What fun this was! Chris gave a chuckle out loud. What a chance—to see what once had been! He was enjoying himself increasingly as he glanced down at the activity along the riverbanks.
So close to noon, the sailors and stevedores had vanished to eat their meal, and passers-by were few. The street was nearly deserted when along the hardened muddy ruts of Water Street Chris heard a wailing cry: "Pity the blind! Pity the pore blind!" The boy looked down, and the drop below him to the road made his head swim, until he refused to think of it. He saw below him a grotesque figure making its way, turning its head toward the houses as it made its cry.
It was a hunchbacked man with a wooden peg leg and a crutch. Tied crisscross over his snarled hair were two black eye patches. He was unshaven and in a rare state of filth, his coat green with age and speckled with greasy stains, the stocking on his one good leg wrinkling down into his shoe, and his hands gnarled with long-nailed fingers. Chris gave an involuntary shudder, but the sight of the man held his gaze, for he had never seen anyone quite like him before.
As the cripple advanced slowly past the few houses of Water Street, here and there a window was opened and a coin tossed out, which the cripple held his cap for, or grubbed with his filthy hands where he heard it fall. Watching his progress, Chris became fascinated with the accuracy with which the blind man caught the coins or found them in the road. After a passing gentleman on horseback had tossed a silver piece in his direction, the hunchback made off around the corner of the stables beyond Mr. Wicker's garden.
The boy hung out even farther and craned his neck to see what the blind man would do, for from his determined gait he seemed to have a purpose. Feeling along the side of the barn to guide himself, when he came to the back of it the cripple darted around, and then, to Chris's amazement, lifted the corner of one black eye patch and peered out from under it! Seeing no one, and thinking himself unobserved, the cripple nonchalantly pushed both eye patches onto his forehead, fished in his pocket, and began examining the silver piece he had just retrieved. It appeared to satisfy his scrutiny, turn it over and over though he did, but to be quite sure of its value he bit tentatively on it with his back teeth. This seemed to be the final test, for the cripple grinned from ear to ear, disclosing even fewer teeth than Master Cilley.
Next, the hunchback sat down upon a heap of straw, laying his crutch beside him, and with a quick movement, wriggled himself out of not only his jacket but his humpback too!
Chris could scarcely believe his eyes, but he now saw that a false hump had been cleverly sewn into the jacket from inside. The cripple untied a patch that formed a trap door in the hump, and putting his hand inside the hollow, drew from its hiding place in the false hump a small bag tied at the neck with a string. Then, as Chris watched, he counted the contents of the bag, pieces of money that winked in the sun, and added to his horde those pieces he had begged that morning. The bag was then retied, replaced, and the jacket and hump put back on its wearer with evident satisfaction.
But the cripple had not yet completed his work. Holding the silver piece between the blackened stubs of his front teeth, with difficulty he managed to hoist his peg leg over his good knee. Then, after darting many a sly look all about him, he unstrapped the wooden peg off the stump of his leg.
First, from the interior of the stump he pulled out an assortment of rags used for stuffing, and to cushion the weight of his stump. Then, after spreading a torn bandanna handkerchief near him, he tipped up the stump and from its hollow peg, out rained a shower of coins!
Chris looked, and looked again. Gold and silver money flashed on the crumpled handkerchief, and adding to it the last silver piece he had held in his teeth, the loathsome cripple stirred the heap around and around with one dirty forefinger, his mouth stretched in a cackle of greed.
After a while he caught up the coins, counting them over not once but many times, and at last let them fall slowly one by one into the hollow peg of his stump, strapping it back securely. Finally, after looking about with his face close to the ground to make sure that no smallest coin had escaped him, the cripple replaced his eye patches and heaved himself up with his crutch under his arm, turning to make his way once more toward the docks and the ships. His wailing cry lagged behind him like a cur dog: "Pity the blind! Pity the pore crippled blind!" Yet Chris now noticed that his head was tilted back to enable him to see under the patches as he went.
The boy was straining to see him out of sight when a resounding bellow from Becky Boozer let him know that dinner was ready. Hastily shutting the window and running downstairs, Chris could think of only one thing.
"Becky!" he cried, bursting out at the bottom of the stairs, "Who is the blind man that just went by—the hunchback?"
