Nevertheless, the best part of the business was the presence of Marjorie. She was a true child of the sea. She loved it as if she had been such a mermaiden as old poets fable. She had sailed with her uncle ever since she was a little girl. She was as good a sailor as her brother, and took foul weather as gallantly as fair. For it was not all smooth sailing, for all our luck. There were squalls and there were storms; but the Royal Christopher rode the billows bravely, and Marjorie faced the storm as fearlessly as the oldest hand on board.

There was one wild night, when we rose and fell in a fury of wind. She must needs be on deck, so I fastened her to one of the masts with a rope and held on next to her while we watched the war of the elements. The rain was strong, and it soaked all the clothes on her body to a pulp; and her long hair floated on the wind, and sometimes flapped across my face and made my blood tingle. She stuck to her post like a man--or, let me say in her honour, like a woman--watching the strife, and every now and then she would put her lips close to my ear--for the screaming of the wind whistled away all words that were not so spoken--and would bid me note some wonder of sky or water. For by this time we were great friends, Marjorie and I, and she always treated me as if I were some kinsman of her house instead of what I was, a poor adventurer in the dawn of his first adventure. She liked me I knew from the start because Lancelot liked me, and because she trusted in Lancelot with the same implicit faith that he addressed to her. And where she liked she liked wholly, as a generous man might, giving her friendship freely in the firm clasp of her hand, in the keen, even greeting of her eyes. It was a strange grace for me to share in that wonderful fellowship of brother and sister, and I joyed in my fortune and shut my mind against any thought of the sorrow that might come to me from such sweet intercourse.

For I knew from the first as I have said that I loved her, and I knew, too, that it would be about as reasonable to fall in love with a star or a dream. Those gentry who write verses, find, as I believe, a kind of bitter satisfaction in recording their pains in rhyme, but for me there was no such solace. Yet on that driving night, in that high wind, I would have rejoiced to be apprenticed to the poets' guild and skilled to make some use that might please her of the dumb thoughts that troubled me. As it was it was she who seemed to speak with the speech of angels and I who listened mumchance.

She had the rarest gifts and graces for gladdening our voyage. She could sing, and she could play a guitarra that she had brought from Spain; and often of fair evenings, when we sat out on the deck, she would sing to us ballads in Spanish and French, and then for me, who was unlettered, she would sing old English ditties, such as 'Barbara Allen' and 'When first I saw your face,' and many canzonets from out of Mr. William Shakespeare's plays, which she always held in high esteem, and I would sit and listen in a rapture.

Once, a long while after, when that Spanish tongue had become as familiar to me as it was then unfamiliar, I remember falling into a brawl with a stout fellow in Spain, and getting, as luck would have it, the better of the business, and being within half a mind of ramming my knife into his throat; for my blood was up, and the fellow had meant to kill me if he had had the chance. But even as I made to strike, he, looking up at me, and as cool as if I were doing him a favour, began to sing very softly to himself just one of those very Spanish songs that Marjorie used to sing of summer evenings on the deck of the Royal Christopher. And as he sang so, waiting death, in that instant all my rage vanished, and I put aside my weapon and held out my hand to him, and asked his forgiveness and asked his friendship. The man looked amazed, as well he might; and it was lucky for me that he did not seize the chance to stab me unawares. But he did not, and we shook hands and parted, and he went his ways never witting that he owed his life to the fairest woman in the whole wide world--at least, that I have ever seen, and I have seen many and many in my time.

There were two on that ship with whom I did not wish to have any dealings, namely, Barbara and the red-bearded man, Hatchett by name, who was now her husband. However, I saw but little of them, for they kept to their own part of the ship.

Barbara knew me again, of course, and we saluted each other when we met, as it was of course inevitable that we should meet on board ship. But we did not meet often, and I was glad to find that I felt no pang when the rare meetings did take place. That folly had wholly gone. There--I have written those words, but I have no sooner written than I repent them. It is not a folly for a boy to be honestly in love, as I was in love with Barbara. I was silly, if you please--a moon-struck, calf-loving idiot, if you like--but in all that hot noon of my madness there never was an unclean thought in my mind nor an unclean prompting of the body.

However, all that was past and done with. My liver was washed clean of that pa.s.sion; it had not left a spot upon my heart. I have only loved two women in all my life, and when the second love came into my life that first fancy was dead and buried, and no other fancy has ever for a moment arisen to trouble my happiness.

CHAPTER XV

UTOPIA HO!

