The Spaniard blindly returned our fire as the James felt her way toward him, the thunder of the two broadsides overpowering, numbing, like the roaring of two beasts fighting in the night. I felt my great-uncle's hand on my arm; his voice was low, but distinct.
"We shall soon be broadside on with her," he said. "The O'Donnells will be on the poop. You had best get for'ard, Robert. If we board from abaft the foremast 'twill place you strategically to seize upon them. Where is Peter?"
The Dutchman leaned through the smoke-whorls.
"We better go aboardt der Spaniard, ja, Murray?" he answered calmly.
My great-uncle chuckled as he dusted snuff into his nostrils.
"We had, friend Peter. And you and Robert had best carry arms. I fear the Spaniards will not seek to differentiate betwixt you and my wicked self."
"Ja," assented Peter. "We go."
Amidships we encountered Saunders and a horde of men pouring up from the gun-deck to augment the boarding-parties. Peter and I tarried to select weapons from a rack by the main mast. He took a boarding-pike, and I contented myself with a cutlass.
Murray, having inspected the grapplings and ascertained that hooks had been rigged from our yard-arms to clutch the Spaniard's rigging, rejoined us. He was dressed with his usual exquisite taste in watered gray silk, with white silk stockings and gray shoes with jeweled buckles. He wore no hat, and his white hair was clubbed and cued. The only weapon he carried was a dress-sword, which he held unsheathed.
"An end to our immediate worries soon, Robert," he announced cheerfully. "The action has gone perfectly. I would not have varied a move so far. We have not lost a dozen men."
A final blast from our guns tore the smoke-clouds to shreds, and a vagrant wind-puff snatched them aside. 'Twas like the drawing of the curtain at a play. The treasure-ship lurched helplessly not twenty fathoms distant, her rigging in tatters, her spars split and wounded, her fo'csle and foredeck one red litter, her bulwarks splintered, gunports blown in, guns dismounted. A handful of men were laboring to cut loose the wreck of the fore-mast, and a few other brave fellows were still fighting a couple of guns which raked us as the bowsprit of the James nudged over her rail.
The two ships jolted together, and in response to wind and helm the Royal James swung broadside on against the Spaniard, our bowsprit becoming entangled in her mizzen rigging. A dozen grappling-irons clattered in air and ground their hooks into her bulwarks. There was a brisk popping of small-arms, an exchange of threats and shouts of defiance.
My great-uncle, regardless of the firing, mounted the breach of a cannon which elevated him above the bulwarks, and Peter and I climbed into the forerigging, whence we had a fair view of both decks. The larboard bulwarks of the Royal James were crowded with men. Stripped to the waist, their lowering faces smutted with powder-stains, their hairy chests barred with tattooing, their backs more often than not scarred by the cruel welts of the lash, they tussled for first place and clung with their bare toes wherever there was a bit of running gear or an inch of space, gripping cutlasses in their teeth to leave hands free for pistol work or to steady themselves as they waited an opportunity to leap the narrowing gap between the vessels.
My eyes strayed to the Spaniard's decks. Little knots of men ran about confusedly. A stolid-looking fellow aimed a pistol at me, and a ratline over my head fell apart. Officers were driving the sailors forward to meet us. A man in a laced coat and periwig was shouting orders from the poop, and my pulse quickened, for at his shoulder was the lanthorn-jawed face of Colonel O'Donnell—aye, and in rear of both a skirt fluttered in the midst of a huddle of raven-black figures, priests and nuns.
"Jump!" squeaked Peter in my ear.
We jumped together, but my great-uncle was ahead of us. He leaped all of ten feet, sword in hand, alighted on the Spaniard's bulwarks, poised himself a moment and dropped into the center of a ring of foes. Before he had recovered his balance he parried the slash of a cutlass and pinked an antagonist in the throat. And he beat down a leveled pistol as I gained the treasure-ship's deck, inclined his head to avoid a murderous blow, ran the man through and almost in the same breath stepped a pace to the right to engage a fourth opponent—and all this with the cool precision of a fencing-master, unhurried, a flush of obvious enjoyment on his pallid cheeks.
But I saw no more. My task was to fight my way aft and protect the O'Donnells, and Peter and I turned our backs upon the struggle amidships. One wave of the pirates stormed in Murray's wake; the rest followed Peter and me. They were as brave as they were vicious, and we made rapid progress and were nearly at the foot of the poop-ladder when Murray's whistle shrilled behind us. I realized too that both O'Donnell and the officer in the laced coat were shouting volubly, the one in English and the other in Spanish, trying to make themselves heard above the din.
"—asks parley," came in broken phrases from O'Donnell. "—can not understand—regrettable mistake——"
"Der Spaniard wants quarter," grunted Peter.
Indeed, those of the Santissima Trinidad's men who had been resisting us promptly flung down their arms, glad of the excuse to quit the fight; but the wolves of the James' crew were not schooled to show mercy, and they killed three poor fellows before Peter and I could knock up their cutlasses.
Murray's whistle blew a second time. There was a sudden hush, punctuated by the grinding of the two vessels, the thudding of unshod feet as more of the James' pirates dropped aboard the treasure-ship, the gagging cries of the wounded, the nasal singsong of a priest pattering Latin prayers.
I seized the opportunity to look around. We were too close under the poop to see what went on beyond the rail directly overhead; but the maindeck, fore and aft, was a pitiful spectacle—cluttered with wreckage and dead men and bits of men and men wounded in every conceivable fashion, its yellow-sand carpet gemmed with carmine pools and rivulets.
My great-uncle, as immaculate as when he had ascended the James' bulwarks, stood a little ahead of the mass of his followers, his serene face and rich clothing in startling contrast with their nakedness and frank brutality. A trickle of blood dripped from the point of his slender sword. His attitude was that of an honorable man who wishes to be reasonable in a difficult situation.
"I believe I heard an appeal for quarter," he said quietly.
"Sir, you did," replied O'Donnell. "I have spoken for the gentleman beside me, Señor Don Ascanio de Hurtado y Custa, who is captain of this vessel."
"I am honored, sir," returned my great-uncle. "And yourself?"
O'Donnell did not altogether relish the playing of his part. He bit his lip and hesitated an instant before he answered.
"I am Colonel O'Donnell, an officer in the service of his Most Catholic Majesty."
"Ah; and what can I do for you, gentlemen?" inquired my great-uncle.
O'Donnell hesitated again and conferred with the Spanish officer.
"Sir," he said then, "Don Ascanio asks you by me: Since when have your country and Spain been at war?"
"To the best of my knowledge, they are not at this present," my great-uncle answered blandly.
"Then to what cause must we attribute this—this—ah—unwarrantable attack?" demanded O'Donnell.
"I am afraid," replied my great-uncle almost with sorrow, "that I am unable to satisfy your curiosity upon that point."
The Spaniard burst into a declaration of passionate intensity, which Murray interrupted.