Becky never even turned from the plate she was preparing. "Oh, him? That would be Simon Gosler, one of Claggett Chew's men. How he can be a sailor beats me, but Claggett Chew has hired him for years, plague take him! Now," and she came toward the sunny table with a beaming smile, "eat up, young man, or I shall think my cooking does not please you!"
Chris hurriedly set about proving his appreciation.
CHAPTER 10
he learning of magic was by no means easy. The days went by with Chris's mornings and afternoons spent in Mr. Wicker's study, reading books too heavy for him to lift, learning incantations by heart, and how to blend simple formulae over the fire. He had told his master at once about Simon Gosler, his horde of money and his hiding places for it. Mr. Wicker though interested and attentive, gave Chris the impression that what he had been told was not new to him. At times Chris was allowed to run about the large vegetable garden and climb the orchard trees, but he was told that the moment had not yet come when he could wander at will in early Georgetown.
Chris had tried it once, rebellious and bored at the now familiar ground, but it was as if an invisible wall kept him in the confines of Mr. Wicker's land, a slippery glass wall he could feel but not see, and in which he could discover no chink in which to put his toe to find the height of it. So there was nothing left to do but to work as fast and as well as he could. "There are rumors," Mr. Wicker had told him quietly, too quietly, "that Claggett Chew is preparing his ship, the Venture, for a voyage East. There is much activity about his ship, and he is laying in stores, so I am informed. We must get forward with all haste, for his ship is a fast one—faster than the Mirabelle."
Chris therefore threw himself into all the preliminaries of his task. His head swam when he laid it on his pillow at night, and Becky Boozer would stand with her hands on her barrel-sized hips, shaking her hat until its plumes and roses waved madly, over "her boy's" shadowed eyes and weary air.
For Chris was now as accepted a member of the household as Mr. Wicker himself, and had it not been for the robust guffaws of Ned Cilley, and the ministrations of the now devoted Becky, Chris's days would have been tedious indeed.
One afternoon when he returned, after a rest, to Mr. Wicker's study, he saw that there was something new in the room. A bowl with a goldfish in it stood on the table, but Mr. Wicker was not to be seen. Now, however, Chris was not the boy he had been a few weeks before. He went straight to the bowl and addressed the fish.
"Sir," he said to the goldfish, "I am here. What shall I do first?"
The goldfish might almost have been said to have changed its expression and smiled, before, brushing a drop of water from his sleeve, Mr. Wicker stood beside the table smiling.
"How you have improved, my boy!" he exclaimed. "It is now time for you to try, and this is as good a change as any."
All at once, at the imminent prospect of really changing himself into some other form, Chris became frightened and his hands grew cold.
"Oh, sir! Do you really think I know how?" he cried, gazing up into the face of his master. "Suppose I change and can't change back?"
Mr. Wicker shook his head with a smile.
"Never fear, Christopher. You know enough to start, and I feel reasonably sure that you will be quite able to change back again. If you get stuck I can help you. Come now," he said, putting out his hand to touch Chris's shoulder in a reassuring way, "here you go. Remember Incantation Seventy-three, Book One."
Chris stared at the fishbowl, empty now. He remembered Incantation 73, Book One, quite well, but his knees began to tremble and he stood as if paralyzed. Mr. Wicker waited patiently beside him for a few moments for Chris to get up his courage.
Then as nothing happened, with a voice like a whip Mr. Wicker said: "Start at once!"
Chris was so startled at his usually gentle master's tone that without further thought or effort on his part, he began intoning to himself the words and sounds of Incantation 73, Book One. As he went on, concentrating on becoming a goldfish in the bowl on the table, he became aware of a humming sensation in his head. This grew until it seemed that all his body was filled with the strange new vibration, tingling from his feet to the crown of his head. The sensation spread, faster and faster. His head swam and he felt faint and a little sick, but he persisted through the final words. Somewhere deep inside him there seemed a sudden lurch, and then a wonderfully cool, liquid sensation. He felt buoyant and rested and looked about, only to get a wavery, enlarged glimpse of Mr. Wicker, looking more like a reflection in a circus mirror than himself. With a light twist of his body Chris floated over, to see that the room looked the same, and rolling back, could see that Mr. Wicker was peering in at him from above and smiling broadly.
