CHAPTER XLVI
THE FIGHT
EARLY in the morning—perhaps eight o’clock—Lieutenant Maynard sent a boat from the schooner over to the settlement, which lay some four or five miles distant. A number of men stood lounging on the landing, watching the approach of the boat. The men rowed close up to the wharf, and there lay upon their oars, while the boatswain of the schooner, who was in command of the boat, stood up and asked if there was any man there who could pilot them over the shoals.
Nobody answered, but all stared stupidly at him. After a while, one of the men at last took his pipe out of his mouth. “There ben’t any pilot here, master,” said he; “we ben’t pilots.”
“Why, what a story you do tell!” roared the boatswain. “D’ye suppose I’ve never been down here before, not to know that every man about here knows the passes of the shoals?”
The fellow still held his pipe in his hand. He looked at another one of the men. “Do you know the passes in over the shoals, Jem?” said he.
The man to whom he spoke was a young fellow with long, shaggy, sunburnt hair hanging over his eyes in an unkempt mass. He shook his head, grunting. “Na—I don’t know naught about t’ shoals.”
“’Tis Lieutenant Maynard of his Majesty’s navy in command of them vessels out there,” said the boatswain. “He’ll give any man five pound to pilot him in.” The men on the wharf looked at one another, but still no one spoke, and the boatswain stood looking at them. He saw that they did not choose to answer him. “Why,” he said, “I believe you’ve not got right wits—that’s what I believe is the matter with you. Pull me up to the landing, men, and I’ll go ashore and see if I can find anybody that’s willing to make five pound for such a little bit of piloting as that.”
After the boatswain had gone ashore, the loungers still stood on the wharf, looking down into the boat, and began talking to one another for the men below to hear them. “They’re coming in,” said one, “to blow poor Blackbeard out of the water.” “Ay,” said another man, “he’s so peaceable too, he is; he’ll just lay still and let’em blow and blow, he will.” “There’s a young fellow there,” said another of the men; “he don’t look fit to die yet, he don’t. Why, I wouldn’t be in his place for a thousand pound.” “I do suppose Blackbeard’s so afraid he don’t know how to see,” said the first speaker.
At last one of the men in the boat spoke up. “Maybe he don’t know how to see,” said he, “but maybe we’ll blow some daylight into him afore we get through with him.”
Some more of the settlers had come out from the shore to the end of the wharf, and there was now quite a crowd gathering there, all looking at the men in the boat. “What do them Virginny ‘baccy-eaters do down here in Caroliny, anyway?” said one of the new-comers. “They’ve got no call to be down here in North Carolina waters.”
“Maybe you can keep us away from coming, and maybe you can’t,” said a voice from the boat.
“Why,” answered the man on the wharf, “we could keep you away easy enough, but you ben’t worth the trouble, and that’s the truth.”
There was a heavy iron bolt lying near the edge of the landing. One of the men upon the wharf slyly thrust it out with the end of his foot. It hung for a moment and then fell into the boat below with a crash. “What d’ye mean by that?” roared the man in charge of the boat. “What d’ye mean, ye villains? D’ye mean to stave a hole in us?”
“Why,” said the man who had pushed it, “you saw ‘twasn’t done a purpose, didn’t you?”
“Well, you try it again, and somebody’ll get hurt,” said the man in the boat, showing the butt-end of his pistol.
The men on the wharf began laughing. Just then the boatswain came down from the settlement again, and out along the landing. The threatened turbulence quieted as he approached, and the crowd moved sullenly aside to let him pass. He did not bring any pilot with him, and he jumped down into the stern of the boat, saying briefly, “Push off.” The crowd of loungers stood looking after them as they rowed away, and when the boat was some distance from the landing they burst out into a volley of derisive yells. “The villains!” said the boatswain, “they are all in league together. They wouldn’t even let me go up into the settlement to look for a pilot.”
The lieutenant and his sailing-master stood watching the boat as it approached. “Couldn’t you, then, get a pilot, Baldwin!” said Mr. Maynard, as the boatswain scrambled aboard.
“No, I couldn’t, sir,” said the man. “Either they’re all banded together, or else they’re all afraid of the villains. They wouldn’t even let me go up into the settlement to find one.”
“Well, then,” said Mr. Maynard, “we’ll make shift to work in as best we may by ourselves. ‘T will be high tide against one o’clock. We’ll run in then with sail as far as we can, and then we’ll send you ahead with the boat to sound for a pass, and we’ll follow with the sweeps. You know the waters pretty well, you say.”
“They were saying ashore that the villain hath forty men aboard,” said the boatswain.[1]
Lieutenant Maynard’s force consisted of thirty-five men in the schooner and twenty-five men in the sloop. He carried neither cannons nor carronades, and neither of his vessels was very well fitted for the purpose for which they were designed. The schooner, which he himself commanded, offered almost no protection to the crew. The rail was not more than a foot high in the waist, and the men on the deck were almost entirely exposed. The rail of the sloop was perhaps a little higher, but it, too, was hardly better adapted for fighting. Indeed, the lieutenant depended more upon the moral force of official authority to overawe the pirates than upon any real force of arms or men. He never believed, until the very last moment, that the pirates would show any real fight. It is very possible that they might not have done so had they not thought that the lieutenant had actually no legal right supporting him in his attack upon them in North Carolina waters.
It was about noon when anchor was hoisted, and, with the schooner leading, both vessels ran slowly in before a light wind that had begun to blow toward midday. In each vessel a man stood in the bows, sounding continually with lead and line. As they slowly opened up the harbor within the inlet, they could see the pirate sloop lying about three miles away. There was a boat just putting off from it to the shore.