"I am so fortunate as to comprehend the noble Spanish tongue," he said. "Would you be so kind, Colonel O'Donnell, as to acquaint your friend with the fact, and to assure him that I regret he must accept the situation as it stands? I am desirous of sparing the lives of those of his people who survive, but at a pinch I will slay them all to compass my intention."
"And what is that?" asked O'Donnell.
"To relieve Don Ascanio of the consignment of treasure he carries," answered my great-uncle. "When it is aboard my ship he shall be at liberty to continue his voyage."
O'Donnell proceeded haltingly to translate this statement. He never finished it. The Spaniard launched a fresh torrent of curses, broke his sword across his knee and tossed the pieces overside. My great-uncle nodded sympathetically.
"'Tis an unpleasant plight, I know," he said. "Had Don Ascanio not discarded his sword I should have been delighted to yield him an opportunity for such satisfaction as one gentleman may give another.
"However—I must stipulate further, Colonel O'Donnell, that the crew of the Santissima Trinidad shall be placed in confinement for so long as suits my purpose. Any resistance must cause additional bloodshed, which, I am sure, you will agree is unnecessary."
"Don Ascanio will say no more," returned O'Donnell. "He washes his hands of the whole proceeding. Abandoned by his crew——"
"Enough," interrupted my great-uncle.
He rattled off a sentence in Spanish, and there was an answering rattle of arms thrown on the deck. He spoke again, and the Santissima Trinidad's men all shifted to starboard and marched into the fo'csle, herded by a bristle of pirate cutlasses.
Murray walked aft to where Peter and I still stood, uncertain what to do next.
"Have you seen her?" he asked.
"I think she is in that group of priests and nuns under the stern lanthorn," I said.
He compressed his lips, a habit he had whenever he must turn to some task he did not overly care for.
"'Tis a trick I shall find as distasteful as O'Donnell did our colloquy just now," he said shortly. "But we must be about it without delay. Our cannonade will have been heard ashore in Hispaniola with this wind. We must gather our loot and away."
The silence was oppressive as we ascended the poop ladder. A last babble of Latin ended on an hysterical note. The Spanish captain glared his hatred, gnawing at his hands as he leaned against the rail, and when my great-uncle drew a laced handkerchief from his coat pocket and began to wipe clean his red blade 'twas more than Don Ascanio could stand. He stalked to the far side of the deck, rumbling curses, and fixed his gaze upon the purple hills of Hispaniola. Behind the steering-wheel the black flock of religious gathered closer under the great, gilded lanthorn which crowned the high, pulpit-like recess intended to protect the helmsman; and amongst those cowled shaven-heads and shapeless swathed forms the slim grace and sunny, blue eyes of Moira O'Donnell were as patent as the growing fear with which her father met us.
My great-uncle nodded a satisfaction I was unable to comprehend.
"A fair maid, Robert!" he exclaimed. "Well, well! This is fine. I might ask no better. I congratulate you, chevalier," he added to O'Donnell. "Your daughter is as dainty a little lady as I have seen in a long life."
O'Donnell understood his mood no better than I.
"I wish she was out of this," he growled resentfully. "Don Ascanio has placed the conduct of matters in my hands. What is next? Must you——"
He gestured expressively toward the vessel beneath us.
"It seems— I—I find myself— 'Tis a nauseating prospect— Several hundred men—and priests and nuns, Murray— Aye, a cardinal sin, one I'll never have absolution for, whatever betide—
"You concern yourself without cause," said Murray soothingly. "We have arranged it differently, and to that end I shall act a part with your daughter which you must support; aye, to the offering of violence. And now, tell me, where is the treasure?"
"In the lazaret."
"Master Saunders!" called my great-uncle.
The second mate thrust his way to the front of the mob of pirates on the main deck.
"Take fifty men and break out a quantity of treasure from the lazaret of the prize."
"Aye, aye, sir," returned Saunders, and the pirates fell over themselves in their alacrity to have a hand in his business.
My great-uncle concluded the cleaning of his sword, crossed to the larboard railing and tossed the bloodied handkerchief overboard.
"Oh, Master Martin," he hailed the mate on the poop of the Royal James.
"Aye, aye, sir," answered Martin. "—— —— —— —— my gizzards for a —— ——, but we ha' done a clean job this morning."
"I find myself in agreement with your sentiments, Martin," replied my great-uncle. "Be so good as to have a whip rigged from the foreyard-arm to sling aboard the treasure which Saunders is breaking out. You will also tell off a score or two of men to make any essential repairs at once. I would have the ship ready to sail as soon as we cast off, which will be the moment the prize's cargo is transshipped."
"Aye, aye, sir, I'll attend to it all myself," Martin assured him. "—— my eyes for a —— —— —— and all the Twelve Apostles, blast 'em for a —— —— lot of —— —— ——."
"A pungent fellow, Martin!" commented my great-uncle, recrossing the deck. "But we must play our little comedy here. You, chevalier, are cast for the Anguished Parent. I am the Aged Libertine. Peter is the Mute with the bowstring—be gentle, Peter. Robert—humph! I scarce know how to describe your rôle, Robert. You, shall we say, are to be Youth? Ah, yes! Youth, immortal, selfish, impulsive, acquisitive, mendacious——"
Colonel O'Donnell regarded him as if he had lost his sanity.
"What folderol is this?" he broke in.
"You shall see," answered Murray. "'Tis our way of carrying you off without focusing the suspicion of Don Ascanio and his people upon your personal participation in this interesting episode. But to continue the enumeration of our cast. Your daughter, of course, is the Innocent Victim.
"And this, Robert, leads me to recast you. I shall deny you the satisfaction of virtue—which after all, the clergy tells us, is its own reward. You shall be Youthful Wantonness, and did we adopt all the exigencies of the plot 'twould be necessary for you finally to strive with me for the possession of the maid. But we will wave that anon. Play up to me, nephew! You, too, Peter!"
He left us and walked with a mincing gait, entirely different from his real catlike prowl, up to the black-garbed cluster surrounding Mistress O'Donnell.
"Stap me, a fair piece, this!" he drawled. "Too fair to bloom unseen. Come hither, mistress!"
A fat monk spat an ejaculation at him in Spanish, and two of the nuns threw their arms around the Irish girl. Murray replied to the monk in his own tongue, and with a virulent fluency which inspired the whole group with pitiful terror. But the maid answered him so dauntlessly that it made the blood prickle in my neck.
"A black shame on you, old enough to be the father of me and these others here! I know you for what you are, Captain Rip-Rap, and if you will be thinking I am one to fear you it is a sorry wakening you will have. Oh, you might better be down on your knees, asking pardon for the wickedness you have wrought, than plotting fresh evil, and threatening holy folk with your dreadful torments!"
The fat monk lifted a crucifix like a weapon and shook it in his face, and Mistress O'Donnell put the two nuns aside and stood forth in front of the group, with her arms spread wide to shelter them.