"Good Lord—I'm a fish!" Chris said, and he heard the words muffled as they came back to him through the water of his bowl. Well, what do you know? he thought, not without a feeling of pride, and commenced experimenting with his tail and fins with such enthusiasm and delight that some little time elapsed before Mr. Wicker's voice boomed close by.
"Better come back now. Take it slowly, son. Seventy-four, Book One: The Return."
The same strange sensations flooded Chris as he made the change back to his own shape, but when he stood once more on his own two feet on the carpet in Mr. Wicker's study, he was pleased and happy despite his weakness. Mr. Wicker took hold of his arm and helped him to a chair, and taking a small vial from the cupboard at the end of the room, he dropped a pellet into it and handed it to Chris.
"This will seem to smoke. Sniff the smoke and drink the liquid that remains," he said.
Chris did as he was told, and his momentary weakness vanished, leaving him quieted and as strong as usual.
"There now," Mr. Wicker said, rubbing his hands with immense satisfaction, "that was not so bad, was it? A peculiar feeling, but as you come to do it more often and more quickly, the change will come more rapidly and in time you will be scarcely aware of the sensations at all." He looked at his pupil with pride. "You will do famously, my boy. In another moment, when you have rested, we shall try another one."
From that time, Chris became increasingly proficient, and as his ability grew he began to find magic a wonderful game, which he and Mr. Wicker played together. They played this new and unique form of hide-and-seek, each one taking a new shape, turn by turn, as a challenge to the other's powers of imagination and detection. Soon Chris could turn himself into a limited number of things, for even Mr. Wicker's magic had a limit: a singing bird in a cage, a part of the pattern in the brocaded curtains, or a section of the design in the Indian rug. The bluebottle fly or the goldfish became as easy as saying "Eureka!" and on one occasion Chris turned himself into the chair on which Mr. Wicker was sitting, and then walked across the room on his four wooden legs carrying Mr. Wicker, who laughed more heartily than he had in years at this display on the part of his student.
One day Chris wandered alone into the dusty shop. The time had nearly come when he could walk about in early Georgetown and know that it would still be the Georgetown of the past, and not the one into which he had been born. This afternoon, a rainy one, he had tired of changing himself into and out of objects. Mr. Wicker was busy, and Becky Boozer had gone off to market accompanied by Ned Cilley. Chris felt somewhat forlorn and lonely, as any boy might, and kicked an old piece of wood ahead of him into the darkness of the shop.
Going up to the shop window, he stood with his hands thrust into his pockets staring glumly first out the window and then, idly, at the three objects he had once loved to contemplate, the Mirabelle in her bottle, the coil of heavy rope, and the carved wooden figure of the Nubian boy.
Without interest at first, Chris stared at the little Negro boy, so gaily dressed in full red trousers, gilded jacket and white turban. The figure's shoes, carved in some Eastern style, had curved up-pointing toes. Then all at once the idea came to Chris. If he was to be a magician, could he make this boy come to life?
The prospect excited him wildly, for he had no companion with whom to laugh and share jokes. Grown people, however gay and kind, were never quite the same. The more he thought of it, the more Chris knew it had to be attempted. He squatted on his haunches, examining the carved wooden figure attentively, and felt convinced that, once alive, the boy would be an ideal and happy companion.
But how did one change inanimate to animate? Chris got up and stole back to Mr. Wicker's door. He heard the magician going up the spiral staircase to his room above, and after changing himself to a mouse to slip under the door and see that the room was really empty, Chris resumed his proper shape and opened the doors of the cupboard at the far end of the room.
On its top shelf was Book Three, a book a foot thick and bound in heavy brass studded with semi-precious stones in the form of signs and symbols. With difficulty, standing on tiptoe, Chris lifted it down, and placing it on the floor, turned over page after page.
The afternoon, rainy before, increased in storm. Dusk came two hours before its time; thunder snarled in the sky.
At last Chris found it. There were the words, and there the charm. Certain elements were to be mixed and poured at the proper time. He hurried, memorizing as he closed the book, and hoisted it once more to its high shelf. Looking about, he found the ingredients that had been listed, and in an empty vial poured first two drops of this, and then seventeen of that, and ran to heat it at the fire.
Mr. Wicker began moving about upstairs; the floorboards creaked, and still Chris could not leave until the potion fumed and glowed.
