to see the Governor in his Ramillies wig,
his glasses, and his powdering-gown still seated sedately at the lonely
table with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.

"I have drunk with the Governor of St. Kitt's when he was sick," said
he, "and God forbid that I should ever try to keep pace with him when he
is well."

The voyage of the _Morning Star_ was a successful one, and in about
three weeks she was at the mouth of the British Channel. From the first
day the infirm Governor had begun to recover his strength, and before
they were half-way across the Atlantic he was, save only for his eyes,
as well as any man upon the ship. Those who uphold the nourishing
qualities of wine might point to him in triumph, for never a night
passed that he did not repeat the performance of his first one. And yet
he would be out upon deck in the early morning as fresh and brisk as the
best of them, peering about with his weak eyes, and asking questions
about the sails and the rigging, for he was anxious to learn the ways of
the sea. And he made up for the deficiency of his eyes by obtaining
leave from the captain that the New England seaman--he who had been cast
away in the boat--should lead him about, and above all that he should
sit beside him when he played cards and count the number of the pips,
for unaided he could not tell the king from the knave.

It was natural that this Evanson should do the Governor willing service,
since the one was the victim of the vile Sharkey, and the other was his
avenger. One could see that it was a pleasure to the big American to
lend his arm to the invalid, and at night he would stand with all
respect behind his chair in the cabin and lay his great stub-nailed
forefinger upon the card which he should play. Between them there was
little in the pockets either of Captain Scarrow or of Morgan, the first
mate, by the time they sighted the Lizard.

And it was not long before they found that all they had heard of the
high temper of Sir Charles Ewan fell short of the mark. At a sign of
opposition or a word of argument his chin would shoot out from his
cravat, his masterful nose would be cocked at a higher and more insolent
angle, and his bamboo cane would whistle up over his shoulder. He
cracked it once over the head of the carpenter when the man had
accidentally jostled him upon the deck. Once, too, when there was some
grumbling and talk of a mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was
of opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they
should march forward and set upon them until they had trounced the
devilment out of them. "Give me a knife and a bucket!" he cried with an
oath, and could hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with
the spokesman of the seamen.

Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only
answerable to himself at St. Kitt's, killing became murder upon the high
seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop
of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met
a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his
vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a
stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had
never known a voyage pass so pleasantly.

And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island,
they had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As
evening fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from
Winchelsea, with the long dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front
of her. Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland, and
Sir Charles might meet the king's ministers at Westminster before the
evening. The boatswain had the watch, and the three friends were met for
a last turn of cards in the cabin, the faithful American still serving
as eyes to the Governor. There was a good stake upon the table, for the
sailors had tried on this last night to win their losses back from their
passenger. Suddenly he threw his cards down, and swept all the money
into the pocket of his long-flapped silken waistcoat.

"The game's mine!" said he.

"Heh, Sir Charles, not so fast!" cried Captain Scarrow; "you have not
played out the hand, and we are not the losers."

"Sink you for a liar!" said the Governor. "I tell you that I _have_
played out the hand, and that you _are_ a loser." He whipped off his wig
and his glasses as he spoke, and there was a high, bald forehead, and a
pair of shifty blue eyes with the red rims of a bull terrier.

"Good God!" cried the mate. "It's Sharkey!"

The two sailors sprang from their seats, but the big American castaway
had put his huge back against the cabin door, and he held a pistol in
each of his hands. The passenger had also laid a pistol upon the
scattered cards in front of him, and he burst into his high, neighing
laugh.

"Captain Sharkey is the name, gentlemen," said he, "and this is Roaring
Ned Galloway, the quartermaster of the _Happy Delivery_. We made it
hot, and so they marooned us: me on a dry Tortuga cay, and him in an
oarless boat. You dogs--you poor, fond, water-hearted dogs--we hold you
at the end of our pistols!"

"You may shoot, or you may not!" cried Scarrow, striking his hand upon
the breast of his frieze jacket. "If it's my last breath, Sharkey, I
tell you that you are a bloody rogue and miscreant, with a halter and
hell-fire in store for you!"

"There's a man of spirit, and one of my own kidney, and he's going to
make a very pretty death of it!" cried Sharkey. "There's no one aft save
the man at the wheel, so you may keep your breath, for you'll need it
soon. Is the dinghy astern, Ned?"

"Ay, ay, captain!"

"And the other boats scuttled?"

"I bored them all in three places."

"Then we shall have to leave you, Captain Scarrow. You look as if you
hadn't quite got your bearings yet. Is there anything you'd like to ask
me?"

"I believe you're the devil himself!" cried the captain. "Where is the
Governor of St. Kitt's?"

"When last I saw him his Excellency was in bed with his throat cut. When
I broke prison I learnt from my friends--for Captain Sharkey has those
who love him in every port--that the Governor was starting for Europe
under a master who had never seen him. I climbed his verandah and I paid
him the little debt that I owed him. Then I came aboard you with such of
his things as I had need of, and a pair of glasses to hide these
tell-tale eyes of mine, and I have ruffled it as a governor should.
Now, Ned, you can get to work upon them."

"Help! Help! Watch ahoy!" yelled the mate; but the butt of the pirate's
pistol crashed down on to his head, and he dropped like a pithed ox.
Scarrow rushed for the door, but the sentinel clapped his hand over his
mouth, and threw his other arm round his waist.

"No use, Master Scarrow," said Sharkey. "Let us see you go down on your
knees and beg for your life."

"I'll see you----" cried Scarrow, shaking his mouth clear.

"Twist his arm round, Ned. Now will you?"

"No; not if you twist it off."

"Put an inch of your knife into him."

"You may put six inches, and then I won't."

"Sink me, but I like his spirit!" cried Sharkey. "Put your knife in your
pocket, Ned. You've saved your skin, Scarrow, and it's a pity so stout a
man should not take to the only trade where a pretty fellow can pick up
a living. You must be born for no common death, Scarrow, since you have
lain at my mercy and lived to tell the story. Tie him up, Ned."

"To the stove, captain?"

"Tut, tut! there's a fire in the stove. None of your rover tricks, Ned
Galloway, unless they are called for, or I'll let you know which of us
two is captain and which is quartermaster. Make him fast to the table.

"Nay, I thought you meant to roast him!" said the quartermaster. "You
surely do not mean to let him go?"

"If you and I were marooned on a Bahama cay, Ned Galloway, it is still
for me to command and for you to obey. Sink you for a villain, do you
dare to question my orders?"

"Nay, nay, Captain Sharkey, not so hot, sir!" said the quartermaster,
and, lifting Scarrow like a child, he laid him on the table. With the
quick dexterity of a seaman, he tied his spreadeagled hands and feet
with a rope which was passed underneath, and gagged him securely with
the long cravat which used to adorn the chin of the Governor of St.
Kitt's.

"Now, Captain Scarrow, we must take our leave of you," said the pirate.
"If I had half a dozen of my brisk boys at my heels I should have had
your cargo and your ship, but Roaring Ned could not find a foremast hand
with the spirit of a mouse. I see there are some small craft about, and
we shall get one of them. When Captain Sharkey has a boat he can get a
smack, when he has a smack he can get a brig, when he has a brig he can
get a barque, and when he has a barque he'll soon have a full-rigged
ship of his own--so make haste into London town, or I may be coming
back, after all, for the _Morning Star_."

Captain Scarrow heard the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin.
Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their foot-steps pass up the
companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the
stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the
falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and
dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he
rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through
the closed door, and rushed hatless on to the deck.

"Ahoy! Peterson, Armitage, Wilson!" he screamed. "Cutlasses and pistols!
Clear away the long-boat! Clear away the gig! Sharkey, the pirate, is in
yonder dinghy. Whistle up the larboard watch, bo'sun, and tumble into
the boats all hands."

Down splashed the long-boat and down splashed the gig, but in an instant
the coxswains and crews were swarming up the falls on to the deck once
more.

"The boats are scuttled!" they cried. "They are leaking like a sieve."

The captain gave a bitter curse. He had been beaten and outwitted at
every point. Above was a cloudless, starlit sky, with neither wind nor
the promise of it. The sails flapped idly in the moonlight. Far away lay
a fishing-smack, with the men clustering over their net.

Close to them was the little dinghy, dipping and lifting over the
shining swell.

"They are dead men!" cried the captain. "A shout all together, boys, to
warn them of their danger."

But it was too late.

At that very moment the dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-boat.
There were two rapid pistol-shots, a scream, and then another
pistol-shot, followed by silence. The clustering fishermen had
disappeared. And then, suddenly, as the first puffs of a land-breeze
came out from the Sussex shore, the boom swung out, the mainsail filled,
and the little craft crept out with her nose to the Atlantic.

II

THE DEALINGS OF CAPTAIN SHARKEY WITH STEPHEN CRADDOCK

Careening was a very necessary operation for the old pirate. On his
superior speed he depended both for overhauling the trader and escaping
the man-of-war. But it was impossible to retain his sailing qualities
unless he periodically--once a year, at the least--cleared his vessel's
bottom from the long, trailing plants and crusting barnacles which
gather so rapidly in the tropical seas.

For this purpose he lightened his vessel, thrust her into some narrow
inlet where she would be left high and dry at low water, fastened blocks
and tackles to her masts to pull her over on to her bilge, and then
scraped her thoroughly from rudder-post to cutwater.

During the weeks which were thus occupied the ship was, of course,
defenceless; but, on the other hand, she was unapproachable by anything
heavier than an empty hull, and the place for careening was chosen with
an eye to secrecy, so that there was no great danger.

So secure did the captains feel, that it was not uncommon for them, at
such times, to leave their ships under a sufficient guard and to start
off in the long-boat, either upon a sporting expedition or, more
frequently, upon a visit to some outlying town, where they turned the
heads of the women by their swaggering gallantry, or broached pipes of
wine in the market square, with a threat to pistol all who would not
drink with them.

Sometimes they would even appear in cities of the size of Charleston,
and walk the streets with their clattering sidearms--an open scandal to
the whole law-abiding colony. Such visits were not always paid with
impunity. It was one of them, for example, which provoked Lieutenant
Maynard to hack off Blackbeard's head, and to spear it upon the end of
his bowsprit. But, as a rule, the pirate ruffled and bullied and drabbed
without let or hindrance, until it was time for him to go back to his
ship once more.

There was one pirate, however, who never crossed even the skirts of
civilisation, and that was the sinister Sharkey, of the barque _Happy
Delivery_. It may have been from his morose and solitary temper, or, as
is more probable, that he knew that his name upon the coast was such
that outraged humanity would, against all odds, have thrown themselves
upon him, but never once did he show his face in a settlement.

When his ship was laid up he would leave her under the charge of Ned
Galloway--her New England quartermaster--and would take long voyages in
his boat, sometimes, it was said, for the purpose of burying his share
of the plunder, and sometimes to shoot the wild oxen of Hispaniola,
which, when dressed and barbecued, provided provisions for his next
voyage. In the latter case the barque would come round to some
pre-arranged spot to pick him up and take on board what he had shot.