I have purposely left out of these pages the record of the voyage. One such voyage is much like another, and though it was all new to me it would not be new to others. I might like to dwell again upon the first land we made, the Island of St. Jago, where we had civil entertainment of a Portuguese gentleman and of a negro Romish priest, with a merry heart and merry heels. My mother would have loved to go marketing in that place, for I bought no less than one hundred sweet oranges for half a paper of pins, and five fat hens for the other half of the paper. I could talk of our becalms and our storms and our crossing the Line, and of our trouble with the travado-wind. But as I do not wish to weary with the repet.i.tion of an oft-told tale, I will say no more of our voyage until we came to the Cape which is so happily named of Good Hope. It was a very wonderful voyage for me; it would not seem a very wonderful voyage to others, who have either made it themselves or who know out of book knowledge all and more than all that I could tell them. But I may say that I was a very different lad when we came to the Cape from the lad who had got on board of the Royal Christopher so many months earlier. I was but a pale-faced boy when I sailed, only a landsman, and no great figure as a landsman. But when we came to the Cape I was so coloured by the winds and the suns and the open life that my face and hands were well-nigh of the tint of burnished copper. I had always been a fairly strong lad; but now my strength was multiplied many times, and, thanks to my dear master, my skill to use that strength was marvellously advanced. Which proved to be of infinite service to me and others better than myself by-and-by.

We stayed some little time at Cape Town; how long now I do not closely remember, but, as I think, a matter of four weeks or more. For the Captain had some old friends amongst the Dutch colony, and there were certain matters of revictualling the ship to be thought of, and Lancelot longed for a little shooting and hunting. For my part, I was by no means loth to tread the soil again, for, though I love the sea dearly, I have no hatred for firm earth as other seamen have, but look upon myself as a kind of amphibious animal, and like the land and the water impartially.

And there was a great joy and wonder to me to see a new country and a new town--I, who knew of no other town than Sendennis, and knew no more of London than of Grand Cairo, or of the capital of the Mogul. I remember that we stayed some days under the roof of a leading Dutch merchant of the place, who entertained us very handsomely, and that his brother, who was a somewhat younger man than he, and who spoke our English tongue well, took Lancelot and me many times a-shooting and a-fishing, and that we had some rare and savage sport. For the town is but a small one, and there is excellent sport to be had well-nigh at its back doors, as it were. I should have loved dearly to have wandered inward far inland towards the great mountains, for I heard wonderful tales, both from the Dutchmen and their black men, of treasures that the bowels of these mountains were said to hold. Of course that was out of the question, with the Royal Christopher waiting for her fate; but the tales fired me with memories of those Eastern tales that I have told you of, and I longed to out-rival Master Sindbad.

I cannot conscientiously affirm that I was sorry to leave Cape Town, and the wines that the Dutch settlers made, and the amazing Hottentots, and the other marvels of that my first experience of strange distant countries. We were all the better for our rest, Marjorie and Captain Amber, Lancelot, the colonists, the crew, and, in a word, all our fellowship. But we were all eager to be on the way again, for very different reasons. Captain Amber, because he was keen to place his foot upon his Land of Promise; Lancelot, because he wished what his uncle wished; Marjorie, because she wished to be with Lancelot; I myself, much out of eager, restless curiosity for new places and new adventures. For I was so simple in those days that the mere crossing of the seas seemed to me to be an adventure, a thing that I came later to regard as no more adventurous than the hiring of a hackney-coach. But in my heart I knew that the main reason for my bliss in boarding the Royal Christopher lay in the closer intimacy it gave me with maid Marjorie. In the little kingdom of the ship, where all in a sense were friends and adventurers together, there was less than on land to remind me that for me to dream myself her lover went far to prove me lunatic. So I was blithe to be afloat again. As for Cornelys Jensen, we were to learn soon enough in what direction lay his pleasure to be ploughing the high seas again.

CHAPTER XVI

I MAKE A DISCOVERY

I have been brief with our adventure so far, because it only began to be adventurous after we had left the Cape leagues behind us. Up to that time, though the voyage was full of wonders for me, it was but one voyage with another for those who use the sea. But when the adventure did begin it began briskly, and having once made a beginning it did not make an end for long enough, nor without great changes of fortune. Yet it began, as a big business often does begin, in a very little matter.

One night, somewhat late, Captain Amber wished for a word with Jensen.

Yet, as it was not the Dutchman's watch, and he might be sleeping, Captain Amber bade me go to his cabin--for Jensen, being a man of consideration upon the ship, had a cabin to himself--to see if he were stirring, commanding me, however, if he were resting, not to arouse him.

