The last buccaneer

The situation was sufficiently delicate. Pomfrett drew me to the port side of the little quarterdeck. Morgan Leroux leaned on the starboard rail, having her back towards us.

“Look here,” said the owners’ agent, “this isn’t what I meant at all. This will never do. It’s impossible. Why did she come?”

“Well, for one thing, you would never have passed Murch’s ship going out of harbour, if it hadn’t been for Morgan Leroux,” I answered.

“Who commands this ship, do you suppose?” returned the supercargo.

“You must ask the lady.”

“But how can she sail with us—or we with her?”

“Too late to enquire, is it not?”

“We can put back.”

“Can we?”

“I’ll soon see,” said the agent, and marched across to Morgan Leroux.

“Well,” said she, “have you done discussing poor Morgan?”

“Will you tell us,” returned Brandon, wisely disregarding the question, “what you—what we are to do?”

“It’s me that should ask you, I think,” said Morgan, placidly. “Here’s your ship. What are you going to do with her?”

“My ship?”

“I said I was going to get you a ship; well, now I’ve done it, haven’t I? You don’t seem weighed down with gratitude.”

“But I am grateful,” cried Pomfrett, eagerly. “I think you’re wonderful. But what troubles me,” he added, in a burst, “is what—where—how I can serve you,” he ended, lamely.

“Will you take me to England?”

“I would gladly,” said the harassed agent. “Only, how can I? Come, Mistress Morgan, I put it to you fairly, can it be done?”

“Don’t speak so loud,” said Morgan, glancing aside at old Crowby, who was handling the wheel. “I’ll answer you fairly. Yes, it can. What are you afraid of? Don’t you know I can take care of myself? Now, then. What’s the alternative?”

“I would put back into Porto-Bello, and give you to your guardian,” answered Brandon, sturdily.

“You’re a brave young man, by your way of it,” said Morgan. “But it would be quicker for you to clap a pistol to your head this minute, and ask Mr Winter to pull the trigger for you. We shall be lucky to escape Mr Murch, as it is. But put back if you want to—only, what about Mr Dawkins and your owners?”

It was true. Behold the incorruptible agent torn in twain.

“I know you mean mighty well,” Morgan went on, with a sudden change of manner, “but you don’t think of me. You think only of yourself; and yet you credit me with pure unselfishness. I had an eye for poor Morgan Leroux, let me tell you, on this little enterprise. You would have left me to sail on the private account with that bloody pirate, Mr Murch, without a thought. You never scrupled to leave me to defend my own good name then—not you. No, no. But when I take the last chance of liberty and honour, and come aboard here, on the same quarterdeck with your worships, oh, then it’s a different tale! It’s ‘Is it right to sail with a woman?’ And ‘Can we endanger our spotless reputation?’ And ‘Put back to your guardian.’ God give you joy of your virtue, gentlemen. I thank Him, mine is of a different kind.” She spoke low, a spot of red on either cheek, an angry spark in her eye, and when she had done she turned her back upon us and walked away.

Brandon looked after the graceful figure with a tightening of the jaw. “Very well,” says he, “if that’s what she wants, by God! she shall have it.” It was not, exactly, what Morgan Leroux wanted, although, no doubt, she desired that too; but Brandon was to know more of the ways of women before he had done. Meanwhile, he went to her, and they talked together.

The prime point was settled, at any rate. Brandon Pomfrett was commander of La Modeste. And a modest ship she was—for a pirate—if ever there was one. Captain Pomfrett laid to his duties with a will. Prayers were read on the quarterdeck morning and evening; profane language was punished by stoppage of grog; flogging was the penalty for dicing or drunkenness; for striking an officer, or attempted mutiny, the offender would be incontinently hanged at the yard-arm. The nine men of Murch’s ship, the Wheel of Fortune’s crew, whom we had brought aboard, were divided into port and starboard watches, with double spells to keep, since we had but half the complement required to work the ship. Crowby, the boatswain, was made pilot and sailing-master; I, Harry Winter, was promoted to owners’ agent. The men had no thought but that we were sailing under Murch’s orders, as tender to the Wheel of Fortune, and the terror of his name helped to keep them within these strait bounds. They supposed he had appointed Pomfrett to the command of the stolen ship, and expected the Wheel of Fortune to rejoin us very soon. We, too, expected her appearance, and we kept a sharp lookout for her top-masts rising on the sky-line. As for Morgan Leroux, the crew still regarded her as the pretty young gentleman-adventurer, in which character she had shipped at first. It seems strange that her disguise should have availed her for so long, but I can only record the fact. That there are cases upon record of women serving for years in the guise of men, both as soldiers and sailors, is notorious.