There had always been a hope in the islands that Sharkey might be taken
on one of these occasions; and at last there came news to Kingston which
seemed to justify an attempt upon him. It was brought by an elderly
logwood-cutter who had fallen into the pirate's hands, and in some freak
of drunken benevolence had been allowed to get away with nothing worse
than a slit nose and a drubbing. His account was recent and definite.
The _Happy Delivery_ was careening at Torbec on the south-west of
Hispaniola. Sharkey, with four men, was buccaneering on the outlying
island of La Vache. The blood of a hundred murdered crews was calling
out for vengeance, and now at last it seemed as if it might not call in
vain.

Sir Edward Compton, the high-nosed, red-faced Governor, sitting in
solemn conclave with the commandant and the head of the council, was
sorely puzzled in his mind as to how he should use his chance. There was
no man-of-war nearer than Jamestown, and she was a clumsy old fly-boat,
which could neither overhaul the pirate on the seas, nor reach her in a
shallow inlet. There were forts and artillerymen both at Kingston and
Port Royal, but no soldiers available for an expedition.

A private venture might be fitted out--and there were many who had a
blood-feud with Sharkey--but what could a private venture do? The
pirates were numerous and desperate. As to taking Sharkey and his four
companions, that, of course, would be easy if they could get at them;
but how were they to get at them on a large well-wooded island like La
Vache, full of wild hills and impenetrable jungles? A reward was offered
to whoever could find a solution, and that brought a man to the front
who had a singular plan, and was himself prepared to carry it out.

Stephen Craddock had been that most formidable person, the Puritan gone
wrong. Sprung from a decent Salem family, his ill-doing seemed to be a
recoil from the austerity of their religion, and he brought to vice all
the physical strength and energy with which the virtues of his ancestors
had endowed him. He was ingenious, fearless, and exceedingly tenacious
of purpose, so that when he was still young his name became notorious
upon the American coast.

He was the same Craddock who was tried for his life in Virginia for the
slaying of the Seminole Chief, and, though he escaped, it was well known
that he had corrupted the witnesses and bribed the judge.

Afterwards, as a slaver, and even, as it was hinted, as a pirate, he had
left an evil name behind him in the Bight of Benin. Finally he had
returned to Jamaica with a considerable fortune, and had settled down to
a life of sombre dissipation. This was the man, gaunt, austere, and
dangerous, who now waited upon the Governor with a plan for the
extirpation of Sharkey.

Sir Edward received him with little enthusiasm, for in spite of some
rumours of conversion and reformation, he had always regarded him as an
infected sheep who might taint the whole of his little flock. Craddock
saw the Governor's mistrust under his thin veil of formal and restrained
courtesy.

"You've no call to fear me, sir," said he; "I'm a changed man from what
you've known. I've seen the light again, of late, after losing sight of
it for many a black year. It was through the ministration of the Rev.
John Simons, of our own people. Sir, if your spirit should be in need
of quickening, you would find a very sweet savour in his discourse."

The Governor cocked his Episcopalian nose at him.

"You came here to speak of Sharkey, Master Craddock," said he.

"The man Sharkey is a vessel of wrath," said Craddock. "His wicked horn
has been exalted over long, and it is borne in upon me that if I can cut
him off and utterly destroy him, it will be a goodly deed, and one which
may atone for many backslidings in the past. A plan has been given to me
whereby I may encompass his destruction."

The Governor was keenly interested, for there was a grim and practical
air about the man's freckled face which showed that he was in earnest.
After all, he was a seaman and a fighter, and, if it were true that he
was eager to atone for his past, no better man could be chosen for the
business.

"This will be a dangerous task, Master Craddock," said he.

"If I meet my death at it, it may be that it will cleanse the memory of
an ill-spent life. I have much to atone for."

The Governor did not see his way to contradict him.

"What was your plan?" he asked.

"You have heard that Sharkey's barque, the _Happy Delivery_, came from
this very port of Kingston?"

"It belonged to Mr. Codrington, and it was taken by Sharkey, who
scuttled his own sloop and moved into her because she was faster," said
Sir Edward.

"Yes; but it may be that you have never heard that Mr. Codrington has a
sister ship, the _White Rose_, which lies even now in the harbour, and
which is so like the pirate, that, if it were not for a white paint
line, none could tell them apart."

"Ah! and what of that?" asked the Governor keenly, with the air of one
who is just on the edge of an idea.

"By the help of it this man shall be delivered into our hands."

"And how?"

"I will paint out the streak upon the _White Rose_, and make it in all
things like the _Happy Delivery_. Then I will set sail for the Island of
La Vache, where this man is slaying the wild oxen. When he sees me he
will surely mistake me for his own vessel which he is awaiting, and he
will come on board to his own undoing."

It was a simple plan, and yet it seemed to the Governor that it might be
effective. Without hesitation he gave Craddock permission to carry it
out, and to take any steps he liked in order to further the object which
he had in view. Sir Edward was not very sanguine, for many attempts had
been made upon Sharkey, and their results had shown, that he was as
cunning as he was ruthless. But this gaunt Puritan with the evil record
was cunning and ruthless also.

The contest of wits between two such men as Sharkey and Craddock
appealed to the Governor's acute sense of sport, and though he was
inwardly convinced that the chances were against him, he backed his man
with the same loyalty which he would have shown to his horse or his
cock.

Haste was, above all things, necessary, for upon any day the careening
might be finished, and the pirates out at sea once more. But there was
not very much to do, and there were many willing hands to do it, so the
second day saw the _White Rose_ beating out for the open sea. There were
many seamen in the port who knew the lines and rig of the pirate barque,
and not one of them could see the slightest difference in this
counterfeit. Her white side line had been painted out, her masts and
yards were smoked, to give them the dingy appearance of the
weather-beaten rover, and a large diamond shaped patch was let into her
fore-topsail.

Her crew were volunteers, many of them being men who had sailed with
Stephen Craddock before--the mate, Joshua Hird, an old slaver, had been
his accomplice in many voyages, and came now at the bidding of his
chief.

The avenging barque sped across the Caribbean Sea, and, at the sight of
that patched topsail, the little craft which they met flew left and
right like frightened trout in a pool. On the fourth evening Point
Abacou bore five miles to the north and east of them.

On the fifth they were at anchor in the Bay of Tortoises at the Island
of La Vache, where Sharkey and his four men had been hunting. It was a
well-wooded place, with the palms and underwood growing down to the thin
crescent of silver sand which skirted the shore. They had hoisted the
black flag and the red pennant, but no answer came from the shore.
Craddock strained his eyes, hoping every instant to see a boat shoot out
to them with Sharkey seated in the sheets. But the night passed away,
and a day and yet another night, without any sign of the men whom they
were endeavouring to trap. It looked as if they were already gone.

On the second morning Craddock went ashore in search of some proof
whether Sharkey and his men were still upon the island. What he found
reassured him greatly. Close to the shore was a boucan of green wood,
such as was used for preserving the meat, and a great store of barbecued
strips of ox-flesh was hung upon lines all round it. The pirate ship had
not taken off her provisions, and therefore the hunters were still upon
the island.

Why had they not shown themselves? Was it that they had detected that
this was not their own ship? Or was it that they were hunting in the
interior of the island, and were not on the lookout for a ship yet?
Craddock was still hesitating between the two alternatives, when a Carib
Indian came down with information. The pirates were in the island, he
said, and their camp was a day's march from the sea. They had stolen his
wife, and the marks of their stripes were still pink upon his brown
back. Their enemies were his friends, and he would lead them to where
they lay.

Craddock could not have asked for anything better; so early next
morning, with a small party armed to the teeth, he set off under the
guidance of the Carib. All day they struggled through brushwood and
clambered over rocks, pushing their way further and further into the
desolate heart of the island. Here and there they found traces of the
hunters, the bones of a slain ox, or the marks of feet in a morass, and
once, towards evening, it seemed to some of them that they heard the
distant rattle of guns.

That night they spent under the trees, and pushed on again with the
earliest light. About noon they came to the huts of bark, which, the
Carib told them, were the camp of the hunters, but they were silent and
deserted. No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would
return in the evening, so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the
brushwood around them. But no one came, and another night was spent in
the forest. Nothing more could be done, and it seemed to Craddock that
after the two days' absence it was time that he returned to his ship
once more.

The return journey was less difficult, as they had already blazed a path
for themselves. Before evening they found themselves once more at the
Bay of Palms, and saw their ship riding at anchor where they had left
her. Their boat and oars had been hauled up among the bushes, so they
launched it and pulled out to the barque.

"No luck, then!" cried Joshua Hird, the mate, looking down with a pale
face from the poop.

"His camp was empty, but he may come down to us yet," said Craddock,
with his hand on the ladder.

Somebody upon deck began to laugh. "I think," said the mate, "that these
men had better stay in the boat."

"Why so?"

"If you will come aboard, sir, you will understand it." He spoke in a
curious hesitating fashion.

The blood flushed to Craddock's gaunt face.

"How is this, Master Hird?" he cried, springing up the side. "What mean
you by giving orders to my boat's crew?"

But as he passed over the bulwarks, with one foot upon the deck and one
knee upon the rail, a tow-bearded man, whom he had never before observed
aboard his vessel, grabbed suddenly at his pistol. Craddock clutched at
the fellow's wrist, but at the same instant his mate snatched the
cutlass from his side.

"What roguery is this?" shouted Craddock looking furiously around him.
But the crew stood in little knots about the deck, laughing and
whispering amongst themselves without showing any desire to go to his
assistance. Even in that hurried glance Craddock noticed that they were
dressed in the most singular manner, with long riding-coats,
full-skirted velvet gowns and coloured ribands at their knees, more like
men of fashion than seamen.

As he looked at their grotesque figures he struck his brow with his
clenched fist to be sure that he was awake. The deck seemed to be much
dirtier than when he had left it, and there were strange, sun-blackened
faces turned upon him from every side. Not one of them did he know save
only Joshua Hird. Had the ship been captured in his absence? Were these
Sharkey's men who were around him? At the thought he broke furiously
away and tried to climb over to his boat, but a dozen hands were on him
in an instant, and he was pushed aft through the open door of his own
cabin.

And it was all different from the cabin which he had left. The floor was
different, the ceiling was different, the furniture was different. His
had been plain and austere. This was sumptuous and yet dirty, hung with
rare velvet curtains splashed with wine-stains, and panelled with costly
woods which were pocked with pistol-marks.

On the table was a great chart of the Caribbean Sea, and beside it, with
compasses in his hand, sat a clean-shaven, pale-faced man with a fur cap
and a claret-coloured coat of damask. Craddock turned white under his
freckles as he looked upon the long, thin, high-nostrilled nose and the
red-rimmed eyes which were turned upon him with the fixed, humorous gaze
of the master player who has left his opponent without a move.

"Sharkey?" cried Craddock.

Sharkey's thin lips opened and he broke into his high, sniggering laugh.

"You fool!" he cried, and, leaning over, he stabbed Craddock's shoulder
again and again with his compasses. "You poor, dull-witted fool, would
you match yourself against me?"

It was not the pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey's
voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman. He flew at the pirate,
roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, and foaming. It took six
men to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered remains of
the table--and not one of the six who did not bear the prisoner's mark
upon him. But Sharkey still surveyed him with the same contemptuous eye.
From outside there came the crash of breaking wood and the clamour of
startled voices.

"What is that?" asked Sharkey.

"They have stove the boat with cold shot, and the men are in the water."

