CHAPTER XXVIII
IN NORTH CAROLINA—IN VIRGINIA
THREE or four days after Mr. Knight’s interview with the pirates, Captain Jackson, of whom the colonial secretary had spoken as having gone up the river for a cargo of wood shingles, stopped at Bath Town on his way to Baltimore, and Mr. Knight sent a note to Blackbeard, telling him that he would bring the coasting captain down that same evening. Dred was just then sick in bed with the earlier stages of his fever, so that only the pirate captain himself and Hands, the master, were left to meet the secretary and the Baltimore skipper.
It was after dusk when Mr. Knight and the Baltimore man came down from the town to the pirate’s house. The boat in which they arrived was rowed by two white men of the crew of the “Eliza Boydell,” the coasting schooner. “Where’s your master, boy?” said Mr. Knight to Jack, who stood at the landing, watching their approach.
“He’s over aboard the sloop,” said Jack. “He went there an hour or more ago, and left word you were to go over there when you came.”
Mr. Knight looked displeased. “I fear he’ll be drinking,” he said to Captain Jackson, “and as like as not be in one of his devil’s humors. ’Tis so he ever appears to be when he hath some venture of especial risk in hand. I’ve a mind to go back to the town again, and come another day.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Jack heard Captain Jackson say. “I’ve seen him often enough to know him well, and I’ve seen him in his liquor and I’ve seen him sober;” and then the boat rowed away from the landing toward the sloop.
No one met Mr. Knight and Captain Jackson as the two came aboard the pirate vessel. Even before they reached the cabin hatchway they could smell the fumes of liquor which filled the space below. It was as Mr. Knight had apprehended—the captain and his master had been drinking. The visitors found the cabin lit by the light of a single candle, and a squat bottle of rum stood on the table, from which both pirates were tippling freely. As the two visitors entered, Hands was in the act of filling his pipe with uncertain, tipsy fingers, and Captain Teach sat leaning upon the table, the lean, brown fingers of his hands locked around his glass. He glowered gloomingly at the two visitors, but he offered them no word of welcome. “Well, captain,” said Mr. Knight, “d’ye see, I fetched our friend, Captain Jackson. And I’ve fetched the letter I’ve writ to our friend in Virginia for you to see.” Captain Teach still looked gloomily from under his brows at his visitors, without vouchsafing any answer.
“I’m glad to see you, captain,” said Captain Jackson. “’Tis a long while since we met, and you be looking hale and well.”
Captain Teach turned his dull, heavy eyes upon the speaker, but still he did not say anything.
“Oh, he’s well enough, he is,” said Hands, thickly. “He’s never sick—sick, he ain’t.” He tilted the bowl of his pipe uncertainly against the candle flame, at first not quite hitting the object at which he aimed. “Well, when he dies,” said Hands, with a wink toward Mr. Knight, “the devil dies, he does, and then honest—honest men all go to h—ic—heaven.”
Captain Teach did not look at his sailing-master. “You be still,” he growled. “You don’t know what you’re saying—you don’t. You’re in liquor, you are.”
Hands winked tipsily at the visitors, as though what the other said was a great joke. Mr. Knight stood looking uncertainly from one to the other. “Perhaps we’d better come some other time,” he said; “I don’t think you choose to talk about this business now, captain.”
“What d’ye mean?” growled the pirate. “D’ye mean to say I’m drunk, ye villain?” and he turned his heavy-eyed glare at the secretary.
“Why, no,” said Mr. Knight, soothingly, “I don’t mean to say you’re drunk, captain. Far be it from me to say that. I only mean to say that maybe ’twould suit you better to have us come another time, as I see you’re in the humor of having some sport to-night, and maybe don’t choose to talk business.”
“I know what you mean to say,” said the pirate captain, moodily. “You mean to say that I’m drunk. Maybe I’m drunk, but I’m sober enough to know what I’m at yet.” He was fumbling in his coat pocket as he spoke, and as he ended, he brought out a pistol of the sort called a dag or dragon—a short, stubby weapon with a brass barrel. “I’m just as steady as a rock,” said he, “and I could snuff that candle easy enough without putting out the light.” He aimed his pistol, as he spoke, toward the candle, shutting one eye. Captain Jackson was directly in range upon the other side of the table, and he ducked down like a flash, crouching beneath the edge of the board. “Hold hard, captain,” he cried, in a muffled voice. “Take care what you’re at! You’ll do somebody a harm the next thing.”
Captain Teach still aimed the weapon for a few seconds of breathless hush. Mr. Knight waited tensely for the report of the pistol, but it did not come, and presently the captain lowered the hammer and slipped it back again in his pocket. “Come, come, captain,” said Captain Jackson, “don’t try any more jokes of that kind.” He smoothed down his hair with the palm of his hand, grinning uneasily as he did so.
“Come, captain,” said Mr. Knight, “you mustn’t act so, indeed you mustn’t. If we’re to talk business we must be serious about it and not go playing with pistols to shoot somebody dead, maybe, before we begin upon whatever we have to do. Our friend Captain Jackson here sails to-morrow morning, wind and weather permitting, and here’s the letter he’s to take up to Mr. Parker. He understands what we’re about, and he undertakes to take the letter up for five pounds.”
“Why, you black-hearted son of a sea-cook!” Captain Blackbeard roared at the other captain. “What d’ye mean by asking five pounds to take a bit of paper like that up to Virginia?” He glowered at his visitor for a moment or two, and the skipper laughed uneasily. “Ye call yourself an honest man, do ye? Ay, an honest man that’ll rob a thief and say ’twas not him took it first. Let me see the letter,” said he, reaching out his hand to Mr. Knight.
