Part 7

“God! I thought I was dead,” says he, rolling over, as we freed him. “Have you any drink? I’ve touched nothing for two days.”

We had neither food nor drink with us; and if we were hungry, what was the supercargo? Morgan explained the posture of affairs, but I doubt if Pomfrett understood what she said. He hugged himself with his arms, and seemed to sleep. Never was so unheroic a rescue. Since, in all likelihood, Murch would delay sending to find us until the dawn, we composed ourselves to watch for the light. There we sat, in that discomfortable wilderness, while Pomfrett groaned and muttered in his sleep, and the leaden minutes laboured by with incredible sluggishness, until our faces showed dimly visible, each to the other, strange as ghosts, as a flaky greyness began to mingle with the dark. Then we took Pomfrett by the shoulders, dragged him protesting to his feet, and made him stand between us.

“Now,” says Morgan, “can you walk? So! Then we’ll strike for Porto-Bello. I can pass for a Spaniard anywhere.”

Pomfrett, coming to his senses, flatly refused to budge. “What are you doing here?” says he. “You must go directly back to Murch. As for us, we can shift for ourselves. Murch is quit of us--that’s all he wants. He told me so when he tied me up, and I was too tired to prevent him. Come, we’ll take you back to the beach.”

Thus was the first blow struck in the duel between these two. Pomfrett might have remembered that Morgan had risked her life to find him; but starving men cannot pick their words.

“Oh, is that the way of it?” said Morgan. “Is that how you talk to me?”

“Look you,” returned Brandon, laboriously, stopping at every other word to find the next, “I’ve lost my ship and I’ve lost the silver--Dawkins has it--he came with fifty men and beat us off. Well, then, we’ve lost all, we’re marooned--cannot you see? We’re like to die. You go back to your ship, and you’re safe.”

“All very noble and generous, Brandon Pomfrett. But let me tell you, my friend, that you waste time. If Murch catches you, I’ll not answer for what he’ll do this time. I can’t keep my petticoat over you for ever. Murch has done with you, has he? Well, now, I’ve done with Murch, do you see?”

“Do you mean,” said Brandon, stupidly, “that you’re coming with us?”

Sure, here was a laggard in love, if ever there was one. Morgan drew a little apart and looked at him. There was an uncomfortable silence. Here were we, lost, starving, in imminent danger of capture, and we must needs stand and dally with fine feelings.

“You would be rid of me, Mr Pomfrett,” says Morgan, presently, with a formidable quietude. “Is that what you would say? Out with it!”

Brandon clutched his chin. “I would not be unkind. I am thinking of you----” he began.

“That’s enough,” said Morgan. She plunged into the thicket, and was gone. In the deep stillness, we heard her crashing through the underwood. So we stood for a long time, till the sounds died away. I don’t know what were Brandon’s feelings; for myself, I own I felt a certain relief. What we chiefly wanted was breakfast. As the light broadened in the sky, we went a little forward, and presently found a patch of sunlight in a glade, where Brandon sat down, while I went to shoot something eatable with a pistol. Since the danger of pursuit was gone with Morgan’s departure, one might, I supposed, shoot as one pleased. I wasted a deal of ammunition on that breakfast. A pistol in unskilful hands is a miserable weapon for the uses of the chase, but I brought down a fat bird like a pheasant, a sitting shot, at last, and we devoured it raw, and found it excellent good. Brandon drank the warm blood like any heathen savage, and was wonderfully cheered. I told him, then, where we were--not in Yucatan at all, but on the coast of Darien; and I related Mistress Morgan’s story of her grandmother, the Incomparable Lady.

“Oh, now I understand,” said Pomfrett. “But Murch has lost his chance. We had found the plate, with the help of the old negro, when Dawkins came up with double our numbers. There was a bloody fight, and we lost nearly all our men. The rest escaped as best they could, and a fine march we had of it, with neither bite nor sup for two days and two nights. Well, if Dawkins has the plunder, it’s mine.”

“If it please you to think so,” I said.

“Where’s the ship, do you think?” asked Brandon, disregarding innuendo.

“At sea, where else?”

“And where’s the nearest port?”

“Porto-Bello, that Captain Morgan sacked, if he left any of it.”

“And where’s Porto-Bello?”