The lieutenant and his sailing-master stood together on the roof of the cabin deck-house. The sailing-master held a glass to his eye. “She carries a long gun, sir,” he said, “and four carronades. She’ll be hard to beat, sir, I do suppose, armed as we are with only light arms for close fighting.”
The lieutenant laughed. “Why, Brookes,” he said, “you seem to think forever of these men showing fight. You don’t know them as I know them. They have a deal of bluster and make a deal of noise, but when you seize them and hold them with a strong hand, there’s naught of fight left in them. ’Tis like enough there’ll not be so much as a musket fired to-day. I’ve had to do with ‘em often enough before to know my gentlemen well by this time.” Nor, as was said, was it until the very last that the lieutenant could be brought to believe that the pirates had any stomach for a fight.
The two vessels had reached perhaps within a mile of the pirate sloop before they found the water too shoal to venture any further with sail. It was then that the boat was lowered as the lieutenant had planned, and the boatswain went ahead to sound, the two vessels, with their sails still hoisted but empty of wind, pulling in after with sweeps.
The pirate had also hoisted sail, but lay as though waiting for the approach of the schooner and the sloop.
The boat in which the boatswain was sounding had run in a considerable distance ahead of the two vessels, which were gradually creeping up with the sweeps until they had reached to within less than half a mile of the pirates—the boat with the boatswain maybe a quarter of a mile closer. Suddenly there was a puff of smoke from the pirate sloop, and then another and another, and the next moment there came the three reports of muskets up the wind.
“By zounds!” said the lieutenant. “I do believe they’re firing on the boat!” And then he saw the boat turn and begin pulling toward them.
The boat with the boatswain aboard came rowing rapidly. Again there were three or four puffs of smoke and three or four subsequent reports from the distant vessel. Then, in a little while, the boat was alongside, and the boatswain came scrambling aboard. “Never mind hoisting the boat,” said the lieutenant; “we’ll just take her in tow. Come aboard as quick as you can.” Then, turning to the sailing-master, “Well, Brookes, you’ll have to do the best you can to get in over the shoals under half sail.”
“But, sir,” said the master, “we’ll be sure to run aground.”
“Very well, sir,” said the lieutenant, “you heard my orders. If we run aground we run aground, and that’s all there is of it.”
“I sounded as far as maybe a little over a fathom,” said the mate, “but the villains would let me go no nearer. I think I was in the channel, though. ’Tis more open inside, as I mind me of it. There’s a kind of a hole there, and if we get in over the shoals just beyond where I was we’ll be all right.”
“Very well, then, you take the wheel, Baldwin,” said the lieutenant, “and do the best you can for us.” Lieutenant Maynard stood looking out forward at the pirate vessel, which they were now steadily nearing under half-sail. He could see that there were signs of bustle aboard and of men running around upon the deck. Then he walked aft and around the cabin. The sloop was some distance astern. It appeared to have run aground, and they were trying to push it off with the sweeps. The lieutenant looked down into the water over the stern, and saw that the schooner was already raising the mud in her wake. Then he went forward along the deck. His men were crouching down along by the low rail, and there was a tense quietness of expectation about them. The lieutenant looked them over as he passed them. “Johnson,” he said, “do you take the lead and line and go forward and sound a bit.” Then to the others—“Now, my men, the moment we run her aboard, you get aboard of her as quick as you can, do you understand? Don’t wait for the sloop or think about her, but just see that the grappling-irons are fast, and then get aboard. If any man offers to resist you, shoot him down. Are you ready, Mr. Cringle?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said the gunner.
“Very well, then, be ready, men; we’ll be aboard ‘em in a minute or two.”
“There’s less than a fathom of water here, sir,” sang out Johnson from the bows. As he spoke there was a sudden soft jar and jerk, then the schooner was still. They were aground. “Push her off to the lee there! Let go your sheets!” roared the boatswain from the wheel. “Push her off to the lee.” He spun the wheel around as he spoke. A half a dozen men sprang up, seized the sweeps, and plunged them into the water. Others ran to help them, but the sweeps only sunk into the mud without moving the schooner. The sails had fallen off and they were flapping and thumping and clapping in the wind. Others of the crew had scrambled to their feet and ran to help those at the sweeps. The lieutenant had walked quickly aft again. They were very close now to the pirate sloop, and suddenly some one hailed him from aboard of her. When he turned he saw that there was a man standing up on the rail of the pirate sloop, holding by the back-stays. “Who are you?” he called, from the distance, “and whence come you? What do you seek here? What d’ye mean, coming down on us this way?”
The lieutenant heard somebody say: “That’s Blackbeard hisself.” And he looked with great interest at the distant figure.
The pirate stood out boldly against the cloudy sky. Somebody seemed to speak to him from behind. He turned his head and then he turned round again. “We’re only peaceful merchantmen!” he called out. “What authority have you got to come down upon us this way? If you’ll come aboard I’ll show you my papers and that we’re only peaceful merchantmen.”
“The villains!” said the lieutenant to the master, who stood beside him. “They’re peaceful merchantmen, are they! They look like peaceful merchantmen, with three carronades and a long gun aboard!” Then he called out across the water, “I’ll come aboard with my schooner as soon as I can push her off here.”
“If you undertake to come aboard of me,” called the pirate, “I’ll shoot into you. You’ve got no authority to board me, and I won’t have you do it. If you undertake it ‘twill be at your own risk, for I’ll neither ask quarter of you nor give none.”
“Very well,” said the lieutenant, “if you choose to try that, you may do as you please; for I’m coming aboard of you as sure as heaven.”
“Push off the bow there!” called the boatswain at the wheel. “Look alive! Why don’t you push off the bow!”