Mr. Knight handed him the letter, and the pirate captain drew the candle over toward him and read it slowly and deliberately. “Well,” he said, as he folded it, “I dare say ’tis good enough.”
“Trust the captain to tell what’s what,” said Hands, taking the pipe out of his mouth as he spoke. “He—he can read a let—ter as well as the betht o’—the best o’ ye.” He held the pipe for a while, looking uncertainly into the bowl, and then thrust his finger into it.
“You hold your noise, Hands,” said Captain Teach; “you’re in your liquor, and not fit to talk.”
“Well, captain,” said Captain Jackson, “I’ll take the letter for five pounds; but I won’t take it for a farthing less. D’ye see, I run a risk in doing it, for I’m an honest man—I am, and nobody hath yet said that black is the white of my eye. And if I’m to run the risk of losing my honesty by dealing with pirates,—if I may be so bold as for to say so,—why, five pounds is little enough to ask for it.”
Captain Teach stared at him for awhile in silence without replying. “Here, captain,” he said, “fill a glass for yourself,” and he pushed the bottle and a glass across the table toward his visitor. “Fill your glass, Mr. Secretary. You villain!”—to Captain Jackson—“you’re worse than any of us to play you’re decent and honest, and to be a thief upon pirates.”
“Why, captain,” said Mr. Knight, “I believe I don’t choose to drink anything to-night.”
“By heaven! you shall drink,” said Captain Teach, scowling at him, and then Mr. Knight reluctantly filled his glass. But he kept a keen eye upon the pirate captain, and presently, as he more than expected, he saw him begin fumbling again in the pockets in which he carried his pistols. And then, as he still watched, he was certain he saw the glint of the light upon the barrel. Whether he was right or wrong, he did not care to risk the chance; neither did he choose to say anything of what he saw, fearing lest he might precipitate some desperate drunken act, and perhaps call the pirate’s anger down upon himself.
“Wait a bit,” he said, “I want to go up on deck a minute—I’ll be down again by and by,” and he edged his way out along the bench.
Captain Teach watched him gloomily as he left the cabin, and after his legs had disappeared through the companion-way he still sat staring for a while out of the open scuttle. Then he turned and looked gloweringly at the other two. Hands was trying to explain to the skipper how he had once been an honest man himself. “Yes, sir,” he was saying, “I’d have no more to do with such bloody villains as these here be—than—than—but what was an honest man to do for hisself?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Captain Jackson. “Where’s Mr. Knight gone?” he asked.
Hands looked about, as though observing for the first time that he was not there. “Why, I don’t know,” he said. “Mr. Knight—where be Mr. Knight?” As the sailing-master spoke, Blackbeard leaned a little forward, and suddenly blew out the light of the candle, leaving the cabin in utter darkness. The next moment there came a double dull, stunning report from beneath the table, and Hands yelled out in instant echo: “O Lord! I’m shot!”
Captain Jackson sat for a moment, dazed by the suddenness of that which had happened. Then he scrambled desperately out along the bench upon which he sat, and ran clattering up on the deck. “What’s the matter?” cried Mr. Knight, who had turned at the sound of the pistol-shots. “What’s happened?”
“Oh!” panted Captain Jackson, breathlessly, “I don’t believe that’s a man; I believe it’s a devil. He blew out the light and shot his pistols under the table. He’s shot Hands.”
The two stood listening for a moment—there was perfect silence below, only for the now regular groaning of the wounded man. “Here, fetch that lantern,” Mr. Knight called out. “There’s somebody shot down in the cabin.”
The men from the boat came scrambling over the edge of the sloop, one of them bringing the lantern with him.
Captain Jackson took the light from him and went to the open companion-way, where he held it for a while, looking down into the yawning darkness beneath. He hesitated for a long time before venturing down. “Go on,” said Mr. Knight. “Why don’t you go on? He’s shot off both his pistols and he hath no more to shoot now.”
“Why, to be sure,” said Captain Jackson, “I don’t like to venture down into a pit with such a man as that. There’s no knowing what he’ll do.”
“He can’t do any more harm,” urged Mr. Knight. “He hath shot his pistols now, and that’s all there is of it.”
“Oh! oh!” groaned the wounded man from out of the darkness.
Finally, after a great deal of hesitation, Captain Jackson went slowly and reluctantly down below. Mr. Knight waited for a moment, and, as nothing happened, he followed after, and the two sailors who had come aboard followed after him. The close space was filled with the pungent mist of gunpowder smoke. By the light of the lantern they saw that Captain Teach was sitting just where he had sat all the evening, gloomy and moody. One of the empty pistols lay upon the table beside him, and the other he must have thrust back again into his pocket. Hands was leaning over with his face lying upon the table; it was ghastly white, and there were drops of sweat upon his forehead. “Oh!” he groaned, “O—h!” He was holding one of his legs with both his hands under the table.
“Where are you hurt?” said Mr. Knight.
“Oh!” groaned Hands, “I’m shot through the knee.”
“Lookee, captain,” said Mr. Knight, “you’ve done enough harm for to-night. D’ye mean any more mischief, or do you not?”
Captain Blackbeard looked heavily at him, swaying his head from side to side like an angry bull. “Why, how can I do any more mischief?” he said. “Don’t you see that both pistols are empty? If I had another I wouldn’t swear that I wouldn’t blow both your lives out.”
“Let’s see where you’re hurt,” said Captain Jackson to Hands. “Can you walk any?”
“No,” groaned Hands. “Ah—h!” he cried more shrilly and quaveringly as Captain Jackson took him by the arm and tried to move him. “Let me alone—let me alone!”
“You’ve got to get out of here somehow,” said Captain Jackson. “Come here, Jake—Ned!” he called out to the two sailors who stood close to the foot of the companion-ladder. “Here, help me get this man out!”