"So you recognize me?" said my great-uncle. "'Tis an honor, mistress. But I fear you have heard much to my prejudice, and I must press you to visit my ship and learn the contrary. Certes, you should be the first to rejoice to disprove such foul allegations against an aged man."
"Step forward, colonel, and defend her," I muttered under my breath to her father.
He had the grace to blush, but he acted upon my suggestion with a semblance of sincerity.
"Sir, sir, what is this you do?" he cried. "Certes, there is some limit to your law-breaking! The maid is my daughter."
My great-uncle went through his snuff ritual with an artful exaggeration which was comical to one who knew him.
"Unfortunate!" he drawled. "I could sympathize with you, sir."
And to me—
"Robert, you will conduct the lady to the James."
For the first time Mistress O'Donnell's glance lighted fair upon my face.
"Master Ormerod!" she gasped.
I jumped toward her with as roughly peremptory a manner as I could assume.
"You'd best come quietly, mistress," I snapped.
She flung out her hands to fend me off, and the fat monk and the two nuns cast themselves upon us, the monk striking at my head with his heavy crucifix and the nuns scratching and clawing so that I was put to it to protect my eyes. They were surely three of the bravest people who ever lived, and but for Peter they would have worsted me.
The big Dutchman waded stolidly into the confusion, shoved O'Donnell from his path, upset the monk and pushed the two nuns out of the way.
"You take der little gal, Bob," he squeaked.
She struggled with all the strength in her lissome body, but I pinned her hands and tossed her over my shoulder—and then her father attacked me with the Spanish captain, whose patience had been exhausted by this last outrage.
Murray drew his sword and forced the Spaniard back, and Peter slung O'Donnell over his shoulder as easily as I had the maid.
"I got him, ja," he announced to Murray.
My great-uncle sheathed his sword.
"Carry him along," he said. "Since he is so much concerned as to his daughter's fate, we will permit him to watch it. Afterward, it may be, he can afford us some additional amusement. Stap me, a most persistent fellow!"
The fat monk picked himself up from the deck, waving his crucifix, and launched a tumult of invective which my great-uncle received with raised eyebrows and an occasional humorous interjection. But I had my hands full controlling my prisoner, and paid no more attention to what happened on the poop after I reached the main-deck ladder.
A line of pirates staggered across the deck, backs stooped beneath burdens of portly casks and iron-bound chests, wire-wrapped and padlocked, each a-dangle with leaden seals impressed with the arms of the Spanish king. They leered at my writhing captive and grinned openly at the ridiculous spectacle presented by Colonel O'Donnell's lank form draped over Peter's shoulder. But they all looked quickly away as my great-uncle descended to us.
"Can you manage her alone?" he asked me curtly.
My temper was thoroughly aroused by the false position in which I had been placed, and I vented it upon him.
"I'll manage her or go overboard with her," I barked.
He smiled.
"The right spirit, lad! Tut, tut, mistress," as she wrenched a hand free and dug at my eyes. "You concern yourself for nothing. We have but played at a game. Observe your father's attitude."
"The greater his shame!" she hissed. "That he should have suffered you to take me alive!"
"We are friends," urged my relative, lowering his voice. "'Tis but a pretense we make——"
"Friends!"
Her white teeth clicked in an effort to bite my ear.
"Ah, you are friends to the Powers of Evil."
"Be patient a little longer, Moira," pleaded her father from his perch on Peter's shoulder. "I'll explain——"
She went of a sudden entirely limp and burst into a passion of weeping.
"Oh, padre, padre, to think of you a coward! 'Tis worst of all!"
O'Donnell swore helplessly.
"Let me down till I settle her mind," he begged.
But Murray rebuked him.
"They are watching you from the poop, chevalier. Struggle as much as you please—'tis all one to Peter—but if you value your future security in Spain do not seem to give in to us."
I climbed by way of a carronade on to the larboard bulwarks, holding Mistress O'Donnell with one arm the while I hooked a strand of rigging with the other; and even as I collected myself to jump the gap that separated the two vessels she twisted free of me and would have slid overside—to be crushed to death, most likely, for the two hulls were continually grinding together. I caught her in the nick of time, letting go my clutch upon the rigging, and was near to being dragged down with her, teetering back and forth as aimless as a feather blown by the wind. So that, what with her struggles and my own loss of balance, I gritted my teeth and jumped most precariously, hit or miss, and, I am bound to admit, landed upon the James' bulwarks rather by good fortune than skill.
I dropped to the deck in no very pleasant mood. Faith, I could have slapped the tear-stained face that was pressed against my shoulder; and in the excess of my disgust I thrust her from me.
"An ill recompense for one that hath been at pains to spare your father's reputation, mistress," I growled, as surly as any pirate of the crew. "You might ha' been my death."
She looked at me, too surprized to answer at once, and before she had recovered herself my great-uncle and Peter joined us, Peter still placidly carrying Colonel O'Donnell like a flour-sack.
Murray cast a swift glance of appraisal around his ship.
"We have come through very creditably," he remarked.
Martin hailed him from the poop.
"By your leave, sir, we're whole aloft, 'ceptin' a few ropes as the topmen are splicin' and a rent in the mizzen royal."
"That's well," replied my great-uncle. "How many casualties?"
"We ha' put twelve overside, and there's two as'll follow, and twenty —— —— —— lubbers as must nurse their carkisses."
"Very good, Martin. I shall be in the cabin. Let me know so soon as the prize's treasure is all aboard."
He turned to us.
"The curtain is ready to fall upon our comedy. Will you accept my arm, Mistress O'Donnell? A glass of wine and a bite of sailor's fare will taste better than Robert's ear, which your hunger prompted you to nibble. Fie, fie, my lass!"
She stared at him with utter horror, yet suffered him to place her hand upon his arm. The spirit was gone out of her, exhausted by the strain she had been subjected to. And I forgot my anger at sight of the agony of dumb fear mirrored in her lovely eyes. She was like a butterfly spiked on a thorn.
Something of the same sensation must have affected my relative, for he patted the limp hand on his arm with a truly paternal kindness.
"Come, come, did I not say the comedy was ended?" he chided her. "I have played the Aged Libertine, 'tis true, but the rôle is now abandoned. You are as safe here as in your Spanish convent. But the deck is too public for our revelations. We will seek the seclusion of the cabin, and there the complete tale shall be unfolded for your reassurance, with your father a witness to support it."
She shook her head.
"I—I—know not what you mean."
"To be sure," he agreed. "But you soon shall."
Peter, behind us, grunted to command Murray's attention.
"Does der colonel walk or ride?"
"Stap me!" exclaimed my great-uncle, "I was forgetting your father's present plight, mistress."
"I feel like a fool!" snarled the Irishman.
"How unreasonable!" deplored Murray. "Have you not been acting the part of an Outraged Parent who sacrificed all in defense of his daughter? My dear chevalier, what rôle could you select more heroical?"
"Give over your mummery," protested O'Donnell. "I'll not be made a mock of, sir!"