“Southward a day’s march.”

“Come along,” says Brandon, getting to his feet quite briskly.

“What do you think you’re going to do?”

“Ask me when we get to Porto-Bello,” says Pomfrett. “Up, you lazy swab!”

“Oh, very well,” I said. “Take the town of Porto-Bello, take Dawkins, take the _Blessed Endeavour_, and take Morgan Leroux’s marriage portion, we two, all by our two selves. Then take Murch and the _Wheel of Fortune_, and--what of Mistress Leroux? You’ll have her money, you may as well have herself. Take Morgan Leroux. Is that all?”

“The money’s aboard my ship,” says Brandon, with unmoved solemnity. “That’s enough for me. Come, now, march!”

And march we did, with intolerable labour, through that infernal wilderness, keeping the eternal booming of the surf on our left hand for a guide. Up and up we climbed in the fainting heat of the forest until we came out upon a spur of the mountains, and beheld the coast-line, jutting forth into many a rocky headland away to the northward, and beneath our feet the huddled brown roofs and white fortifications of Porto-Bello town, and its harbour thick with masts. Far as eye could reach the great glistening plane of the sea was bare of shipping. Where, then, was Mr Dawkins? and where Mr Murch? Down we went, two hapless wights, knowing no more than our boot-soles what should befall us.

It was dark by the time we gained the outskirts of the town, on the inland side. Dark walls blotted upon the stars; we could hear the sentries call and counter-call. Captain Morgan had battered Porto-Bello to pieces; but the indomitable Spaniard had built it up again, it seemed. Within was supper. We could see in our minds the spit turning, and hear the hissing of the fat; we beheld the ruby sparkle of the wine in the hospitable light of a tavern. The risk of capture was not great. We might pass as common sailors; only, how to persuade the sentry? Brandon would have been glad to kill him, I make no doubt; but Brandon was spent nearly to death; and as for Henry Winter, he had never slain a man, and had small stomach for the experiment.

We stood in the shadow of the trees by the road-side, bitterly considering the matter; but we could think of nothing to serve, save to wait until the country carts came in at sunrise, and pass in their train, if, indeed, it were the custom of this country for carts to come in. So we stayed, shivering in the heavy dew, until we were aware of footsteps drawing near along the road, and three men came walking softly. We followed them, keeping hidden, into the very shadow of the wall, where the sentry stood or paced before the gate. Voices spoke low in Spanish, there were a sudden stamping and a sound of hard breathing as of men struggling together, and three men came back along the road, closed about a fourth--the sentry, by the glimmer of his steel cap. Now more and yet more men appeared softly out of the dark, talking low together; and their words were English. Without more ado, we joined ourselves to them, unnoticed in the dark, and immediately recognized the men of the _Wheel of Fortune_. The redoubtable Murch was not there; we looked in vain for his head and shoulders looming above the rest. The whole body of some thirty men moved forward, and it was the sentry (I knew he had a pistol at his ear and a knife in the small of his back) who gave the countersign, and brought us under the deep arch of the gateway into Porto-Bello town. Not to excite suspicion, we broke up into groups of two or three, following each other at intervals of twenty paces or so; and in this manner we traversed the principal street, which was lighted by lamps here and there, turned to the right hand, and ascended dark and narrow ways until we gathered about a door in a high wall. Within, the garden was lighted as for a festival; the leaves of the trees above the wall glimmered gold; there was a noise of music and a gay sound of many voices.

“There’s victuals going inside,” says Brandon, hoarsely, in my ear. “In we go, whoever stays out.” And we edged through the crowd towards the door.

“You know your orders,” said one, and lo! it was the voice of Morgan Leroux. Brandon started back, but I took him firmly by the arm. I was hungry. “You two come with me,” went on Morgan.

“That we will,” said I, at her elbow. She turned as though she had been stung, and scanned us sharply.

“’Twas you I meant,” said she, with wonderful readiness. “Crowby and Harper, fall back.” And she knocked upon the door with the handle of her walking-cane.