With a great deal of groaning and dragging and shuffling of feet they finally dragged Hands out from behind the table. The blood was flowing down from his knee, and his stocking was soaked with it. Captain Teach sat gloomily looking on, without moving from his place or saying anything.
“What did ye shoot the man for, anyhow?” said Mr. Knight, as he stood over the wounded Hands, who now sat on the floor holding his shattered leg with both hands, swaying back and forth and groaning.
Captain Blackbeard looked at him for a moment or two without replying. “If I don’t shoot one of them now and then,” said he, thickly, “they’ll forget who I be.”
The letter reached Mr. Richard Parker some two weeks later at Marlborough, where he was then staying. The great house was full of that subdued bustle that speaks so plainly of illness. It was Colonel Parker. In the shock and despair that followed the abduction of his daughter, the gout had seized him again, and since then the doctor had been in the house all the time. “How is my brother this morning?” Mr. Richard Parker had asked of him.
“Why, sir, I see but very little change,” said the doctor.
“Yes, I know that; but can’t you tell me whether the little change is for the better or worse?”
“Why, Mr. Parker, sir, ’tis not for the worse.”
“Then it is for the better?”
“No, I do not say that, either, sir.”
“Well, what do you say, then?” said Mr. Parker, his handsome face frowning.
“Why, sir, I can only say that there is little change. His honor does not suffer so much, but the gout still clings to his stomach, and is not to be driven out.”
It was some little time after the doctor had so spoken that Mr. Knight’s letter was given to Mr. Parker. He had eaten his breakfast alone, and the plate and broken pieces of food still lay spread before him as he read and re-read the note. He sat perfectly still, without a shade of change passing over his handsome face. “’Tis indeed true,” said part of the letter, “that the young lady appears to be really ill, and if her father does not presently redeem her out of their hands she may, indeed, fall into a decline;” and then was added, in a postscript to the passage, “This is, I assure you, indeed the truth;” and the words were underscored.
There was no change upon his face when he read the passage, but he sat thinking, thinking, thinking, holding the open letter in his hand, his gaze turned, as it were, inward upon himself. Should she die, what then? There could be no doubt as to how it would affect him if father and daughter should both die. By his father’s will, the Parker estate that had been left to his brother would come to him in the event of the other’s dying without heirs. One of the servants came into the room with a dish of tea. Mr. Parker looked heavily and coldly at him, his handsome face still impassive and expressionless. “I can do nothing with my brother now,” he was saying to himself as he looked at the servant; “he is too ill to be troubled with such matters. Yes, Nelly will have to take her chances until Birchall is well enough for me to talk to him. I meant her no harm, and if she falls sick and dies, ’tis a chance that may happen to any of us.”
CHAPTER XXIX
AN EXPEDITION
BLACKBEARD had been away from home for some days in Bath Town—a longer stay than he commonly made. Meantime Jack was the only hale man left about the place. He and Dred had been turned out of their beds to make way for Hands, who had been brought ashore to the house from the sloop when he was shot through the leg. That had been four or five weeks before, and since then Jack and Dred had slept in the kitchen. It was very hard upon Dred, who was weak and sick with the fever.
Then one morning the pirate captain suddenly returned from the town.
Jack and Betty Teach were at breakfast in the kitchen, and Dred lay upon a bench, his head upon a coat rolled into a pillow.
“You’d better come and try to eat something,” said Betty Teach. “I do believe if you try to eat a bit you could eat, and to my mind you’d be the better for it.” Dred shook his head weakly without opening his eyes. Jack helped himself to a piece of bacon and a large yellow yam. “Now, do come and eat a bit,” urged the woman.
“I don’t want anything to eat,” said Dred, irritably. “I wish you’d let me alone.” He opened his eyes for a brief moment and then closed them again.
“Well,” said Betty, “you needn’t snap a body’s head off. I only ask you to eat for your own good—if you don’t choose to eat, why, don’t eat. You’ll be as testy as Hands by and by—and to be sure, I never saw anybody like he is with his sore leg. You’d think he was the only man in the world who had ever been shot, the way he do go on.”
“‘Twas a pretty bad hurt,” said Jack, with his mouth full, “and that’s the truth. ’Tis a wonder to me how he did not lose his leg. ’Tis an awful-looking place.” Dred listened with his eyes closed.
Just then the door opened and the captain came in, and then they ceased speaking. He looked very glum and preoccupied. Dred opened his eyes where he lay and looked heavily at him. The captain did not notice any of the three, but went to the row of pegs against the wall and hung up his hat, and then picked up a chair and brought it over to the table. “Have you had your breakfast yet, Ned?” his wife asked.
“No,” he said, briefly. He sat quite impassively as she bustlingly fetched him a plate and a knife and fork. “Where’s the case bottle?” he asked, without looking up.
“I’ll fetch it to you,” she said, and she hurried to the closet and brought out the squat bottle and set it beside him. He poured out a large dram for himself and then turned suddenly to Dred.
“Chris,” he said, “I got some news from Charleston last night. Jim Johnson’s come on, and he says that a packet to Boston in Massachusetts was about starting three or four days after he left. There’s a big prize in it, I do believe, and I’ve sent word down to the meet that we are to be off as soon as may be. I’m going to run down to-night.”
Jack sat listening intently. He did not quite understand what was meant, and he was very much interested to comprehend. He could gather that the pirate was going away, seemingly on an expedition of some sort, and he began wondering if he was to be taken along. Again Dred had opened his eyes and was lying looking at the pirate captain, who, upon his part, regarded the sick man for a steadfast moment or two without speaking. “D’ye think ye can go along?” said Blackbeard presently.
“Why, no,” said Dred weakly, “you may see for yourself that I can’t go along. How could I go along? Why, I be a bedrid man.”