"Let them stay there," said the pirate. "Now, Craddock, you know where
you are. You are aboard my ship the _Happy Delivery_, and you lie at my
mercy. I knew you for a stout seaman, you rogue, before you took to this
long-shore canting. Your hands then were no cleaner than my own. Will
you sign articles, as your mate has done, and join us, or shall I heave
you over to follow your ship's company?"

"Where is my ship?" asked Craddock.

"Scuttled in the bay."

"And the hands?"

"In the bay, too."

"Hock him and heave him over," said Sharkey.

Many rough hands had dragged Craddock out upon deck, and Galloway, the
quartermaster, had already drawn his hangar to cripple him, when Sharkey
came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face.

"We can do better with the hound!" he cried. "Sink me if it is not a
rare plan. Throw him into the sail-room with the irons on, and do you
come here, quartermaster, that I may tell you what I have in my mind."

So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
for the evil of his life. All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers
which told him that the ship was at sea, and driving fast. In the early
morning some one came crawling to him in the darkness over the heaps of
sails.

"Here's rum and biscuits," said the voice of his late mate. "It's at the
risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you."

"It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!" cried Craddock.
"How shall you answer for what you have done?"

"What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones."

"God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird. How came you into their
hands?"

"Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
the very day that you left us. They laid us aboard, and, short-handed as
we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but a
poor defence. Some were cut down, and they were the happiest. The others
were killed afterwards. As to me, I saved my life by signing on with
them."

"And they scuttled my ship?"

"They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching
us from the brushwood, came off to the ship. His main-yard had been
cracked and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that
ours was whole. Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which
you had set for him."

Craddock groaned.

"How came I not to see that fished main-yard?" he muttered. "But whither
are we bound?"

"We are running north and west."

"North and west! Then we are heading back towards Jamaica."

"With an eight-knot wind."

"Have you heard what they mean to do with me?"

"I have not heard. If you would but sign the articles----"

"Enough, Joshua Hird! I have risked my soul too often."

"As you wish! I have done what I could. Farewell!"

All that night and the next day the _Happy Delivery_ ran before the
easterly trades, and Stephen Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room
working patiently at his wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the cost
of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he
could not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened.

From hour to hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the
barque must be driving with all set, in front of the trade wind. In that
case they must be nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could
Sharkey have in his head, and what use did he hope to make of him?
Craddock set his teeth, and vowed that if he had once been a villain
from choice he would, at least, never be one by compulsion.

On the second morning Craddock became aware that sail had been reduced
in the vessel, and that she was tacking slowly, with a light breeze on
her beam. The varying slope of the sail-room and the sounds from the
deck told his practised senses exactly what she was doing. The short
reaches showed him that she was manoeuvring near shore, and making for
some definite point. If so, she must have reached Jamaica. But what
could she be doing there?

And then suddenly there was a burst of hearty cheering from the deck,
and then the crash of a gun above his head, and then the answering
booming of guns from far over the water. Craddock sat up and strained
his ears. Was the ship in action? Only the one gun had been fired, and
though many had answered there were none of the crashings which told of
a shot coming home.

Then, if it was not an action, it must be a salute. But who would salute
Sharkey, the pirate? It could only be another pirate ship which would do
so. So Craddock lay back again with a groan, and continued to work at
the manacle which still held his right wrist.

But suddenly there came the shuffling of steps outside, and he had
hardly time to wrap the loose links round his free hand, when the door
was unbolted and two pirates came in.

"Got your hammer, carpenter?" asked one, whom Craddock recognised as the
big quartermaster. "Knock off his leg shackles, then. Better leave the
bracelets--he's safer with them on."

With hammer and chisel the carpenter loosened the irons.

"What are you going to do with me?" asked Craddock.

"Come on deck and you'll see."

The sailor seized him by the arm and dragged him roughly to the foot of
the companion. Above him was a square of blue sky cut across by the
mizzen gaff with the colours flying at the peak. But it was the sight of
those colours which struck the breath from Stephen Craddock's lips. For
there were two of them, and the British ensign was flying above the
Jolly Rodger--the honest flag above that of the rogue.

For an instant Craddock stopped in amazement, but a brutal push from the
pirates behind drove him up the companion ladder. As he stepped out upon
deck, his eyes turned up to the main, and there again were the British
colours flying above the red pennant, and all the shrouds and rigging
were garlanded with streamers.

Had the ship been taken, then? But that was impossible, for there were
the pirates clustering in swarms along the port bulwarks, and waving
their hats joyously in the air. Most prominent of all was the renegade
mate, standing on the foc'sle head, and gesticulating wildly. Craddock
looked over the side to see what they were cheering at, and then in a
flash he saw how critical was the moment.

On the port bow, and about a mile off, lay the white houses and forts of
Port Royal, with flags breaking out everywhere over their roofs. Right
ahead was the opening of the palisades leading to the town of Kingston.
Not more than a quarter of a mile off was a small sloop working out
against the very slight wind. The British ensign was at her peak, and
her rigging was all decorated. On her deck could be seen a dense crowd
of people cheering and waving their hats, and the gleam of scarlet told
that there were officers of the garrison among them.

In an instant, with the quick perception of a man of action, Craddock
saw through it all. Sharkey, with that diabolical cunning and audacity
which were among his main characteristics, was simulating the part which
Craddock would himself have played, had he come back victorious. It was
in _his_ honour that the salutes were firing and the flags flying. It
was to welcome _him_ that this ship with the Governor, the commandant,
and the chiefs of the island was approaching. In another ten minutes
they would all be under the guns of the _Happy Delivery_, and Sharkey
would have won the greatest stake that ever a pirate played for yet.

"Bring him forward," cried the pirate captain, as Craddock appeared
between the carpenter and the quartermaster. "Keep the ports closed, but
clear away the port guns, and stand by for a broadside. Another two
cable lengths and we have them."

"They are edging away," said the boatswain. "I think they smell us."

"That's soon set right," said Sharkey, turning his filmy eyes upon
Craddock. "Stand there, you--right there, where they can recognise you,
with your hand on the guy, and wave your hat to them. Quick, or your
brains will be over your coat. Put an inch of your knife into him, Ned.
Now, will you wave your hat? Try him again, then. Hey, shoot him! stop
him!"

But it was too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had
taken his hands for a moment off Craddock's arm. In that instant he had
flung off the carpenter and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had
sprung the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and
hit again, but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man
who has his mind set upon doing something before he dies. He was a
strong swimmer, and, in spite of the red trail which he left in the
water behind him, he was rapidly increasing his distance from the
pirate.

"Give me a musket!" cried Sharkey, with a savage oath.

He was a famous shot, and his iron nerves never failed him in an
emergency. The dark head appearing on the crest of a roller, and then
swooping down on the other side, was already half-way to the sloop.
Sharkey dwelt long upon his aim before he fired. With the crack of the
gun the swimmer reared himself up in the water, waved his hands in a
gesture of warning, and roared out in a voice which rang over the bay.
Then, as the sloop swung round her head-sails, and the pirate fired an
impotent broadside, Stephen Craddock, smiling grimly in his death agony,
sank slowly down to that golden couch which glimmered far beneath him.

THE BLIGHTING OF SHARKEY

Sharkey, the abominable Sharkey, was out again. After two years of the
Coromandel coast, his black barque of death, the _Happy Delivery_, was
prowling off the Spanish Main, while trader and fisher flew for dear
life at the menace of that patched fore-topsail, rising slowly over the
violet rim of the tropical sea.

As the birds cower when the shadow of the hawk falls athwart the field,
or as the jungle folk crouch and shiver when the coughing cry of the
tiger is heard in the night-time, so through all the busy world of
ships, from the whalers of Nantucket to the tobacco ships of Charleston,
and from the Spanish supply ships of Cadiz to the sugar merchants of the
Main, there spread the rumour of the black curse of the ocean.

Some hugged the shore, ready to make for the nearest port, while others
struck far out beyond the known lines of commerce, but none were so
stout-hearted that they did not breathe more freely when their
passengers and cargoes were safe under the guns of some mothering fort.

Through all the islands there ran tales of charred derelicts at sea, of
sudden glares seen afar in the night-time, and of withered bodies
stretched upon the sand of waterless Bahama Keys. All the old signs were
there to show that Sharkey was at his bloody game once more.

These fair waters and yellow-rimmed palm-nodding islands are the
traditional home of the sea rover. First it was the gentleman
adventurer, the man of family and honour, who fought as a patriot,
though he was ready to take his payment in Spanish plunder.

Then, within a century, his debonair figure had passed to make room for
the buccaneers, robbers pure and simple, yet with some organised code of
their own, commanded by notable chieftains, and taking in hand great
concerted enterprises.

They, too, passed with their fleets and their sacking of cities, to make
room for the worst of all, the lonely, outcast pirate, the bloody
Ishmael of the seas, at war with the whole human race. This was the vile
brood which the early eighteenth century had spawned forth, and of them
all there was none who could compare in audacity, wickedness, and evil
repute with the unutterable Sharkey.

It was early in May, in the year 1720, that the _Happy Delivery_ lay
with her fore-yard aback some five leagues west of the Windward Passage,
waiting to see what rich, helpless craft the trade-wind might bring down
to her.

Three days she had lain there, a sinister black speck, in the centre of
the great sapphire circle of the ocean. Far to the south-east the low
blue hills of Hispaniola showed up on the skyline.

Hour by hour as he waited without avail, Sharkey's savage temper had
risen, for his arrogant spirit chafed against any contradiction, even
from Fate itself. To his quartermaster, Ned Galloway, he had said that
night, with his odious neighing laugh, that the crew of the next
captured vessel should answer to him for having kept him waiting so
long.

The cabin of the pirate barque was a good-sized room, hung with much
tarnished finery, and presenting a strange medley of luxury and
disorder. The panelling of carved and polished sandal-wood was blotched
with foul smudges and chipped with bullet-marks fired in some drunken
revelry.

Rich velvets and laces were heaped upon the brocaded settees, while
metal-work and pictures of great price filled every niche and corner,
for anything which caught the pirate's fancy in the sack of a hundred
vessels was thrown haphazard into his chamber. A rich, soft carpet
covered the floor, but it was mottled with wine-stains and charred with
burned tobacco.

Above, a great brass hanging-lamp threw a brilliant yellow light upon
this singular apartment, and upon the two men who sat in their
shirt-sleeves with the wine between them, and the cards in their hands,
deep in a game of piquet. Both were smoking long pipes, and the thin
blue reek filled the cabin and floated through the skylight above them,
which, half opened, disclosed a slip of deep violet sky spangled with
great silver stars.

Ned Galloway, the quartermaster, was a huge New England wastrel, the one
rotten branch upon a goodly Puritan family tree. His robust limbs and
giant frame were the heritage of a long line of God-fearing ancestors,
while his black savage heart was all his own. Bearded to the temples,
with fierce blue eyes, a tangled lion's mane of coarse, dark hair, and
huge gold rings in his ears, he was the idol of the women in every
waterside hell from the Tortugas to Maracaibo on the Main. A red cap, a
blue silken shirt, brown velvet breeches with gaudy knee-ribbons, and
high sea-boots made up the costume of the rover Hercules.