"Rightly spoken!" cried my great-uncle. "You shall not be, chevalier. Peter, good friend, prithee take three steps within the companionway and there deposit Colonel O'Donnell with decent propriety upon the two limbs Nature intended for his locomotion. Ah! Excellent! Allow me, mistress!"
Peter and I followed the three of them up the dark tunnel of the companionway.
"We are past one danger-mark, Peter," I whispered. "What's to come?"
"Trouble," mumbled Peter.
"Trouble?"
"Ja. To get der treasure, I saidt dot was easy, Bob. But to divide der treasure—dot's trouble. Andt now we got a woman on der ship—andt dot's more trouble."
Ben Gunn and the two negro lackeys ushered the party to their seats. Mistress O'Donnell sank into hers with a weariness that was pathetic. She was quite regardless of her surroundings. 'Twas as if she was become reconciled to whatever misfortune was in store for her. And she did not so much as glance at her father, who sat morosely upon Murray's left hand across the table from her. Peter took his accustomed place at the opposite end, and I sat beside her.
"Let me give you a glass of this aqua vitae, my lass," said my great-uncle. "'Tis efficacious for fatigue and the migraine. See, I taste it myself. 'Tis quite all right. You, too, chevalier? Excellent! Perhaps you will pass the flask to Master Corlaer yonder. You gentlemen should know each other after your recent intimate contact. And Master Ormerod yonder—my nephew. But I believe you and your daughter have had previous acquaintance with him."
O'Donnell muttered something none too civil, but the maid bestirred herself, and her eyes examined me again with the mingling of horror and stupefaction which governed her mood.
"How come you here?" she asked. "You—you—are you also a pirate?"
"I am a captive as surely as yourself," I returned. "Aye, more so."
"A captive!" she exclaimed, her interest fanned alight. "But surely you——"
My great-uncle interrupted her.
"Please, Mistress O'Donnell! Our tale is sufficiently complicated. Let us not make it more difficult to comprehend by confusing it at the beginning with side-issues."
"Gunn!"
"Yessir!"
The steward ducked and scraped.
"Give us whatever food you have prepared, swiftly. And fetch up some wines—port, burgundy, claret, madeira."
"Yessir."
Ben Gunn writhed himself into the companionway. Murray resumed his discourse to the Irish girl.
"First, that there may be no misunderstanding, mistress, 'tis true that I am he who is known as Captain Rip-Rap."
She shrank away from him in a renewed access of terror.
"I have already told you that you have no cause to fear me," he went on gently, "and to prove that to you I will add that I am an outlaw—what is called a pirate, although I detest the word myself—because I am a Jacobite. I believe, too, I may claim your father as my friend."
He looked inquiringly at O'Donnell. The Irishman drained his glass.
"'Tis true," he assented. "This gentleman is one Andrew Murray, who was out in the '15 and was afterward in trouble in New York Province on the score of intrigues with our friends and the French, Moira. He hath been a good servant to King James."
"But for why will you have been the death of all the poor folk on the Santissima Trinidad?" she cried. "And your men will be lifting the treasure that is Spain's, and Spain a safe haven for the exiles the Hanoverian will not suffer to serve their rightful king and dwell in Britain!"
"'Tis regrettable that Spaniards had to die, lass," answered my great-uncle, lowering his voice to a proper depth of emotion. "But I call to your mind that Spain has not helped the Good Cause as she might when there was a bonny chance of fetching the Stuarts home."
"That is God's truth," she admitted with quick passion.
"Therefore," pursued my great-uncle, "some of us have concerted it to seize a portion of Spain's treasure and turn it to the purpose of winning back for King James his crown."
"I am thinking 'tis not overhonest," she said doubtfully.
"You are no more than a lass," rebuked her father, emptying his second glass. "'Tis not for you to be saying what is honest and what is not honest in politics, of which you have no knowledge."
"Indeed," interposed my great-uncle, "the question as to what is honest and what is dishonest in politics is one upon which men have been unable to agree since the times of Aristotle."
"Yet even politicians can not honestly confuse the dishonesty of taking one man's gold for another man's profit," I put in.
Mistress O'Donnell gave me a sidewise look.
"We are speaking of kings, not of men," my great-uncle pointed out.
"I am afraid I will be of Master Ormerod's way of thinking," said the Irish maid.
"You talk nonsense, Moira," blustered her father. "Is it not better that this treasure should be employed to recover England and all the lands pertaining to the English crown for their rightful rulers—who will assist in the restoration of the True Faith—than that it should be poured into the pockets of the king's favorites at Madrid? You are only a child, and 'tis not fitting for you to know all that goes on in the world; yet common sense, ordinary religious devotion and affection for your king might tell you so much. Why, lass, there are great lords, aye, a prince of the Church, no less, that set the seal of their approval to what we do."
Moira O'Donnell hung her head.
"Sure, I am only an ignorant lass as you say, padre, one that knows no more than the sisters taught her in the convent; but there's that in me cries out stronger than learning or creed or loyalty."
Colonel O'Donnell hammered his fist upon the table-top—he had just drained a third glass.
"And this is the child of a race that have been pulled down from the high places of the land by the tyrant, and their heads and limbs strewn God knows where, and those who escaped death driven to poverty and exile! Girl, you know not what you say. The people of Spain will be thanking us for the use to which we turned their treasure—and then we'll pay it back," he added with a happy inspiration.
"Odds, that we will!" endorsed my great-uncle. "What's a million and a half pounds to royal Spain? Aye, or to an England that waxes grandly prosperous under wise Stuart rule?"
"'Twill be the difference betwixt honor and dishonor," I cried hotly. "As for prosperity, England was never richer, as any man who earns his living honestly would tell you. King George may be a Dutchman and talk with an accent and spend more time in Hanover than London; but he keeps his hands off trade, and that means wealth for all who'll labor."
Colonel O'Donnell favored me with a fishy glance.
"It seems we must both reckon with disloyalty in our families, Murray," he remarked dryly.
"Never give it a thought, sir," replied my great-uncle. "Tut, tut, chevalier, they are young and shall learn by experience. Let them argue it between themselves, eh? That should fetch them around."
"I'll not suffer any to call me disloyal!" exclaimed Moira. "I am all for the Stuarts; but I'd not have them resort to dishonest means to win what is their own."
"Humph," said my great-uncle. "To win their own, my lass, they must have money. If you will tell us where else in the wide world they are to obtain it, I'll transship this treasure back aboard the Santissima Trinidad."
She was silent.
His suave manner conveyed subtly an implication of the importance he attached to her approval.
"I would not inflict a dose of the material philosophy of age upon one so young and charming, my dear," he went on; "but possibly you will forgive me if I indicate to you the regrettable circumstance that the ideal is seldom attainable? In other words, mistress, to obtain the greatest good for the greatest number of people it is occasionally necessary to inflict misery, suffering, even death, upon a lesser number. As in the present case, in order to secure the means for reëstablishing King James and what your father so quaintly terms the True Faith in the British Isles, it hath been necessary for a gentleman of questionable legal status—myself—associated with others of yet more dubious antecedents and repute, to procure the death of divers Spanish persons, who, of themselves, had never wrought any harm against us or the cause we served.
