Part 12

Thus they talked together as the ship came slowly to her anchorage. Perrin joined them, seemingly indifferent to the present trouble. “Whatever happens,” he said, “we shall be ourselves. It’s no use worrying.” He smoked more than usual after dinner, and then made outline draughts of the coast. He was not being brave; but having little imagination he was indifferent. It was hot, too; and hot weather always made him dull. The sight of the new land pleased him. There was forest; miles of forest; forest rising over hills, lapsing to hollows of marsh, coming down to the sea, fading in a blur of branches. Here and there were clearings. Here and there, in sandy bays, the cows came, lowing at the sea. Smoke, in blue spires, rose up at a planter’s slip where a sloop was building. At times, as they neared the land, before going about on another reach, they heard the voices of men, the chop of axes upon timber. A country sloop lay at a jetty. Her men were hoisting casks aboard, singing at the tackles. A saw was at work at hand. Men were carrying planks to the jetty end. One of the men, laying down his load, waved to the ship as Captain Cammock flung his colours out. Very proudly, with all the dignity of beauty, the _Broken Heart_ marched to her rest. Her sailors cheered. They fired their guns, took up their berth and anchored. Jamestown lay before them; with some twenty of her citizens watching them from the battery. Already one or two men were putting out in boats towards them.

“That’s not the whole city,” said Perrin. “There’s only twenty or thirty houses, beside the fort and the church.”

“That’s Jamestown,” said Cammock. “Now, Captain Margaret. Now for it.”

“Not much longer to wait. We’ll go ashore together.”

“No, sir. I’ll go alone. If anything’s going to happen, I’ll send off word. Then you can look to the lady.”

“Ah, thank you, Captain.”

“Well. We’ll know soon. I’ll wave my hat from the pier if it’s all well, sir. Cheer up, sir. Mr. Cottrill, there.”

“Ay, ay, Captain Cammock.”

“My gig’s crew, mister. Are they in their whites?”

“Gig’s crew all dressed, sir.”

“Tell the bosun to pipe them away. No one to come aboard, Mr. Cottrill.”

“No one to come aboard, sir.”

“You better keep an eye on Mr. Stukeley, Captain Margaret. He may cut up rash.”

“I will. Good-bye, captain. Good luck.”

“We’ll know soon.”

“Got your papers?”

“All correct, sir. Now.” He passed over the side, and shoved off.

Margaret watched the boat pull past, glad of that small diversion. She was a six-oar gig, whale-built, painted dark-blue and white, steering, on state occasions, with a brass-yoked rudder, at other times with an oar. A boy in a white jacket steered her with the yoke-lines, sitting behind Cammock’s back-board.

“Look, Edward,” said Margaret. “How character shows in little things. Look at the style of the rowers. Look at the stroke, bowing his head as he comes aft, and the two midship oars watching their blades. What makes men watch their blades?”

“Weak will. Or vanity. I always do it. A sense of beauty, too. Desire of pleasure. The swirl and the bubbles are beautiful. What do you make of the bow?”

“He’s not got room to pull. The stern-sheets are too roomy.”

“He’s a coward,” said Perrin. “I should be like that. He shirks each stroke because he’s afraid of knocking the second bow’s back.”

“Yes. That’s it.”

“The weakest man is always put in the bow. He has to jump out with the painter.”

“The most intelligent man, probably.”

“No. I shouldn’t say the most intelligent. The most sensitive.”

“What do you make of Cammock’s back?”

“Cammock’s a fine fellow.”

“Isn’t it strange that he should be what he is?”

“After mixing---- Good Lord, what ruffians he’s mixed with.”

“I should like to know how he comes by it. I’m a great believer in heredity. I wonder what his people were. He’s got refinement, too, in a curious sort of way.”

“The poor are often very refined,” said Perrin. “The very poor. Especially in the country.”

“I suppose because they’ve nothing to make them false.”

“Yes.”

“You know, Edward, that Olivia’s going to have a child?”

“No. Good Lord. What in the world? Supposing there’s a letter?”

“That’s the question. There it is. And there goes Cammock up the stage.”

“But it knocks her coming to Darien?”

“Stukeley says not.”

“Good God, though. It must.”

“We probably shan’t leave here, Edward. And anyway he’s her husband.”

“You must refuse to take her.”

“Yes. But even if we get to Darien--I don’t think it likely--she’s as well with us as here, Edward.”

