Part 5

“Oh; but it is so nice to do that. Besides, if we hadn’t decided, we should have gone to Venice, or somewhere not half so nice.”

“Well. How will you like being at _least_ six months from home? Have you reckoned on that?”

“Oh, but the only home one has is just one’s self. The only real home.”

“Now, Olivia. I love to have you with me. You know that of course. But you don’t realize how disagreeable the life may be.” A thought struck him. “Yes,” he muttered excitedly. “Nor how dangerous,” he added, “how frightfully dangerous.”

“One can always be one’s self,” she replied. “And I shan’t be afraid of danger, with Tom by me.”

“And the danger will threaten him, remember.”

“I shall take care of him.”

Something in her voice, in her manner, made Captain Margaret think that Olivia’s willingness to come with them was merely a willingness to please her husband. It seemed to him that her first sight of England from the sea had come upon her with a shock. He felt that she only kept from tears by an effort, now that the excitement of the race had passed. He saw her look at the men who hauled the braces; following her train of thought, that these were to be her companions for months to come. He felt instinctively that her mind began to dwell upon the possible disagreeable closeness of companionship, shut up in a small ship’s cabin, with three or four men. He wondered whether Stukeley had bullied her into the venture. He thought not. He had ever believed a rogue to be plausible, rather than masterful. He promised himself some little amusement in cross-examining Stukeley, to learn the history of that day’s work. He remembered then that he was their host. He called Stukeley. “Won’t you both come below,” he said, “to see what sort of house you’ve chosen?” He led them down the poop-ladder to the alley-way door. As he passed the door of Perrin’s cabin he heard a shaking voice uttering fierce curses. Perrin was stamping up and down, wholly given over to rage.

Up on deck, Captain Cammock walked the weather-poop, glad at heart that the wind was freshening. The _Broken Heart_ was lying over a little, with the wind on her starboard beam. She was under all sail, going through it at about five knots. “I shall drive you, my duck,” he said. “You shall groan to-night.” He longed for a whole gale, a roaring Western Ocean gale, that the passengers might learn their folly. He eyed the sails, stiff and trembling, with shaking shadows at their clues. The carpenter was screwing battens behind the gun-trocks; the boatswain and half the watch were forward, singing out on a rope. Captain Cammock watched them whenever he turned forward. When he walked aft, he turned, glanced at the compass, looked aloft at the maintopgallant sail, and noted the feathers on the wind-vane. He was reviewing the situation. “It was a good thing for us,” he thought, “that that duchess lady was aboard that frigate. Otherwise we’d a-been chased and took. Now how was it her boat gave chase? The duchess lady arrives from the south; after six days at sea, say. She sends in for letters and stores, and the boat waits at the pier. Now this Stukeley fellow came alongside us in a shore boat, from Salcombe. I saw the word Salcombe on her backboard. Now if I was that Stukeley duck---- How could it have been, I wonder. He couldn’t have come from the pier, because the man-of-war boat lay there. If he wanted to get away, what would he have done? He’d have left word for his gear to be brought down to the water; and then gone off for a walk or drive. Then he’d have sent a boat for his gear, and got her to pick him up and row him about, up towards Kingsbridge, say, as soon as ever he decided to come aboard of us. He knew he was wanted, that duck did. Yes. That was it. For sure. And them who was laying for him hears of that, and sends up a boat to look for him; but he gives her the slip. As soon as the ebb begins, he runs down. And away he comes full tilt for us. Now some one who was laying for him must have been on the jetty, waiting for him to land. Soon as ever he come past, they nip into the cutter in the name of the King and pull after him. A little too far after. One boat pulls to the frigate, and so we get three nine-pounder shots sent at us, before the duchess lady tells ’em to stop that horrid firing. I wonder what that Stukeley duck has done, now.”

He turned over this outline of the Stukeley escape, just as, years before, he had pieced out evidence, and scouts’ reports, when he was cruising on the Spanish Main. He had always wished to have a command on the Main; for he had more than courage to recommend him. He had a keen intuitive shrewdness and a power of deduction. “They never give me a chance on the Main,” he thought. “But I was right about them roasting spuds.” He sighed. That error of his captain had lost them a pound of gold apiece. “Now,” he thought, “if them two birds is coming the cruise we shan’t have a very happy ship.”