"Paradoxical, I must admit, involving an apparent denial of the essential elements of divine justice, and in an ordinary light a gross breach of the world's laws and conventions. But 'tis by precisely such contraventions of precedent and lettered laws that epochal events are brought about. I trust my reasoning is clear?"
"Faith, sir," she answered simply, "I think you will be poking fun at me."
My great-uncle took snuff.
"I was never more serious," he asserted.
O'Donnell emptied a fourth glass with an impatient growl that masked an oath.
"You are wasting time, Murray. Moira is a good lass, and my daughter; but what she thinks of this venture——"
"—is of considerable importance to me," my great-uncle protested. "I was compelled in the beginning of our acquaintance to give her a wrong impression of my character, and I am extremely desirous to have her good opinion."
"You'd better work on your nephew first," the Irishman snapped.
"'Tis to earn his good opinion that I am so solicitous of her's," my extraordinary relative admitted serenely, and the shadow of a smile brightened her face.
"Troth, sir," she retorted, "I am thinking that is the wisest thing you have said, for the young man appears to be the one of you that has a prejudice for the plain truth—I can say nothing for the large gentleman, since he has not opened his mouth."
Murray laughed.
"I will take to myself some of the credit you heap upon my nephew," he said. "As to the 'large gentleman,' 'tis his custom to be silent; eh, Peter?"
"Ja," said Peter.
"But why is he—" she blushed a trifle—"why is Master Ormerod a captive? Why does he say I am a captive, if——"
"You are not a captive," returned my great-uncle. "At least, I say that under the impression that, as your father's daughter and a devout Jacobite, you would not, whatever your personal feelings might be, undertake to interfere with our plans."
He waited, and after a pause she nodded her head.
"My grandnephew on the other hand," he continued, "as well as the 'large gentleman' yonder, are not political sympathizers with us—not yet."
"Nor will they ever be," I corrected him.
"I shall beg leave to differ with you, Robert," he replied. "Nevertheless, in justice to you, I will go on and acquaint Mistress O'Donnell that I carried you by force aboard my ship, Peter accompanying you of his own free will, for reasons which sufficiently commended themselves to me."
"I am wondering are you all mad," she said blankly.
"You may well say so!" I exclaimed. "The truth is this, mistress: Master Murray hath besides his own ship's company a second band of pirates the which are restless beneath his thumb. He desired me to be his lieutenant to help him hold them in restraint, and——"
"You restrained them bravely aboard the Santissima Trinidad!" she said. "My faith, but I am caught in a network of lies!"
"Moira!" gurgled her father, sopping his cuff as he finished his fifth glass. "Ye talk like a—like a—" his brogue thickened—"a besom or what not at all. I'll not have it! I'll not have it, I say!"
"That was to save you!" I declared.
"Troth, and I'm saved," she echoed sarcastically.
"Yes, you and your father," said Murray gravely. "Colonel O'Donnell risked everything on this coup of ours. To protect him 'twas essential it should never be known he was privy to it. We had the choice of two means to that end. One was to sink the Santissima Trinidad with all hands except yourselves——"
She cried out in expostulation and clapped her hands to her eyes as if to shut out the vision the words evoked.
"The other," he continued, "was to arrange to remove the two of you in such fashion as to establish your innocence. I am free to say the first was the easiest course. The dictates of humanity, however, prevailed."
How he rolled that last sentence!
"And what do you know of humanity that soaked the decks of the Santissima Trinidad with blood?" she answered. "You that the Spaniards cite as a byword for cruelty and wickedness! I will not believe a word that you say. I will not believe any man here. You are all smirched with the same badness."
"Blessed Virgin guard me!" whimpered O'Donnell. "And did any ever hear a daughter tell off her father the like of that? Glad I am the mother that bore ye——"
Peter leaned his great bulk forward upon the table.
"Don't talk no more, you," he commanded the Irishman. "Neen, I talk! Little gal, Bob andt I we don't come wit' Murray because we like to. He makes us. Ja! He uses us. He uses your fat'er. He uses you. But when we are wit' him we do what we can to take care of you. It is not goodt for little gals to be on pirate ships. Neen!"
He leaned back.
"Dot's all."
Her blue eyes dwelt seriously upon his vast, flat face, with its insignificant features blobbed here and there.
"I believe you," she said.
"Stap me," jeered Murray. "Our Peter is discovered a squire o' dames—a preux chevalier. Peter, you ha' disguised your talents. We must know more of them."
"Ja," said Peter vacantly.
Mistress O'Donnell rose from her chair.
"Sir—" she addressed my great-uncle—"you will be excusing me if I do not linger for more conversation. What you do hath no concern with me. I am very distraught, and my heart is sick with the black sorrow, and I—I—" she swayed a little—"I would lie me down and—and—weep."
I slipped from my seat and steadied her. Her father, opposite, blinked at us through maudlin tears.
"A sweet maid!" he hiccuped. "She's all I ha' left from following the Lost Cause. Curse the Hanoverian——"
"Take her to your stateroom, Robert," said my great-uncle. "You must lodge with Peter."
He rose, himself, bowing with the fine courtesy which became him nobly.
"What we can do to serve you, dear lass, that will we right gladly. In the mean time, do you rest and forget the nightmare scenes I would have spared you had I known how."
I guided her as far as the stateroom door. She thanked me faintly as I opened it for her, and I was abruptly impelled to recover her friendship.
"What I tried to tell you was the truth," I murmured, the words spilling fast from my tongue. "Indeed it was so! Peter Corlaer had the right of it. We two are no pirates, and all that we ha' done has been intended to make smooth your way."
There was a wistful light in her eyes as she lifted them under long, black lashes.
"God send you be honest, sir," she said. "I—I must wait to judge. The world is gone all twirly-round. Even the padre——"
She choked back a sob.
"You will not misunderstand," she ended with quiet dignity, "if I say no more that maybe already ha' said too much."
When I returned to the main cabin Ben Gunn was placing the food on the table, and my great-uncle was removing the liquor from Colonel O'Donnell's reach.
"We have had sufficient to drink, Ben," he said and, heedless of the Irishman's disappointed face, waved away that which had been before them as well as the new array of bottles one of the lackeys bore upon a silver tray.
Nothing more was said until the steward and the negroes had retired. Then Murray sat forward in his chair.
"There is a certain matter of importance to be discussed, colonel," he announced. "I must have your attention."
O'Donnell nodded sulkily.