“That’s true, too. Well. I told you how it would be, Charles. Didn’t I?”

Cammock was a long time gone; but not such a long time as it seemed. Margaret, deserted by Perrin, who was called away by Cottrill, paced the poop moodily, losing, in dejection, the clumsy trick of carriage which marred his gait. His ordinary walk had a kind of jaunty spring, which seemed unnatural to the man, improper to his essential character. There was no jauntiness in him at this moment; for his trouble was heavy. For possible arrest he cared nothing; for possible hanging he cared nothing. “I shall still be myself,” he said, repeating what Perrin had repeated from another. “What does it matter if I am hanged?” Bells seemed to be ringing in his brain, heavy bells and dull, with merry impish bells. “Olivia’s going to have a child,” they said. “Olivia’s going to have a child. Going to have a child. A child. A child.” Like many lonely men, he desired children. They had played about him in his dreams of her. Girls mostly, with Olivia’s eyes, her throat, her voice. Now was come the end of everything. Her child would be a monster, a goat-footed boy, a Stukeley. He shuddered to think of the child’s hair, curling and black like the father’s hair, negro hair; his nerves were shaken. As for his love for Olivia, that would never be the same; it was changed now, wholly changed. No man’s love could bear that, could forgive that; though it glorified her, in a way, and made her very sacred.

He leaned over the taffrail, to watch for Cammock, who had vanished among the strangers, like a stone cast into water. Something stirred beside him, and there was Olivia, dressed in clothes which she had worn long ago at home, looking as she had looked then; but that her face was paler. He started to see her, thinking for a moment that she had come to tell him, hoping it with all his heart. It would make their friendship perfect, he thought, if this might be done together. She smiled to see him start; but her face instantly grew grave again.

“Charles,” she said, “is anything the matter with Tom?”

“Matter with him?” he repeated. “Is he ill? Has he hurt himself?” For just one wild second, he wondered, in an agony that was half hope, if the man had taken poison.

“I can’t get him to speak to me. And he’s so white, Charles, I can’t help thinking that he is sunstruck.”

“Shall I go down?”

“He won’t see anybody. He won’t---- Oh, Charles, I wish I’d been on deck with him. Was he in the sun? Are you sure he wasn’t?”

“He wasn’t in the sun, Olivia. He wasn’t on deck for more than a few minutes.”

“But where was he, then? He must have been forward, where you couldn’t see him.”

“I do hope he wasn’t,” said Margaret, hating himself for his deception. The words “Mrs. Inigo” rose to his lips; but he kept from uttering them. “I ought to have prevented all this. I might have. I ought to have kept them apart till---- She ought not to be fretting.” He bit his lips at the thought of his negligence.

“I’ll come down at once, Olivia,” he said. “Oh, Olivia,” he added, his voice growing tender and moving, “you look so white and worried. I’ll look after Stukeley. Won’t you lie down and rest? It’s much too hot for you in the sun here. And then the excitement.”

“Oh, never mind me,” she said hurriedly, almost gaily. “I’m not in the least ill. It’s Tom.” As women sometimes will, in moments of emotion, she acted impulsively, laying her hand on his arm, sending the blood to his temples.

“Come on down, then,” he said thickly. “We’ll see. We’ll see your husband.” He glanced over the side again, biting his lips, his face turned away, as she took his arm. In that glance he saw the slip below the battery, with its green piles, barnacled, clucked about by the tides, mounted with tarpaulined cannon. Cammock stood upon the slip end, his gig’s crew, their oars tossed, just below him. Townsmen were talking to him; but he stood unheeding, looking at the _Broken Heart_, waving his hat. Margaret waved his hat in answer, to show that he saw; then, breathing a deep sigh, he led Olivia below.

“Why. What makes you sigh like that?” she asked.

“Why do I sigh? Captain Cammock was signalling to me. I was afraid we might be quarantined. But it’s all right now. He’s signalled that it’s all right. I’m relieved.”

“Charles,” she said, pausing in the alleyway, “I sometimes feel that I’ve given you pain by coming with you like this. Have I?”

“No, Olivia,” he answered. “How could you?”

“But are you sure? I couldn’t bear to think that I had.”

“I am very sure of that, Olivia.”

“You aren’t angry with me for asking?”

“We’re old friends, you and I, Olivia. Old friends like you and I don’t get angry with each other.”

