Too much had already depended on the boy and had been faithfully carried out for even Captain Blizzard to doubt of his ability. Orders were quickly given to cast off from the pirate ship and Chris disappeared to a hidden corner. There he hid everything the leather bag had contained excepting the grainy powder. Next, taking the bag from around his neck and leaving the mouth of it wide open, he changed his shape to that of a sea gull.

Taking the pouch in its beak the gull soared high above the two vessels, now drifting imperceptibly apart. Sounds of violent fighting could still be heard inside Claggett Chew's cabin, but the pirate crew seemed grateful enough to fall to the b.l.o.o.d.y decks to rest and care for their wounds. As the two ships finally stood clear of one another, a resounding cheer of victory rose from the courageous members of the _Mirabelle_. Their shirts ripped into hasty bandages, their bodies glistening with sweat and rusty with their own or their foes' blood, they were a bedraggled sight. Nevertheless, as they raised their arms or flung their caps into the air, flinging after the pirates a few last resounding epithets. Chris's heart swelled with emotion at the men he was proud to call his friends.

As the gull, he swung up into the air away from the _Mirabelle_, and began shaking the dust from the open pouch on the sea around the _Vulture_. By the time the bag was empty, a mist impossible for any helmsman to see through had surrounded the battered ship from stem to stern, and in despite of a freshening wind, was rising steadily to the top of its one remaining mast.

Chris returned to his own ship, and in his own shape at last, surveyed the dwindling island of mist that clung persistently around the Vulture, blow though the wind might, and turn and turn again though the helmsman might try to do. How long, Chris wondered, would the mist hold? Or would the _Vulture_ be doomed to drift at the mercy of the sea in its magic white shroud?

He gave it a long look, a diminishing irregular white shape on the vast spread of the ocean, then turned quickly and went to the decks below to help his wounded friends. Yet not before he had seen that the prow of the _Mirabelle_ was turned triumphantly home!

CHAPTER 35

Chris had always known, tucked away somewhere out of sight at the back of his heart and his mind, that he loved his country and his city. But he had never given it much thought; it had been something as taken for granted as the air he breathed. So that he found himself overwhelmed by the gust of emotion sweeping through him when he stood beside Captain Blizzard as the _Mirabelle_ sailed slowly up the Potomac.

Chris stood there with Amos on his other side, looking at the sh.o.r.es that were both familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar when he saw Mount Vernon on its imposing bluff; unfamiliar because no domes or obelisks were to be seen; no airfield, and no Pentagon. But the sweet green land itself was there, holding out its welcoming and individual scent of fields and rich American soil.

However, the Georgetown Ned Cilley and Amos remembered, the little town from which they had all sailed in secrecy and haste so many months before, was there awaiting them. The noon sun was bright over the few slate roofs and red brick chimneys, and Chris felt a choke of happiness binding his throat like a scarf too tightly drawn, and a constriction at his heart as if it were too firmly held in a welcoming hand.

An excited happiness shook him as the _Mirabelle_ was eased to the wharfside, and at last, after dangers and adventures beyond his imagining, Chris not only knew that he was home again, but saw a familiar black-dressed figure and a plump woman in a monstrous hat, waiting for him to disembark.

What a day that was! The greetings and handshakings; the enveloping hug for Chris and Amos from Becky Boozer, her eyes filled with happy tears and her bonnet trembling with agitation. Her roguish glances and coy giggles flew out like a flock of doves at the sight of swaggering Ned Cilley, who came down the gangplank carrying a macaw in a cage for "Mistress Boozer," and hustled her behind some bales to kiss her warmly. But most of all and best of the day, that first look from Mr.

Wicker that spoke more than any gesture or carefully chosen words could have done. He had no need to speak. Chris could see the pride and pleasure shining in his face, and Mr. Wicker, so solitary all his life, could see in the boy's eyes an affection his own son might have shown him.

In due time a well-crated object was carefully hauled by cart to Mr.

Wicker's back door and taken inside. The ship's carpenter had made a case to measurements given him without knowing what it was to hold, and when Chris saw it at last set in a corner of Mr. Wicker's well-remembered study, he knew a lightness of mind he had not had since first he had been told of the Jewel Tree and his long journey.

There were long hours of talk with Mr. Wicker before the fire, telling him of every detail. Mr. Wicker's fine dark head nodded from time to time, interspersing Chris's account with an occasional "Quite so--you did perfectly right," or, "Indeed? I did not see that too clearly, and so I was not sure." At last all was told; every tale unfolded.