The captain stared almost angrily at him. “I believe you could go along,” said he, “if you’d have the spirit to try. Ye lie here all day till you get that full of the vapors that I don’t believe you’ll ever be fit to get up at all. Don’t you think you could try?” Dred shook his head. “D’ye mean to say that you won’t even make a try to go along? D’ye mean that because you’re a little bit sick you choose to give up your share in the venture that’ll maybe make the fortune of us all?”
“I can’t help it,” said Dred, and then he groaned. “You may see for yourself that I’m not fit for anything. I wouldn’t do any good, and ’twould only cripple you to have a sick man aboard.”
“But how am I to get along without you?” said Blackbeard, savagely, “that’s what I want to know. There’s Hands in bed with his broken knee, and you down with the fever, and only Morton and me to run everything aboard the two sloops. For they do say that the packet’s armed and we’ll have to take both sloops.”
Jack had listened with a keener and keener interest. He felt that he must know just what all the talk meant. “Where are you going, captain?” he said. “What are you going to do?”
The pirate turned a lowering look upon him. “You mind your own business and don’t you concern youself with what don’t concern you,” he said. Then he added, “Wherever we’re going, you’re not going along, and you may rest certain of that. You’ve got to stay at home here with Betty, for she can’t get along with the girl and two sick men to look after.”
“He means he’s going on a cruise, Jack,” said Dred from the bench. “They’re going to cruise outside to stop the Charleston packet.”
“I don’t see,” said Jack to the pirate captain, “that I’m any better off here than I was up in Virginia. I had to serve Mr. Parker there and I have to slave for you here without getting anything for it.”
Blackbeard glowered heavily at him for a few moments without speaking. “If ye like,” he said, “I’ll send ye back to Virginia to your master. I dare say he’d be glad enough to get you back again.” And then Jack did not venture to say anything more. “Somebody’ll have to stay to look after all these sick people,” Blackbeard continued, “and why not you as well as another?”
The pirate’s wife had left the table and was busy getting some food together on a pewter platter. “You take this up-stairs to the young lady, Jack,” she said, “while I get something for Hands to eat. I never see such trouble in all my life as the three of ‘em make together—the young lady, and Hands, and Chris Dred here.”
“When d’ye sail!” Dred asked of the pirate captain, and Jack lingered, with the plate in his hand, to hear the answer.
“Why, just as soon as we can get the men together. The longer we leave it the less chance we’ll have of coming across the packet.” Jack waited a little while longer, but Blackbeard had fallen to at his breakfast, and he saw that no more was to be said just then, so he went up-stairs with the food, his feet clattering noisily as he ascended the dark, narrow stairway.
The young lady was sitting by the window, leaning her elbow upon the sill. Jack set the platter of food upon the table and laid the iron knife and two-pronged fork beside it. She had by this time become well acquainted with him and the other members of the pirate’s household. She would often come down-stairs when Blackbeard was away from home, and would sit in the kitchen talking with them, sometimes even laughing at what was said, and, for the time, appearing almost cheerful in spite of her captivity. Several times Jack and Betty Teach had taken her for a walk of an evening down the shore and even around the point in the direction of Trivett’s plantation house. She looked toward him now as he entered and then turned listlessly to the window again. She was very thin and white, and she wore an air of dejection that was now become habitual with her. “Do you know whether they have heard anything from Virginia to-day?” she asked.
“I don’t believe they have,” said Jack. “At least I didn’t hear Captain Teach say anything of the sort. Maybe by the time he comes back there’ll be a letter.”
“Comes back? Is he, then, going away?”
“Ay,” said Jack. “He’s going off on an expedition that’ll maybe take him two or three weeks.”
“An expedition?” she said. She looked at Jack as though wondering what he meant, but she did not inquire any further. “A matter of two or three weeks,” she repeated, almost despairingly. “I suppose, then, if a letter should come I would have to wait all that time until Captain Teach comes back again?”
“And cannot you, then, have patience to wait for a week or so, who have been here now a month?” said Jack.
Just then came the sound of the pirate captain’s heavy tread ascending the stairs.
“There he is, now,” said Jack, “and I’ve got to go.”
“Won’t you ask him if he’s heard anything from Virginia yet?”
“Why, mistress, it won’t be of any use for me to ask him; he won’t give me any satisfaction,” said Jack; and then he added,—“but I will if you want me to.”
Blackbeard went along the low, dark passageway and into the room where Hands lay, and Jack followed him. “Phew!” said the pirate captain, and he went across the room and opened the window. Hands, unconscious of the heavy, fetid smell of the sick-room, was sitting propped up in bed with a pillow, smoking a pipe of tobacco. He was very restless and uneasy, and had evidently heard some words of the pirate’s talk with Dred down-stairs. “Well, what’s ado now?” he asked.
“Why,” said Blackbeard, “we’re off on a cruise.”
“Off on a cruise?” said Hands.
“Yes,” said Blackbeard, as he sat himself down on the edge of the bed, “I was up in town last night when Jim Johnson came up. He’d just come back from Charleston and brought news of the Boston packet sailing. He says it was the talk there that there was a chist o’ money aboard.”
Hands laid aside his pipe of tobacco and began swearing with all his might. “What did ye mean, anyway,” he said, “to shoot me wantonly through the knee?” He tried to move himself in the bed. “M-m-m!” he grunted, groaning. He clenched the fist upon which he rested, making a wry face as he shifted himself a little on the bed.
The pirate captain watched him curiously as he labored to move himself. “How do you feel to-day?” he asked.
“Oh! I feel pretty well,” said Hands, groaning, “only when I try to move a bit. I reckon I’ll never be able to use my leg agin to speak on.”