A very different figure was Captain John Sharkey. His thin, drawn,
clean-shaven face was corpse-like in its pallor, and all the suns of the
Indies could but turn it to a more deathly parchment tint. He was part
bald, with a few lank locks of tow-like hair, and a steep, narrow
forehead. His thin nose jutted sharply forth, and near-set on either
side of it were those filmy blue eyes, red-rimmed like those of a white
bull-terrier, from which strong men winced away in fear and loathing.
His bony hands, with long, thin fingers which quivered ceaselessly like
the antennae of an insect, were toying constantly with the cards and the
heap of gold moidores which lay before him. His dress was of some sober
drab material, but, indeed, the men who looked upon that fearsome face
had little thought for the costume of its owner.

The game was brought to a sudden interruption, for the cabin door was
swung rudely open, and two rough fellows--Israel Martin, the boatswain,
and Red Foley, the gunner--rushed into the cabin. In an instant Sharkey
was on his feet with a pistol in either hand and murder in his eyes.

"Sink you for villains!" he cried. "I see well that if I do not shoot
one of you from time to time you will forget the man I am. What mean you
by entering my cabin as though it were a Wapping alehouse?"

"Nay, Captain Sharkey," said Martin, with a sullen frown upon his
brick-red face, "it is even such talk as this which has set us by the
ears. We have had enough of it."

"And more than enough," said Red Foley, the gunner. "There be no mates
aboard a pirate craft, and so the boatswain, the gunner, and the
quartermaster are the officers."

"Did I gainsay it?" asked Sharkey with an oath.

"You have miscalled us and mishandled us before the men, and we scarce
know at this moment why we should risk our lives in fighting for the
cabin and against the foc'sle."

Sharkey saw that something serious was in the wind. He laid down his
pistols and leaned back in his chair with a flash of his yellow fangs.

"Nay, this is sad talk," said he, "that two stout fellows who have
emptied many a bottle and cut many a throat with me, should now fall out
over nothing. I know you to be roaring boys who would go with me against
the devil himself if I bid you. Let the steward bring cups and drown all
unkindness between us."

"It is no time for drinking, Captain Sharkey," said Martin. "The men are
holding council round the mainmast, and may be aft at any minute. They
mean mischief, Captain Sharkey, and we have come to warn you."

Sharkey sprang for the brass-handled sword which hung from the wall.

"Sink them for rascals!" he cried. "When I have gutted one or two of
them they may hear reason."

But the others barred his frantic way to the door.

"There are forty of them under the lead of Sweetlocks, the master," said
Martin, "and on the open deck they would surely cut you to pieces. Here
within the cabin it may be that we can hold them off at the points of
our pistols." He had hardly spoken when there came the tread of many
heavy feet upon the deck. Then there was a pause with no sound but the
gentle lapping of the water against the sides of the pirate vessel.
Finally, a crashing blow as from a pistol-butt fell upon the door, and
an instant afterwards Sweetlocks himself, a tall, dark man, with a deep
red birth-mark blazing upon his cheek, strode into the cabin. His
swaggering air sank somewhat as he looked into those pale and filmy
eyes.

"Captain Sharkey," said he, "I come as spokesman of the crew."

"So I have heard, Sweetlocks," said the captain, softly. "I may live to
rip you the length of your vest for this night's work."

"That is as it may be, Captain Sharkey," the master answered, "but if
you will look up you will see that I have those at my back who will not
see me mishandled."

"Cursed if we do!" growled a deep voice from above, and glancing upwards
the officers in the cabin were aware of a line of fierce, bearded,
sun-blackened faces looking down at them through the open skylight.

"Well, what would you have?" asked Sharkey. "Put it in words, man, and
let us have an end of it."

"The men think," said Sweetlocks, "that you are the devil himself, and
that there will be no luck for them whilst they sail the sea in such
company. Time was when we did our two or three craft a day, and every
man had women and dollars to his liking, but now for a long week we have
not raised a sail, and save for three beggarly sloops, have taken never
a vessel since we passed the Bahama Bank. Also, they know that you
killed Jack Bartholomew, the carpenter, by beating his head in with a
bucket, so that each of us goes in fear of his life. Also, the rum has
given out, and we are hard put to it for liquor. Also, you sit in your
cabin whilst it is in the articles that you should drink and roar with
the crew. For all these reasons it has been this day in general meeting
decreed----"

Sharkey had stealthily cocked a pistol under the table, so it may have
been as well for the mutinous master that he never reached the end of
his discourse, for even as he came to it there was a swift patter of
feet upon the deck, and a ship lad, wild with his tidings, rushed into
the room.

"A craft!" he yelled. "A great craft, and close aboard us!"

In a flash the quarrel was forgotten, and the pirates were rushing to
quarters. Sure enough, surging slowly down before the gentle trade-wind,
a great full-rigged ship, with all sail set, was close beside them.

It was clear that she had come from afar and knew nothing of the ways of
the Caribbean Sea, for she made no effort to avoid the low, dark craft
which lay so close upon her bow, but blundered on as if her mere size
would avail her.

So daring was she, that for an instant the Rovers, as they flew to loose
the tackles of their guns, and hoisted their battle-lanterns, believed
that a man-of-war had caught them napping.

But at the sight of her bulging, portless sides and merchant rig a shout
of exultation broke from amongst them, and in an instant they had swung
round their fore-yard, and darting alongside they had grappled with her
and flung a spray of shrieking, cursing ruffians upon her deck.

Half a dozen seamen of the night-watch were cut down where they stood,
the mate was felled by Sharkey and tossed overboard by Ned Galloway, and
before the sleepers had time to sit up in their berths, the vessel was
in the hands of the pirates.

The prize proved to be the full-rigged ship _Portobello_--Captain Hardy,
master--bound from London to Kingston in Jamaica, with a cargo of cotton
goods and hoop-iron.

Having secured their prisoners, all huddled together in a dazed,
distracted group, the pirates spread over the vessel in search of
plunder, handing all that was found to the giant quartermaster, who in
turn passed it over the side of the _Happy Delivery_ and laid it under
guard at the foot of her mainmast.

The cargo was useless, but there were a thousand guineas in the ship's
strong-box, and there were some eight or ten passengers, three of them
wealthy Jamaica merchants, all bringing home well-filled boxes from
their London visit.

When all the plunder was gathered, the passengers and crew were dragged
to the waist, and under the cold smile of Sharkey each in turn was
thrown over the side--Sweetlocks standing by the rail and hamstringing
them with his cutlass as they passed over, lest some strong swimmer
should rise in judgment against them. A portly, grey-haired woman, the
wife of one of the planters, was among the captives, but she also was
thrust screaming and clutching over the side.

"Mercy, you hussy!" neighed Sharkey, "you are surely a good twenty
years too old for that."

The captain of the _Portobello_, a hale, blue-eyed grey-beard, was the
last upon the deck. He stood, a thick-set resolute figure, in the glare
of the lanterns, while Sharkey bowed and smirked before him.

"One skipper should show courtesy to another," said he, "and sink me if
Captain Sharkey would be behind in good manners! I have held you to the
last, as you see, where a brave man should be; so now, my bully, you
have seen the end of them, and may step over with an easy mind."

"So I shall, Captain Sharkey," said the old seaman, "for I have done my
duty so far as my power lay. But before I go over I would say a word in
your ear."

"If it be to soften me, you may save your breath. You have kept us
waiting here for three days, and curse me if one of you shall live!"

"Nay, it is to tell you what you should know. You have not yet found
what is the true treasure aboard of this ship."

"Not found it? Sink me, but I will slice your liver, Captain Hardy, if
you do not make good your words! Where is this treasure you speak of?"

"It is not a treasure of gold, but it is a fair maid, which may be no
less welcome."

"Where is she, then? And why was she not with the others?"

"I will tell you why she was not with the others. She is the only
daughter of the Count and Countess Ramirez, who are amongst those whom
you have murdered. Her name is Inez Ramirez, and she is of the best
blood of Spain, her father being Governor of Chagre, to which he was now
bound. It chanced that she was found to have formed an attachment, as
maids will, to one far beneath her in rank aboard this ship; so her
parents, being people of great power, whose word is not to be gainsaid,
constrained me to confine her close in a special cabin aft of my own.
Here she was held straitly, all food being carried to her, and she
allowed to see no one. This I tell you as a last gift, though why I
should make it to you I do not know, for indeed you are a most bloody
rascal, and it comforts me in dying to think that you will surely be
gallow's-meat in this world, and hell's-meat in the next."

At the words he ran to the rail, and vaulted over into the darkness,
praying as he sank into the depths of the sea, that the betrayal of this
maid might not be counted too heavily against his soul.

The body of Captain Hardy had not yet settled upon the sand forty
fathoms deep before the pirates had rushed along the cabin gangway.
There, sure enough, at the further end, was a barred door, overlooked in
their previous search. There was no key, but they beat it in with their
gunstocks, whilst shriek after shriek came from within. In the light of
their outstretched, lanterns they saw a young woman, in the very prime
and fullness of her youth, crouching in a corner, her unkempt hair
hanging to the ground, her dark eyes glaring with fear, her lovely form
straining away in horror from this inrush of savage blood-stained men.
Rough hands seized her, she was jerked to her feet, and dragged with
scream on scream to where John Sharkey awaited her. He held the light
long and fondly to her face, then, laughing loudly, he bent forward and
left his red hand-print upon her cheek.

"'Tis the rovers' brand, lass, that he marks his ewes. Take her to the
cabin and use her well. Now, hearties, get her under water, and out to
our luck once more."

Within an hour the good ship _Portobello_ had settled down to her doom,
till she lay beside her murdered passengers upon the Caribbean sand,
while the pirate barque, her deck littered with plunder, was heading
northward in search of another victim.

There was a carouse that night in the cabin of the _Happy Delivery_, at
which three men drank deep. They were the captain, the quartermaster,
and Baldy Stable, the surgeon, a man who had held the first practice in
Charleston, until, misusing a patient, he fled from justice, and took
his skill over to the pirates. A bloated fat man he was, with a creased
neck and a great shining scalp, which gave him his name. Sharkey had put
for the moment all thought of mutiny out of his head, knowing that no
animal is fierce when it is over-fed, and that whilst the plunder of the
great ship was new to them he need fear no trouble from his crew. He
gave himself up, therefore, to the wine and the riot, shouting and
roaring with his boon companions. All three were flushed and mad, ripe
for any devilment, when the thought of the woman crossed the pirate's
evil mind. He yelled to the negro steward that he should bring her on
the instant.

Inez Ramirez had now realised it all--the death of her father and
mother, and her own position in the hands of their murderers. Yet
calmness had come with the knowledge, and there was no sign of terror in
her proud, dark face as she was led into the cabin, but rather a
strange, firm set of the mouth and an exultant gleam of the eyes, like
one who sees great hopes in the future. She smiled at the pirate captain
as he rose and seized her by the waist.

"'Fore God! this is a lass of spirit," cried Sharkey; passing his arm
round her. "She was born to be a Rover's bride. Come, my bird, and drink
to our better friendship."

"Article Six!" hiccoughed the doctor. "All _bona robas_ in common."

"Aye! we hold you to that, Captain Sharkey," said Galloway. "It is so
writ in Article Six."