Bell after bell passed by; the day wore; the sun set. As he had foretold, the wind drew more to the west; freshening as it shifted. The _Broken Heart_ was beginning to feel the strain. She was lying down a little, and whitening a path in the sea. She was full of odd noises. The breechings on her guns were new, they cracked and creaked at each roll; her decks groaned as the trocks ground. At two bells, when the hands came aft to muster, in the summer twilight, having catted the anchor, she was seven miles from land, driving on in the dusk, making the seas gleam. Her poop-light, like a burning rose abaft all, reddened her wake with bloody splashes. She stooped to it and staggered. Over her bows came the sprays, making the look-outs cower down in their tarred coats. The water whitened aft in a washing rush, gleaming and creaming. By the break of the poop the watch lay. A score of men huddled together in the shade, marshalled by the boatswain in his old blue cloak, scurfed with salt at the seams. Voices murmured among them; one lit a pipe, one hummed. The wind in the shrouds hummed; already the blocks were clacking. Now and then, as they rushed on, in the gathering darkness, the boy above struck the bell; and from forward came the answering bell, with the call of the look-outs, “Weather cathead,” “Lee cathead,” showing that they were alert. The steward came from the alleyway, snuffing up the strong salt air; he climbed the lee ladder to the poop. Battling up to windward against the gale, he halted and uncovered before the captain.

“Well, steward,” said Cammock.

“Captain Margaret sends his compliments to you, seh,” said the old negro, with the soft “boneless” speech of his kind, “and will you step below, seh, to speak with him in the cabin.”

“Tell him I’ll be down in a minute,” said Cammock. He glanced at the compass-card again, and spoke a word with old Mr. Cottrill, the mate, whose watch it was, according to old sea custom. “Call me if it freshens,” he said; “but don’t take any sail off.”

Mr. Cottrill murmured that he understood, and bent under his coat to get a light for his pipe. His thought was, “I’ve shipped with pirates. With pirates.” The memory of that afternoon gave him bitter thoughts till midnight, as the ship rushed on, under the stars, carrying her freight of passion, her freight of souls.

Down below in the cabin the lamp had been lighted. The curtains had been drawn across the windows, and now swayed a little with the roll, making a faint click of rings. They were dark green curtains; but on each of them was worked a blood-red tulip, which glowed out finely in the lamplight. The windows were open behind the curtains. At times, when the ship pitched, the cloth sucked in or out, sending the lamp-flame dancing. At the table were the two Stukeleys and Captain Margaret. Perrin sat upon the locker by the window, biting his poor raw thumbs. When Captain Cammock entered, he noticed that Olivia had been drinking a bowl of soup, and that Stukeley was staring hard in front of him, clutching his glass of spirits.

“You’re turning sick,” said Cammock to himself. “Wait till we haul our wind, my duck. Oh, mommer.” A single hard glance at Olivia convinced him that she felt wretched. “More than you bargained for, ain’t it?” he thought cheerfully. “You wait till we haul our wind.”

He had the common man’s hatred of strangeness and of strangers. He loved not to have more folk aboard to interrupt his chats with his owners, and to sit in the sacred cabin, ordering his steward.

“Captain Cammock,” said Margaret, “let me introduce you to Mrs. Stukeley. Mr. Stukeley.”

The captain bowed.

“Captain Cammock is our commander, Olivia.”

Olivia smiled at the captain, much as a Christian martyr may have smiled.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” said the captain, bowing.

He felt a queer gush of pity for her, remembering how he had felt, years before, on his first night at sea.

“I hope you won’t make my little ship giddy, ma’am,” he said kindly. “You must wear veils. All ladies has to, when they come on deck. You know, ma’am----” He sat down at the foot of the table. “I seen a ship quite lose her head one time. And the girl who done it wasn’t to be compared, not to you.”

“You see, Olivia,” said Margaret, “a sailor loses no time.”

“You must come on deck and see the moon by and by, ma’am,” said Cammock kindly. “And bring your husband. It’s nice and fresh up on the deck. It’ll do you good before turning in, I dare say,” he went on. “I dare say you’ve never seen the sea at night. Not all round you. No? Well, you come up.”

Olivia thanked him for his invitation.

“I’ve lived by the sea all my life,” she said; “but I was never on it in a ship before, except when I went to France.”