“She’s hard aground!” answered the gunner. “We can’t budge her an inch.”
“If they was to fire into us now,” said the sailing-master, “they’d smash us to pieces.”
“They won’t fire into us,” said the lieutenant. “They won’t dare to.” He jumped down from the cabin deck-house as he spoke, and went forward to urge the men in pushing off the boat. It was already beginning to move.
At that moment the sailing-master suddenly called out, “Mr. Maynard! Mr. Maynard! they’re going to give us a broadside!”
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, before Lieutenant Maynard could turn, there came a loud and deafening crash, and then instantly another, and a third, and almost as instantly a crackling and rending of broken wood. There were clean yellow splinters flying everywhere. A man fell violently against the lieutenant, nearly overturning him, but he caught at the stays and so saved himself. For one tense moment he stood holding his breath. Then all about him arose a sudden outcry of groans and shouts and oaths. The man who had fallen against him was lying face down upon the deck. His thighs were quivering, and a pool of blood was spreading and running out from under him. There were other men down, all about the deck. Some were rising; some were trying to rise; some only moved.
There was a distant sound of yelling and cheering and shouting. It was from the pirate sloop. The pirates were rushing about upon her decks. They had pulled the cannon back, and, through the grunting sound of the groans about him, the lieutenant could distinctly hear the thud and punch of the rammers, and he knew they were going to shoot again.
The low rail afforded almost no shelter against such a broadside, and there was nothing for it but to order all hands below for the time being.
“Get below!” roared out the lieutenant. “All hands get below and lie snug for further orders!” In obedience the men ran scrambling below into the hold, and in a little while the decks were nearly clear except for the three dead men and some three or four wounded. The boatswain crouching down close to the wheel, and the lieutenant himself, were the only others upon deck. Everywhere there were smears and sprinkles of blood. “Where’s Brookes?” the lieutenant called out.
“He’s hurt in the arm, sir, and he’s gone below,” said the boatswain.
Thereupon the lieutenant himself walked over to the forecastle hatch, and, hailing the gunner, ordered him to get up another ladder, so that the men could be run up on deck if the pirates should undertake to come aboard. At that moment the boatswain at the wheel called out that the villains were going to shoot again, and the lieutenant, turning, saw the gunner aboard of the pirate sloop in the act of touching the iron to the touch-hole. He stooped down. There was another loud and deafening crash of cannon, one, two, three—four,—the last two almost together,—and almost instantly the boatswain called out: “’Tis the sloop, sir! look at the sloop!”
The sloop had got afloat again, and had been coming up to the aid of the schooner, when the pirates fired their second broadside, now at her. When the lieutenant looked at her she was still quivering with the impact of the shot, and the next moment she began falling off to the wind, and he could see the wounded men rising and falling and struggling upon her decks.
At the same moment the boatswain called out that the enemy was coming aboard, and even as he spoke the pirate sloop came drifting out from the cloud of smoke that enveloped her, looming up larger and larger as she came down upon them. The lieutenant still crouched down under the rail, looking out at them. Suddenly, a little distance away, she came about, broadside on, and then drifted. She was close aboard now. Something came flying through the air—another and another. They were bottles. One of them broke with a crash upon the deck. The others rolled over to the further rail. In each of them a quick-match was smoking. Almost instantly, there was a flash and a terrific report, and the air was full of the whizz and singing of broken particles of glass and iron. There was another report, and then the whole air seemed full of gunpowder smoke. “They’re aboard of us!” shouted the boatswain, and even as he spoke, the lieutenant roared out: “All hands to repel boarders!” A second later there came the heavy, thumping bump of the vessels coming together.
Lieutenant Maynard, as he called out the order, ran forward through the smoke, snatching one of his pistols out of his pocket and the cutlass out of its sheath as he did so. Behind him, the men were coming, swarming up from below. There was a sudden stunning report of a pistol, and then another and another, almost together. There was a groan and the fall of a heavy body, and then a figure came jumping over the rail, with two or three more directly following. The lieutenant was in the midst of the gunpowder smoke, when suddenly Blackbeard was before him. The pirate captain had stripped himself naked to the waist. His shaggy black hair was falling over his eyes, and he looked like a demon fresh from the pit, with his frantic face. Almost with the blindness of instinct, the lieutenant thrust out his pistol, firing it as he did so. The pirate staggered back: He was down—no; he was up again. He had a pistol in each hand; but there was a stream of blood running down his naked ribs. Suddenly, the mouth of a pistol was pointing straight at the lieutenant’s head. He ducked instinctively, striking upward with his cutlass as he did so. There was a stunning, deafening report almost in his ear. He struck again blindly with his cutlass. He saw the flash of a sword and flung up his guard almost instinctively, meeting the crash of the descending blade. Somebody shot from behind him, and at the same moment he saw someone else strike the pirate. Blackbeard staggered again, and this time there was a great gash upon his neck. Then one of Maynard’s own men tumbled headlong upon him. He fell with the man, but almost instantly he had scrambled to his feet again, and as he did so he saw that the pirate sloop had drifted a little away from them, and that their grappling-iron had evidently parted. His hand was smarting as though struck with the lash of a whip. He looked around him; the pirate captain was nowhere to be seen—yes, there he was, lying by the rail. He raised himself upon his elbow, and the lieutenant saw that he was trying to point a pistol at him, with an arm that wavered and swayed blindly, the pistol nearly falling from his fingers. Suddenly, his other elbow gave way, and he fell down upon his face. He tried to raise himself—he fell down again. There was a report and a cloud of smoke, and when it cleared away Blackbeard had staggered up again. He was a terrible figure—his head nodding down upon his breast. Somebody shot again, and then the swaying figure toppled and fell. It lay still for a moment—then rolled over—then lay still again.