Betty Teach came in with a platter of food. “What ha’ ye got there?” asked the sick man, craning his neck.
“A bit of pork and some potatoes,” she said.
“Potatoes and pork,” he growled. “’Tis always potatoes and pork, and nothing else.” She made no reply, but set the platter down upon the bed and stood watching him. “When do you sail?” asked Hands.
“As soon as we can,” said Blackbeard, briefly.
“The young lady wants to know if you’ve heard anything yet from Virginia,” said Jack.
The pirate looked scowlingly at him. “I’ll tell her when I hear anything,” he said shortly.
Blackbeard ate his dinner ashore, and it was some time afternoon before the sloop was ready to sail. Some half-dozen men had come up, during the morning, in a rowboat from somewhere down the sound. They had hoisted sail aboard the sloop, and now all was ready for departure. The clouds had blown away, and the autumn sun shone warm and strong. Dred had come down from the house to see the departure, and by and by Blackbeard appeared, carrying the guitar, which he handed very carefully into the boat before he himself stepped down into it. Dred and Jack stood on the edge of the landing, watching the rowboat as it pulled away from the wharf toward the sloop, the captain sitting in the stern. Two or three men were already hoisting the anchor, the click-clicking of the capstan sounding sharply across the water. The long gun in the bows pointed out ahead silently and grimly. Presently the small boat was alongside the sloop, and the captain scrambled over the rail, the others following. Still Jack and Dred stood on the end of the wharf, watching the sloop as the bow came slowly around. Then, the sail filling with the wind, it heeled heavily over, and with gathering speed swept sluggishly away from its moorings, leaving behind it a swelling wake, in which towed the yawl boat that had brought the captain aboard. They watched it as it ran further and further out into the river, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, and then, when a great way off, coming about again. They watched it until, with the wind now astern, it slipped swiftly in behind the jutting point of swamp and was cut off by the intervening trees. The two stood inertly for a while in the strange silence that seemed to fall upon everything after all the bustle of the departure. The water lapped and splashed and gurgled against the wharf, and a flock of blue jays from the wet swamp on the other side of the creek begun suddenly screaming out their noisy, strident clamor. Presently Dred groaned. “I’m going back to the house,” he said. “I ain’t fit to be out, and that’s a fact. I never had a fever to lay me out like this. I’m going up to the house, and I ain’t going to come out ag’in till I’m fit to be out.”
CHAPTER XXX
THE ATTEMPT
IT was a chill and drizzly morning, five or six weeks after the pirates had gone off on their cruise; Jack had been out-of-doors to fetch in some firewood, and he now sat near the chimney-place, drying his coat before the crackling fire, holding out the shaggy garment, and watching it steam and smoke in the heat. Dred was lying stretched out on the bench with his eyes closed, though whether or not he was asleep Jack could not tell. His fever had left him, and he was now growing stronger every day. During his sickness he had grown into a habit of indolence, and he spent a great deal of his time lounging inertly thus upon the bench in the kitchen. The young lady had not been down that morning. Betty Teach was moving about up-stairs, and presently Jack, as he sat thus drying his coat, heard her tap on the door of Miss Eleanor Parker’s room; then, after an interval of waiting, tap again; then, after another interval, open the door and go into the room.
Suddenly there came the sound of her feet running—then of a window flung up. Then she called out, “Dred! Dred!” Her voice was shrill with a sudden keen alarm, and Jack started up from where he sat, still holding his coat in his hand. His first thought was that something had happened to the young lady, and then, with a thrill, a second thought came to him, he knew not why, that maybe she was dead.
Dred raised himself upon his elbow as Betty Teach came running down-stairs. The next moment she burst into the kitchen. “O Dred!” she cried, her voice still high and keen with excitement, “she’s gone!”
“Gone!” said Dred, “who’s gone?” He asked the question, though he knew instantly whom she meant.
“The young lady!” cried Betty Teach, wringing her hands. “She’s run away. I went to her room just now, to see if she was up. I knocked, but she wouldn’t answer. Then I went in and I found she’d gone—there was her bed, as empty as could be.”
“Why,” said Jack, “I remember, now, I saw this morning that the door was unbolted, but I didn’t think anything of it then. She must just have opened it for herself and walked out.”
Neither Dred nor Betty Teach paid any attention to what he said. “O Dred!” cried Betty, “won’t you try to do something? Won’t you come up-stairs, and see for yourself?” She had begun to weep, now, and was wiping the tears from her face with her apron. “Oh,” she wept, “what will Ned say? He’ll kill me if he finds this out.”
“Well, well,” said Dred, “’tis no use making such a hubbub about it. That won’t do any good. Let’s go up and take a look at her room. She can’t be far away.” He arose heavily and laboriously from the bench as he spoke, and led the way up-stairs to the young lady’s room. He went to the bed and laid his hand upon it. “Ay,” he said, “she’s gone sure enough, and what’s more, she’s been gone some time, for the bed’s dead cold.” He looked about the room as he spoke. “Why, look yonder!” he cried out; “the pore young thing ain’t even took her shoes with her. I dare say she was afeard of making a noise, and so she’s gone off without ‘em—gone in her stocking-feet, and on this cold, wet day, too. Have you told Hands yet?” he asked, turning to the pirate’s wife.
“No, I haven’t,” she said.
“Then come along and let’s tell him, and see what he has to say about it.”
As they went along the passageway Betty Teach continued wringing her hands: “Oh, lacky, lacky me!” she wailed. “What’ll Ned say when he finds this out? He’s like enough to be back at any time, now, and he’ll kill me, he will, if he finds out we’ve let her get away.”
“Well, he don’t know anything about it as yet,” said Dred, roughly, “and till he does, ’tis no use crying for it.”