After what seemed an endless time, amid a growing grind of thunder and in the almost darkened room, the phial in Chris's hand gave off an arching rosy glow. Chris, his cheeks hot from excitement and the fire, tiptoed out just as Mr. Wicker's step creaked on the topmost tread of the spiral stair. With infinite caution Chris closed the door silently behind him, and running lightly forward, reached the figure of the Negro boy.
The words came out, interrupted by peals and cracks of thunder. The shop was black except for the paler crescent of the bow window giving onto the street. With a crash of thunder all but drowning out his words, the boy shouted in the emptiness of the shop as he poured the rosy liquid on the figure made of wood.
And then, appalled at his audacity, Chris dropped the phial which splintered on the floor. Watching there in the darkness, he shook so with nerves that he had to kneel.
For in the blackness lit only by the lightning and its own eerie glow, the wood was changing as he watched.
It was as if the stiffness melted. Under his eyes the wooden folds of cloth became rich silk, embroidery gleamed in its reality upon the coat, and oh! the face! The wooden grin loosened, the large eyes turned, the hand holding the hard bouquet of carved flowers moved, and let the bouquet fall. The feet of the boy twitched and shifted in their pointed shoes.
Aghast, Chris remained frozen as the boy moved slowly, and a final Boom! of thunder seemed to split the sky apart. Outside, the rain poured down as if over some skyward dam.
The boy looked down at Chris with a radiant smile and put out his hand.
"I'll help you up," he said to the kneeling boy in front of him. "I am Amos."
And as they turned, the light and the dark hands holding firm, the firelight was streaming from the distant door and Mr. Wicker waited.
CHAPTER 11
rom that time on Chris and Amos were inseparable, with the exception of those times when Chris studied alone with Mr. Wicker. Amos, during these hours, soon endeared himself to Becky Boozer, to whom he became invaluable, for he took over those chores Chris had undertaken as his share. These consisted of carrying water, peeling potatoes, or watching the roasting meat in case it should burn. For Chris had less and less time for such jobs, and Amos's laughter and willing happy nature soon made Becky spoil him as much as she did Chris.
Another cot was put into Chris's room, and night after night they would hang out the two mansard windows, watching what went on below until it was too dark to see. Or else they would talk by the light of their candle until they fell asleep.
Chris now knew how lonely he had been until he set Amos free from his wooden shroud, but, warned by Mr. Wicker, he did not tell his new friend that he came from another year as yet unreached by the time they lived in.
"It is enough for a while," cautioned Mr. Wicker, "that Amos get used to being limber and alive. That is change enough from a carved wooden figure. It would only confuse and trouble him to think you do not really belong where you are. So let him be happy. And I shall seal your lips with regard to the secret of the Jewel Tree, for that must be known to no one," and so saying he rubbed a salve over Chris's lips.
"Now tell me what you are to journey after," commanded Mr. Wicker. But when Chris attempted to talk of the Jewel Tree, the words would not pass his lips but remained in his mouth like a handful of marbles.
"Good," said Mr. Wicker, rubbing his hands. "Not even to me. Excellent stuff, this," he added, turning the tiny case that contained the salve in his fingers. "I got it in India years ago, and this is the last of it. But I hardly imagine I shall need it again. Its use is somewhat drastic, but occasionally wise."
"Mr. Wicker," Chris said thoughtfully one afternoon after his lessons and memorizing were over for the day, "of the three things in your shop window that I liked best, two have been explained. Yet the third, which still interests me, seems to have had, so far, no significance. I mean, of course, the rope."
"Ah yes," Mr. Wicker agreed, nodding and stretching his feet out toward the fire, "the rope. Very well, my boy, since it has come into your mind again, that means that the time has come for you to discover its use. Go and bring it to me."
Chris ran to get the coiled rope. He experienced almost a shock when he touched it. It had looked harsh and coarse to the touch, of rough hemp fibre, but on picking it up, the coils in his hand seemed almost silky. Certainly they were more than usually pliable. Returning to the study, the boy put the rope beside Mr. Wicker's chair. The magician did not move, his feet still stretched comfortably towards the flames. His dark handsome face was dreamy and remote, and Chris wondered in what faraway place or time his teacher moved. The apprentice sat down cross-legged with his back to the fire, and presently Mr. Wicker took his gaze from the sparks and smoke to look thoughtfully at him.
"You have heard of the Indian rope trick, Christopher?"