Captain Brandon Pomfrett is now, you see, committed to chivalric action. He is rescuing the lady from all sorts of perils, so she declared, and she ought to have known; he is appointed the guardian and trustee of her maiden honour. The position restored his self-respect, something damaged hitherto by the contemplation of his obligation to Morgan Leroux. She had saved him from being bought and sold as a slave, at first; she came to our aid in Porto-Bello; and, for my part, I believe that she persuaded Murch to attack that town, and took her share in the business, in the hope of finding Brandon Pomfrett again—Brandon, who would have none of her, sending her back to the ship when she would have marooned herself along with the supercargo. Then she stole the ship in which we were now all sailing together, and gave it to Pomfrett. And for all these benefits he had returned nothing until now, when the lady cast herself upon his protection. Until now, the more she did for him the less he had liked her. The obligation had galled him; besides, Brandon Pomfrett had no notion of dangling about a petticoat; he had other ends in view. Do you think Morgan Leroux had no perception of these things, when they are plain to common persons like you and me? At any rate, affairs took on another complexion aboard La Modeste.

From the moment Captain Pomfrett assumed command, Mistress Morgan found herself waited on hand and foot. The captain, you see, considered it his duty to pay the extreme of nice attention to one in his protection. Morgan, too, became less aggressively masculine in appearance; she wore doublet and hose, indeed, but over these she disposed the fine cloak of crimson damask which came from the house of the Governor of Porto-Bello, so that she really went clad in a loose gown. Moreover, her talk insensibly changed its note. She was less loud and downright, no longer boisterous, but falling into placid silences, in which her dark eyes, shining beneath the straight brows, like lights in still water overhung by cliffs, met Brandon’s glance and held it, and dropped away again. These little signs served to indicate the course and rising of that invisible stream that makes the real history of life. As for the other, the procession of shows, that passes with a great noise and clamour: the life of eating and drinking, fighting and folly, getting and losing; kept its indifferent way with even pace.

Its chronicle, so far as our little voyage on the Ship of Modesty be concerned, began in a report from the cook that there were but a few days’ provisions in store. Whereupon Captain Pomfrett encouraged the watch to vigilance, promising to the man who first sighted a ship the pick of the small-arms aboard her. And the second day at sea we sighted a small snow, flying French colours. Our colours were French, too—a coincidence of which we made use. We overhauled the snow, fired a shot across her bows, summoned her to surrender, and sent a boat aboard to take possession. There was but small resistance, soon put down. These little ships speculate on the chance of running the gauntlet of pirates and privateers, rather than trust to their powers of defence. We pressed six of her crew, negroes and half-castes, took her cargo of wine, brandy, flour, and cocoa, and let her go; but not before Captain Brandon had pillaged her great cabin for dainties to grace the board of his own. Two days later we took, in like manner, another small ship, laden with marmalade, jars of gunpowder, some bar silver, muskets, and bags of bullets.

Meanwhile, there was no sign of Mr Murch. It was to be supposed that he was delayed in Porto-Bello. And, meanwhile, was no sign of Mr Dawkins, either. We were sailing north, but Dawkins might have gone south for all we knew, save that Murch was ranging to the southward, and Dawkins would have little lust to meet him. So we held on, with plans somewhat indeterminate. We could not sail after Dawkins for ever; if for no other reason, because our crew would certainly break into mutiny before long. They came out for plunder, and plunder they would have, sooner or later. Failing Dawkins, we might set a course for Bristol, and keep the crew in a good humour by picking up what ships we could on the way. What would happen when we fetched up in Bristol was a question never at this time debated. Persons in a doubtful situation often avoid a discussion, for, so long as a matter is not talked of, you may, if you like, pretend that it does not exist. But it was clear enough, without any words, that we were in a feeble case. We had but four guns and twenty-odd men, against Mr Dawkins’s eighteen guns and ninety men, or Murch’s eight guns and sixty men. Either pirate could blow us out of the water, if he had a mind.

Meanwhile, we held on steadily before the jolly trade-wind, shepherding its white cloud-flocks upon the blue illimitable fields of heaven. A great part of the captain’s day was occupied in taking the sun and working out the ship’s position; no dead reckoning or rule-of-thumb for Captain Pomfrett; the rest of his time he spent with Morgan Leroux. The skipper would have had the voyage to last for ever on these terms, I think. So we cruised warily among the group of little islands, Albuquerque Cays, Saint Andrew’s Island, Old Providence Island, and Serrana Cays, spying in every harbour, creek, and inlet for our old ship, the Blessed Endeavour, captained now by Dawkins. For we reckoned that she would need cleaning by this time, and we hoped to light upon the bark in some sequestered bay, careened and helpless. But we worked through the islands in vain, and steered north-west for Cape Gracias à Dios, at the outflow of the River Coco, where we would take in wood and water. So expert was the captain becoming at the art of navigation, that we did not miss the Cape by more than fifteen miles—a trifling error, easily amended by two or three hours’ tacking about and about, to which evolutions we owed the sight in the offing of a tall ship steering due west. Perceiving that the stranger altered her course as though to speak with us, we went about, and soon showed that, on a wind, we had the heels of her, whoever she might be. Before long she altered her course again, steering for the mainland. But when we fetched up in the shadow of Cape Gracias à Dios that evening there was no ship to be seen, and we thought no more of her for the time, being busied for the next two or three days in getting wood and water for the ship, overhauling her, and making good defects.