"As you know, the crew of my associate, Captain Flint, some of whom you saw in New York, are not under the same discipline as my own men. Captain Flint saw fit to express jealousy of the terms I arranged with your principals for the division of the treasure, and in order to conciliate him and assure him of my good faith I gave him my grandnephew and Master Corlaer as hostages. They went unwillingly and succeeded in escaping before we sailed, returned aboard the James and secreted themselves for several days. I dared not risk the time to return them to Flint, and I anticipate that he will receive me now with augmented suspicion."
"I said all along ye were crazy to let a low fellow like him have any hand in the affair," fumed O'Donnell.
"We need not go over that again," rejoined my great-uncle. "I must have the security of the Rendezvous, and for that I must needs pay Flint. Also, I may have need of him in other ways. This venture is not yet consummated. There is likewise the consideration that we have worked together in the past, and I owe him a modicum of loyalty."
"Loyalty to the Cause should come first," declared O'Donnell.
"True, sir, and I yield it. But I must look to the future. 'Tis contrary to my policy to break with Flint if it can be avoided. 'Tis similarly contrary to my instinct to trust him farther than I must, and in this immediate case I am loath to trust him."
"What's to do?" rasped O'Donnell. "Raise his price?"
"No, no. My suggestion is that we should stow away our friends' portion of the treasure before we return to the Rendezvous."
"Where?"
"I have been turning that in my mind for several weeks. There is an island south of Porto Rico in the Virgin Group, a barren dot, hated by all seamen for sorry memories of shipwreck and suffering. They call it the Dead Man's Chest."
I remembered the deep, swinging chorus I had first heard in the Whale's Head tavern the night I sought O'Donnell for his daughter. It sounded like a fit place for pirate treasure.
The Irishman frowned.
"What? Dump this gold we have risked so much to win on a sandbar for the first passing fellow to——"
"I have said no man will go there if he can help it."
"I like it not!" scowled O'Donnell. "My friends would have ugly things to say did the stuff slip from our hands in that way."
"'Tis less likely to slip from our hands on the Dead Man's Chest than abroad the Royal James," answered Murray. "Bethink you, chevalier! To begin with, there is Flint to reckon with. He will be nasty, as nasty as he dares, depending upon the temper of his crew and the quantity of rum he has consumed. Second, there is always the chance that we might fall in with a frigate too swift for us. On all scores 'tis preferable to get the treasure off the Royal James. 'Twill give us time to let the hue and cry of the Spaniards die down and to arrange with your friends for its reception."
"Whatever you say, 'tis a miserable alternative," protested O'Donnell. "Let us rather hold north and set the treasure ashore in France."
"To run the gauntlet of French and English cruisers?" my great-uncle demanded scornfully. "'Odsblood, man, you are out of your mind! And when you had landed it, what would you do? How much of it would go to your friends and how much to grease the pockets of French officials? A great treasure is not so easily disposed of."
"Ja," spoke up Peter, "dot's right, Murray. But what goodt is it to go back to Flint? He makes trouble, always he makes trouble—andt if he don't, his men does. It's better you go anodder place."
My great-uncle took snuff, tapping the box thoughtfully after he had dusted the powder in his nostrils.
"To be strictly honest with you, gentlemen," he remarked at last, "I am disposed to return to Flint because I foresee a possibility of my desiring to sacrifice him to cover our tracks. I have no definite plan in mind, but a situation might shape itself in which it would be desirable to supply a fugitive for Spaniard, Frenchman and Englishman to chase. I should vastly prefer—as I am sure you would, too—that the fugitive be the Walrus and not the James. Also, until that situation arises, the Rendezvous is the safest hiding-place I know this side of Africa."
O'Donnell eyed him with involuntary respect.
"I should hate to have ye set on my track, Murray!" he exclaimed. "Is not Flint your friend?"
My great-uncle considered this question.
"Scarcely my friend," he decided. "Say, rather, associate. And the fellow is troublesome occasionally. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing him to secure the stake we play for."
"And there is no real feeling of loyalty in your heart!" I gibed. "'Tis simply a question of using him to your best advantage."
"Yes and no, Robert," he retorted coolly. "As you grow older you will learn that as naught is wholly bad neither is it wholly good."
A step clumped in the companionway, and Martin stuck his grizzled head in the cabin.
"Last o' the —— —— ruddy-boys is comin' aboard, sir," he said. "What course will ye set?"
Murray looked at the Irishman.
"Here's the moment for decision, sir," he said. "'Tis for you to say what shall be done."
O'Donnell's long face seemed to grow longer.
"Sure, and how will I know what to say that never gave thought to the matter before?" he parried dubiously. "Do I understand you to suggest Captain Flint might attempt to possess the entire treasure?"
"I should consider it likely," assented my great-uncle.
"He is more likely to make trouble if you come to the Anchorage after disposing of half the gold," I thrust in. "'Twill only serve to stimulate his suspicions."
"There is reason in what you say," agreed my great-uncle. "Nevertheless, permit me to indicate that if we have not the half of the treasure 'twill be impossible for him to secure it by any means."
O'Donnell smacked his open hand upon the table top.
"A truce to arguing!" he exclaimed. "I am in your hands, Murray, whether it pleases me or not. Do whichever you think best."
My great-uncle turned to the mate.
"Cast loose from the prize, Master Martin, and make all sail. The course is so'east by south. I would have you stand off out of sight of the Porto Rican shore."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Martin hesitated.
"And the treasure, cap'n?" he added.
"Benn Gunn will give you the keys of the lazaret. 'Twill go there as usual."
"Aye, aye, sir."
There was an interval of silence after he had gone. The shouts of the pirates echoed from the deck, with the creaking of halyards and napping of sails. The Royal James seemed to shake herself as she sidled free of the battered hull of the Santissima Trinidad, and through the stern windows showed the bowsprit and fo'csle of the Spaniard, still smothered beneath a mess of canvas and broken spars and rigging. Slowly we drew past her, and I was amused to see that men leaned from her ports and on her bulwarks, watching us with the idle curiosity to be expected in any friendly meeting at sea.
The Spanish flag still flaunted at her main where it had stayed throughout the action. Don Ascanio, her captain, still stood with folded arms and furious mien on the poop. The group of religious were all on their knees in prayer. The fat monk raised his crucifix with a threatening gesture as we glided under her stern.
"Observe the fallacy of religious conviction," commented Murray. "The monk curses us for a crime we have not committed."
"There is enough evil to your credit to warrant him, even so," I answered.
O'Donnell crossed himself.
"Leave religion alone, Murray," he said sourly. "'Tis a bid for ill-fortune to mock the Church and holy men and women."
"Prejudice, my dear chevalier!" protested my great-uncle. "Yet any sane view of mundane affairs must recognize religion hath its uses to mankind."
He rose.
"If you will pardon me, I have much to see to on deck. Should you desire any refreshment do but ring that bell and state your wants to the steward. Robert, if you and Peter can so far submerge your Hanoverian sympathies I should appreciate such aid as you might render in the accounting of the treasure."