"Yes—and no, sir," Chris replied. "I'm not sure how it works."
Mr. Wicker gave a chuckle. "Indeed? Well, let me tell you, my boy, no one else does either. The rope is made to go up in the air, so stiffly that the fakir—that is, the Eastern magician—can climb it. Some claim to have seen the fakirs climb up it and vanish from sight, and the rope disappear after them."
Mr. Wicker waved one hand as much as to say that those who had seen it could believe as they pleased.
"A good enough trick, in its way," condescended Mr. Wicker, "but this rope is capable of so much more remarkable possibilities as to throw the Indian rope trick completely in the shade."
With one of his quick gestures, Mr. Wicker reached down for the rope and was up and out of his chair, all in one movement.
"You shall learn, last of your lessons, a new way of using a lasso. Not lassoing—" Mr. Wicker held up a finger to stress his point, "that, too, you shall learn, but how to use this particular rope to make the most of its—shall we say?—qualities."
Mr. Wicker smiled his sardonic smile, though his eyes were snapping as brightly as the fire.
"Now Christopher," he began, running the rope through his long, fine hands, "just push that table and the chairs to the wall, there's a good lad, and we shall get the stiffness out of this rope." Chris cleared the room. "And pull the curtains, my boy," added his master, "for one never knows but that Amos or Becky Boozer might pass by at the crucial moment. What they do not know," murmured the magician, "is best for them."
When the room was satisfactorily arranged, and candles had been lit, Chris returned to stand by the fireplace beside his master, who was turning the rope lightly in his fingers.
"Now Christopher, your attention please," said the magician, and his tone was crisp and authoritative. "Imagine that you are in need of a boat, and there is no boat."
With several twists of his hands the rope spun out into the middle air of the room. It moved and twisted like a live thing, and Mr. Wicker, Chris thought, seemed to be drawing the outline of a boat in the air with the moving line. Even as this thought flickered in his mind, the rope formed in mid-air the skeleton of a dingy, and then, mysteriously, the rope added to itself until the bare struts and sides were filled in and there, rocking lightly from the speed of its creation, a small row-boat hovered in the air, as if it were tied up to a dock.
"Go and feel of it, Christopher," Mr. Wicker urged. "Climb in it if you like. I have left the two ends of the rope long enough to make oars, if necessary."
Chris ran over and felt the sides of the boat. It was sound and secure, no doubt of that. He went all around it, pounding its sides, and at last heaved himself over to fall into its center. The boat never stirred, and stamp as he would, the rope bottom and gunwales resisted firmly.
"Gee! Mr. Wicker!" Chris exclaimed. "This is the best yet—except for Amos. Golly Moses!" and as he sat down and took up the two loose ends of rope still remaining, he found that he held not rope ends but two oars. "Even oars!" Chris cried in delight.
Mr. Wicker stood with his hands behind his back, the firelight outlining his black clothes and neat dark head.
"Yes," he said, in a matter-of-fact voice, "Quite so. Now climb out and I will show you some of the other shapes of which it is capable. A ladder," Mr. Wicker remarked as Chris rejoined him, "is almost too simple. We can do that at any time."
Grasping the end of one oar, with movements too fast for Chris's eyes to follow, in an instant the boat was a rope again, coiled over Mr. Wicker's arm.
"Now!" said Mr. Wicker, and his eyes twinkled with mischief. The rope flew out again, but this time took a strange outline—the outline of an elephant.
"It will have to be a small elephant," murmured Mr. Wicker, his hands flying, "because of the size of the room."
The elephant, like the boat, took shape, the final ends of the rope hanging down at its trunk and tail. After the elephant came a horse, an eagle, and a dolphin, and Chris's admiration and zest to learn the secrets of the rope grew with every change of shape.
"Very well," ended Mr. Wicker, "you shall learn." And placing his hands over Chris's while the boy held the rope, he began slowly to show him the magic twists and turns.
CHAPTER 12
he time had come when Chris could go out beyond the confines of Mr. Wicker's gardens. It was a bright fall day when Amos and he stepped out the kitchen door. Becky Boozer's huge frame blocked it behind them as she stood in the sun to see them off. Each boy had been given meat and bread, some cakes and apples, for their midday meal, and Chris stood looking up and down the street for a moment before starting, savoring the promise of new sights and new adventure. The only drawback was that Amos would not, and must not, know why Chris might be surprised at certain places. Georgetown in the year 1790 might be new for Amos, but not nearly as new as it would be for Chris.