“Some day I hope you’ll marry, Charles. You’d make the right woman very happy.”

“Ah no, no. We mustn’t talk of that.”

“You will, Charles. You will. And yet it would be sad to see all one’s boy and girl friends married. A woman doesn’t like to feel old.”

“Olivia.”

“Now come in and see Tom. Do you think there are good doctors here?” The question was earnestly asked. It seemed to Margaret that it took for granted that he knew, that it was the woman’s way of taking him into her confidence, into the dark, locked cupboard, meagrely catalogued without, which is a woman’s confidence. It made a strange jangling of all his strings to hear her. In the dark passage there, with her great eyes looking into his, and the earrings gleaming palely against the hair, she moved him, she shook him out of tune.

“Olivia,” he said, stammering. “Olivia. If. When. When your. If you ever have a child, Olivia. Will you let me--let me---- Let me see it often. Be its godfather. Be something to it?”

“Yes,” she said softly, pressing the back of his hand quickly. “Yes, Charles. I promise you that.”

“You aren’t hurt, Olivia?”

“No, Charles. Not hurt.”

“God bless you, Olivia.”

“Come in to Tom, now,” she said in a low voice. She was moved and touched. They went in.

Stukeley sat at the cabin table, drinking brandy without water. He was white and sick. Their entrance made him start up with an oath.

“What’s the matter, Stukeley?” said Margaret. “We aren’t going into--into quarantine. Cammock’s signalled that it’s all right. What’s the matter with you? Let me feel your pulse.”

“Ah,” he said, gasping. “Ah. This heat’s upset me.”

“How are you, Tom?” Olivia tenderly asked. “How’s your head?”

“Oh, my head’s all right. Don’t bother. Don’t bother.” He rose from his seat, laughing wildly. “What a turn it gave me,” he said. “I’m going to see old Brandyco. I’m all right again, Olivia.” He took her by the shoulders and bent back her head so that he might kiss her. “Poor little Olive,” he said caressingly, pinching her arms. “She’s been worrying, ever so. Hasn’t she? Hasn’t she? Eh?” He kissed her eyes. Margaret turned away, wondering whether the kiss smelt worse of brandy or tobacco.

“Don’t go on deck,” said Olivia. “Don’t go on deck, Tom dear. The sun’s so strong.”

“But you’ll want to hear about Jamestown from Cammock.”

“No, Tom dear. I don’t. I want you. I want you to rest and get well.”

“I’d like. I must just see Cammock.”

“But what makes you so eager to see Captain Cammock, Tom?”

“Stukeley looks on the captain as a sort of a show,” said Margaret quickly. “The captain has just been talking with strangers. Wouldn’t you like to see a man who’d really seen a new face, Olivia; and heard a new voice?”

Olivia smiled.

“I don’t think Tom’s strong enough for excitements,” she said.

“No,” said Margaret, leaving the cabin. “But I don’t think there’s much wrong. I think he’ll soon be all right, Olivia. Make him lie down and rest. I must just see the captain.” He went on deck hurriedly, holding his breath till he was in the fresh air. “Poison,” he said to himself. “Poison. What a life. What squalor. That woman going to have a child. And Stukeley, pah. Drinking and smoking there, waiting to be dragged to gaol. She doesn’t see it. One would think he must shock every fibre of her nature. And he doesn’t. He gives her love, I suppose. That was the only thing she wanted. And now that beast is her standard.” In the pure air he blamed himself for thinking ill of her. “After all,” he thought, “Stukeley isn’t a beast to her. She, with her much finer sense, sees something in him. Something that is all the world to her. Something beautiful. She may even be happy with him. She may be.” He thought pitifully of women and angrily of men. It was all wrong, he thought. Men and women could never understand each other, except in rare moments, in love, when the light in each heart burned clearly. Women were hidden; they were driven to covert, poor trembling fawns. They were like the nymphs hidden in the reeds by the river. They took care that men should see only the reeds. He had never really seen Olivia; he was not sure if he knew her yet; he couldn’t say what it was that he loved. He did not care; he was not going to ask. She was beautiful; her beauty moved him to the bone; beauty was in all of her, in the whole woman, the whole nature, body and spirit, in the ways of body and spirit. She was going to have a child; Stukeley’s child; red-cheeked, curly; a little boy-beast, the bully of his school. Ah, but the child would be hers, too. She would bring it up to be like her. He would have that refinement of voice, that lovely, merry, almost timid manner, her eyes, her grace, her shyness. Captain Cammock, who had been watching him for a full thirty seconds, half amused, half sad, that his passion had so strong a hold still, even in a moment of anxiety, now tapped him on the shoulder.

