The last buccaneer

Presently the negro reappeared, motioned us within, and led us into a cool, gloomy room with a matted floor, sparely furnished with a table, a great carved settle, and a red earthenware water-jar, oozing a cold perspiration. The walls, of baked earth, or adobe, were two or three feet thick in the embrasure of the small window, which was fitted with an iron grille, curiously wrought. The square of the window framed a space of blinding sunshine, continually crossed and recrossed by darting, many-coloured flies. We had a few minutes in which to remark these things, before the heavy door opened, and there entered a tall old man, dressed in loose clothes of white linen. His complexion was of the colour of old mahogany, so that his eyes glinted light like steel, and his thick white hair and beard were as snow. With his strong projection of chin, line of forehead running sharply backward and upward, and upward slant of tufted eyebrow and long, narrow eye, there was at the first glance a certain viperine aspect about Mr Jevon Murch. The skin of his face was wrought into a net-work of fine lines, not only about the eyes, where the net was closest, but covering cheek and forehead.

“Mr Pomfrett,” said Mr Murch, bending his keen glance upon each of us in turn. He had a beautiful deep voice, like a bell.

Pomfrett signified that he was the person addressed.

“Ah! You are Brandon Pomfrett? And you, sir, are Henry Winter? Precisely. Well, gentlemen,” said Mr Murch, with stern deliberation, “I am sorry to see you here. But I have my duty to do, as you have yours.”

At this unexpected address, we stared in amazement.

“I surprise you,” said Mr Murch. “Or, rather, God surprises you. You shall never escape Him. He is ever in ambuscade. Did you think to avoid His arm by fleeing across the seas? Why, you witless boys, all the while ’twas His wind was blowing you to the place of repentance.”

We had no notion of what this extraordinary man might mean; but it seemed clear enough that the sooner we were out of his house the better.

“I fear,” said Brandon, politely, “there has been some mistake, sir. We have the honour to wish you good-day.” He made as if to go, but Mr Murch stood against the door, his hand upon the lock.

“As to a mistake, be sure, Mr Pomfrett, I will ascertain the rights of the business. Sir,” said Mr Murch, with great dignity, “I keep a clean ship here—no slaver. Meanwhile, sirs, I must ask you to accept my hospitality.” He slipped from the room, and we heard the bolt click. We were prisoners.

Of course, we tried to get out; and, of course, we failed. The door was of some dark, hard, foreign wood, inches thick; the window-bars were immovable. We discussed the situation. At first we were ready to conclude that Mr Jevon Murch was mad, since he was evidently sober; but the explanation seemed inadequate. Such were the hurry and disorder of our spirits, that it took us a long time to arrive at the conclusion which, to the reader, must appear fairly obvious. Mr Dawkins had sold us to his friend, Mr Murch, who would either keep us captive until the ship had sailed, or, what in those days was the more likely supposition, would enslave us to work on his plantation. Either way, the prospect did not smile. Either way, as the supercargo remarked, we were in a clove hitch. But, why should Mr Dawkins desire to be rid of the owners’ agent and, by consequence, his assistant? Here, again, we were long in debate before we came to a plausible theory. The owners’ representatives out of the way, Mr Dawkins would lift the plate and skip with the profits—this was our brilliant solution.

“Why, the man’s a common pirate,” cried Brandon. “However could we have engaged him? But it was the bottle did it; we had to, you see. It was all my fault, but it seemed such plain sailing at the time. I can never go back to England now, whatever this Murch does with us. We’re done—the game’s up. And I’ve dragged you into it, too, Harry,” says Brandon, with a very proper expression of remorse.