Hands was still bedridden with his broken knee. As Dred, followed by Jack and Betty Teach, entered the room, they found him lying propped with his elbow on the pillow, and his head on his hand, smoking the pipe that now seemed never to leave his lips. He had heard the stir and the sound of voices below, and almost as soon as Dred opened the door he asked what was the ado. Dred told him, and he listened, sucking every now and then at his pipe, nodding his head at intervals, as though he had already surmised what had occurred. “In her stocking-feet!” he repeated, as Dred concluded. “Well, well! to be sure! In her stocking-feet! Why, then, she can’t go far.”
“In course not,” said Dred.
“I don’t know why she ran away,” cried Betty Teach. “She didn’t make no sign of running away last night. I took her supper up to her, and she talked for a long while with me. She asked me then if there’d been any news from Virginia, and then she wondered whether Ned couldn’t take her back without waiting to hear news, but she didn’t seem to think anything of running away.”
They listened to her with a sort of helpless silence as she spoke.
“Well,” repeated Hands, after a while, “she can’t have gone far in her stocking-feet. I tell you what ’tis, Dred, I believe she be gone up toward the town. ’Tis most likely she’d think first of going there. If she didn’t go there she’d go down to Jack Trivett’s or Jim Dobbs’s, they being the nighest houses t’other way. And then, if she goes that way, why they knows all about her, and they’ll send her back or send word back. If she goes up toward the town she can’t go no furder than the little swamp. If I was you, I’d go up that there way on the chance of finding her.”
Dred sat for a while on the edge of the bed in thoughtful silence. “Well,” he said, “I reckon you be about right, and I’d better go and look for her.” Then he groaned. “This be ill weather for a fever-struck man to be out in,” he said, “but summat’s got to be done. If for no other reason, we can’t let the pore young lady stay out to be soaked in the rain. You’ll have to go with me, Jack.”
The misty drizzle had changed to a fine, thin rain when Jack and Dred started out upon their quest. They walked along together, side by side, Dred lagging somewhat with the dregs of his weakness. “We’ll strike along the shore,” he said, panting a little as he walked, “and then, from the mouth of the branch, we’ll beat up along the edge of the swamp. If we don’t find her ag’in’ we get up as far as the cross branch, we’ll skirt back into the country and see if she’s at Dobbs’s or Trivett’s plantation-houses. As for going to the town, why, what Hands says is true enough; she couldn’t cross the swamp with her shoes on, let alone in her stocking-feet.”
Jack’s every faculty was intent upon the search, but, by a sort of external consciousness, he sensed and perceived his surroundings with a singular clearness. The bank dipped down rather sharply toward a narrow strip of swamp, threaded midway by a little sluggish, lake-like stream of water. Oaks and cypress-trees grew up from the soft, spongy soil. The boles of the trees were green with moss, and here and there long streamers of gray moss hung from the branches. Fallen trees, partly covered with moss, partly buried in the swampy soil, stretched out gaunt, lichen-covered branches like withered arms, also draped with gray hanging filaments. Here or there little pools of transparent, coffee-colored water caught in reflection a fragment of the gray sky through the leaves overhead, and gleamed each like a spot of silver in the setting of dusky browns of the surrounding swamp.
Dred walked upon the border of the drier land, Jack closer down, along the edge of the swamp. His feet sucked and sopped in the soft, wet earth, and now and then he leaped from a mossy root to a hummock of earth, from a hummock of earth to a mossy root. The wet wind rushed and soughed overhead through the leaves, and then a fine, showery spray would fall from above, powdering his rough coat with particles of moisture. The air was full of a rank, damp, earthy smell.
“D’ye keep a sharp lookout,” called Dred to him.
“Ay, ay,” answered Jack.
They again went on for a little distance without speaking. “I’m a-going to stop awhile, till I light my pipe,” Dred called out presently; “the damp seems to get into my nose; ’tis like a lump of ice.” He had filled his pipe with tobacco, and now he squatted down and began striking his flint and steel while Jack went on forward through the swamp.
He had gone, perhaps, thirty or forty paces when he suddenly caught sight of a little heap of wet and sodden clothes that lay upon the ground, partly hidden by the great ribbed roots of a cypress-tree. It looked like some cast-off clothing that had been thrown away in the swamp. He wondered dully for a moment how it came there, and then, with a sudden start—almost a shock—realized what it must be. He hurried forward, the branches and roots hidden by the mossy earth crackling beneath his feet. “Dred!” he called out, “Dred—come here, Dred!”
“Where away!” called Dred, his voice sounding resonantly through the hollow woods.
“Here!” answered Jack, “come along!”
The next moment he came around the foot of a cypress-tree, and found himself looking down at the fugitive—almost with a second shock at finding what he had expected.
She did not move. Her face was very white, and she looked up at him with her large, dark eyes as he stood looking down at her. A shudder passed over her, and then presently another. She said nothing, nor did he say anything to her. Her skirts were soaked and muddy with the swamp water through which she must have tried to drag herself. She sat with her feet doubled under her, crouched together. Her hair was disheveled, one dark, cloudy lock falling down across her forehead. Somehow Jack could not bear to look at her any longer; then he walked slowly away toward Dred, who now came hurrying up to where he was. “Where is she?” said Dred to Jack when the two met.
“Over yonder,” said Jack, pointing toward the tree. He was profoundly stirred by what he had seen. She had not looked like herself. She had looked like some forlorn, hunted animal. When Jack came back with Dred they found her still sitting in the same place, just as he had left her. Dred stood looking down at her for a moment or two. Perhaps he also felt something of that which had so moved Jack. Then he stooped and laid his hand upon her shoulder. “You must come back with us, mistress,” he said. “You shouldn’t ha’ tried to run away; indeed, you shouldn’t. How long have you been out here?”