"I will cut the man into ounces who comes betwixt us!" cried Sharkey, as
he turned his fish-like eyes from one to the other. "Nay, lass, the man
is not born that will take you from John Sharkey. Sit here upon my knee,
and place your arm round me so. Sink me, if she has not learned to love
me at sight! Tell me, my pretty, why you were so mishandled and laid in
the bilboes aboard yonder craft?"

The woman shook her head and smiled. "No Inglese--no Inglese," she
lisped. She had drunk off the bumper of wine which Sharkey held to her,
and her dark eyes gleamed more brightly than before. Sitting on
Sharkey's knee, her arm encircled his neck, and her hand toyed with his
hair, his ear, his cheek. Even the strange quartermaster and the
hardened surgeon felt a horror as they watched her, but Sharkey laughed
in his joy. "Curse me, if she is not a lass of metal!" he cried, as he
pressed her to him and kissed her unresisting lips.

But a strange intent look of interest had come into the surgeon's eyes
as he watched her, and his face set rigidly, as if a fearsome thought
had entered his mind. There stole a grey pallor over his bull face,
mottling all the red of the tropics and the flush of the wine.

"Look at her hand, Captain Sharkey!" he cried. "For the Lord's sake,
look at her hand!"

Sharkey stared down at the hand which had fondled him. It was of a
strange dead pallor, with a yellow shiny web betwixt the fingers. All
over it was a white fluffy dust, like the flour of a new-baked loaf. It
lay thick on Sharkey's neck and cheek. With a cry he flung the woman
from his lap; but in an instant, with a wild-cat bound, and a scream of
triumphant malice, she had sprung at the surgeon, who vanished yelling
under the table. One of her clawing hands grasped Galloway by the beard,
but he tore himself away, and snatching a pike, held her off from him as
she gibbered and mowed with the blazing eyes of a maniac.

The black steward had run in on the sudden turmoil, and among them they
forced the mad creature back into the cabin and turned the key upon her.
Then the three sank panting into their chairs and looked with eyes of
horror upon each other. The same word was in the mind of each, but
Galloway was the first to speak it.

"A leper!" he cried. "She has us all, curse her!"

"Not me," said the surgeon; "she never laid her finger on me."

"For that matter," cried Galloway, "it was but my beard that she
touched. I will have every hair of it off before morning."

"Dolts that we are!" the surgeon shouted, beating his head with-his
hand. "Tainted or no, we shall never know a moment's peace till the year
is up and the time of danger past. 'Fore God, that merchant skipper has
left his mark on us, and pretty fools we were to think that such a maid
would be quarantined for the cause he gave. It is easy to see now that
her corruption broke forth in the journey, and that save throwing her
over they had no choice but to board her up until they should come to
some port with a lazarette."

Sharkey had sat leaning back in his chair with a ghastly face while he
listened to the surgeon's words. He mopped himself with his red
handkerchief, and wiped away the fatal dust with which he was smeared.

"What of me?" he croaked. "What say you, Baldy Stable? Is there a chance
for me? Curse you for a villain! speak out, or I will drub you within an
inch of your life, and that inch also! Is there a chance for me, I say!"

But the surgeon shook his head. "Captain Sharkey," said he, "it would be
an ill deed to speak you false. The taint is on you. No man on whom the
leper scales have rested is ever clean again."

Sharkey's head fell forward on his chest, and he sat motionless,
stricken by this great and sudden horror, looking with his smouldering
eyes into his fearsome future. Softly the mate and the surgeon rose from
their places, and stealing out from the poisoned air of the cabin, came
forth into the freshness of the early dawn, with the soft, scent-laden
breeze in their faces and the first red feathers of cloud catching the
earliest gleam of the rising sun as it shot its golden rays over the
palm-clad ridges of distant Hispaniola.

That morning a second council of the Rovers was held at the base of the
mainmast, and a deputation chosen to see the captain. They were
approaching the after-cabins when Sharkey came forth, the old devil in
his eyes, and his bandolier with a pair of pistols over his shoulder.

"Sink you all for villains!" he cried. "Would you dare cross my hawse?
Stand out, Sweetlocks, and I will lay you open! Here, Galloway, Martin,
Foley, stand by me and lash the dogs to their kennel!"

But his officers had deserted him, and there was none to come to his
aid. There was a rush of the pirates. One was shot through the body, but
an instant afterwards Sharkey had been seized and was triced to his own
mainmast. His filmy eyes looked round from face to face, and there was
none who felt the happier for having met them.

"Captain Sharkey," said Sweetlocks, "you have mishandled many of us, and
you have now pistolled John Masters, besides killing Bartholomew, the
carpenter, by braining him with a bucket. All this might have been
forgiven you, in that you have been our leader for years, and that we
have signed articles to serve under you while the voyage lasts. But now
we have heard of this _bona roba_ on board, and we know that you are
poisoned to the marrow, and that while you rot there will be no safety
for any of us, but that we shall all be turned into filth and
corruption. Therefore, John Sharkey, we Rovers of the _Happy Delivery_,
in council assembled, have decreed that while there be yet time, before
the plague spreads, you shall be set adrift in a boat to find such a
fate as Fortune may be pleased to send you."

John Sharkey said nothing, but slowly circling his head, he cursed them
all with his baleful gaze. The ship's dinghy had been lowered, and he,
with his hands still tied, was dropped into it on the bight of a rope.

"Cast her off!" cried Sweetlocks.

"Nay, hold hard a moment, Master Sweetlocks!" shouted one of the crew.
"What of the wench? Is she to bide aboard and poison us all?"

"Send her off with her mate!" cried another, and the Rovers roared their
approval. Driven forth at the end of pikes, the girl was pushed towards
the boat. With all the spirit of Spain in her rotting body she flashed
triumphant glances on her captors.

"Perros! Perros Ingleses! Lepero, Lepero!" she cried in exultation, as
they thrust her over into the boat.

"Good luck, captain! God speed you on your honeymoon!" cried a chorus of
mocking voices, as the painter was unloosed, and the _Happy Delivery_,
running full before the trade-wind, left the little boat astern, a tiny
dot upon the vast expanse of the lonely sea.

Extract from the log of H.M. fifty-gun ship _Hecate_ in her cruise off
the American Main.

     "_Jan. 26, 1721._--This day, the junk having become unfit for
     food, and five of the crew down with scurvy, I ordered that we
     send two boats ashore at the nor'-western point of Hispaniola,
     to seek for fresh fruit, and perchance shoot some of the wild
     oxen with which the island abounds.

     "_7 p.m._--The boats have returned with good store of green
     stuff and two bullocks. Mr. Woodruff, the master, reports that
     near the landing-place at the edge of the forest was found the
     skeleton of a woman, clad in European dress, of such sort as to
     show that she may have been a person of quality. Her head had
     been crushed by a great stone which lay beside her. Hard by was
     a grass hut, and signs that a man had dwelt therein for some
     time, as was shown by charred wood, bones and other traces.
     There is a rumour upon the coast that Sharkey, the bloody
     pirate, was marooned in these parts last year, but whether he
     has made his way into the interior, or whether he has been
     picked up by some craft, there is no means of knowing. If he be
     once again afloat, then I pray that God send him under our
     guns."

IV

HOW COPLEY BANKS SLEW CAPTAIN SHARKEY

The Buccaneers were something higher than a mere band of marauders. They
were a floating republic, with laws, usages, and discipline of their
own. In their endless and remorseless quarrel with the Spaniards they
had some semblance of right upon their side. Their bloody harryings of
the cities of the Main were not more barbarous than the inroads of Spain
upon the Netherlands--or upon the Caribs in these same American lands.

The chief of the Buccaneers, were he English or French, a Morgan or a
Granmont, was still a responsible person, whose country might
countenance him, or even praise him, so long as he refrained from any
deed which might shock the leathery seventeenth-century conscience too
outrageously. Some of them were touched with religion, and it is still
remembered how Sawkins threw the dice overboard upon the Sabbath, and
Daniel pistolled a man before the altar for irreverence.

But there came a day when the fleets of the Buccaneers no longer
mustered at the Tortugas, and the solitary and outlawed pirate took
their place. Yet even with him the tradition of restraint and of
discipline still lingered; and among the early pirates, the Avorys, the
Englands, and the Robertses, there remained some respect for human
sentiment. They were more dangerous to the merchant than to the seaman.

But they in turn were replaced by more savage and desperate men, who
frankly recognised that they would get no quarter in their war with the
human race, and who swore that they would give as little as they got. Of
their histories we know little that is trustworthy. They wrote no
memoirs and left no trace, save an occasional blackened and
blood-stained derelict adrift upon the face of the Atlantic. Their deeds
could only be surmised from the long roll of ships which never made
their port.

Searching the records of history, it is only here and there in an
old-world trial that the veil that shrouds them seems for an instant to
be lifted, and we catch a glimpse of some amazing and grotesque
brutality behind. Such was the breed of Ned Low, of Gow the Scotchman,
and of the infamous Sharkey, whose coal-black barque, the _Happy
Delivery_, was known from the Newfoundland Banks to the mouths of the
Orinoco as the dark forerunner of misery and of death.

There were many men, both among the islands and on the main, who had a
blood feud with Sharkey, but not one who had suffered more bitterly than
Copley Banks, of Kingston. Banks had been one of the leading sugar
merchants of the West Indies. He was a man of position, a member of the
Council, the husband of a Percival, and the cousin of the Governor of
Virginia. His two sons had been sent to London to be educated, and their
mother had gone over to bring them back. On their return voyage the
ship, the _Duchess of Cornwall_, fell into the hands of Sharkey, and the
whole family met with an infamous death.

Copley Banks said little when he heard the news, but he sank into a
morose and enduring melancholy. He neglected his business, avoided his
friends, and spent much of his time in the low taverns of the fishermen
and seamen. There, amidst riot and devilry, he sat silently puffing at
his pipe, with a set face and a smouldering eye. It was generally
supposed that his misfortunes had shaken his wits, and his old friends
looked at him askance, for the company which he kept was enough to bar
him from honest men.

From time to time there came rumours of Sharkey over the sea. Sometimes
it was from some schooner which had seen a great flame upon the horizon,
and approaching to offer help to the burning ship, had fled away at the
sight of the sleek, black barque, lurking like a wolf near a mangled
sheep. Sometimes it was a frightened trader, which had come tearing in
with her canvas curved like a lady's bodice, because she had seen a
patched fore-topsail rising slowly above the violet water-line.
Sometimes it was from a Coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama Cay
littered with sun-dried bodies.

Once there came a man who had been mate of a Guineaman, and who had
escaped from the pirate's hands. He could not speak--for reasons which
Sharkey could best supply--but he could write, and he did write, to the
very great interest of Copley Banks. For hours they sat together over
the map, and the dumb man pointed here and there to outlying reefs and
tortuous inlets, while his companion sat smoking in silence, with his
unvarying face and his fiery eyes.

One morning, some two years after his misfortune, Mr. Copley Banks
strode into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness. The
manager stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had shown
any interest in business.

"Good morning, Mr. Banks!" said he.

"Good morning, Freeman. I see that _Ruffling Harry_ is in the Bay."

"Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday."

"I have other plans for her, Freeman. I have determined upon a slaving
venture to Whydah."

"But her cargo is ready, sir."

"Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the
_Ruffling Harry_ must go slaving to Whydah."

All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to
clear the ship once more.

And then Copley Banks began to make preparations for his African voyage.
It appeared that he relied upon force rather than barter for the filling
of his hold, for he carried none of those showy trinkets which savages
love, but the brig was fitted with eight nine-pounder guns and racks
full of muskets and cutlasses. The after sail-room next the cabin was
transformed into a powder magazine, and she carried as many round shot
as a well-found privateer. Water and provisions were shipped for a long
voyage.

But the preparation of his ship's company was most surprising. It made
Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that
his master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or
another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the
firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port--men
whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been
ashamed to furnish them.

There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been present at
the killing of the log-wood cutters, so that his hideous scarlet
disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from
that great crime. He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a
little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking
of Cape Coast Castle.

The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been
shaved, and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom
Sharkey had placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his
experiences to Copley Banks.

These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet uncommented upon in the town of
Kingston. The Commandant of the troops--Major Harvey, of the
Artillery--made serious representations to the Governor.

"She is not a trader, but a small warship," said he. "I think it would
be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the vessel."

"What do you suspect?" asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man,
broken down with fevers and port wine.

"I suspect," said the soldier, "that it is Stede Bonnet over again."

Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious
character, who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in
his blood, had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the
Caribbean Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the
utmost consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been
accused of being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions
upon their plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister
construction.

"Well, Major Harvey," said he, "I am vastly sorry to do anything which
may offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been
under his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for
me but to order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to
her character and destination."

So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers,
paid a surprise visit to the _Ruffling Harry_, with the result that they
picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the
moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented
danger. She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out
against the north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.

When upon the next morning the brig had left Morant Point a mere haze
upon the Southern horizon, the men were called aft, and Copley Banks
revealed his plans to them. He had chosen them, he said, as brisk boys
and lads of spirit, who would rather run some risk upon the sea than
starve for a living upon the shore. King's ships were few and weak, and
they could master any trader who might come their way. Others had done
well at the business, and with a handy, well-found vessel, there was no
reason why they should not turn their tarry jackets into velvet coats.
If they were prepared to sail under the black flag, he was ready to
command them; but if any wished to withdraw, they might have the gig and
row back to Jamaica.

Four men out of six-and-forty asked for their discharge, went over the
ship's side into the boat, and rowed away amidst the jeers and howlings
of the crew. The rest assembled aft, and drew up the articles of their
association. A square of black tarpaulin had the white skull painted
upon it, and was hoisted amidst cheering at the main.

Officers were elected, and the limits of their authority fixed. Copley
Banks was chosen Captain, but, as there are no mates upon a pirate
craft, Birthmark Sweetlocks became quartermaster, and Israel Martin the
boatswain. There was no difficulty in knowing what was the custom of the
brotherhood, for half the men at least had served upon pirates before.
Food should be the same for all, and no man should interfere with
another man's drink! The Captain should have a cabin, but all hands
should be welcome to enter it when they chose.

All should share and share alike, save only the captain, quartermaster,
boatswain, carpenter, and master-gunner, who had from a quarter to a
whole share extra. He who saw a prize first should have the best weapon
taken out of her. He who boarded her first should have the richest suit
of clothes aboard of her. Every man might treat his own prisoner, be it
man or woman, after his own fashion. If a man flinched from his gun, the
quartermaster should pistol him. These were some of the rules which the
crew of the _Ruffling Harry_ subscribed by putting forty-two crosses at
the foot of the paper upon which they had been drawn.

So a new rover was afloat upon the seas, and her name before a year was
over became as well known as that of the _Happy Delivery_. From the
Bahamas to the Leewards, and from the Leewards to the Windwards, Copley
Banks became the rival of Sharkey and the terror of traders. For a long
time the barque and the brig never met, which was the more singular, as
the _Ruffling Harry_ was for ever looking in at Sharkey's resorts; but
at last one day, when she was passing down the inlet of Coxon's Hole, at
the east end of Cuba, with the intention of careening, there was the
_Happy Delivery_, with her blocks and tackle-falls already rigged for
the same purpose.

Copley Banks fired a shotted salute and hoisted the green trumpeter
ensign, as the custom was among gentlemen of the sea. Then he dropped
his boat and went aboard.

Captain Sharkey was not a man of a genial mood, nor had he any kindly
sympathy for those who were of the same trade as himself. Copley Banks
found him seated astride upon one of the after guns, with his New
England quartermaster, Ned Galloway, and a crowd of roaring ruffians
standing about him. Yet none of them roared with quite such assurance
when Sharkey's pale face and filmy blue eyes were turned upon him.

He was in his shirt-sleeves, with his cambric frills breaking through
his open red satin long-flapped vest. The scorching sun seemed to have
no power upon his fleshless frame, for he wore a low fur cap, as though
it had been winter. A many-coloured band of silk passed across his body
and supported a short murderous sword, while his broad, brass-buckled
belt was stuffed with pistols.

"Sink you for a poacher!" he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the
bulwarks. "I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch
also! What mean you by fishing in my waters?"

Copley Banks looked at him, and his eyes were like those of a traveller
who sees his home at last.

"I am glad that we are of one mind," said he, "for I am myself of
opinion that the seas are not large enough for the two of us. But if you
will take your sword and pistols and come upon a sand-bank with me, then
the world will be rid of a damned villain whichever way it goes."

"Now, this is talking!" cried Sharkey, jumping off the gun and holding
out his hand. "I have not met many who could look John Sharkey in the
eyes and speak with a full breath. May the devil seize me if I do not
choose you as a consort! But if you play me false, then I will come
aboard of you and gut you upon your own poop."

"And I pledge you the same!" said Copley Banks, and so the two pirates
became sworn comrades to each other.

That summer they went north as far as the Newfoundland Banks, and
harried the New York traders and the whale-ships from New England. It
was Copley Banks who captured the Liverpool ship, _House of Hanover_,
but it was Sharkey who fastened her master to the windlass and pelted
him to death with empty claret-bottles.

Together they engaged the King's ship _Royal Fortune_, which had been
sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five
hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the
battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles
of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and
then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long
cruise down the West Indies.

By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends,
for Sharkey loved a wholehearted villain, and he loved a man of metal,
and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the _Ruffling
Harry_. It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold
suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself
outside his own ship and away from his own men.

But Copley Banks came often on board the _Happy Delivery_, and joined
Sharkey in many of his morose debauches, so that at last any lingering
misgivings of the latter were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil
that he had done to his new boon companion, for of his many victims how
could he remember the woman and the two boys whom he had slain with such
levity so long ago! When, therefore, he received a challenge to himself
and to his quartermaster for a carouse upon the last evening of their
stay at the Caicos Bank, he saw no reason to refuse.

A well-found passenger ship had been rifled the week before, so their
fare was of the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply
together. There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned
Galloway, and Israel Martin, the old buccaneersman. To wait upon them
was the dumb steward, whose head Sharkey split with his glass, because
he had been too slow in the filling of it.

The quartermaster had slipped Sharkey's pistols away from him, for it
was an old joke with him to fire them cross-handed under the table, and
see who was the luckiest man. It was a pleasantry which had cost his
boatswain his leg, so now, when the table was cleared, they would coax
Sharkey's weapons away from him on the excuse of the heat, and lay them
out of his reach.

The Captain's cabin of the _Ruffling Harry_ was in a deck-house upon the
poop, and a sternchaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot
were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a
stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates
sang and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up
their glasses, and passed the box and the candle round for their
tobacco-pipes. Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices
hoarser, the curses and shoutings more incoherent, until three of the
five had closed their blood-shot eyes, and dropped their swimming heads
upon the table.

Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had
drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake
his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the watchful
steward, for ever filling up his waning glass. From without came the low
lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor's chanty from the
barque.

In the windless tropical night the words came clearly to their ears:

        "A trader sailed from Stepney Town,
    Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!
        A trader sailed from Stepney Town
          With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
          Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
          Waiting with his yard aback
        Out upon the Lowland Sea."

The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks
glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the
shot-rack behind him.

"Captain Sharkey," said Copley Banks, "do you remember the _Duchess of
Cornwall_, hailing from London, which you took and sank three years ago
off the Statira Shoal?"

"Curse me if I can bear their names in mind," said Sharkey. "We did as
many as ten ships a week about that time."

"There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. Maybe that will
bring it back to your mind."

Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.

"But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!" he cried. "How came
you to think of it?"

"It was of interest to me," said Copley Banks, "for the woman was my
wife and the lads were my only sons."

Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering
fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame.
He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt. Then
he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round him,
and in an instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like a wild
cat and screamed for help.

"Ned!" he yelled. "Ned! Wake up! Here's damned villainy! Help, Ned,
help!"

But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for
any voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey was
swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a
handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at
them. The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for
the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him. He understood
that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him
at last.

The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
elaborate.

First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder barrels,
and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor. They piled it
round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled in a heap of
it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced him sitting
over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the muzzle. Wriggle
as he would he could not move an inch either to right or left, and the
dumb man trussed him up with a sailor's cunning, so that there was no
chance that he should work free.

"Now, you bloody devil," said Copley Banks, softly, "you must listen to
what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will
hear. You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have
given all that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as
well.

"To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove
against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learnt that
there was no other way. I've robbed and I have murdered--worse still, I
have laughed and lived with you--and all for the one end. And now my
time has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the
shadow creeping slowly upon you and the devil waiting for you in the
shadow."

Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty
over the water.

        "Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
    Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!
      Where is the trader of Stepney Town?
      His gold's on the capstan, his blood's on his gown.
        All for bully rover Jack,
        Reaching on the weather tack
      Right across the Lowland Sea."

The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men
pacing backwards and forwards upon the deck. And yet he was helpless,
staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to
utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the
deck of the barque.

      "So it's up and it's over to Stornoway Bay,
    Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with the stun-sails!
      It's off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay,
      Where the liquor is good and the lasses are gay,
        Waiting for their bully Jack,
        Watching for him sailing back,
    Right across the Lowland Sea."

To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own
fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in his venomous blue
eyes. Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had
sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the
candle and cut it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon
the loose powder at the breach of the gun. Then he scattered powder
thickly over the floor beneath, so that when the candle fell at the
recoil it must explode the huge pile in which the three drunkards were
wallowing.

"You've made others look death in the face, Sharkey," said he; "now it
has come to be your own turn. You and these swine here shall go
together!" He lit the candle-end as he spoke, and blew out the other
lights upon the table. Then he passed out with the dumb man, and locked
the cabin door upon the outer side. But before he closed it he took an
exultant look backwards and received one last curse from those
unconquerable eyes. In the single dim circle of light that ivory-white
face, with the gleam of moisture upon the high, bald forehead, was the
last that was ever seen of Sharkey.

There was a skiff alongside, and in it Copley Banks and the dumb steward
made their way to the beach, and looked back upon the brig riding in the
moonlight just outside the shadow of the palm trees. They waited and
waited, watching that dim light which shone through the stern port. And
then at last there came the dull thud of a gun, and an instant later the
shattering crash of the explosion. The long, sleek, black barque, the
sweep of white sand, and the fringe of nodding, feathery palm trees
sprang into dazzling light and back into darkness again. Voices screamed
and called upon the bay.

Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him touched his companion
upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely jungle of
the Caicos.

V

THE "SLAPPING SAL"

It was in the days when France's power was already broken upon the seas,
and when more of her three-deckers lay rotting in the Medway than were
to be found in Brest harbour. But her frigates and corvettes still
scoured the ocean, closely followed ever by those of her rival. At the
uttermost ends of the earth these dainty vessels, with sweet names of
girls or of flowers, mangled and shattered each other for the honour of
the four yards of bunting which flapped from the end of their gaffs.

It had blown hard in the night, but the wind had dropped with the
dawning, and now the rising sun tinted the fringe of the storm-wrack as
it dwindled into the west and glinted on the endless crests of the long,
green waves. To north and south and west lay a skyline which was
unbroken save by the spout of foam when two of the great Atlantic seas
dashed each other into spray. To the east was a rocky island, jutting
out into craggy points, with a few scattered clumps of palm trees and a
pennant of mist streaming out from the bare, conical hill which capped
it. A heavy surf beat upon the shore, and, at a safe distance from it,
the British 32-gun frigate _Leda_, Captain A. P. Johnson, raised her
black, glistening side upon the crest of a wave, or swooped down into an
emerald valley, dipping away to the nor'ard under easy sail. On her
snow-white quarter-deck stood a stiff little brown-faced man, who swept
the horizon with his glass.

"Mr. Wharton!" he cried, with a voice like a rusty hinge.

A thin, knock-kneed officer shambled across the poop to him.

"Yes, sir."

"I've opened the sealed orders, Mr. Wharton."

A glimmer of curiosity shone upon the meagre features of the first
lieutenant. The _Leda_ had sailed with her consort, the _Dido_, from
Antigua the week before, and the admiral's orders had been contained in
a sealed envelope.

"We were to open them on reaching the deserted island of Sombriero,
lying in north latitude eighteen, thirty-six, west longitude
sixty-three, twenty-eight. Sombriero bore four miles to the north-east
from our port-bow when the gale cleared, Mr. Wharton."

The lieutenant bowed stiffly. He and the captain had been bosom friends
from childhood. They had gone to school together, joined the navy
together, fought again and again together, and married into each other's
families, but so long as their feet were on the poop the iron discipline
of the service struck all that was human out of them and left only the
superior and the subordinate. Captain Johnson took from his pocket a
blue paper, which crackled as he unfolded it.

     "The 32-gun frigates _Leda_ and _Dido_ (Captains A. P. Johnson
     and James Munro) are to cruise from the point at which these
     instructions are read to the mouth of the Caribbean sea, in the
     hope of encountering the French frigate _La Gloire_ (48), which
     has recently harassed our merchant ships in that quarter. H.M.
     frigates are also directed to hunt down the piratical craft
     known sometimes as the _Slapping Sal_ and sometimes as the
     _Hairy Hudson_, which has plundered the British ships as per
     margin, inflicting barbarities upon their crews. She is a small
     brig, carrying ten light guns, with one twenty-four pound
     carronade forward. She was last seen upon the 23rd. ult. to the
     north-east of the island of Sombriero.

    "(Signed) JAMES MONTGOMERY

    "(_Rear-Admiral_).

    "H.M.S. _Colossus_, Antigua."

"We appear to have lost our consort," said Captain Johnson, folding up
his instructions and again sweeping the horizon with his glass. "She
drew away after we reefed down. It would be a pity if we met this heavy
Frenchman without the _Dido_, Mr. Wharton. Eh?"

The lieutenant twinkled and smiled.

"She has eighteen-pounders on the main and twelves on the poop, sir,"
said the captain. "She carries four hundred to our two hundred and
thirty-one. Captain de Milon is the smartest man in the French service.
Oh, Bobby boy, I'd give my hopes of my flag to rub my side up against
her!" He turned on his heel, ashamed of his momentary lapse. "Mr.
Wharton," said he, looking back sternly over his shoulder, "get those
square sails shaken out and bear away a point more to the west."

"A brig on the port-bow," came a voice from the forecastle.

"A brig on the port-bow," said the lieutenant.

The captain sprang upon the bulwarks and held on by the mizzen-shrouds,
a strange little figure with flying skirts and puckered eyes. The lean
lieutenant craned his neck and whispered to Smeaton, the second, while
officers and men came popping up from below and clustered along the
weather-rail, shading their eyes with their hands--for the tropical sun
was already clear of the palm trees. The strange brig lay at anchor in
the throat of a curving estuary, and it was already obvious that she
could not get out without passing under the guns of the frigate. A long,
rocky point to the north of her held her in.

"Keep her as she goes, Mr. Wharton," said the captain. "Hardly worth
while our clearing for action, Mr. Smeaton, but the men can stand by the
guns in case she tries to pass us. Cast loose the bow-chasers and send
the small-arm men to the forecastle."

A British crew went to its quarters in those days with the quiet
serenity of men on their daily routine. In a few minutes, without fuss
or sound, the sailors were knotted round their guns, the marines were
drawn up and leaning on their muskets, and the frigate's bowsprit
pointed straight for her little victim.

"Is it the _Slapping Sal_, sir?"

"I have no doubt of it, Mr. Wharton."

"They don't seem to like the look of us, sir. They've cut their cable
and are clapping on sail."

It was evident that the brig meant struggling for her freedom. One
little patch of canvas fluttered out above another, and her people could
be seen working like madmen in the rigging. She made no attempt to pass
her antagonist, but headed up the estuary. The captain rubbed his hands.

"She's making for shoal water, Mr. Wharton, and we shall have to cut her
out, sir. She's a footy little brig, but I should have thought a
fore-and-after would have been more handy."

"It was a mutiny, sir."

"Ah, indeed!"

"Yes, sir, I heard of it at Manilla: a bad business, sir. Captain and
two mates murdered. This Hudson, or Hairy Hudson as they call him, led
the mutiny. He's a Londoner, sir, and a cruel villain as ever walked."

"His next walk will be to Execution Dock, Mr. Wharton. She seems heavily
manned. I wish I could take twenty topmen out of her, but they would be
enough to corrupt the crew of the ark, Mr. Wharton."

Both officers were looking through their glasses at the brig. Suddenly
the lieutenant showed his teeth in a grin, while the captain flushed a
deeper red.

"That's Hairy Hudson on the after-rail, sir."

"The low, impertinent blackguard! He'll play some other antics before we
are done with him. Could you reach him with the long eighteen, Mr.
Smeaton?"

"Another cable length will do it, sir."

The brig yawed as they spoke, and as she came round a spurt of smoke
whiffed out from her quarter. It was a pure piece of bravado, for the
gun could scarce carry half-way. Then with a jaunty swing the little
ship came into the wind again, and shot round a fresh curve in the
winding channel.

"The water's shoaling rapidly, sir," repeated the second lieutenant.

"There's six fathoms by the chart."

"Four by the lead, sir."

"When we clear this point we shall see how we lie. Ha! I thought as
much! Lay her to, Mr. Wharton. Now we have got her at our mercy!"

The frigate was quite out of sight of the sea now at the head of this
river-like estuary. As she came round the curve the two shores were seen
to converge at a point about a mile distant. In the angle, as near shore
as she could get, the brig was lying with her broadside towards her
pursuer and a wisp of black cloth streaming from her mizzen. The lean
lieutenant, who had reappeared upon deck with a cutlass strapped to his
side and two pistols rammed into his belt, peered curiously at the
ensign.

"Is it the Jolly Rodger, sir?" he asked.

But the captain was furious.

"He may hang where his breeches are hanging before I have done with
him!" said he. "What boats will you want, Mr. Wharton?"

"We should do it with the launch and the jolly-boat."

"Take four and make a clean job of it. Pipe away the crews at once, and
I'll work her in and help you with the long eighteens."

With a rattle of ropes and a creaking of blocks the four boats splashed
into the water. Their crews clustered thickly into them: bare-footed
sailors, stolid marines, laughing middies, and in the sheets of each the
senior officers with their stern schoolmaster faces. The captain, his
elbows on the binnacle, still watched the distant brig. Her crew were
tricing up the boarding-netting, dragging round the starboard guns,
knocking new portholes for them, and making every preparation for a
desperate resistance. In the thick of it all a huge man, bearded to the
eyes, with a red nightcap upon his head, was straining and stooping and
hauling. The captain watched him with a sour smile, and then snapping up
his glass he turned upon his heel. For an instant he stood staring.

"Call back the boats!" he cried in his thin, creaking voice. "Clear away
for action there! Cast loose those main-deck guns. Brace back the yards,
Mr. Smeaton, and stand by to go about when she has weigh enough."

Round the curve of the estuary was coming a huge vessel. Her great
yellow bowsprit and white-winged figure-head were jutting out from the
cluster of palm trees, while high above them towered three immense masts
with the tricolour flag floating superbly from the mizzen. Round she
came, the deep-blue water creaming under her fore foot, until her long,
curving, black side, her line of shining copper beneath and of
snow-white hammocks above, and the thick clusters of men who peered over
her bulwarks were all in full view. Her lower yards were slung, her
ports triced up, and her guns run out all ready for action. Lying behind
one of the promontories of the island, the lookout men of the _Gloire_
upon the shore had seen the _cul de sac_ into which the British frigate
was headed, so that Captain de Milon had served the _Leda_ as Captain
Johnson had the _Slapping Sal_.

But the splendid discipline of the British service was at its best in
such a crisis. The boats flew back; their crews clustered aboard, they
were swung up at the davits and the fall-ropes made fast. Hammocks were
brought up and stowed, bulkheads sent down, ports and magazines opened,
the fires put out in the galley, and the drums beat to quarters. Swarms
of men set the head-sails and brought the frigate round, while the
gun-crews threw off their jackets and shirts, tightened their belts, and
ran out their eighteen-pounders, peering through the open portholes at
the stately Frenchman. The wind was very light. Hardly a ripple showed
itself upon the clear blue water, but the sails blew gently out as the
breeze came over the wooded banks. The Frenchman had gone about also,
and both ships were now heading slowly for the sea under fore-and-aft
canvas, the _Gloire_ a hundred yards in advance. She luffed up to cross
the _Leda's_ bows, but the British ship came round also, and the two
rippled slowly on in such a silence that the ringing of ramrods as the
French marines drove home their charges clanged quite loudly upon the
ear.

"Not much sea-room, Mr. Wharton," remarked the captain.

"I have fought actions in less, sir."

"We must keep our distance and trust to our gunnery. She is very heavily
manned, and if she got alongside we might find ourselves in trouble."

"I see the shakos of soldiers aboard of her."

"Two companies of light infantry from Martinique. Now we have her!
Hard-a-port, and let her have it as we cross her stern!"

The keen eye of the little commander had seen the surface ripple, which
told of a passing breeze. He had used it to dart across the big
Frenchman and to rake her with every gun as he passed. But, once past
her, the _Leda_ had to come back into the wind to keep out of shoal
water. The manoeuvre brought her on to the starboard side of the
Frenchman, and the trim little frigate seemed to heel right over under
the crashing broadside which burst from the gaping ports. A moment later
her topmen were swarming aloft to set her topsails and royals, and she
strove to cross the _Gloire's_ bows and rake her again. The French
captain, however, brought his frigate's head round, and the two rode
side by side within easy pistol-shot, pouring broadsides into each other
in one of those murderous duels which, could they all be recorded, would
mottle our charts with blood.