But regrets were unavailing, as I told him; this world is unsusceptible of refinements. It was to be supposed that Dawkins’s letter to Murch had described us as two young gallows-birds whose ingenuous faces our relatives were not anxious to behold again. Everyone is aware that the plantations used to relieve of their failures who knows how many excellent families? There was nothing strange in that. Dawkins had probably garlanded our necks for the sacrifice with the fragments of all the Ten Commandments; or, rather, it was to be supposed, Gamaliel’s fertile wit had done so for him, since Dawkins was no hand with a pen. Mr Murch, in all likelihood, was even now gone to see Captain Dawkins on our account; Dawkins would confirm his letter with damning detail; the bonds would be signed, and Mr Dawkins would pouch two hundred pieces of eight, or so. He would be at no loss to explain to the officers the continued absence of two dissolute young men; would make great pretence of delaying his departure; and would finally cut sail, swearing that he declined to lose another half-hour for the Angel Gabriel himself. We could see him at it. As for Mr Jevon Murch, he would return with Dawkins’s sign-manual for value received in his pocket, and—what then? We should be his property, as much as his ass, or his ox, or anything that was his. We should have lost everything in the world, and ourselves into the bargain. And yet, Mr Murch seemed possessed of piety, a strange quality in a friend of Mr Dawkins’s and one of Captain Morgan’s men.

“If there’s anything I hate,” says Brandon, with great energy, “’tis hypocrisy.”

I was beginning to explain to him how rare was this vice, so fluently imputed, so difficult to learn, when there came a knock at the door, a little barred wicket opened in the panel, and the face of the dumb negro appeared in the opening. He handed in a bottle of wine, a couple of cold roasted fowls, a branch of bananas, some good white bread, and various small delicacies. These I received and set out on the table, for Pomfrett refused to touch them.

“I will not break bread in the house of this canting scoundrel of a crimp and buccaneer,” said he, nobly, with a ravenous eye on the victuals, the like of which he had not smelt for weeks.

And all hungry and thirsty as I was, I had to persuade the virtuous supercargo that here were no hospitalities of an equal, but rations for prisoners, before I could begin.

“Do you really think so?” said Brandon.

I understood him. “My dear man,” said I, “do you take my feelings to be less delicate than your own?”

This was all he wanted; and, honour being satisfied, we made a heavenly meal. The negro kept in attendance and brought us cigarros, and we lay on the floor and smoked. We were not nearly so sad as we thought we were. I think, secretly, we began to conceive a sneaking kindness towards Mr Jevon Murch.

The twilight was gathering, when the bolts shot back, the door swung wide, and the great figure of Mr Murch appeared in the dark of the doorway.

“If you will have the kindness to come into my room, gentlemen, we will have a talk,” said he.

“Sir,” began Pomfrett, “what——”

But Murch had turned his back. Following him, we stepped into the passage, glancing left and right for a chance of escape. The passage opened at either end to the cool of the evening air; and in the doorways lounged two or three white men in great hats, holding long guns in the hollow of their arms, whom I took to be overseers. We followed Mr Murch into the room opposite our prison. He sat beside a tall scrutoire, a pair of lighted candles in silver candlesticks at his elbow.

“Now, gentlemen,” said he. “I have heard your captain’s account of you. I should be glad to hear your own.”

“By what right——” Brandon began.

“By right of purchase,” Mr Murch broke in. “You are as much mine”—he spread his broad hand upon the desk—“to keep, burn, or destroy, as this piece of furniture. Do you require documentary evidence? Here it is.”

He took a folded paper from his vest and laid it beside him. It was as we thought. We were indentured slaves for five years.

But Brandon declined to look at the document, declined to accept Mr Murch’s explanation, declined to have anything to do with him. He demanded, as a free British subject, to be liberated instantly, and so forth, with a fine indignation; to all of which Mr Murch hearkened with more patience than I should have expected him to manifest, on the whole. As he reclined in his chair, his great size and mass half in light and half in shadow, his narrow eyes, the upper lids drawn close, like the lids of a hawk’s eye, fixed upon the speaker’s simple countenance, the old buccaneer disengaged a strong expression of latent force; of sleeping fires that a touch might kindle into a highly disagreeable conflagration.