Upon the third night after our arrival in this snug anchorage we had been supping late, and came upon deck about midnight—the skipper, and Morgan Leroux, and the writer of these memoirs. The moon had gone down behind the rocky headland, which loomed upon the silver dimness like a huge couchant beast; fire-flies sparkled in the vast shadows of the shore, and out to seaward the smoothly rolling plains of water stretched away and away, glimmering mysterious. Save for the eternal thunder of the surf, which ran so continually in our ears that we ceased to hear it, the night was very still.

“This is a pleasant life,” said Captain Pomfrett. “It’s a pity it must end so soon.”

“Why so soon, then?” asked Morgan Leroux.

“Owners at home, and pirates abroad,” Brandon answered.

“I am so tired of your talk about owners,” said Morgan. “What have you to do with owners, when it was their ship’s company that sold you in Barbadoes? Why, they set Dawkins on to do it, very likely.”

“You wouldn’t say so if you knew my uncle, not to mention aunt,” returned the captain, lazily. “But it was I that brought Dawkins to them in the beginning, and it’s me that has to bring him back in the end—dead or alive.”

“Dead or alive, ho, ho!” came, like an echo, and with a chuckle, close beside us; and there were the head and shoulders of a man, risen above the rail of the bulwarks, black upon the moonlight.

As we turned, he dropped below the rail. Pomfrett cried out “Who’s that?” and we all ran to the side to see a boat, manned by eight or ten men, shoving off from under the counter. Pomfrett challenged, and the same voice answered across the swiftly widening space of water, “Dead or alive, shipmate, dead or alive—ho, ho, ha!”

Pomfrett roared for the watch below, and, the men tumbling up in a hurry, he had a boat lowered and went himself in pursuit. But lowering boats and such evolutions are not performed in a ship of the private account as they are in Her Majesty’s navy. By the time our boat struck the water the stranger had a fair start, and Pomfrett must needs return before very long, having lost all trace of her in the dark.

“That’s Dawkins, for a ducat,” says Morgan; and we supposed that she was right, and that the ship which had chased us three days since was the Blessed Endeavour at last. The watch on deck had no information to give; it was clear the man had been asleep, and he was duly sentenced to a flogging. Then we held a council. If Dawkins were near by, we should hear from him again before long. In that case, were we to fight? Run away we could not, for the wind had dropped. Now, buccaneers do not risk their skins in fighting unless there is a distinct advantage to be gained thereby, and Dawkins stood in very little danger from us. We were too small a force to harm him. All things considered, the captain (whose decision is final in all questions of fighting, chasing, or being chased) decided to clear for action and sit still. It was true that the boat might not have come from Dawkins, but from a strange ship, or even from Murch himself; but, even so, we had no alternative.

Yet I think we had made up our minds that it was Dawkins who had found us out—I hardly know why. Morning dawned in a windless calm, and I went ashore with a perspective glass and Morgan Leroux, who insisted on accompanying me, to climb the headland. We came to a bare place in the ridge, where the trees fell away, and there, looking northward, stretched a big lagoon, and on the shore a tall ship lay careened. Tents were pitched, the smoke of fires lifted light against the dark woods, and men were clustering like ants about the ship. That was the Blessed Endeavour, sure enough; I could tell her lines among a thousand.

“So there’s the long-lost bark,” says Morgan, staring through the glass. “She’s not far off, and yet she might as well be an ocean away, for all the use she is. I’ve a month’s mind to pay this Dawkins of yours a visit, Harry. Shall I ask him to dinner?”

In vain I adjured this obstinate girl to return. She laughed me to scorn.

“Your Dawkins does not know me,” said she. “Why should he harm me? I’m a brother skipper, d’ye see, out on the account, like himself. Oh, I’ll spin the man a yarn, never fear. Take your long face back to the captain with my compliments, Harry, and bid him prepare a dinner for Mr Dawkins by six o’clock. Adieu, my friend.” And she plunged into the wood.

Here was a quandary. It was my business to return to the ship and make report; yet how could I let this wild quean go alone into Dawkins’s camp? But supposing I went with her, what could I do against near a hundred pirates? Moreover, I had no longer any doubt but that our visitor of last night was sent by Dawkins, who must therefore be aware of our neighbourhood; and I reflected that Morgan could go on her errand alone with a much better face than if I were to accompany her. Besides, she was not running any great risk.

On the whole, it was better I should go back to the ship; and back I went, but ill at ease.

Captain Brandon Pomfrett fell into a violent passion when I gave him Morgan’s message.

“God do so to me, and more also, but you shall answer for every hair of her head that’s injured. Why did you let her go? Why didn’t you stop her? Why didn’t you go with her?”

Thus Pomfrett, and much more to the same effect. I never saw him in so deplorable a condition of rage and distress. But, after a while, he consented to wait until six o’clock before setting out with the whole ship’s company to rescue the damsel.

“I know,” he said, at last, “it’s her doing. You couldn’t help it—I couldn’t myself. And perhaps she’ll come back safe—she’s very clever, Harry,” says the captain, wistfully.

And, meantime, as you shall hear, Morgan Leroux stood in no danger at all, save in the captain’s excited imagination. The occurrence marks a stage in the relations of these two.