There was a loud splash of men jumping overboard, and then, almost instantly, the cry of “Quarter! quarter!” The lieutenant ran to the edge of the vessel. It was as he had thought: the grappling-irons of the pirate sloop had parted, and it had drifted away. The few pirates who had been left aboard of the schooner had jumped overboard and were now holding up their hands. “Quarter!” they cried. “Don’t shoot!—quarter!” And the fight was over.
The lieutenant looked down at his hand, and then he saw, for the first time, that there was a great cutlass gash across the back of it, and that his arm and shirt-sleeve were wet with blood. He went aft, holding the wrist of his wounded hand. The boatswain was still at the wheel. “By zounds!” said the lieutenant, with a nervous, quavering laugh, “I didn’t know there was such fight in the villains.”
His wounded and shattered sloop was again coming up toward him under sail, but the pirates had surrendered, and the fight was over.
“THE COMBATANTS CUT AND SLASHED WITH SAVAGE FURY.”
CHAPTER XLVII
IN THE NEW LIFE
IT is wonderful how adolescent youth accepts the changes of its life, and with what fluency it adapts itself to them.
During the month that the Attorney Burton lingered at Marlborough before his return to England, it came to be more like home to Jack than any place in which he had ever lived. In a wonderfully little while there grew to be a singularly ripe feeling of familiarity about the roomy halls and passageways, the books, the pictures, the fine, stiff, solid furniture, the atmosphere of wide and affluent ease; a like familiarity in all the outside surroundings of unkempt grassy lawn, of garden and of stable. No doubt the steady, uniform kindness of those dear people tended more than anything else to endear everything to him, with that peculiar home-feeling that always afterward embalmed the memories of Marlborough in his mind. No one, not even his uncle, Sir Henry, in the few years that followed, seemed to fill the singular place in his heart occupied by Colonel Parker with his somewhat grandiose benignity; no one the place of Madam Parker with her fussy, sometimes tiresome, attentions.
It was a long time before Nelly Parker recovered her perfect strength. Some days she would appear almost perfectly herself; then would ensue times of petulant lassitude that were sometimes very hard to bear. The little doctor came every day to see her, sometimes staying to supper, and riding home alone through the starlit night. He and Jack struck up a great friendship, and there were many little meaningless fragments of that pleasant time remaining in Jack’s memory, in which the little pot-bellied man was the dominant figure.
One such recollection was of finding him waiting for Miss Nelly Parker when she and Jack returned from a ride to Bolingwood—Mr. Bamfield Oliver’s place. She had gone to call on the young ladies, and Jack, at her bidding, had reluctantly accompanied her. He always felt his awkwardness and young clumsiness at such times—the constraint of talking about himself and of answering those reiterated questions about his adventures. At the sound of their horses’ hoofs the doctor and Madam Parker had appeared at the door, and as Jack dismounted and helped Nelly Parker down from her horse at the horse-block, the doctor had called out, “Well, my young pirate, and so you are back again, then? Zooks! We were just debating whether you hadn’t run away with our young lady again, and for good and all this time.”
Another such recollection of his presence was of his coming unexpectedly one time while there was company out on the lawn, and of feeling her pulse as she sat in the midst of them all.
Such foolish little memory fragments are very apt to have some indefinable filaments of association that cause them to cling with peculiar tenacity to the memory.
For some such subtle reason all the little circumstances of a certain uneventful Sunday morning became very intimately a part of Jack’s life. That day he rode to the parish church with the family, in the great coach. It had been raining the day before, but then the air was full of warm, mellow autumn sunlight, that fell widely in through the coach windows and across Colonel Parker’s knees and his own lap, feeling warm and pleasant to his legs. The road was heavy with sticky mud, and the four horses strained and labored as they pulled the huge, yawing coach through the deeper ruts. Nelly Parker and her mother sat opposite, the young girl, all unconscious of his steady look, playing with and smoothing out the ribbons that hung from her prayer-book—trivial little things, but for some reason knit so closely into his consciousness, that his memory always recurred to them with a singular precision of detail. The church was paved with brick, and he even remembered how very chill and damp it was that morning, and how, by and by, when he moved his toes in his shoes, he found them grown numb and as cold as ice.
When the sermon was over the ladies and gentlemen gathered for a while, standing in groups here and there in the churchyard, flooded with the yellow sunlight that felt very bland and warm after the chill, damp interior of the building. The greater part of the ladies were gathered in a single group, chatting together about this or that of gossip. Three or four gentlemen stood with them, now and then putting in a word, now and then laughing. Colonel Parker and Mr. Bamfield Oliver and Mr. Cartwright were standing together, discussing tobacco; and from where he stood he could hear Mr. Oliver’s monologue running somewhat thus:—“I cannot understand it,”—here he offered the other gentlemen snuff from a fine silver-gilt snuff-box,—“I cannot understand it; ‘twas as good tobacco as any I ever shipped, and if there was anything the matter with it, as Sweet complains, why, the hogsheads must have been broached in the carrying. I’m sure it could not have been Jarkins’s fault; for he is the best packer I have.” And so on and so on.
All this while Jack was lingering near Nelly Parker, holding her prayer-book in his hand. He saw that Harry Oliver and two of his sisters were talking to Mrs. Cartwright a little distance away. He knew one of the young ladies; the other, who had been away from home for some time, was, as yet, a stranger to him. He felt that she was looking intently at him, and presently saw her whispering to her brother. He tried to appear unconscious, but with certain prescience he knew very well she was speaking to her brother about him and his adventures. Suddenly Harry Oliver burst out laughing. “Why, Master Jack,” he called, “here’s another young lady hath lost her heart to you, and thinks you’re a hero. The fame of your pirate adventures has reached all the way to the Bermuda Hundreds, ‘twould seem.”