“I should tell you, Mr Pomfrett,” said he, in his sounding, deliberate tones, “that all this is nothing. Barbadoes is not England. Once for all, I am master here. There’s no admiral that sails the seas commands the obedience I command. Now, as to my request, again. Your story, gentlemen, is of no moment to me. You, Mr Pomfrett, may have misapplied your uncle’s money; you, Mr Winter, may have stolen a virtuous young woman from her parents”—here, then, were some of Mr Dawkins’s rather clumsy inventions—“it is nothing to me. It was rather for your own sakes that I made my request. I make it again.”

Every line upon his swarthy face, every hair of his strong white beard, every vibration of his deep voice cried “Beware!” We complied. We told Mr Jevon Murch all that had befallen, from the meeting in Gamaliel’s tavern to our landing in this accursed island. Pomfrett ended by a fervent adjuration, imploring Mr Murch, if he could not give or sell his liberty, at least to let him go down to the ship, on his parole, and challenge Captain Dawkins to mortal combat.

Mr Murch, who had listened without a word, good or bad, treated the proposition very airily.

“My lad,” said he, “don’t you know Dawkins better than that? He does not fight except for gain. Moreover, he sails to-night—has already cut sail, in all likelihood.”

I thought Brandon would have sprung at his throat, and then I thought he would break into weeping. He glanced at the iron face of his master, and then he stood looking down, with a bitten lip. Before he had time to give way to his feelings, Murch struck a silver gong, and a brown servant appeared, by whom preceded, and followed by Mr Murch, we were conducted into a sleeping-chamber. Murch commended to us the food and wine set out on a side-table, bade us good-night, and left us, bolting the door after him.

These emergencies of life are worse in either anticipation or retrospect than in experience. We thought little, and said little, ate and drank, and slept soundly, chiefly conscious of the pleasure of being ashore, in a clean house, with fresh food. That we were sold into slavery was certainly a disaster; we were aware of it, in the abstract; but, at present, we felt it not. As for Mr Murch, he puzzled us.

But, somehow or other, during the night-watches the shadow of servitude descended upon us. We awoke at first to a vague consciousness of a nameless taint, then to a clear perception of that infamy. In the good hour of the dawn, when the world is all still, and the air scented with the smoke of wood-fires, we stood sullen at the window, gazing at the clear glory of the sky with the eyes of chained dogs. It was so Mr Murch found us, when he came briskly in, at the heels of a thundering knock, cat-footed, for all his bulk, and massively alert.

“Gentlemen, what cheer? I have brought you a little present,” quoth he, tapping a folded paper with his thick fingers. “Do me the favour to glance at this document.”

Pomfrett received the paper, and together we ran our eyes over it. It was the same I had perused the night before, signed with Dawkins’s great sprawling signature, and purporting to be the indenture delivering us to Mr Jevon Murch for a term of five years. The sum paid was one hundred and fifteen pieces of eight for Brandon Pomfrett, aged twenty-two; one hundred for Henry Winter, aged twenty-five; both being “notorious profligate evil-livers.” The schoolmaster, it appeared, was the cheaper article—why?

“You have us in a trap—we knew that last night,” said Brandon, returning the paper. “But let me tell you, that’s a shameful document,” he added, hardily.

Mr Murch, with those narrow-lidded eyes of his on Brandon, slowly tore the paper across and across. We stared at the pieces as they dropped, and up at the bronze countenance with its inscrutable hieroglyphic of fine lines.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Pomfrett, stupidly.

“I desire your company, gentlemen, at breakfast—and my servants do not sit at table with me,” said Mr Murch. “I beg you will so favour me.” With his customary abrupt action, he turned about and padded from the room. What should we do but follow? Mr Murch led us out into the verandah. A lady wearing a black lace mantilla, as the Spanish ladies use, came to him and kissed him.