"Where-all are we going in the first place?" Amos asked.
Chris had long ago decided. "We'll take a look at the Mirabelle," he said.
While looking about him, Chris glanced more than once at Amos. The colored boy's brilliant foreign costume was very noticeable, his friend thought, but when no one paid any attention, Chris decided Amos's clothes were not unfamiliar to the seafaring men among whom they were walking.
A ship had just come in, the sailors browned and cheerful at being once more in their home port. Merchants in coats of fine but sober cloth were talking with the captain and mate, while they kept an eye on the cargo being laboriously unloaded by stevedores.
For some time Chris and Amos stood watching the men carrying out bales or kegs on their shoulders. When one part of the cargo had been assembled on the dock, an auction was held forthwith to sell it off at once to the highest bidder.
Listening and looking, Chris saw bolts of silk, hardware, china, wines and liquors, needles and pins—all manner of things auctioned and sold. The ship, American-owned, had come from England, and Chris overheard one man say to another: "See there, the thin man. That be Mr. Mason's agent. I heard he's here to buy the ballast bricks for his master's plantation on the island."
Chris, not understanding, asked, "Ballast bricks? Please sir, what's that?"
The men, astounded to be interrupted by a boy, and looking down to see two, each with an apple in his hands, turned around, and after a moment's scrutiny, answered.
"Ballast bricks? Why, anyone knows that these are the bricks brought over in the hold, my lad, should there not be sufficient cargo, both to make ballast for the vessel and to sell once here. English bricks are cheaper than those we can make ourselves. Did you not know, young man," he said, frowning with disapproval, "that our bricks for building houses have all come from British kilns?"
"No sir, thank you sir," Chris said, and moved away, not in the least abashed.
How I should have loved to have told him I didn't belong in this age anyway, and that in my time, we do make our own bricks! he chuckled to himself.
Further on, a ship being painted a dazzling white caught their eyes.
"The Mirabelle!" Chris cried, running forward, and sure enough, black and gold letters along her bow pronounced that indeed it was the Mirabelle.
"I'd know those lines anywhere!" Chris said to Amos, and the two boys stood gazing at Mr. Wicker's ship.
The Mirabelle was a three-masted schooner of more than usually trim lines. Even at the dockside, the curve of her bow gave an instant vision of how the waves would curl back as she drove forward over the sea. At the waterline, a clear light green contrasted well with the white of her sides. Above decks, the size of the masts and neatly furled sails showed at a glance that the Mirabelle was hardy enough to weather many a storm, and also that her crew were able and well trained.
Looking about, Chris soon spied Ned Cilley, on deck lounging against the side of the ship and smoking his pipe. Master Cilley's eyes lit up as he saw his friends, and hurrying down the gangplank, shook them by the hand as warmly as if he had not seen them for a month, instead of just the night before when he had shared with them what Becky termed, "a taste, a mere spoonful" of supper.
"Eh well, lookee here!" he exclaimed, delighted. "Chris and Amos, by me soul!" Ned Cilley beamed on them and leaned back on his heels for a better view. "Lookin' about, lads? Eh, that's the way. Is she not the finest ship that ever ye did rest your eyes on?"
The boys were agreeing enthusiastically when a remarkable couple came into sight, pacing the decks of the Mirabelle. Soon the watchers were given a better look, for the two men came down the gangplank to examine cases that had been brought to the dock for loading, and Chris and Amos were hard put to it not to laugh out loud at the comical pair.
The first man was so round and so short he appeared to have no legs at all. Below a tight round paunch, two small feet looking rather like mice, went in and out as he walked. The roundness of his face was underlined by three folds of chin, but his small piercing blue eyes had a way of suddenly opening wide that made Chris feel the man was no fool. He constantly burbled with laughter and was in a high good humor, occasional remarks from his companion causing him now and again to chuckle with amusement.
What the other man could be saying that was so entertaining Chris could not imagine, for he was the opposite of the fat good-humored one.
This second person was twice again as tall as the plump little fellow beside him, and was as dour and thin as the other was cheery and fat. He seemed in a state of perpetual depression, and no amount of chuckles on the part of the plump gentleman could cause even a passing smile over the long sad face of the dour man.