The young lady’s velvety cheek, dark like her brother’s, colored to a soft crimson, and she turned sharply away. Jack felt himself blushing in sympathy, and Nelly Parker, looking at him, burst out with a peal of laughing.
The afternoon of another Sunday, when the news of the fight at Ocracock and the death of Blackbeard was first received at Marlborough, had perhaps more reason for its insistence upon the plane of his consciousness than this meaningless fragment.
Nelly Parker had gone to her room after dinner, and the house seemed singularly empty without her presence in it. Jack was sitting in the library, reading. Now and then the words formed themselves into ideas, but for long lapses he would read without knowing what he was reading, his mind full of and brimming over with the thought of her. The sunlight came in through the wide, open windows, and lay in great squares across the floor, and the brass of the nails in the chair and sofa and of the andirons, catching the light, gleamed like stars, and the room was full of the clear brightness. The blazing fire snapped and crackled in the great fireplace, and there was a dish of apples on the table.
While he so sat there he heard the door suddenly opened, and the rustle of a dress. He knew instantly and vividly who it was had come in—he felt it in every fiber, but he would not look up. Then he heard her moving about the room.
“What are you reading?” she said, at last.
Jack looked at the top of the page. “’Tis The Masque of Comus,” he said.
“The Masque of Comus!” she repeated. “I was reading that to papa yesterday.”
She came over and stood behind his chair as she spoke, leaning over him and looking down at the book in his hand, reading it as he read it. He felt her nearness, and every filament of nerve tingled at it. Her breath fanned his cheek, and a part of her dress touched his shoulder. His heart thrilled poignantly, and his breath came thickly and suffocatingly, but still he did not look up. She stood there close behind him for a long while. He could almost hear the beat of her young heart, and it seemed to him that she must be feeling some soft echo of his own passion. Suddenly she gave his elbow a push that knocked the book out of his hand, and then she burst out laughing. As Jack stooped to pick up the book there was the voice of some one in the hall without. It was Harry Oliver, and she sprang away from where she stood, and flew like a flash to a chair at some distance, where she seated herself, instantly demure.
Then Harry Oliver came into the room; and presently he and she were talking and laughing together, and all that agonizing delight of the little while before melted out of Jack’s heart and dissolved away and was gone.
That passionate, innocent joy of early love! How does it fill all these little nameless, foolish things full to overflowing with its tremulous golden happiness—its ardent pangs of deep delight!
It was a little while after this that Colonel Parker called Jack into his own cabinet and put a packet of papers in his hand, saying that they had just been sent up from Jamestown, and that they were from Lieutenant Maynard; that there had been a fight with the pirates at Ocracock, and that Blackbeard was killed.
“What!” exclaimed Jack. “Blackbeard dead?” And then again, after a moment—“Blackbeard dead!” It seemed incredible to him that such a thing could be; he could not realize it.
There was a list of killed and wounded accompanying the letter, and Jack read it over, name by name—he knew nearly all. “Why,” he cried, “Morton’s dead, too—and Miller, the quartermaster—and Roberts, and Gibbons. Why, that is all of Blackbeard’s officers, except Hands, who is lame at Bath Town.”
“Maynard says there was a lame man they arrested down at Bath Town and brought up with them.”
“That, then, must be Hands,” said Jack. “He was the fellow whom Blackbeard shot in sport while I was down there.” And then, suddenly thinking of Nelly Parker, his heart thrilled agonizingly again.
CHAPTER XLVIII
JACK MEETS SOME OLD FRIENDS
IT was late in November when Mr. Burton returned to England. Jack accompanied him as far as Jamestown; and Mr. Simms, who had business at the factory at Yorktown, also went down in the schooner as far as that place.
The day was keen and clear, with a soft, cool wind blowing, before which the schooner sloped swiftly away, dropping the great brick front of Marlborough rapidly behind. The wide rush of air and water seemed very full of life and vigor, and Jack lay up under the weather-rail in the warm sunlight, wrapped in his overcoat and given up utterly to the building of day-dreams.
He had just parted from Nelly Parker, and his mind was very full of thoughts of her. She had been more than usually teasing that morning. “I believe you wouldn’t mind if I were going away from you forever,” Jack had burst out as they stood lingering in the wide sunlight in front of the great house. “I sometimes think that you have no heart in you at all.”
Then she looked at him with sudden seriousness. “Do you, then, really think that of me?” she said. “Well, then, I may tell you that I have a heart, and that it would, indeed, grieve me to the heart if you were going away forever.”
“Would it?” Jack had said.
“Yes. And see—if I have teased you too much, here is my hand.”
Jack took her soft, white hand in his; it was very warm. Then with a sudden impulse he lifted it to his lips and pressed a long, long kiss upon it. She did not withdraw it, and when he looked up he saw that she was still gazing very steadily at him. His heart was beating with exceeding quickness, but he looked as steadily back at her, though with swimming sight. Then she had burst out into a peal of laughter, had snatched her hand away, and had run away back into the house, leaving him standing where he was. Then he had hurried down toward the wharf, hardly sensing whither he was walking, and not answering Mr. Simms when the factor asked him what had kept him so long.
Long after they had dropped Marlborough away behind, he still lay in the sunlight under the rail, wrapped closely in his overcoat, his heart full of the thought of her. He was giving himself over luxuriously to that foolish day-dreaming to which adolescent youth loves to yield itself, and upon the funny inconsequence of which the matured man looks back and laughs from the firmer stand of later years. For one often remembers such dear, foolish day-dreams in after times.