Peter and I went with him, as much to escape the company of the Irishman as to satisfy our curiosity regarding the chests and boxes we had glimpsed in transit across the Santissima Trinidad's deck. And certes, the scene that awaited us was worth going far to see. The maindeck, immediately for'ard of the poop, was jammed with the contents of the Spaniard's lazaret, piled helterskelter as the working-parties had hastily shifted it from one ship to the other.
Murray produced tablet and ink-horn; a desk was arranged for me atop of a water-butt, and one by one a procession of pirates filed past, each with his load of gold or silver, minted and in bullion.
'Twas a marvelous concentration of wealth. The columns of figures I set down upon the tablet never condescended to detail—5,000 pieces of eight, they would run, or 10,000 doubloons, 12,000 onzas, 20,000 castellanos, 25,000 eights, and so on. One cask we opened was filled with quaint Eastern coins, some square, some oblong, some cubical, some round, inscribed with spidery characters, a consignment from the Spanish possessions in the South Seas. There was upward of two hundred thousand pounds in bar silver, fifty-pound ingots sheathed by threes in thick canvas jackets to facilitate their transport by mule-trains—each mule carrying a load of three hundred pounds. There was a quantity, too, of gold bullion, each ingot of eighty pounds in its own canvas jacket. There were a chest of precious stones, the value of which we could only guess at, and three chests of plate.
The total value, by the Government estimates upon each package, chest or keg, was £1,563,995 in English money, exclusive of the jewels and the plate; and we did not conclude the accounting and bestowal of the treasure in Ben Gunn's wine-cellar until an hour past dusk, when Murray dismissed all hands with an extra ration of rum and instructed Saunders, who had the watch, to allow his men to sleep on deck, except those actually needed for lookouts and the wheel.
In the cabin we found Colonel O'Donnell asleep, sprawled on the table with his head rested on his folded arms, a puddle of wine by his elbow. My great-uncle's eyebrows twitched upward.
"This gentleman is a chamberlain to King James, Robert," he remarked, "a Knight of Malta and of Santiago in Spain, a colonel of Spanish engineers and lord of I know not how many bog-manors in Ireland if he had his rights. And look at him!"
He was not a pleasant sight, I'll own; but my redoubtable relative's perpetual air of omniscience grated upon me.
"Who brought him to this?" I retorted.
"Not I, my boy! To intrigue is not necessarily to license appetite. Well, well, 'tis doubtly fortunate I induced him to fetch along the little maid."
"'Twas well nigh your most dastardly act!"
He took snuff, deliberately pondering the charge, and despite the toil of the day his face preserved its uncanny fulness of outline.
"The appearances are against me," he answered. "Yet I am inclined to believe that in the long run you will concede I acted for the best. Consider her plight in a Spanish convent, if anything happened to her father."
"Consider her plight in a pirate ship, if anything happened to him!" I jeered.
He appealed to Peter, whimsically humorous.
"Stap me, the boy wears upon my nerves! Was ever a youth so callow in his assurance of righteousness?"
Peter's little eyes twinkled.
"He is right, andt you are right. But we better put der colonel in his bed, ja."
"'A Daniel come to judgment!'" cried Murray. "Now what might you mean by that, friend Peter?"
"You know what I mean—andt I know what you mean," returned the Dutchman solemnly. "You are a big rascal, but dot time maybe you was right."
"Don't be an idiot, Peter," I rasped.
"'Tis you are the idiot," affirmed my great-uncle. "Here are you and Peter—two honest men if any ever were—and myself, with less claim to virtue perhaps, but as acute an interest, if the truth be known. And all three of us a-hungering to safeguard the lass. What mother might ask more?"
"And Flint," I amended. "He'd protect her, I suppose."
"He'll never have the chance, Robert," he answered gravely. "You and Peter have played ducks and drakes, between you, with my plans; but John Flint is not the man to overreach me. Give him rope, lad—and we'll present him his chance to hang."
"Ja," said Peter. "We take care of der little gal—andt so we put der colonel in his bed."
And so we did, to an accompaniment of stammered oaths and tags of Jacobite ditties.
Afterward, in Peter's stateroom, I asked him what he had been hinting at in his exchange with Murray.
"Oh, we just talk," he replied, rolling into his berth with a ponderous sigh of satisfaction.
"I heard you," I snapped. "But of what?"
There was a dim light in his eyes, buried behind rolling flaps of blubber.
"We just talk," he murmured. "Murray talks, andt I talk. Murray, he likes to talk, ja."
I was up early in the morning, but Mistress O'Donnell and my great-uncle were before me. As I climbed to the poop I saw them standing by the weather rail, Murray expressing deference in every line of his straight figure and handsome, old-young face, the little maid eying him with a comical mixture of antipathy and respect.
The wind had veered in the night, providentially for us, and we were running free, the James riding the easy swell with the dash of a race-horse. We were out of sight of land.
My great-uncle clapped his hand on my shoulder in his best paternal manner, and Mistress O'Donnell gave me a shy look that I read to reflect a double attitude of mind similar to that she evidenced for him.
"Here is my nephew, who will settle all your remaining doubts, Mistress Moira," proclaimed Murray; "and with your leave I'll be about my morning inspection—for we must maintain a high level of discipline, since we sail on the king's errand and are therefore the king's ship."
She watched his retreating back with a kind of fascination.
"Sure, I never met the like of him," she said at last. "He puts me in mind of the grand gentry the padre brings to see me in Madrid—and him a pirate! Glory, what a tale I could be telling the girls if I ever see the four walls of St. Bridget's again! Whiles I talk with him he makes me feel there's none other so grand and fine in the broad world. And again I'll remember the screaming on the Santissima Trinidad and what Frey Sebastian said of him—and then the shivers turn me winter-cold. But I'm thinking yourself will be the same queer sort, Master Ormerod, you that can be generous and gallant to a foolish maid and as cruel as the wildcat the Indians showed us in the hills up behind Porto Bello."
"It must seem so to you," I answered. "But the truth is that I am as much the sport of Fate as yourself."
"Do you tell me so?" she replied politely.
"I do," I said with energy. "Let me tell you the whole story—it begins on the night I accompanied you to the Whale's Head——"
"Ah, that was a night of nights!" she exclaimed. "The first breath of adventure ever I drew, and I was thinking to myself as I hugged the memory afterwards I could never get enough of that same savor. But yesterday was the curing of my hunger."
And her blue eyes clouded with tears and the corners of her mouth quirked downward most dolefully.
"Do but let me tell you my story," I pleaded, "and you will think better of that night and maybe of some things that happened afterward."
"Why, sir," she said, "here are you with a ready tongue, and me with two ears wide open. There's naught to stop you. But as to believing—that will be a story for me to tell and you to hear."
So I began at the beginning and told her all from the moment Darby McGraw had run into the counting-room in Pearl Street—and how remote in time and place that seemed as we stared out upon the blue-green rollers of the Caribbean and the tropic sun warmed toward its noon intensity! She listened with mounting interest, never interrupting save for an occasional "Glory!" "Oh, blessed saints!" "Holy Virgin, can such things be!" But when I came to the escape from the Walrus she broke in upon me.