Jensen's cabin lay amidships, and as I proceeded warily because of the Captain's caution, I came to it quietly and listened at the door before lifting my finger to knock. As I did so I noticed that the door was not fastened. Whoever had drawn it to had not latched it, and it lay open just a c.h.i.n.k, through which a line of light showed from within. Thinking that if I peeped through this c.h.i.n.k I might learn if Jensen were astir or no, I put my eye to it and saw what I saw.

The cabin was not a very large one, and though the lamp that swung from the ceiling gave forth but a dim light, yet it was enough to enable me to see very clearly all that there was to see. At the first blush, indeed, there seemed to be nothing out of the way to witness. At the further end of the cabin two men were sitting at a table together, with a chart before them. Nearer to me, and in front of the men, a woman stood, and held up for their inspection a piece of needlework. The two men were Cornelys Jensen and William Hatchett; the woman was Barbara Hatchett. It might have made a very pleasing example of domestic peace but for one queer fact, which notably altered its character.

The needlework at which women are wont to labour is nine times out of ten white work or brightly-coloured work. Women are like the best kind of birds, and love snowy plumage or feathers that are bravely tinted. But the work with which Barbara Hatchett was occupied was neither white nor coloured, but black--the deepest, darkest black. Now there was no cause as yet, thank Heaven! for man or woman to mourn on board of the Royal Christopher, and there was no need for Mistress Barbara to deal with mourning. So I marvelled, but even as I marvelled I noted, as she shifted her position slightly and shook out the black stuff over her knees, that it was not all and only black. There was white work in it too, a kind of patch or pattern of white work in the midst which I could not make out, for the stuff was still bunched up in the woman's hands. But now, as I watched, I saw her shake it out over her knees for the others to view, and I saw that the thing she displayed was a large square of black worsted, and that in the centre were sewn some pieces of white material into a very curious semblance. For that semblance was none other than the likeness of a grinning human skull, with two cross-bones beneath it--just such an effigy as I had seen many times on the tombstones in the churchyard at Sendennis.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HELD UP FOR THEIR INSPECTION A PIECE OF NEEDLEWORK."]

It was not, however, of the tombstones at Sendennis that I thought just then. No; that ugly image in the girl's fingers carried my fancy back to the place where I had first seen her--to the hostelry of the Skull and Spectacles--and I fancied somehow, I scarce knew why, that the work of Barbara's fingers had some connection with her father's inn. Only for a second or so did I think this, but in honest truth that was my first, my immediate belief, and it brought me no thought of fear, no thought of danger with it. I was only conscious of wondering vaguely to what service this sad piece of handicraft could be put, when suddenly, in a flash, my intelligence took fire, and I knew what was intended; and I felt my knees give way and my heart stand still with horror.

The thing I was looking at, the ill-favoured thing that was hanging from my old love's hand, was none other than a flag of evil omen--a pirate's flag, the barbarous piece of bunting that they call the Jolly Roger.

There could be no doubt of that--no doubt whatever. I had heard of that flag and read of it, and now I was looking at it with my own eyes; and a light seemed to be let in upon my mind, and I trembled at the terror it brought with it. That piece of handicraft meant murder; meant outrage; meant violence of all kinds to those that were so dear to me--to those who were all unconscious of their imminent doom. For I was as sure now as if those three had told it to me with their own lips that I had come upon a conspiracy.

The red-haired ruffian and the black-haired ruffian were in a tale together; their purpose was to seize the poor Royal Christopher that sailed on so gentle an errand and make her a pirate ship, with that devil's ensign flying at her forepeak. My soul sickened in my body at the thought of the women-kind at the mercy of these desperadoes. There was one name ever in my heart, and as I thought of that name I shivered as if the summer night had suddenly been frozen. I believe that if I had had a brace of pistols with me I should have taken my chance of sending those two villains out of the world with a bullet apiece, so clearly did their malignity betray itself to my observation. But I was unarmed, and even if I had been I might have missed my aim--though this I do not think likely, in that narrow place, and with my determination steadying my hand--and, moreover, I had no notion as to how many of the ship's crew were sworn to share in the villainy. Besides, I have never killed a man in cold blood in my life, and on that night so long ago I had never lifted hand and weapon against any man, and had only once in my life seen blood spilt murderously. But I stayed there, with my heart drumming against my ribs and my breath coming in gasps that seemed to me to shake the ship's bulk, staring hard at the two men and the woman with her work.