"Who in the world are they?" Chris asked of Cilley as they drew near. Cilley looked scandalized at Chris's impertinence in finding them in any way droll.
"Them? Why, bless me cap and buttons! That-there's the captain of the Mirabelle no less, and his first mate. Captain Ezekial Blizzard, he is, and Mr. Elisha Finney," Ned Cilley told them, watching the earnest conversation of the pair with evident affection.
"Blizzard and Finney, that's them," he said. "And a better captain and first mate is not come by in the whole land, I shall warrant you. He may look too plump for his own good," Master Cilley went on, lowering his voice and bending down to be on a level with Chris and Amos, "but believe me, there's no sounder captain afloat. They all know it hereabouts, for Ezekial Blizzard knows the Chiny Seas better than the sight of his own feet, make no mistake about it. As to Elisha Finney, he's glum, I don't deny, but faithful! That's true of the two of them—whatever they can do for Mr. Wicker is law for Ezekial Blizzard and Elisha Finney. They swear by Mr. Wicker, so they do," Ned said, wagging his head with the certainty of it. "Mr. Finney's kind, too," Ned went on, "though he don't look it, bless me cap and boots! He's tenderhearted as a bird, under that gloom, is Finney."
"Could we go on board the ship?" Chris asked, when the Captain and Mr. Finney had moved off to the far end of the wharf.
"No, me lad," Cilley answered gravely. "'Tis better not. Wait till the master do present you proper to the Captain, for the Mirabelle is Captain Blizzard's castle, like. I would sooner ye were asked aboard by him."
Then, seeing Chris's crestfallen face, Cilley clapped him so heartily on the back that the boy staggered forward a pace or two.
"Come now! Cheer up!" Ned cried. "Come meet some of the crew!" he invited, and taking Chris and Amos's arms, drew them towards a group of seamen.
Chris looked quickly around at the faces of the men, for these, he secretly knew, were to be his companions on a long sea journey soon to start. With a deep sense of relief he found that he liked them all. All, perhaps, but one. Then he gave his attention to Ned Cilley, who with a flourish was making the introductions.
"Me lads!" he cried, "Here are two likely young 'uns, living at the house of Mr. Wicker. Ye've heard me speak of them. Amos, here, on me right, and Chris, that's on me other side." He beamed at both and on the men confronting him. "Now boys," he roared, "this good man here is Bowie."
A short, muscular, bowlegged man with a friendly grin, nodded his head at them and cut off a piece of black tobacco with his knife, stuffing it into his mouth, knife blade and all. Chris gave a shiver as the blade went in and came out and Bowie champed contentedly on his chew.
"This here's Elbert Jones," Cilley went on, "and that one's Abner Cloud, and that one," pointed Ned, "that one's Zachary Heigh."
Chris smiled and nodded, or shook hands, and Amos followed suit, but when they had reached Zachary, a tall young man of eighteen years or so, Zachary bent his handsome surly face and fumbled at his shoe. Chris stood there with his hand out, feeling the red blood surging angrily up his cheeks, and then he wondered who Zachary was looking at from the corner of his eye.
Chris turned his head and did not have to hear the name muttered by Cilley or by Bowie at his back. Chris found himself staring at Claggett Chew.
CHAPTER 13
laggett Chew possessed a face and bearing not easily forgotten. A giant of a man, standing well over six feet three, he stood bareheaded in the morning sun. Contrary to the custom of the time, he wore no pigtail at his neck, nor even hair caught back, tied with a bow. Claggett Chew's head was shaved so close that the pale skin of his skull showed through the peppery stubble, making him seem bald. Below the bare skull, as if in counterbalance, his black eyebrows started out, tangled and thickly black, and under them, as out of a rocky cave, his small pale eyes blinked like cornered foxes in their dens. His nose, overlarge to start with, had at some time in his life been broken, and its crooked shape leaned to the right as if still bending beneath the blow that had battered it.
A long untrimmed mustache shadowed his mouth, and stray hairs caught inside his lips when he opened and closed them. His lips, like his eyes, were pale, and his skin sickly as that of a man who sees but little of the light. His cheeks and chin were stubbly, like his head; his beard seemed more reluctant than half grown. His whole appearance, in his sallow yellow vest, gun-gray coat and breeches and canary-colored stockings, was one of mingled power and weakness; strength joined with an unhealthy habit of never being in the sun, and a cruelty best enjoyed when he knew that he could win.