“Ah, captain.”

“It’s all right, sir. Nothing come yet. You can land your goods as soon as you like. The Governor said he remembered you, and hopes that you will wait upon him.”

“Good. I will.”

“It is good, sir. Oh, I’ve ordered some fresh meat, sir, and some fowls.”

“Yes. We must feast to-night. And send the boat in for a cask of fresh water. Two-month water is poor tipple.”

“Yes. What would you say to six-month water? We must give a free pump in port. And a cask of rum or beer, sir, on the quarter-deck, would help our trade. For visitors you know, sir.”

“See to it then, captain. A letter may come while we’re here, though.”

“Then make the Governor and the others your friends. Send ’em a few cases of wine. Square the man-of-war captains. There’ll be no trouble if you make them all your friends.”

“It doesn’t sound pretty.”

“Nor a wrung neck don’t look it.”

During the next few days there was bustle in the _Broken Heart_. Visitors came aboard to look at samples of goods; to talk with the seamen; and to taste the rum and beer, which was served out, a cup to each comer, for the first forty-eight hours of her stay in the port. All sorts came aboard her; traders and planters, oyster and fisher men, soldiers from the fort, officers of the Governor’s house, Indians, men from the backwoods, trappers, a sun-burned, good-humoured, silent company, very sharp at a bargain.

After the first two days, the trade began. The seamen rigged up trading-booths ashore, with some old sails, stretched upon poles. Planks were laid upon casks to serve as trade tables. The goods were arranged at the back of each booth, in the care of trusty hands. Clothing was more in demand than any other kind of goods; but the only clothes bought were those of fine quality and beautiful colour. It puzzled Captain Margaret to see a small planter, owning perhaps only one white apprenticed servant, or redemptioner, buying clothes of great price, putting them on in the booth, and riding off, like an earl, on his little Virginian horse, to his little clearing in the wilderness. A few planters, especially those who were newly come to the colony from the islands, where they had been privateering, paid for their purchases in ounces of silver. It was easy to recognize these planters. They had not lost their sea-walk, nor that steadfast anxiety of gaze which marks the sailor. They all carried arms; though the richer sort of them wore only pistols and a knife, leaving the carriage of the musket, the bag containing lead, a mould, and some bullets, and the heavy leather-covered powder-bottle, to a redemptioner, a Moskito Indian, or, more rarely, to a negro slave. Cammock had known some of these men in the past. Often, as he sat in the shade, watching the beauty of the scene, now so glorious with coming autumn, Captain Margaret would see one of these strangers approaching, followed by his man. He was always impressed by them, sometimes by their physical splendour, sometimes by the sense that they were full of a rather terrible exuberance. As he watched such a man approaching the booths, puffing at his pipe, dressed in elaborate clothes, hung about with silver at all points, with silver buttons, silver brooches, silver discs, buckles of heavy silver, links and stars of silver, silver chains and necklets, so that the man’s whole wealth was on his body at one time, Captain Margaret was conscious of a feeling of envy. His own training, his own beautifully ordered life in an English college, had shut him off from such a life as this man’s. This clashing, tinkling pirate--he was nothing more, although he often looked so fine--was master of his world. Captain Margaret was the slave of his; the unhappy slave. The pirate could leave his plantation when he wished, letting the wild bines choke his tobacco. He could ship himself in any ship in the harbour, and go to any part of the world which pleased his fancy. If chance flung him down in a tropical forest, on an island in the sea, in a battle, in a shipwreck, at a wedding, he would know what to do, what to say, what to propose. The world had no terrors for such a man. Captain Margaret forgot, when he thought thus enviously, that he himself was one of the few who had escaped from the world, escaped from that necessity for tooth and claw which is nature; and that by being no longer “natural,” instinctive, common, he had risen to something higher, to a point from which he could regard the pirate as an interesting work of art. He never pursued his fancy far enough to ask himself if he would willingly imitate or possess that work; because the pirate, passing him by with a hard, shrewd glance, would stride into the booth, taking off his hat to thrust back his long hair. He would listen then to the conversation. If the man was known to Cammock, the talk began promptly.