The words were very hard to speak; for as she spoke, with a rush, with a flash, burningly, as tears come, came the memory of her sheltered life at home, with her old servants, and her garden full of flowers, over which now, at this moment, the moon was rising, lighting the moths to their honey. She was homesick; she longed for that old life. Life had gone very smoothly there; and now she was at sea in a ship, among rough men, amid noise and bawling and the roaring of wind. She kept a brave face upon it, but her heart was wretched; she wondered why her husband did not understand. She longed for the peace of her quiet room at home, full of the scent of flowers, and of that vague scent, pleasant, and yet morbid, which hangs about all houses where there has been a fine tradition of life. Old things, old beautiful things, seem to give out this scent, the scent of the dead sweet pea-blossom. Wherever that vague perfume lingers, something of the old world lives, something beautiful, stately, full of sweet care. Olivia was made for that life of lovely order. Her life had been passed in the gathering of flowers, in the playing of music, in dances, in the reading of poems. All sweet and lovely and gracious things had wrought her; but they had not fitted her for this. Something was wrong with the justice of the world; for surely such as she should have been spared. She was not for the world; not at least for the world of men. She was the idea of woman; she should have been spared the lot of women. Her beautiful grace, her beautiful refinement, surely they were beautiful enough for her to be spared. Now this violence had happened; this brutal rearrangement of her life, needing further violence to remedy. At the time she understood nothing of what had happened. She was stunned and surprised, as a flower dug up and transplanted must be surprised and stunned. She drooped and pined; this alien soil made her shrink. As she sat there, ignorant of the world, highly ignorant, even, of the nature of sea-sickness, she wondered why her husband made no effort to cheer her, to comfort her, to be about her, like a strong wall, shutting out the world. In her home by the sea, by lamplight, over her music, she had often dreamed of the lover who would fill her life. She had thought of him as of one who would live her life by imaginative sympathy, thinking her thoughts, feeling with her own fineness of tact, following each shy, unspoken thought in the passing of shadow or smile, in the change of the voice, in the gesture, or even without such help, by an extreme unselfish sensitiveness. She found comfort in the thought that her husband must be debating the wisdom of this cruise, which, only a few hours ago, had seemed so wise, so noble, so right in every way.

Captain Margaret broke the silence which had followed her last words.

“Captain Cammock,” he said, “we’re making a new arrangement in the cabins. Mr. and Mrs. Stukeley will have my double cabin to starboard here. I shall have the spare bunk in Mr. Perrin’s cabin. I shall want you to beat up to Falmouth, captain.”

“You’ll run some risk of gaol, Charles,” said the petulant friend on the locker-tops. “You’ll probably be wanted by this time to-morrow all over the west of England.”

“You were always a pessimist,” said Margaret.

“Is the lady to go ashore, then?” said Cammock, looking towards Olivia.

“I hope not,” said Margaret. “But if she stays she must have a maid. We shall put her--let me see.”

“Where will you put her?” asked Perrin. “There’s no room. You surely won’t put her in the ’tween-decks?”

“No,” replied his friend. “We must make up a room in the sail-room. Captain Cammock must shift his sails into the ’tween-decks.”

“She’ll have the biggest room in the ship,” said Cammock. “She’ll be able to give a ball to the hands.”

“Charles,” said Olivia, “I don’t think I can possibly come with you. I’m giving you too much trouble.”

She was hurt, now, that it was Charles, not her husband, who had thought of her comfort, and shown that he considered her position.

“Nonsense,” said Margaret. “You’re being very nice. You just make all the difference. Now, you’re both tired out. Your cabin’s quite ready for you. Suppose we all go on deck to take the air for a while before we say good-night.”

As they filed on deck, Cammock drew Stukeley aside.

“See here,” he said. “You’re giving way to it. You’ll be as sick as a dog if you give way to it. What you want to do is to get some nice fat pork, or a bit of greasy bacon, now. Or lard. The steward ’d lend you a ball of lard. Or get one of the hands to puff tobacker at yer. Or take a suck at a little melted butter, or some of that salad oil as they call it. It’ll fetch you up all standing.”

He turned to his owner as Olivia left the poop.

“And you wish me to beat for Falmouth, sir?”

“If you please,” answered Captain Margaret.