He imagined to himself how he would have to go away to live in England. He would not come back again, he thought, until he had made himself famous; then he would return to her once more. Yes; while he was away from her he would become very famous. Maybe he would enter the navy. There would be a great war, and his ship would be in battle. He pictured to himself a terrible battle in which the senior officers would all be killed, so that it would depend upon him, the youngest of all, to save the ship. He would call upon the men to follow him, and then, in a last desperate, almost hopeless attack, he would rush aboard the enemy’s ship, his men close behind him. They would conquer, but he would have been shot through the arm, and his arm would have to be cut off, and he would go with an empty sleeve—it seemed very pathetic as he thought of it. All the world would talk of the young hero who had saved the ship, and Nelly Parker would hear of it and would think, “He will now never come back to Virginia again. He is too great and too famous to remember me now.” Then one day he would suddenly appear before her. She would say: “What! have you, then, come back to us? Have you, then, not forgotten us?” He would smile and would say: “No, I can never forget you.” He would stand before her with one empty sleeve pinned to his breast. There would be an order upon his breast, and he would say: “I love you and have always loved you, and none but you.”
“If we make it in time,” said Mr. Simms, suddenly, speaking to the Attorney Burton where they stood together looking out toward the shore, “we’ll stop at the Roost this afternoon. There was a letter for Mr. Parker sent up to Marlborough by mistake yesterday, and I may as well leave it on the way down.”
His words broke sharply upon Jack’s thoughts and shattered the dream to fragments. He lay silent for a moment or two. “Do you think,” he said, suddenly, “that Mr. Parker is there now?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Simms, turning toward him, “but I hope he is, so that I can leave this letter for him. Why do you ask?”
“I’d like to go ashore,” said Jack, “but I don’t care to meet him.”
“Why not?” said Mr. Simms. “He can’t do you any harm.”
“I know that very well,” said Jack, “but, all the same, I don’t want to see him, if I can help it.”
It wanted still an hour of sunset when they reached the Roost. Mr. Parker was not at home, and Jack accompanied Mr. Simms up to the house. How familiar and yet how strange everything appeared! How full of countless associations! There was a bed-coverlet hanging from a window, and he seemed to recognize its garish colors. A face passed by the open window—it was Peggy Pitcher. Two or three negroes came out from behind the end of the house and stood looking toward him; among them was Little Coffee. The negro boy stood staring; then, when Mr. Simms had gone into the house, he came forward, and Jack burst out laughing at his staring face. He asked the negro boy where Dennis was; Little Coffee said that the overseer was at the stable, and Jack went directly over to the outbuildings, Little Coffee following him. That feeling of renewed familiarity still surrounded everything. Everywhere the negroes grinned recognition at him, and he spoke to them all, laughing and nodding his head.
He found Dennis sitting in the shed by the stables mending an old saddle. He looked up when Jack came in, as though for a moment puzzled. Then instantly his face cleared. “Why, lad,” he said, “is that you?” He slipped the wax-end betwixt his lips and held out his hand. Then he looked Jack over. “And how you have climbed up in the world, to be sure!” he said.
“Have I?” said Jack, laughing.
They talked together for a little while about indifferent things, and it did not seem to Jack that Dennis was as keenly alert as he should have been to the fact of his visit. There was something very disappointing in it. As they talked, Little Coffee stood by, looking him all over. “How’s Mrs. Pitcher, Dennis?” Jack asked, presently.
“Oh, she’s very well,” said Dennis. “She was talking about you only this morning. I tell you what ’tis, lad, she and his honor had it like shovel and tongs after you ran away.”
“Did they?” said Jack. “Well, I think I’ll go over to the house to see her. I’ve only got a little while to stay. We’re going on down the river to Jamestown. Good-by.”
Dennis took the hand that Jack gave him and shook it warmly.
“I can’t get up,” he said, “for this teasing saddle.”
Jack went away over to the house, still accompanied by Little Coffee. Some one had told Peggy Pitcher that he was about the place, and she was expecting him. Whatever lack of warmth Jack had felt in Dennis’s greeting was fully made up by Mrs. Pitcher. “Why, Jack,” she said, looking all over him, “what a fine, grand gentleman you’ve grown all of a sudden! Well, to be sure! To think that I should have seen you that last time sitting down yonder in the cellar so down in the spirits that ‘twas enough to break a body’s heart to see you, and now you to be grown so fine a young lord of a man, to be sure. I did hear say that you joined the pirates after you got away.”
“No, I didn’t join the pirates,” said Jack. “I went down to North Carolina with them, but I didn’t have any business with them. But never mind that, Mrs. Pitcher. What I wanted to say is that I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me as long as ever I live.”
“Won’t you, Master Jack?” she said, evidently gratified. “Why, now, that’s very kind and noble-spoken of you.”
“I don’t see that ’tis,” said Jack. “Where would I have been now, do you think, if it hadn’t been for you?”
Peggy Pitcher burst out laughing. She sat down on a chair just behind her. “Why, I don’t know,” she said, “and that’s the truth. ’Tis like you’d been in a pretty bad way. His honor was hot ag’in’ you, just then, I can tell you.” She became suddenly serious. “I tell you what ’tis, Master Jack,” she said, “things are not going well with him just now, and he’s a good, kind man, too, when he chooses to be so. Do you remember Master Binderly, who used to come here, blustering about his money?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I do. And how you said you’d pour hot water upon him if he didn’t go away.”
Again Peggy burst out laughing, and slapped her palm upon her knee. “Ay,” she said, “so I did, to be sure. Well, he’s been pestering about here a deal, of late, and I do suppose that’s why his honor’s away so much. He’s been away now for two weeks.”