“THEY FOUND HER STILL SITTING IN THE SAME PLACE.”
Her lips moved, but she could not speak at first. “I don’t know,” said she presently, in a low, dull voice. “A long time, I think. I wanted to get away, but I couldn’t get through the swamp; then I was afraid to go back again.” She put her hand up to her eyes nervously, and pressed it there, and her lips began to quiver and writhe. And again she shuddered, as though with the cold.
“In course you couldn’t,” said Dred, soothingly, “and indeed you shouldn’t ha’ tried, mistress. ’Tis enough to kill the likes of you to be out in this sort of weather, and in your stocking-feet. There, don’t you take on so, mistress. Come, come, don’t cry no more. You come back to the house with us, and get some dry clothes on you, and you’ll feel all well again. Why, she’s cold to the marrow,” he said, as he helped her to rise. “Lend her your coat, Jack.”
Jack instantly began stripping off his coat, eager to do something to show his sympathy. She made no resistance, but stood with her hands pressed to her eyes as Jack put the coat over her shoulders and buttoned it under her chin.
Betty Teach opened the door and stood waiting as they came up the pathway to the house. “You’ve found her, have you?” she said, and she trembled visibly with joy. “Oh! what would Ned say if he was to find all this here out?”
“Why, he needn’t know anything about it,” said Dred, roughly, as he and Jack assisted the young lady into the house. “Just you say nothing about it to the captain, you too—d’ye hear, Jack? I’ll see Hands myself and ask him that he don’t say anything.”
Jack had walked all the way back from the swamp in his shirt-sleeves. He was damp and chilled with the fine rain, and he sat himself close to the fire, and began warming his hands, hardly knowing that he was doing so. He had been most profoundly moved by what he had seen, and his mind was full of thinking about it. He was glad that he was wet with the rain for her sake. Presently Betty Teach returned from taking the young lady to her room, and he roused himself from his thoughts to hear the pirate’s wife tell Dred that she had put her to bed. “You’d better take something warm up to her,” Dred said, and Betty Teach replied: “Yes, I will. D’ye think she’d drink a tumbler of grog if I mixed it?” “Ay, she’ll have to,” said Dred. “‘Twas enough to kill the likes of her to be setting out in the wet swamp like that.” Jack listened for the moment, and then his thoughts went back to her again. He recalled how she had pressed her hands over her eyes, and how her lips had quivered and writhed as he buttoned the coat at her throat. His hand had touched her cold wet chin, and there was a strong pleasure in the recollection. Then he again aroused from his thoughts to hear Dred saying, “Take care what you’re about! You’re making it too strong,” and then he saw that Betty Teach was busy mixing a hot drink for the young lady, pouring rum from the pirate’s case-bottle into the hot water, and stirring it round and round.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE RETURN
IT was at the dead of the same night when Jack began to be disturbed in his sleep by iterated poundings upon the floor overhead. He heard the noise, and for some time it mingled in his dreams before he began recognizing it with his waking thoughts. He raised himself upon his elbow where he lay upon the floor. Dred, too, was sitting up, and there was the sound of stirring overhead. They could hear the patter of bare feet, and presently Betty Teach came running down-stairs. The next moment she burst into the room, clad in a blanket which she had wrapped around her. “The sloop’s come back!” she cried. “Hands heard ‘em, and he’s been pounding on the floor with his shoe for a deal of a while, but ye slept like ye were dead.”
Even before she had ended speaking, Jack was pulling on his shoes. He tied the thongs hurriedly and then slipped on his coat and hat. He looked up at the clock as he ran off out of the house, leaving Dred dressing more slowly and deliberately, and he saw that it was half-past twelve.
The rain was still driving in fine sheets, and there was the constant sound of running water, and every now and then the dropping and pattering of many drops from the trees as they bowed gustily before the wind. There were lights moving about down at the landing-place, and there were two other lights twinkling out over the harbor, where the sloop evidently lay, the bright sparks reflected in long, restless trickles of light across the broken face of the water. Jack could see that there were figures moving about the landing wharf, and he started to go thither.
He was still dazed and bewildered with the sudden waking, and everything seemed to him to be singularly strange and unreal; what he saw took on the aspect of night-time, but things that had happened the day before mingling oddly with those of the present—the spitting of the fine, chill rain blending with a recollection of Miss Eleanor Parker as she crouched at the foot of the cypress-tree. A cock crew in the rainy night, and the sound was singularly pregnant of the wet darkness of the unborn day.
He had gone only a little distance when he suddenly met two dark figures walking up toward the house through the long, wet, rain-sodden grass. One was Captain Teach, the other was Morton, the gunner. They stopped abruptly as they met him, and the pirate captain asked him where he was going. Jack could tell by the sound of his voice that he was in one of his most savagely lowering humors. “I’m going down to the landing,” Jack answered.
“You’re going to do nothing of the sort,” said the pirate captain’s hoarse husky voice from out of the darkness. “You’re going straight back to the house again.” And then, as Jack hesitated a moment, “D’ye hear me?” he cried out, with a sudden savage truculence, “you go back to the house again,” and Jack did not dare to disobey.
Betty Teach met them at the door, and they all went directly into the kitchen, where a freshly-laid bunch of faggots crackled upon the fire, dispelling the chill dampness of the night. The pirate captain, without offering any word of greeting to Dred, turned to his wife and asked her if she had heard anything from Virginia concerning the young lady.
“No,” she said, “not a word.”
“What!” cried out the pirate, “are you sure? Nothing yet? Why, to be sure there must be something. It has been nigh six weeks since I left.”
“There’s nothing come yet,” said his wife.