“Very good, sir. I’ll go about at once. I can tack with the watch. Mr. Cottrill,” he shouted, “Ready oh.”

His advice to Stukeley had the usual results. Olivia’s first night at sea was passed in the marriage-bed of the state-room by the side of a sea-sick boor, who groaned and damned and was violently sick all through the night. He complained of cold before the dawn broke, so she gave him her share of blankets, tenderly tucking him in. Up on deck the men passed quietly to relieve the wheel. The main race-block grunted and rattled; the mizen topsail sheets flogged on the woolding of the mast, making a noise like drums. Up and down, above her head, in a soft, never-ending shuffle, went the ship’s boy, keeping the lee poop. At each bell she heard the hails of the lookouts: “Weather cathead,” “Lee cathead,” “Gangway,” “Lee poop,” coming in the gusts of the storm. Often, too, she heard a noise which she had never heard before, a terrifying noise, the noise of water breaking aboard, the lash of spray against her scuttle. The wind freshened through the night, till it blew a fresh gale. The _Broken Heart_ took on strange antics, which seemed very dreadful to Olivia. Far aft, as she was, the pitching was violent and broken. Each little sea seemed deep as the valley of the shadow. The roaring in the shrouds increased. At 4 a.m., all hands reefed topsails. Creeping out of bed to the great cabin, she managed to peep to leeward through the skylight, in a heavy lee-roll, which made her clutch the table. She saw a wild sky, notched by the sea; great billows foaming, spray flying down wind, angry gleams in blown cloud. From just above her head came the bull-roar of Captain Cammock, who was damning the mizen-top men. “Lay in to the top, you,” he was shouting. “Lay down a few of you and clue it up.” Then from just above her head came the thunder of the slatting sail as the topsail yard came down. “Away. Away. Lee-ay,” came the startling shouts of the men on the clue-lines. The sail thundered and jangled. The men roared at the ropes. Captain Cammock, with his head tilted back, yelled to them to lay out, and hand the leech in. One phrase struck upon her sharply. He bade them make it fast, letting the bunt go to a place she had never heard of. “Pass your gaskets. Pass them yard-arm gaskets. Get on the yard, you. Stamp that damned bunt down.” The excited angry tone, the noise, the wild sky, all helped her fears. She crept back to Stukeley’s side sure that the end was coming, that the gale was increasing to a hurricane, and that, in a little while, they would all sink together in some wild whirlpool screamed over by the seagulls.

On the third day of storm, they managed to beat into Falmouth, where they anchored off Trefusis Point. It was a wild, wet morning when they anchored. The wooded combe of Trefusis was hidden in cloud, which continually whirled off in streamers, as new cloud drove along, to catch in the tree tops. The _Broken Heart_ was the only ship in the anchorage; though over against Flushing there were a few fishing-boats, rocking in the tideway. Captain Margaret went into Falmouth, with Perrin and Olivia, to engage a maid. Stukeley was too weak from his sickness to leave the ship. To Margaret it was a sign that his crime was exceedingly foul.

“You have been badly scared, my friend,” he said to himself, as he sat down beside Olivia in the boat. “If you persist in leaving England, after being sick like that.”

Olivia had found comfort in what she took to be her husband’s nobleness. She was proud that her husband had not abandoned his ideas because of his bodily distress. By this time, too, she had seen the potency of sea-sickness. She had seen its effect upon a strong man. She had got over her first homesick terror of the sea. The storm had exhilarated her. Up on deck, hanging to the mizen rigging, behind the weather-cloth, she had felt the rapture of the sea. She had gone below with her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining, cheered and delighted. She had been touched, too, by the kindness of the three men of the afterguard. Cammock had given up his cabin to the sick man, so that she might have the great cabin to herself, in peace and quiet. She had been very busy in getting her cabin into order, even in the tumble of the storm. Now that she had made the state-room a home she had less terror of the sea.

It was not an easy matter to engage a maid for such a voyage. They tried at many mean houses, using tempting promises; but without success. At last they called at the poor-house, where they had their choice of several. An idiot girl, aged twenty, four old women who remembered King James, and the widow Inigo, a black but comely woman, in the prime of life, who had gone under after a succession of disasters beginning with the death of her husband. They struck a hard bargain with the widow Inigo, and then bore her down the hill to buy her an outfit for the voyage. At the mercer’s shop, where Olivia and the widow made their purchases, Captain Margaret, following his invariable custom, began a conversation with one of the shopmen, a youth just out of his apprenticeship.