In that heavy tropical air, with so faint a breeze, the smoke formed a
thick bank round the two vessels, from which the topmasts only
protruded. Neither could see anything of its enemy save the throbs of
fire in the darkness, and the guns were sponged and trained and fired
into a dense wall of vapour. On the poop and forecastle the marines, in
two little red lines, were pouring in their volleys, but neither they
nor the sea-men-gunners could see what effect their fire was having.
Nor, indeed, could they tell how far they were suffering themselves,
for, standing at a gun, one could but hazily see that upon the right and
the left. But above the roar of the cannon came the sharper sound of the
piping shot, the crashing of riven planks, and the occasional heavy thud
as spar or block came hurtling on to the deck. The lieutenants paced up
and down the line of guns, while Captain Johnson fanned the smoke away
with his cocked-hat and peered eagerly out.

"This is rare, Bobby!" said he, as the lieutenant joined him. Then,
suddenly restraining himself, "What have we lost, Mr. Wharton?"

"Our maintopsail yard and our gaff, sir."

"Where's the flag?"

"Gone overboard, sir."

"They'll think we've struck! Lash a boat's ensign on the starboard arm
of the mizzen cross-jackyard."

"Yes, sir."

A round-shot dashed the binnacle to pieces between them. A second
knocked two marines into a bloody, palpitating mash. For a moment the
smoke rose, and the English captain saw that his adversary's heavier
metal was producing a horrible effect. The _Leda_ was a shattered wreck.
Her deck was strewed with corpses. Several of her portholes were knocked
into one, and one of her eighteen-pounder guns had been thrown right
back on to her breech, and pointed straight up to the sky. The thin line
of marines still loaded and fired, but half the guns were silent, and
their crews were piled thickly round them.

"Stand by to repel boarders!" yelled the captain.

"Cutlasses, lads, cutlasses!" roared Wharton.

"Hold your volley till they touch!" cried the captain of marines.

The huge loom of the Frenchman was seen bursting through the smoke.
Thick clusters of boarders hung upon her sides and shrouds. A final
broadside leapt from her ports, and the mainmast of the _Leda_, snapping
short off a few feet above the deck, spun into the air and crashed down
upon the port guns, killing ten men and putting the whole battery out of
action. An instant later the two ships scraped together, and the
starboard bower anchor of the _Gloire_ caught the mizzen-chains of the
_Leda_ upon the port side. With a yell the black swarm of boarders
steadied themselves for a spring.

But their feet were never to reach that blood-stained deck. From
somewhere there came a well-aimed whiff of grape, and another, and
another. The English marines and seamen, waiting with cutlass and musket
behind the silent guns, saw with amazement the dark masses thinning and
shredding away. At the same time the port broadside of the Frenchman
burst into a roar.

"Clear away the wreck!" roared the captain. "What the devil are they
firing at?"

"Get the guns clear!" panted the lieutenant. "We'll do them yet, boys!"

The wreckage was torn and hacked and splintered until first one gun and
then another roared into action again. The Frenchman's anchor had been
cut away, and the _Leda_ had worked herself free from that fatal hug.
But now, suddenly, there was a scurry up the shrouds of the _Gloire_,
and a hundred Englishmen were shouting themselves hoarse: "They're
running! They're running! They're running!"

And it was true. The Frenchman had ceased to fire, and was intent only
upon clapping on every sail that he could carry. But that shouting
hundred could not claim it all as their own. As the smoke cleared it was
not difficult to see the reason. The ships had gained the mouth of the
estuary during the fight, and there, about four miles out to sea, was
the _Leda's_ consort bearing down under full sail to the sound of the
guns. Captain de Milon had done his part for one day, and presently the
_Gloire_ was drawing off swiftly to the north, while the _Dido_ was
bowling along at her skirts, rattling away with her bow-chasers, until a
headland hid them both from view.

But the _Leda_ lay sorely stricken, with her mainmast gone, her bulwarks
shattered, her mizzen-topmast and gaff shot away, her sails like a
beggar's rags, and a hundred of her crew dead and wounded. Close beside
her a mass of wreckage floated upon the waves. It was the stern-post of
a mangled vessel, and across it, in white letters on a black ground, was
painted, "_The Slapping Sal_."

"By the Lord! it was the brig that saved us!" cried Mr. Wharton. "Hudson
brought her into action with the Frenchman, and was blown out of the
water by a broadside!"

The little captain turned on his heel and paced up and down the deck.
Already his crew were plugging the shot-holes, knotting and splicing and
mending. When he came back, the lieutenant saw a softening of the stern
lines about his eyes and mouth.

"Are they all gone?"

"Every man. They must have sunk with the wreck."

The two officers looked down at the sinister name, and at the stump of
wreckage which floated in the discoloured water. Something black washed
to and fro beside a splintered gaff and a tangle of halliards. It was
the outrageous ensign, and near it a scarlet cap was floating.

"He was a villain, but he was a Briton!" said the captain, at last. "He
lived like a dog, but, by God, he died like a man!"

VI

A PIRATE OF THE LAND

ONE CROWDED HOUR

The place was the Eastbourne-Tunbridge road, not very far from the Cross
in Hand--a lonely stretch, with a heath running upon either side. The
time was half-past eleven upon a Sunday night in the late summer. A
motor was passing slowly down the road.

It was a long, lean Rolls-Royce, running smoothly with a gentle purring
of the engine. Through the two vivid circles cast by the electric
head-lights the waving grass fringes and clumps of heather streamed
swiftly like some golden cinematograph, leaving a blacker darkness
behind and around them. One ruby-red spot shone upon the road, but no
number-plate was visible within the dim ruddy halo of the tail-lamp
which cast it. The car was open and of a tourist type, but even in that
obscure light, for the night was moonless, an observer could hardly fail
to have noticed a curious indefiniteness in its lines. As it slid into
and across the broad stream of light from an open cottage door the
reason could be seen. The body was hung with a singular loose
arrangement of brown holland. Even the long black bonnet was banded with
some close-drawn drapery.

The solitary man who drove this curious car was broad and burly. He sat
hunched up over his steering-wheel, with the brim of a Tyrolean hat
drawn down over his eyes. The red end of a cigarette smouldered under
the black shadow thrown by the headgear. A dark ulster of some
frieze-like material was turned up in the collar until it covered his
ears. His neck was pushed forward from his rounded shoulders, and he
seemed, as the car now slid noiselessly down the long sloping road, with
the clutch disengaged and the engine running free, to be peering ahead
of him through the darkness in search of some eagerly-expected object.

The distant toot of a motor-horn came faintly from some point far to the
south of him. On such a night, at such a place, all traffic must be from
south to north when the current of London week-enders sweeps back from
the watering-place to the capital--from pleasure to duty. The man sat
straight and listened intently. Yes, there it was again, and certainly
to the south of him. His face was over the wheel and his eyes strained
through the darkness. Then suddenly he spat out his cigarette and gave a
sharp intake of the breath. Far away down the road two little yellow
points had rounded a curve. They vanished into a dip, shot upwards once
more, and then vanished again. The inert man in the draped car woke
suddenly into intense life. From his pocket he pulled a mask of dark
cloth, which he fastened securely across his face, adjusting it
carefully that his sight might be unimpeded. For an instant he uncovered
an acetylene hand-lantern, took a hasty glance at his own preparations,
and laid it beside a Mauser pistol upon the seat alongside him. Then,
twitching his hat down lower than ever, he released his clutch and slid
downward his gear-lever. With a chuckle and shudder the long, black
machine sprang forward, and shot with a soft sigh from her powerful
engines down the sloping gradient. The driver stooped and switched off
his electric head-lights. Only a dim grey swathe cut through the black
heath indicated the line of his road. From in front there came
presently a confused puffing and rattling and clanging as the oncoming
car breasted the slope. It coughed and spluttered on a powerful,
old-fashioned low gear, while its engine throbbed like a weary heart.
The yellow, glaring lights dipped for the last time into a switchback
curve. When they reappeared over the crest the two cars were within
thirty yards of each other. The dark one darted across the road and
barred the other's passage, while a warning acetylene lamp was waved in
the air. With a jarring of brakes the noisy new-comer was brought to a
halt.

"I say," cried an aggrieved voice, "'pon my soul, you know, we might
have had an accident. Why the devil don't you keep your head-lights on?
I never saw you till I nearly burst my radiators on you!"

The acetylene lamp, held forward, discovered a very angry young man,
blue-eyed, yellow-moustached, and florid, sitting alone at the wheel of
an antiquated twelve-horse Wolseley. Suddenly the aggrieved look upon
his flushed face changed to one of absolute bewilderment. The driver in
the dark car had sprung out of the seat, a black, long-barrelled,
wicked-looking pistol was poked in the traveller's face, and behind the
further sights of it was a circle of black cloth with two deadly eyes
looking from as many slits.

"Hands up!" said a quick, stern voice. "Hands up! or, by the Lord----"

The young man was as brave as his neighbours, but the hands went up all
the same.

"Get down!" said his assailant, curtly.

The young man stepped forth into the road, followed closely by the
covering lantern and pistol. Once he made as if he would drop his hands,
but a short, stern word jerked them up again.

"I say, look here, this is rather out o' date, ain't it?" said the
traveller. "I expect you're joking--what?"

"Your watch," said the man behind the Mauser pistol.

"You can't really mean it!"

"Your watch, I say!"

"Well, take it, if you must. It's only plated, anyhow. You're two
centuries out in time, or a few thousand miles longitude. The bush is
your mark--or America. You don't seem in the picture on a Sussex road."

"Purse," said the man. There was something very compelling in his voice
and methods. The purse was handed over.

"Any rings?"

"Don't wear 'em."

"Stand there! Don't move!"

The highwayman passed his victim and threw open the bonnet of the
Wolseley. His hand, with a pair of steel pliers, was thrust deep into
the works. There was the snap of a parting wire.

"Hang it all, don't crock my car!" cried the traveller.

He turned, but quick as a flash the pistol was at his head once more.
And yet even in that flash, whilst the robber whisked round from the
broken circuit, something had caught the young man's eye which made him
gasp and start. He opened his mouth as if about to shout some words.
Then with an evident effort he restrained himself.

"Get in," said the highwayman.

The traveller climbed back to his seat.

"What is your name?"

"Ronald Barker. What's yours?"

The masked man ignored the impertinence.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

"My cards are in my purse. Take one."

The highwayman sprang into his car, the engine of which had hissed and
whispered in gentle accompaniment to the interview. With a clash he
threw back his side-brake, flung in his gears, twirled the wheel hard
round, and cleared the motionless Wolseley. A minute later he was
gliding swiftly, with all his lights gleaming, some half-mile southward
on the road, while Mr. Ronald Barker, a side-lamp in his hand, was
rummaging furiously among the odds and ends of his repair-box for a
strand of wire which would connect up his electricity and set him on his
way once more.

When he had placed a safe distance between himself and his victim, the
adventurer eased up, took his booty from his pocket, replaced the watch,
opened the purse, and counted out the money. Seven shillings constituted
the miserable spoil. The poor result of his efforts seemed to amuse