“Any Don Peraltoes, this trip?”

“What? Peraltoes? You weren’t there?”

“Ain’t you Ned?”

“And you’re Lion. I’d never have known you. Any of ’em with you?”

“No, I quit the trade. Come and have something.”

Then they would mix some rum and sugar, and sprinkle the mixture with a squeeze of a scrap of lemon-peel. They would drink together, calling their curious toasts of “Salue,” “Here’s How,” “Happy Days,” and “Plenty Dollars.” Then, over the trade as the men haggled--

“Got any powder, Lion?”

“I can only sell powder if you’ve a license from the Governor.”

“Any small arms?”

“The same there.”

“Them’s a nice lot of macheats. How do they come?”

“An ounce apiece. Or fifty pound of leaf.”

“Steep. Let’s see one. A good trade knife.”

“What are you doing now?”

“I got about fifty acres burned off. That’s the grant here, Lion, fifty acres. Tobacco, you know. I do a bit of fishing, whiles. A nice handy sloop, I got. Small, of course.”

“Crops good?”

“A sight too good, if you ask me. This black soil’ll sprout a coffin. But tobacco’s away down. We burn half our crops, trying to keep up prices. It’s only worth about ninepence.”

“Are you going to stick at it?”

“It’s a bit quiet. I lie out in the woods whiles.”

“Anything else doing?”

“You were here yourself?”

“I come here with Crawfot’s party. I was here. Yes. Sure.”

“Crawfot’s dead, if you mean Tom. Did you ever try any running?”

“Running rum from Jamaica?”

“Yes. I do a bit that way. Other things, too. I’m in with some of Ned’s lot.”

“Ned Davis?”

“Yes. We run blacks sometimes, too. Run ’em into Carolina. New York sometimes.”

“Ah. How did Tom die?”

“Indians. I done a bit that way, too, Lion. You catch two or three squaws. They fetch as much as a white woman down to Campeachy. Two or three of them; it runs into money.”

“I’ve known that done,” said Cammock. “The man done it was Robert Jolly. He come to a jolly end, what’s more. The braves got him.”

“There’s always a risk of that,” said Ned. “And it’s 10,000 lbs. of leaf fine, if the Governor gets you.”

“Well, Ned. If you want fun, why don’t you come in with us. And bring in some of your mates.”

“Is this trade only a blind, then?”

“Not on your life. But we’re in for a big thing. A very big thing. I wouldn’t mention it. But you see, I know you, Ned; and so, you see, it’s like this.”

Between them, Margaret and Cammock persuaded some half a dozen recruits to join during the first few days in port. The new recruits promised to come aboard when the ship sailed, but not before, lest the Governor should grow suspicious. They agreed, also, seeing that Margaret had a commission, to submit to a sharper discipline than was usual among privateers. Margaret had no intention of admitting these men into his fo’c’s’le. They were not waged men like the seamen shipped in London; but volunteers agreeing to serve for shares. To admit them into the fo’c’s’le, where they would enjoy certain privileges not shared by the sailors, would cause bad blood, and bickering for precedence. To avoid this, he planned with Cammock to create a military company, to be called “the men of war.” The privateers who joined him were to be enlisted in this company, under the command (as he suggested) of an old buccaneer (one of the first to join) who kept an alehouse some miles out of Jamestown. This old man was named Raphael Gamage. He had served with Cammock many years before in Morgan’s raid on Porto Bello. As far as Cammock could remember, he was a trusty old man, well liked. The troop of men of war (when fully recruited) was to mess in the ’tween-decks; just forward of the officers’ cabins and the wardroom. At sea, they were to work the mizen-mast, standing three watches. In battle, half of them were to man the quarter-deck guns, while the other half walked the poop as sharp-shooters. But all of them, at all times, were to obey the officers of the ship like the other members of her crew. It was a pleasure to Perrin to help in the arrangement of the ’tween-decks for the reception of these men. He screwed in hammock-hooks and battens, and designed removable mess-tables which the carpenter, being one of the politest of men, thought equal to the Navy.

Trade throve beyond their dreams; for the _Broken Heart_ was the first ship in since the tobacco crop. Her general cargo of hemp and flax seed, tools, wines, ploughs, linens and woollens, boxes, cart-wheels, rope, weapons, books, and musical instruments, sold at good rates, for silver and leaf tobacco.