"And you did that to be handy by if I had need of you! Oh, sir, forget the wicked suspicions I owned! 'Tis a true friend you will be—and the large gentleman, too. What is he called? Master Corlaer? Alas, I am heavy in your debt, and always shall be. But the only payment I ever can make will be just my bare thanks and the prayers I'll say on my bended knees my life long."
She was wholly trustful with Peter and me from then on and spent most of her time with us. Her father, when he was not drinking, was engaged in conferences with Murray. They worked for hours at a time with quill and paper, figuring the strength of clans, costs of muskets and powder and lead and the number of field-cannon to be stowed in a ship's hold, as also the individual requirements of chiefs and nobles and the amounts for which several persons would "sell out." And as they worked my great-uncle's confidence increased, and Colonel O'Donnell's long, horsey face took on a flush over the cheekbones that was not alone the result of four bottles of madeira at a sitting.
On the seventh morning after the action with the Santissima Trinidad we raised a low, sandy islet, densely choked with low trees and bush growth, bare of any characteristic that invited human habitation. Its only distinguishing feature was its roughly oblong shape, which might, by a stretch of imagination, enable it to be likened to a sailor's chest. Murray approached it with caution, a man in the chains dipping the lead continually, and we came to anchor under its lee and a mile or more offshore.
In the mean time Martin and a party of some fifty men had been passing up treasure from the wine-cellar or lazaret, the mate checking the amounts withdrawn upon the list I had prepared, the pirates muttering amongst themselves in a way not at all to my fancy as they gaged anew the size of the fortune they had won, without, so far, any benefit or reward. Martin was a competent officer, and he kept them at work, for all their grumbling and discontent, until the anchor cable ran out and Murray issued an order to lower all the small boats. The next thing we knew the fifty had hurled the mate into the scuppers and were swarming up the starboard poop ladder, a giant North-countryman at their head.
Murray, who had been talking with O'Donnell, leaped to meet them, as unperturbed as if the incident were a part of the ship's routine.
"Get back there, men," he ordered quietly.
The leaders halted, sullenly irresolute, cowed at once by the red glare in his tawny eyes, the cold power that radiated from his white face.
"We'm on'y seekin' a bit goold," said the first man hoarsely.
My great-uncle calmly produced a small, double-barreled French pistolet from an inner pocket, shot the fellow in the head, leaned forward and pushed his body off the ladder.
"Master Martin," he called, "be so good as to have that carrion cast overboard. Go about your work, men, or I'll flog the lot of you at the triangles."
They tumbled down the ladder and disintegrated like a pack of sheep, and not one raised a hand when Martin came at them, cursing grotesquely in his gentle voice and striking right and left with knotted fists. Two of them obeyed his order to throw the dead man's body over the rail, and they went straight to the boat-falls without another mutinous word or act.
Yet when Murray turned to face us I noted the tiny wrinkle betwixt his eyebrows which was a sure indication that he was worried.
Moira O'Donnell, who had been standing with Peter and me, listening to my recital of the song about the island, was the first to speak.
"Will you have had to shoot that man?" she challenged.
"'Twas that or maybe the deaths of all of us, my lass," he replied, unwontedly grim. "A shipload of men like my crew are a volcano of lawlessness held in restraint by fear. Let them once break the spell of discipline—which is maintained by fear—and they in their numbers would soon overpower us. This incident is relatively unimportant, but it points a lesson I should be reckless not to heed.
"To be brief, my friends," my great-uncle, summed up, "I dare not leave the Royal James whilst any of the treasure is aboard; nor would it be safe for me to entrust any of my crew with the location of the hiding-place."
He took snuff, staring contemplatively at the sand-hillocks of the Dead Man's Chest.
"Here, then, is my plan," he pursued. "I will have eight hundred thousand pounds set ashore in the boats—my own share of one hundred thousand, chevalier, as well as the seven hundred thousand pounds guaranteed to your friends. I will then land you four, with sufficient provisions, and bear away in the James to the so'th'ard, returning in five days to pick you up. In the intervening period you should be able to transport the treasure to a safe spot and bury it. In that way, chevalier, its safety can be assured until we are able to return for it with the James or some other craft dispatched by your friends."
"Your plan is maybe the best in the circumstances," answered O'Donnell, "but I'd have ye remember, Murray, that of the four people who will know of the gold's location two are Hanoverians and the third is my daughter, who is a weak maid."
My great-uncle laughed.
"You need have no fear on the score of those three. You little know Mistress Moira if you call her a weak maid; and as for Robert and Peter, they are men of honor—and best of all, are not likely to be submitted to the temptation to reveal the treasure to their political friends. No, no, colonel; by my plan the treasure will be safer than in a bank."
There was more talk back and forth, but the end of it all was that O'Donnell accepted my great-uncle's plan, and Moira was won over likewise by the argument that so long as the treasure was stolen it had best be assured to a worthy purpose. Peter and I agreed for a complex of reasons—because of the little maid for one thing, and for another, because there was an excitement in the burial of treasure which neither of us had tasted before, and also, of course, because, when all was said and done, we were prisoners and we must. But I'd never seek to deny that we had pleasure from the thrill that came to us late in the afternoon of that day as we stood on the narrow beach of the islet beside a great stack of kegs and chests, axes, pickaxes and shovels, a barrel of water and boxes of food from Ben Gunn's larder, watching the boat that had landed us pull back to the James.
The ensuing five days demanded an amount of manual labor which extracted wails of indignation from Colonel O'Donnell, much uncomplaining effort from Moira and all the strength Peter and I possessed. Indeed, without the big Dutchman we might never transported that amount of treasure, dug a hole for it and concealed the location, all within the time-limit Murray had allowed us.
The first afternoon and evening we spent in selecting a hiding-place in a shallow valley protected from the terrible storms which sweep those seas. Colonel O'Donnell and Moira were detailed to do the digging, as neither was as capable as Peter and I of managing the weighty bulk of the casks and chests. And after that we worked unremittingly, except for a couple of hours at midday and a short snatch of sleep about dawn; for the starlit nights, with their bracing sea-winds, were the most comfortable times we had. Yet the tops'ls of the James were within sight before we had disposed of the last spadeful of sand from the hiding-place and replanted its area with the trees and bushes we had removed with every care to preserve their roots.
O'Donnell had an unconquerable aversion to laboring with his hands, but his engineering knowledge enabled him to survey crudely the site we used and plot certain angles which fixed it in our memories—a precaution highly necessary, as when we had finished there was no more evidence of what we had done than a slight instability about several trees. We had even gone so far as to transplant an enterprising colony of land-crabs to scuttle back and forth over the fresh-turned sand. And in a month, we knew, the luxuriant growth would have obliterated the narrow slash of the path that zigzagged across the sand hillocks to the valley's lip.