Just then he heard Mr. Simms calling him outside. “Master Jack! Master Jack!”
“There,” said Jack, “I must go now. I’ll try to see you some time again, Mrs. Pitcher,” and he gave her his hand.
“Well,” said Peggy Pitcher, as she rose, and took Jack’s hand, “I didn’t think I was helping you into such good luck when I helped you to get away that night.”
“Nor I didn’t, either,” said Jack.
Something, he couldn’t tell what, brought the thought of Nelly Parker into his mind, and he felt a quick fullness of happiness that seemed suddenly to brim his heart more than full.
“Good-by, Mrs. Pitcher,” he said, and again he pressed Peggy’s hand.
“I’ve been hunting all over the place for you,” said Mr. Simms, testily, when Jack came out of the house.
Jack almost never enjoyed himself so much as he did those three or four days while he was at Jamestown. Lieutenant Maynard appeared to be very glad to see him, and welcomed him with great heartiness. Almost from the beginning of their acquaintance he had dubbed Jack “My hero,” and he began calling him so now when they met again. “Well, my hero,” he cried out, as he came aboard the schooner from the man-of-war’s boat, carrying his arm in a sling, “and how do you do by now! Well, your old friend, Blackbeard, has got his quietus. Look ye here, d’ ye see, he left me a remembrance before he went,” and he held out his bandaged hand so that Jack might see it. “A great big cutlass slash across the knuckles,” he said.
“I hear the pirates are all in jail over at Williamsburgh,” said Jack.
“Ay,” said the lieutenant, “and it was lucky for you that you ran away in time, or else you might be there, too.” And then Jack burst out laughing.
The lieutenant introduced Jack to his brother officers of the “Lyme,” and Jack often went aboard of the man-of-war, sometimes to take breakfast, and nearly always to dinner. The officers all seemed to like him, and once Captain St. Clare entertained him over a bottle of Madeira for nearly an hour in the cabin. The life aboard the man-of-war was very new to Jack, and he never lost the vividness of his interest in the charm of the wide, long decks, so immaculately clean; in the towering masts, the maze of rigging, the long, double row of cannon, in the life that swarmed above and below—the sailors, the marines, the sentinels pacing up and down, with every now and then a sparkling glint of the sun on musket-barrel or brass trimmings of accoutrements.
It was a great pleasure and gratification to him to be made so much of aboard the great man-of-war, and he was with his new friends nearly all the time. There were wild, rollicking blades among them—men seasoned to the wickedness of the world, who would sometimes sing songs and tell stories after dinner that were not always fitted for a young boy’s ears. One handsome rattle-brained young fellow in particular, who seemed to take a peculiar liking to Jack, was full of jests and quips, that, though they made Jack laugh, were hardly suitable for him to listen to. But Jack’s nature was of too honest and too robust a sort to offer ground for any pruriency of thought to cling very closely to.
On the second or third day of his stay at Jamestown, he and Lieutenant Maynard went over to Williamsburgh together, to visit the pirate prisoners in the jail at that place. As soon as they had obtained the permit they went straight to the prison, and were admitted by the turnkey to the round-house in which the pirates were confined.
They were all crowded into the one room—the wounded and the unwounded together. At first, Jack could hardly bear the heavy, fetid smell of the place, but the prisoners themselves appeared altogether unconscious of it. There was quite a number of them who had been hurt and who now lay there uncared for in their sufferings; one man, with a cloth tied around his head, looked very pale and ill, and another lay with his face to the wall, perfectly silent all the time that Jack was there.
“Why, ’tis Jack Ballister!” cried one of the men as soon as he had come in at the door. It was Ned Bolles who spoke—the young fellow of about Jack’s age who had been shot in the shoulder when the pirates took the French barque. Then: “Why, Jack,” he said, “what a fine, grand gentleman you are, to be sure!”
Jack laughed. They all crowded around him except Hands and the man with the wounded head, and the other who lay motionless with his face turned toward the wall. Hands sat in a corner upon the floor smoking his pipe, his lame leg stretched out perfectly straight before him. He spoke no word of especial greeting to the visitor. All of the prisoners were handcuffed and wore leg-irons. Some had wrapped rags around the shackles to protect their ankles and wrists from being rubbed by the rough iron. They all seemed very glad to see Jack; apparently glad of any change in the monotony of their imprisonment.
“Well, Jack,” said one of the men, named Dick Stiles, “I tell ‘ee what ’tis, ‘ee be lucky to be here now alive and well. ‘Twas a nigh miss for ‘ee when ‘ee got int’ t’ inlet ahead of us. If ‘ee’d been a minute later ‘ee never ‘a’ got oot t’ be here now.”
“So poor Chris Dred is dead, is he?” another called out.
“Ay,” said Jack, “you did the business for him.”
“Well, Jack,” said one of the men, “you fell into your fortune when you got away. I suppose you’ll be marrying her young ladyship next, won’t you?”
They all burst out laughing. Jack laughed too; but he knew that he was blushing, and was conscious that Lieutenant Maynard was standing at the door, listening to what was said.
“I tell you what ’tis, Jack,” said one of the men; “you be such a grand, great gentleman now, you ought to speak a good word for your old friends. They says our trial is to come off next week, and you ought to ax for our pardon of your new friend the governor, for old times’ sake,” and then they all began laughing.
“Hands says he knows summat’ll save his own neck,” said a voice.
“Ay,” said Hands, from where he sat on the floor, “they daren’t hang me. I know what I know, and they won’t harm me. I’m not afraid of that.”
It seemed very strange to Jack that they should appear to think so little of their approaching trial and the inevitable result that must follow. They must all know that there could be but one end to it, for the governor was determined to make an example of them for the benefit of all other would-be pirates; they seemed to think more of the dullness of their present imprisonment than anything else.