The door was opened at once by a servant in livery, to whom Morgan spoke in Spanish. In the light of the garden we perceived that Mistress Morgan was dressed like a great gentleman, in lace and velvet and silk. Lamps of many colours gleamed and shone among the trees; within the house fiddles were going to a merry measure, and we could see the flitting figures of the dancers through the lighted windows. Many ladies and gentlemen moved in the garden, passing from shadow to shine with a gleam of finery and sparkle of jewels. There we stood, a crowd of lackeys and negroes staring upon this pair of scarecrows with matted hair, unshaven faces, tattered and miry clothes, while Morgan talked with the man who opened the door. Presently he went away, with an obeisance, and Morgan took us aside and spoke low.

“I have brought a letter for the Governor. I have told the servant you brought it to me through the forest; this will account for your state; he will bring you food. Eat and drink, and wait here by the door; if you hear me call, open the door and bring in the crew. But there is little danger. If you must speak, speak French--not a word of English, mind!”

Here, one with a silver wand came up, and Morgan went away with him--into the Governor’s presence, it was to be supposed. They brought us food and wine, and we ate and drank, sitting with our backs against the wall, hard by the door. We could hear the men on the other side talking low among themselves, while in front of us the festival went forward like a scene in a playhouse. But, before very long the music stopped, the assembly in the garden streamed within-doors, there was a great noise of talking, and presently the company began to depart in haste. They all passed close to us, as we sat by the door--fine ladies, hooded and cloaked, bearded Spanish gentlemen, some wearing swords, some without, some dressed in full uniform, some habited like merchants; the rout huddled past us in a hurry and out into the road, and before we had finished the jug of wine the garden was deserted, the house fallen silent, its lighted windows empty, and we were alone. Pomfrett was asleep by this time; and as for me, I thought I was asleep too, and dreaming. In my dream it seemed that Morgan Leroux came out of the house and called the crew within, and disposed them as sentries about the house; that two of them carried Pomfrett into the house and laid him upon a bed in a high, dark chamber smelling of cedar, while some draggled remains of one who was formerly known as Henry Winter, but who must on no account be confused with the real owner of that respectable name, staggered in to sink into a heap on the floor; that Morgan Leroux held a taper to the dazzled eyes of the said heap, which was then hove bodily upon a soft bed. Here the dream ended.

X

_DUX FEMINA FECIT_

A thundering of cannon, clanging of bells, and calling of trumpets fetched me broad awake. Pomfrett, slumbering on the great bed, never moved. I let him lie, and ran out to the verandah. There was Morgan Leroux, sound asleep in a chair. Sleep is a tell-tale; some quality of nature, hidden by day, looks stealthily forth from the unconscious face. Morgan’s beauty had in a measure departed from her. The features had relapsed into something of grossness: the nostril coarsened, the mouth relaxed, the skin flushed a dull red. The spiritual had evaporated; the animal was apparent. Yet it was no bad animal that lay supine, I thought, but an honest creature of courage and tenacity--and something more. But what that something was I could not decipher. Morgan Leroux opened her eyes, and her face changed into its living semblance, as her hands moved mechanically about the disarray of her man’s attire.

“Where’s Brandon--where’s Mr Pomfrett?” were Morgan’s first words. “Rouse him out--he must be gone before Murch comes, and you too, or there’ll be the devil to pay.” The noise of firing was so loud, I could hardly hear what she said. “I’m in charge of the Governor’s house, while he’s away directing the defence,” Morgan went on, with a pleasant smile. “Now, fetch Brandon, and I’ll get some victuals the while. Smart’s the word, Harry.”

She blew upon a whistle, and a sentry, from the other side of the house, answered the call, and began shouting to the crew, who were quartered somewhere out of sight. Brandon Pomfrett lay as I had left him. This face, at least, suffered little change in sleep; there was the same simple, stubborn honesty which ever marked the owners’ agent. Mark you now these two reflections of different souls; for the souls themselves were already in conflict one with another, and the weakest must lose the game.

A minute or two, and I had Brandon Pomfrett out on the verandah; but Mistress Morgan had found time enough to arrange her hair, and so forth, cares which were lost on Mr Pomfrett. The men brought relics of last night’s sumptuous banquet; and it was Mr Pomfrett’s glass that must be filled with wine, and his silver plate heaped with delicacies, by Morgan’s hands--hands that shook at the noise of artillery and tumult in the town below. As for Mr Winter, he was glad to shift for himself. So we crammed our victuals, standing and looking upon the empty garden, where the extinguished lamps were hanging in the trees and a few withered flowers lay upon the trodden sands of the walks.