She held out the banner at arm's length, and looked down at it lovingly, as women are wont to look at any piece of needlework that they have taken pains over with pleasure in the pains. I had seen women smile over their work many and many a time--good women that have worked for their kin, mothers that have laboured to fashion some bit of bodygear for a cherished child--and I have always thought that the smile upon their faces was very sweet to see. But in this case there was the same smile upon the woman's face as she looked upon her unholy handiwork, and there was something terrible in the contrast between that look of housewifely satisfaction and the job upon which it was bestowed. Many an evil sight have I seen, but never, as I think, anything so evil as this sight of that beautiful face smiling over the edge of that hideous thing, the living radiant visage above that effigy of death. The black flag covered her like a pall, ominously.

'Well,' she said, 'is it well done?'

She spoke in a low tone, but I could hear what she said quite well where I crouched.

Cornelys Jensen nodded his head approvingly.

The red-bearded man spoke. 'Time it was done, too, and that we should be setting to work. I am sick of this waiting.'

'Patience, my good fellow, patience,' said Cornelys Jensen. 'All in good time. Trust Cornelys Jensen to know the time to act. The fiddle is tuned, friend. I shall know when to play the jig.'

'My feet ache for the dancing,' the red beard growled. Barbara laughed; dropping her hands, she drew the black flag close to her, so that it fell all in folds about her body and draped her from throat to toe. Her beauty laughed triumphantly at the pair from its sable setting.

'Put that thing away,' said Jensen. 'You have done your work bravely, Mistress Hatchett, and Bill may be well proud of you.'

He clapped his hand as he spoke on Red Beard's shoulder, and the fool's face flushed with pleasure.

Barbara laughed, and slowly folded the flag up square by square into a small compa.s.s. Jensen took it from her when she had finished and put it into a locker, which he closed with a key that he took from his pocket.

I began to find my position rather perilous. It was high time for me to take my departure, before the conspirators became aware of my whereabouts. It would not trouble either of the men a jot to ram a knife into my ribs and to jerk me overboard ere the life was out of me. And then what would become of my dear ones, and of all the honest folk on board, with no one to warn them of their peril?

I drew back very cautiously, creeping along the pa.s.sage and holding my breath, stepping as gingerly as a cat on eggs, for fear of making any sound that should betray me. As I crept along I kept asking myself what I was to do. The first course that came to my mind was to go to Captain Marmaduke and tell him of what I had seen. But then, again, I did not know, and he did not know, how many there were of crew or company tarred with Jensen's brush, and I asked myself whether it would not first be more prudent to consult with Lancelot. For I knew that with Captain Marmaduke the first thing he would do would be to accuse Jensen to his face, without taking any steps to countermine him, and then we should have the hornets' nest about our ears with a vengeance.

But while I was creeping along in the dark, straining my ears for every sound that might suggest that Jensen or Hatchett were following me, and while my poor mind was anxiously debating as to the course I ought to pursue, that came to pa.s.s which settled the question in the most unexpected manner.

CHAPTER XVII

A VISITATION

My agitations were harshly interrupted. There came a crash out of the silence, and before I could even ask myself what it meant I was flung forward and my legs were taken from under me. I pitched on to a coil of rope, luckily for me, or I might have come to worse hurt, and I had my hands extended, which in a measure broke the force of my fall. But I rapped my head smartly against the wall of the pa.s.sage--never had I more reason in my life to be grateful for the thickness of my skull--and for a few moments I lay there in the darkness, dizzy--indeed, almost stunned--and scarcely realising that there was the most horrible grinding noise going on beneath me, and that the ship seemed to be screaming in every timber. I could have only lain there for a few seconds, for no human clamour had mingled with the sound of the ship's agony when I staggered to my feet. My head was aching furiously, and my right wrist was numb from the fall, but my senses had now come back to me, and I knew that some great calamity had befallen the ship. In desperation I pulled myself together and ran with all speed, heedless of the darkness, to the end of the pa.s.sage where the ladder was, and so up it and on to the deck.

The weather was fair, and a moon like a wheel made everything as visible as if it were daytime. The decks shone silver and the sky was as blue as I have ever seen it; but the sea, as far as eye could reach, appeared to be wholly covered with a white froth, which rose and fell with the waves like a counterpane of lace upon a sleeper. All that there was to see I saw in a single glance; in another second the deck was full of people.

Captain Marmaduke came on deck clad only in his shirt and breeches, and Lancelot was by his side a moment after in like habit. At first the sailors rushed hither and thither in alarm and confusion, but Cornelys Jensen brought them to order in a few moments, while Hatchett and half a dozen of the men proceeded to rea.s.sure the pa.s.sengers and to keep them from crowding on to the deck. All this happened in shorter time than I can take to set it down, and yet after a fashion, too, it seemed endless.

Captain Marmaduke rushed up to the watch and caught him by the shoulder. 'What have you done?' he said; 'you have lost the ship!'

The man shook himself away from the Captain's hand.