“Lookee, Jack,” one of them said, “do you have any money about ye? Just tuppence or so to buy a twist of ‘baccy; I ha’n’t had a smoke for two days now.” It was the young fellow Bolles who spoke.
“I’ve got sixpence here,” said Jack, “and that’s all. But you’re welcome to it.”
“You wouldn’t give it all to Bolles, would you?” said Salter. “He’s no worse off than the rest on us be.”
As they walked away up the street together, Lieutenant Maynard asked him what it was Hands meant when he spoke to him.
“What do you mean?” said Jack; “I don’t remember what he said.”
“Well,” said the lieutenant, “the talk is that he hath been proclaiming to every one that the governor shall never hang him, and that he knows something concerning Colonel Parker that will save his neck, and that they will never dare to hang him.”
“Does he say that?” said Jack. “Ay, I do remember now what he said to me, though I didn’t think of it at the time. But he knows naught about Colonel Parker—’tis about Mr. Richard Parker.”
“About Mr. Richard Parker?” said the lieutenant. “Do you know what it is, then? What is it, Jack?”
Jack hesitated for a second or two. “I don’t believe I ought to tell you anything about it,” he said. “I don’t believe Colonel Parker would choose to have me say anything about it to you.”
“Nonsense!” said Lieutenant Maynard. “Why should you not tell me? I’ll not speak about it to a living soul. What hath Mr. Richard Parker been about?”
Then Jack told him.
The lieutenant was listening very silently and intently as he walked along. “Why, what a thing do you tell me?” he cried out. “Of course, if that villain Hands knew aught like this conspiracy of Mr. Richard Parker’s he has reason enough to believe that Colonel Parker won’t choose to have it known. I always misliked Dick Parker; but what a prodigious rascal he must be! ’Tis incredible that one born a gentleman could be such a villain as that. But I tell you what it is, Master Jack, this is a mightily serious secret that you have. You’d best keep it tight locked in your own bosom and say naught of it to any living soul.”
As the lieutenant spoke, a heavy feeling fell suddenly upon Jack that he had been very foolish to speak to such a comparative stranger as the lieutenant about such a thing. He walked on in silence, suffering that singularly bitter feeling that we have maybe all of us sometimes smarted under—a feeling that we have betrayed a friend’s secret to a stranger.
He was destined to feel still more uncomfortable about it in time. For almost immediately upon his return to Marlborough he was called into Colonel Parker’s private cabinet. Colonel Parker had just received a packet from Williamsburgh the day before—a long letter from Governor Spottiswood, inclosing a statement from Hands, and he began at once, almost as soon as Jack had come into the room, to speak about what he had in his mind. “Tell me,” he said, “do you know aught of how Nelly came to be taken away from Marlborough?”
“What do you mean, sir?” said Jack, and then his heart began beating. He knew very well what Colonel Parker referred to.
“I mean,” said Colonel Parker, “do you know aught of who ‘twas put this pirate Blackbeard up to carrying poor Nelly away? Did he do it of his own free will, or did you hear that any one set him to do it?”
Jack hesitated, then he said, “Yes, sir; I did hear there was somebody put him up to doing it.”
“What did you hear?” said Colonel Parker. “Come, speak out plain, and tell me just what you know.”
“Well,” said Jack, “‘twas said down there at Bath Town,—that is, by those who came to see the pirate at his house,—’twas said that—that Mr. Richard Parker knew about Miss Nelly’s having been taken away. I don’t know anything about it myself, but that was what they all said. I know that Blackbeard writ three or four letters to Mr. Parker while the young lady was there, and I heard them say again and again that Mr. Parker knew that she had been taken away from home and whither she had been taken, and that he was concerned in it.”
Colonel Parker was leaning with his elbow upon the table, and his fingers against his forehead. He was looking very steadily and silently at Jack. He did not speak for a long time after Jack had ended. “Well,” he said, at last, “what then? What else do you know?” And Jack resumed:
“I heard Blackbeard say over and over again that it was Mr. Parker had planned how she should be taken, and that he was to get you to pay for bringing her back again. Mr. Knight the secretary writ three or four letters, too, and sent ‘em to Mr. Parker, and ‘twas said that Mr. Parker was to show the letters to you. But no answer could be got to any of them. Then, by and by, they all began to think that maybe he—Mr. Parker, that is—intended that she shouldn’t come back again at all.”
“Are you sure of all this you’re telling me?” said Colonel Parker.
“I am sure that was what I heard,” Jack said. “‘Twas talked about there in the house betwixt Blackbeard and the others just as things are talked about in a house. They didn’t try to hide the matter or keep it a secret from me, but talked about it always as if ‘twere so.”
Again Colonel Parker sat in silence, and Jack, as he stood there, wished and wished—oh, with what pangs of bitter self-reproach!—that he had not said anything to Lieutenant Maynard about it. He wondered with heavy apprehension what Colonel Parker would say if he knew that he had told such a secret to such a stranger as the lieutenant. Then suddenly Colonel Parker spoke. “Well,” he said, “you can see for yourself without my telling you that naught must be said of all this—no, not to a living soul. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack, weakly.
“Very well,” said Colonel Parker. “Remember, my boy, that you have in your bosom a very dreadful secret that involves the credit of the whole of our family, and that you must not speak of it to a living soul.”
It may be said here that the lieutenant did not betray Jack’s secret—or, at least, it never came to Jack’s ears that he had done so. It may also be briefly said that Hands was pardoned by Governor Spottiswood, and that in a little less than a month later Mr. Richard Parker ran away from Virginia—it was said from his debts—to Jamaica.