His cold eyes pinned Chris with their gaze as if the boy were a butterfly transfixed by a pin. His thin, pallid lips curled with disdain and yet, Chris thought, uneasiness perhaps, as he eyed the two lads and the little knot of men. One strong, too white hand held a whip, its long leather tail ending like a scorpion's sting, in a length of wire. He held the five feet of the whip loosely caught in his hand against the plaited leather handle, and Chris had an icy sensation as he looked at it that it was never far from the large white hand of Claggett Chew.
A little behind Claggett Chew, examining the scene through a pair of jeweled lorgnettes, stood an even weirder figure.
"Osterbridge Hawsey," whispered Ned Cilley, as if to himself, as he followed the direction of Chris's eyes.
Osterbridge Hawsey, younger than Claggett Chew by twenty years to Claggett's forty, was dressed in the height of the French mode. Anything more out of place on the dirty swarming docks of Georgetown could scarcely have been imagined. His three-cornered hat was rakishly set at an angle on his fair hair, which was meticulously rolled in curls above his ears, and the curls were caught at his neck with a black velvet ribbon. Beside Claggett Chew's offensive bare skull, the hat, in its delicate blue velvet, silver braid, and airy rim of ostrich feathers, was ludicrous. Osterbridge Hawsey's costume was of a piece with the hat, for his coat was of fine blue velvet of too pale a shade for any use outside a drawing room. It, too, was edged in silver braid, and its owner, holding a lorgnette with his right hand, with his left pushed back the velvet folds to display the delicacy of his flower-embroidered waistcoat. Satin knee breeches, a cascade of fine lace at his throat, and lace falling gracefully over his small well-kept hands made up the picture. As Chris looked at him, fascinated and repelled, he noticed that the young man wore a patch in the shape of a crescent moon, on his left cheek.
Chris, who had been not a little overawed at seeing Claggett Chew, could not restrain himself at the sight of this fop. The touch of fear he had felt, looking into the pale expressionless eyes of Mr. Wicker's enemy, found relief and release in an uncontrollable burst of laughter when from his pocket Osterbridge Hawsey drew a tiny bottle of smelling salts and held it delicately to his nose.
Chris's young laughter rose in peal after peal. Amos's warmer, quicker laugh joined in, and in a second, laughter had spread to the group of seamen who doubled up, convulsed, fell on one another's shoulders as they wiped their eyes, and slapped their hard thighs with their roughened hands.
The pair that so amused the rest, Claggett Chew and his fine friend, had stopped some ten feet away at the first sound of mirth. Then into Claggett Chew's gray-white face came astonishment, for he was used to creating many impressions—fear, hatred, or cringing obsequiousness—but never before had he or any of his friends been laughed at. Furthermore, he, the dreaded Claggett Chew, and his gaudy friend Osterbridge Hawsey, were held as being of so little account that a boy dared to laugh at them!
After a surge of deep ugly red to his head, Claggett Chew's face became whiter than before, and his eyes were murderous.
"Oh, Claggett, they seem to be laughing at me!" Osterbridge Hawsey whined in a high-pitched voice.
Unfortunately, at this moment Chris, forgetting caution in the grip of his laughter, held on to Amos shouting feebly: "He's got a patch on his cheek! What do you know—a beauty patch!"
The derision in his voice, in spite of his laughter, was unmistakable, but before he could so much as draw another breath, he heard Claggett Chew's voice for the first time.
"So—you ill-found ugly twirp! You idiot whippersnapper! Let me give you one to match!"
And quicker than the eye could follow, the whip flicked out, and with a cutting sting, lashed Chris's cheek. The cut, from the metal wire, was deep, almost to Chris's jawbone; but he did not feel the hurt as much as he realized—his laughter gone—that Claggett Chew was now his deadly enemy.
"Next time," came Claggett Chew's sneering voice, "I shall take an eye from you, my laughing boy, and see if that amuses us as well!"
And turning on his heel, followed by the sauntering, giggling fop, the pair picked their way along the wharf and disappeared.
It was only then, looking around at the sobered, silent sailors, Chris remembered that Zachary Heigh was the only one who had not laughed.