“I don’t like this firing,” said Morgan. “But it’s a comfort to think there’ll be no one hurt--the dear Governor will care for that. You don’t understand? It’s just Mr Murch’s way, you see. We enter the town by the back door, all as you saw last night, while Mr Murch lies-to outside the harbour. We visit the Governor, introduced by the sentry--all as you saw.... His Excellency is giving a banquet. So much the better--we get the chief burgesses and soldier people, wives and all, in a bag. We secure the entrances, and there they are, prisoners of war, everyone in his best clothes. I have four pistols in my sash (only one is loaded, because I hate pistols, but how is his Excellency to know that?), and I present myself with my best bow and my whitest hand--a messenger of peace. I take his Excellency by his frill, and lead him apart from the giddy throng. ‘Sir,’ says I, ‘Admiral Jevon Murch is lying off the harbour bar, with the Black Flag at the main, and a dozen tall ships at his call----’”

“But has he?” asked Brandon, round-eyed.

“What a question!” Morgan returned. “Have you never heard of a _ruse de guerre_? You forget I was employed in saving all those poor people’s lives. Don’t interrupt--there’s no time. If Murch catches you here, my pretty gentlemen--well, I can’t help you, as I said before.” She glanced about, terror in her face. “To be brief, I told the Governor that Murch would burn the town unless it was ransomed before ten o’clock to-morrow--to-day, that is--for two hundred thousand pieces of eight. Moreover, he and his friends would be hanged on the trees of the garden at sunrise.”

As she talked, in a high voice of feverish rapidity, her eyes shone, laughter passed upon her face like light and was gone, and all the time she kept glancing about and stopping in her talk, as though to listen, amid the noise of the firing, for the tramp of the pirates’ nearing footsteps.

“You would never have done it,” said Brandon, stolidly.

“Not I,” said she, “but Murch would. I was play-acting. And the old gentleman submitted. Perhaps he remembered the visit of Sir Henry Morgan to Porto-Bello. He little knew whose granddaughter he was making submission to. But he stood on a condition that he should be allowed to set up a sham defence, to save his honour before the world. Bless the man, of course he should! He’s making it now--hark to the Governor’s cannon. And off he went to take the shot from all guns, with a guard of honour from the _Wheel of Fortune_ to attend him, in case of accidents. That’s all. Now, would you like a ship?”

She flashed the question at Pomfrett.

“A ship? what sort of a ship?” asked the slow-moving supercargo.

“A ship--don’t you hear me tell you--a ship with masts and sails. Oh, Mother of God, how dull----”

“A ship--yes, I suppose so. But what for?” Brandon lacked the time to appreciate the situation.

Morgan stamped her foot. “To carry you from here before Murch sees you. Hark!” She stared across the garden at the great wooden gate in the wall.

“There’s nothing,” said Brandon, unmoved. “And what ails us with Mr Murch, pray? It’s I that have a quarrel with him, I think. I want to ask your Mr Murch why he marooned me.”

“How long will you dilly-dally?” cried Morgan. “Come! There’s ships in the harbour for the taking. I’ll give you ten men. What’s it to be?”

“Why,” says Brandon, “the ship I want is the _Blessed Endeavour_.”

“Get another and chase her, then,” returned Morgan.

Brandon stood quietly considering the matter, undisturbed by the imminent jeopardy in which we stood. For Murch desired our removal, that was clear; probably because we knew too much of his secret affairs. For myself, I could see well enough that Morgan Leroux had much of a mind towards the amiable Pomfrett; it was scarce extravagant to suppose that Murch perceived as much, having more incentive to observation; and I wondered if the old buccaneer objected to his ward’s fancy. I had no time to pursue the speculation, for there, sure enough, was the tramping of feet coming up the lane without. Then came an imperious hammering on the garden gate, and Murch’s voice bellowing for admission.

“There! I knew it!” cried Morgan, turning white as a napkin. “Go! Get you out by the back, go down to the harbour, and I’ll send the men. Go!”

She laid hands on Brandon in her haste and fear, urging him into the house. “What’s all this?” said he, holding back. “Why should I go? I’m not afraid of Murch.”

Morgan pulled at his sleeve, the tears running down her face.