We were presented in due form to Mistress Morgan Leroux. What shall I say of her? She had the blackest eyes I ever beheld (but no eyes are truly black), beneath level brows, and a mouth the colour of bruised poppies. In the shadow of her hood and her dark hair she glowed like a rose, a refreshing vision to eyes tired with the eternal waste of sea. Mistress Morgan looked curiously at these two gentlemen, who were slaves (the taint was upon us still) no later than this morning, and it was their glance that dropped.

Mr Murch ate enough for three, and talked in a proportion.

“A clean ship, and the log posted—there’s the rule for a mariner,” says he. “Now, gentlemen, I’ll tell you. I’ve had youngsters shipped to me before; their cases were clear; repentance was the thing for them, and discipline to back it. Repentance is the word. A man is blown out of his course—there’s never mortal man that isn’t—and fetches up on a lee-shore very likely. He claws off as best he may, and thinks no more about it. And when he’s shipwrecked once for all, he’s surprised. He likes to consider himself a clever man, you see—he hasn’t the heart to repent—he’s a fool. Well, now, when I came to post up the log last night, I had in my mind that Dawkins was lying, after what you told me of yourselves. I know Mr Dawkins better than he knows me. But I wasn’t sure. I took the night to think it over, and this morning I saw what to do. Yours, gentlemen, is not a common case.”

“I hope not,” said Pomfrett. “I’ve lost my ship.”

“And that’s better than losing your head, my lad,” observed Mr Murch.

“Was that the alternative?” enquired Pomfrett, apparently with ironical intention.

“Dawkins is bitter fond of money, but he must be growing strangely patient in his old age to have suffered an owners’ agent so long,” returned Mr Murch, shaking his great head. “Why, next to the captain who died, and lucky for him, you were the thorn in his pillow from the beginning. What! not content with being an agent, you must hector him on his quarterdeck, by your own account! No—it’s a miracle you came ashore, Mr Supercargo.”

Here was a new point of view. Mr Murch began to appear transfigured into the light of a saviour.

“Yes,” he went on, “you may say I bought your salvation, gentlemen. No—don’t thank me.” Mr Murch waved deprecating hands. “If I hadn’t bought you, others would. Dawkins came to me as an old shipmate, you see.”

It was like a dream to be sitting in that strange place, with the girl watching us, and the old buccaneer discussing, between mouthfuls, the question of our death or purchase as though we had been a brace of poultry.

“But what I say and maintain, is a clean ship above board and below,” said Murch, harping back. “I hope I make myself clear, gentlemen. I want you to understand me. I know what’s right and I know what’s wrong, as well as any man alive. I consider it right to buy slaves under certain conditions, wrong under others. You do right, as you think; you find it wrong; what then? Repent, as I was saying. Repent, smart and handsome, and that brings you to your course again. Take your own case—you see? Why, now, that’s all shipshape. With your leave, we’ll talk business presently. Mistress Morgan will entertain you in the meanwhile, I daresay.”

Having delivered himself of these sentiments in his weighty, sonorous manner, whose positive assurance implied negation of even the possibility of contradiction, the old gentleman clapped a palm-leaf hat on his head, called for his horse, and disappeared.

“When Mr Murch talks in this way, you may believe him. It is true what he says.” Thus abruptly did Mistress Morgan Leroux address us, with a clear foreign-accented enunciation.

“Is Mr Murch your——?” asked Pomfrett, rather at a loss.

“My guardian, yes,” said the girl. “Ever since Sir Henry Morgan went to England. He was my grandfather—Sir Henry; that is why I am called Morgan.”

She sent for cigarros, and took one herself. We sat there in the cool shadow, well filled and comfortable. Pomfrett talked with Morgan Leroux. He forgot his ship, and his owners, and his aunt, and everything—you had only to glance at his face to know that. I let them talk; women are not much in my way. After a while old Murch came back and carried us into his room.