Blackbeard’s face lowered at her as though he thought it was somehow her fault that no letter had come, but he said nothing. All this while Dred was standing before the fire as though waiting, and Jack knew it must be that he could hardly contain his desire to learn something about the fortune of the expedition. But however great was his desire to know, he asked no immediate question.
“How be you, Dred?” said Morton at last.
“I’m better now,” said Dred, “and able to be about a bit.” He opened his mouth as though to speak, when the pirate captain cut in:
“How’s Hands getting on?”
“He’s still abed,” said Dred, “but he’s a deal better than he was. He stood on his leg yesterday for nigh an hour.” Then at last he asked, “What luck did you have?” The question was directed at Blackbeard, and Jack and Betty Teach stood waiting breathlessly for the reply, but, in his sullen, evil humor, the pirate captain did not choose to answer. He turned away, flung his hat down upon the bench, and began slowly peeling off his rough coat, wet and heavy with the fine rain. Dred eyed him for a second or two, and then he turned to Morton. “What luck did ye have, Morton?” he asked.
Morton was a slow, heavy, taciturn man, very unready of speech. The reply came almost as though reluctantly from him, but he could not hide the triumphant exultation that swelled his heart. “‘Twere good enough luck, Chris Dred”—a pause—“ay, ‘twere good luck. You lost the chance of your life for a big prize this time, when you stayed ashore—that’s what you did, Chris Dred.”
“Did you, then, come across the packet?” asked Dred, impatiently; and again Jack and Betty waited breathlessly for the reply. Morton was filling his pipe. “‘Twere better than that,” he said, slowly. “‘Twere better than any packet betwixt here and Halifax. ‘Twere a French bark loaded full of sugar and rum from Martinique; that’s what it were, Chris Dred.”
Then, with many pauses in his slow narrative, and every now and then a few quick, strong puffs at his pipe, he told how the two pirate sloops—the sloop from Bath Town and the other from Ocracock—had captured the French bark with its—at that time—precious cargo of sugar and rum; that prize that afterward became so famous in the annals of the American pirates; that prize so valuable that it was impossible that Blackbeard should be allowed to keep it for his own without having to fight the law for it.
The pirate captain, in his sworn statement made before Governor Eden a few weeks later, said that the two sloops had found the bark adrift in the western ocean; and Governor Eden had then condemned it, as being without an owner and belonging to those who had brought it in.
It was a very different story that Jack listened to that night as Morton told it in his slow sentences, sitting in the red light of the crackling faggot fire. Morton said that the Frenchman had fought for over half an hour before he had surrendered. Two of the pirates had been killed and four wounded, and the Frenchman had lost thirteen in killed and wounded. He said that there were a number of Englishmen aboard—castaways, whom the Frenchmen had picked up off a water-logged bark that had been driven out of its course to the southward in a storm off the Bermudas. The Frenchmen, he said, would have surrendered a deal sooner than they did, only that the Englishmen had lent a hand in the fighting. He said that the English captain and a passenger from the English bark were the only men on deck when they came aboard, and it was the English captain who had informed them of the precious nature of the Frenchman’s cargo. Dred asked incidentally what had been done with the prisoners, and Morton said that Blackbeard had, at first, been all for throwing the Englishmen overboard, because they had fought against their own blood, but that he (Morton) and the boatswain of the other sloop had dissuaded him from his first intention, and that finally the crew and passengers of the prize had all been set adrift in three of the Frenchman’s boats, though without compass and with only provisions and water for three days. This was the story that Morton told, and it was very different from Blackbeard’s statement made before Governor Eden.
Jack listened most intently. It all sounded very strange and remote—that savage piracy upon a poor merchantman,—and yet it was all singularly real as Morton told it. He wished very strongly that he had been along. What a thing it would have been to remember in after years! What a thing to have talked about if he should ever get back again to Southampton!
Dred asked who of their own men had been hurt.
“Swigget was killed nigh the first fire the parleyvoos gave us,” Morton answered, “and Robinson was shot a while later and died whiles they were carrying him below. T’others’ll all get well like enough, unless it be black Tom, who was shot in the neck.”
Jack did not know Robinson, but he recollected Swigget very distinctly as being one of the crew that had made the descent upon Marlborough. He had not seen him since those days, but it seemed very strange, almost shocking, to think that he who had been so strong and well at that time, who had snapped his finger in time to the captain’s guitar music and who had been so exultant when he had won at cards, that he should now be suddenly dead!
“‘Twere a hot fight while it lasted,” Morton was saying. “But, oh, Chris, you should just ha’ seen that there bark—full, chock up to the hatches, with sugar, and twenty hogsheads of rum in the forehold besides. ‘Twas the chance of your life you missed, Chris Dred.”
There was a long pause, and then Dred asked, “Where is she now?”
“She’s lying down below Stagg’s Island,” said Morton.
What, during that little pause, was the intangible cause that should have so suddenly have recalled to Jack’s memory the scene of yesterday—the swamp, and the poor fugitive girl crouching at the foot of the cypress-tree? Some expression of Dred’s face, perhaps; some indefinable motion of his hand. His mind rushed back to that other event, and a recollection of the young lady’s white, woeful face—a remembrance of the touch of her cold chin upon his hand, stood out very strongly upon his memory.
All the while Morton had been talking, Blackbeard had sat at the table in sullen silence, taking no part in, and not even seeming to hear, what was said. Morton still smoked his pipe, and now the kitchen was pungent with rank tobacco smoke. Meantime Betty Teach had been bustling about, and had brought out a bottle of rum and some glasses, half a ham, and a lot of corn bread. Then she set a couple of pewter plates with knives and forks upon the table. Blackbeard cut himself a slice of ham and helped himself to a piece of bread, and by and by Morton took his place at the table also, drawing up his chair with a noisy scrape upon the floor.