“Why, very well,” said Brandon, hastily, “let be, I’ll go. Good-bye.”

He looked at her as he spoke, but I think he never read the glance she gave him. The next moment we were retreating through the house. One of the _Wheel of Fortune’s_ crew stood sentry on a little door opening from the back of the garden; seeing who we were, he let us pass, and we went down towards the sea. The inhabitants, black, white, and brown, were tumbling out of their houses, for fear of the pirates. They passed us, singly and in groups, laden with cooking-pots and bundles, all going to camp in the woods, the children running and crying at their heels. All through the town it was the same; and all the while the bells were hammering in the steeples and the big guns were booming in the castle, and never a sign of a pirate to be seen until we came to the quays; and there was the _Wheel of Fortune_ wreathed in smoke, the great black flag flying at the main. She was firing at the moored ships about her, a dozen or more merchant bottoms, and three or four were firing in return, while puffs of smoke kept breaking from the walls of the stone forts at the harbour mouth. A sea-fight is a confused business--masts and sails appearing and disappearing in thickening volumes of smoke, tongued with red flashes, to an intermittent roar of cannon and crash of splintering wood--and the spectator can make but little of it. But, it would appear that Mr Murch, in his bargain with the Governor, had omitted to include the shipping in the harbour. Here was no mock engagement. We could hear the shot strike and see the splinters fly, and here and there a top-mast shut down sideways.

A convenient pile of timber made a shelter against the balls which came ashore now and again, and there we had a little leisure to consider the posture of affairs.

“I don’t understand this girl--this Morgan Leroux,” said Pomfrett.

“Why should you?”

“The girl worries me. Why should she want to come with us--when was it? only yesterday, so it was--and then here she is at Porto-Bello; and now she’ll get us a ship, by her way of it. But I don’t believe she can.”

“_Dux femina fecit_,” I said.

“Yes, but I don’t like it. Besides, the girl’s a pirate, and the daughter of a pirate. Why is it we can never be rid of pirates, whatever we do? All I want is to sail a straight course in the owners’ interests, and it can’t be done for this mess of pirates,” complained the agent. “All we do is to purvey ships for them.”

“Well, here’s a pirate--a female pirate--offering to purvey a ship for you in return.”

“And if she is,” says Brandon, with energy, “I’ll take it. I’ve got to get the property back somehow. I tell you what, Harry, I’ve been thinking that there’s cases where ordinary rules of morals don’t apply.”

“Do you say so? Continue, good supercargo.”

“Well, that’s all,” said Pomfrett, after a little consideration. “But don’t you agree with me?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “But the question is, what are we to do next?”

“Let us look the situation fairly in the face,” said Pomfrett. “I wish there was less noise, but it can’t be helped. First, there’s Dawkins, sailing away with our ship, the _Blessed Endeavour_.”

“And Mr Murch’s silver. Or, rather, Mistress Morgan Leroux’s silver.”

“There again,” said the agent, wrinkling his brow. “How do I know whose silver it is? It may be the very silver I set out to get. You can’t believe these pirate people. Anyway, it’s aboard my ship.”

“Call it yours, then. What next?”

“Next, there’s Murch in his ship, the _Wheel of Fortune_, which he owes to me, engaged in taking Porto-Bello. And next, there’s our ship which we haven’t got, but which Morgan Leroux says she will get for us.”

“And next, there’s ourselves, the Two Gentlemen of Porto-Bello, or the Virtuous Pirates,” I remarked.

“We’re not pirates yet,” said Pomfrett, cocking an eye over the baulks of timber, and diving down again at the report of a gun.

“How about getting Murch a ship under false pretences?”

“That was necessary in the owners’ interests. Besides, we never knew he was going to play this game.” Brandon regarded me with great solemnity. “I see nothing to laugh at,” he added. “I tell you, I’ll stick at nothing to get my ship back. I’m not afraid of words. Call me a pirate, if it amuses you.”

“There’s nothing amusing about Execution Dock,” I said, “and that’s the course you’re shaping, as sure as you’re alive, my buccaneer.”

“I can’t help it,” said the valiant agent. “But there’s no reason why you should run the risk because I do. You’ve no responsibility, and I hold you free to go where you like,” he added, magnanimously.