“How long do you have to stay here every day?”

“About twelve hours, sir. From six till six.”

“That’s a very long day’s work, isn’t it? Do you have those hours all the year round, or only in the summer?”

“All the year round, sir.”

“And what holidays do you have?”

“Holidays, sir? Easter, and Christmas, and Whitsuntide. Of course I’ve my Sundays.”

“And how do you pass your spare time?”

“I go out with fellows, sir.”

“And what do you do?”

“Sometimes we dub at something.”

“And what is dub?”

“We put up a bottle somewhere, and then we dub at it.”

“Is that all you do?”

“On Thursdays our club meets. Then we have singing.”

“And do you read at all?”

“No, sir, I can’t say as I ever do, sir. I don’t want much reading after the shutters are up.”

“I should have thought that you’d have been a great reader. Don’t you find your work very interesting?”

“Oh. It’s all right, sir. Like any other work.”

“Yes. But. Take these woollen things, for instance. Don’t you think of all the hands it has passed through? Don’t you think of the sheep up on the hills, and the shepherds piping to them, and the great lonely downs, eh, with nothing but sheep-bells and the wind?”

“No, sir. Not in that light exactly.”

“And then, don’t you think of the brooks where they wash and shear? And then the great combs and looms, with so many people combing and weaving and spinning, all helping to make this?” He picked up the warm woollen shirt, and handled it. “And don’t you think of the people who will wear these things?”

“No, sir. You see, I’m only a shopman. Mr. Treloar, the owner, he thinks of all these things.”

“And will not you be a shop-owner, sometime, if you save and work hard?”

“No, sir. Oh no, sir. I’m only a shopman.”

“Yes; but could you not become a shop-owner? Would you not like to be one?”

“No, sir. I can’t say as I should, sir.”

“What would you like to be?”

“Of all things, sir?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know, sir. That’s rather a big order, sir.”

“Think.”

“I think, sir, I’d like to be. Don’t let Mr. Burls hear, sir. He’s listening. I’d like to be one of these buccaneers, sir. Fellows what goes about fighting the Spaniards. They live an open-air life. Not like here, sir. Oh, I’d like to lie by a camp-fire, sir, with a lot of big bronzed men. And to have a gun, sir. And then to attack a city full of treasure.”

“But I should think that was very dangerous. Isn’t it?”

“No, sir. Not by all accounts, sir. A poor lot, sir, the Spaniards. They’re not like us, you know, sir. Our fellows are a bull-dog lot, sir. The bull-dog breed, sir.”

“Really!”

“Oh yes, sir. Why, sir, only a day or two ago there come the news-letter from Plymouth. I dare say you saw it, sir. And there was a Virginia ship at Salcombe, it says. Did you see that bit, sir? And a forger was escaping from the constables, and he got on board this ship and bribes the captain, and he carries the man off safe, with the men-of-war all firing broadsides on him. Oh, it must be fine to hear the cannon-balls coming whizz.”

“Indeed! A forger, you say?”

“A forger, sir; but he’d done other things as well, sir, of course. And he’d a lady with him, too, sir.”

“But you wouldn’t like to be that sort of man?”

“No, sir.”

“What would you do to the forger, if you caught him?”

“I should give him up to the constables, sir.”

“And the ship-captain?”

“I don’t know, sir. I haven’t thought about it much, sir.”

“You would support the laws, I hope?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“Even if he were a buccaneer.”

“Oh, now you’re too hard on me, sir.”

“But he was defying the law. And saving a ruffian from it.”

“Yes, sir. Of course I suppose I should support the laws, as you say.”

“It would be rather nice to be a buccaneer, and to obey only those laws which one is strong enough to make for oneself.”

“Yes, sir?”

“To defend the weak and to make money by it. Isn’t that our maxim?”

The shopman giggled nervously. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m a buccaneer,” said Margaret. “Come with me. Won’t you? You shall be what you really long to be.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t leave the shop, sir. Mr. Treloar would never----”

“Well, think it over,” said Margaret, rising. “I hope you’ll send all these things down to the landing-stage within an hour. And send this woman’s box down with them.”