Then Mr. Wicker rose, smiling at Chris. "Go have your supper lad, and come back. I have some other things to say."

The candlelit kitchen, the blazing hearth, the hissing spit on which wood pigeons roasted; the steaming pots where savory things were cooking; Amos laughing and chattering and swinging his legs from the cane-bottomed chair; Becky Boozer alternating between bursts of happy song and jokes directed at Amos or Ned Cilley, everything seemed beautiful to Chris and the room the gayest he had ever known. Yet he was conscious of a heavy feeling inside himself in spite of the laughter and the talk, and sat quietly staring at the rosy firelight that flowed up Becky's white ap.r.o.n and starched fichu to her hot, flushed face and kind blue eyes. The reflection of the sparks went even higher to gild the twenty-four roses and twelve waving black plumes, and when they pa.s.sed on, found a kindred spark in the large contented eyes of his friend Amos. Ned Cilley was going through the usual formula of pretending that he should not stay to supper, and that even if he did, he had no appet.i.te at all.

"Ah now, Master Cilley," coaxed Becky, her hands on her hips and the soup ladle she still held standing out at right angles, "you will fade away into a wraith, my good man, so you will! Do you not eat a morsel nor a mouthful, and die in the night, how shall I bear to live with my conscience thereafter, tell me that?"

Ned Cilley, seated at the table near the Water Street windows, his legs sprawled out and his rough hands folded over his round little paunch, twiddled his thumbs and wagged his head in a doleful manner, drawing the corners of his mouth down, though it was plain that this was an effort.

"Eh, lack-a-day!" he sighed. "The life of a sailor, 'tis that hard--is't not, me boys?" He wagged his head again. "The vittles is hard on a stummick as delikit nor what mine be--"

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Amos put his hand over his mouth to stifle some sound that broke through in spite of him. Ned gave him a reproving glance. "Or else, me innards is ruint by that galley cook of ours." He sighed and nodded in reminiscent sorrow. "Ah, sweet Boozer, were you to sample but a spoonful of what us pore sailors must face week after week, and month after month, and us on the high seas--you bein' such a delikit cook, so to speak--your heart's blood would curdle on the instant, that it would, by my cap and b.u.t.tons!"

Tears of pity streamed down Becky Boozer's face, and pulling out a bandanna handkerchief from her ap.r.o.n pocket she blew her nose with a honk that would have blown a less st.u.r.dy man than Ned Cilley off his chair.

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"Deary me, the saints preserve and defend us!" she cried. "I must do all in my poor weak woman's power to tempt you as best I may. Draw up, lads, for here it comes!" she announced without ceremony, and the three watching her needed no second invitation.

Then such a feast as was heaped upon their plates and crowded on the table. Steaming vegetable soup, roast pigeons, roasted ducks, several boiled fowl with wild rice, a cold beef pie, several kinds of cheese, tarts and pies, jams and preserves. A blissful silence fell over the cheerful room and Becky Boozer stood back to survey the two busy boys and engrossed silent man. Silent if one can call Ned Cilley's champing jaws, smacking lips, great sighs after a draught of ale, or loud appreciative belches a silent meal.

When everyone had finished at last and they had pushed back their chairs and looked about them again with dozy smiles, Chris remembered Mr. Wicker's request. He rose, not without difficulty.

"Mr. Wicker asked me to see him for a moment." He moved to the pa.s.sageway. "That was a superb supper, Becky. I'm stuffed."

Becky looked around genuinely surprised. "Why--a mere mouthful, a taste, a tidbit, was all any of you had. See--there's a pigeon or two left, and half a duck, and part of the beef pie--why, you do but peck at your food, all of you, like poor birds!" she insisted.

Chris laughed. Ned Cilley, picking his teeth with his habitual ship's nail, was already falling asleep, and Amos, his head on one hand, propped himself up amid a jumble of empty plates. Peacefulness and content lay everywhere in the room, warm as the firelight and as pervasive.

Chris turned. "Anyhow, thanks again. I'll be back," and he went along to knock at Mr. Wicker's door.

Inside, the ruby damask curtains were drawn close across the windows, for it was nearly dark, and the fire here too was as red as the rose that was the joy of a princess of China. Chris closed the door behind him, looking around with a smile at the familiar walls and objects he had missed and dreamed of, many a time, the table with its flowers in a fine China bowl, the desk between the windows with the long-feathered quill pens and the papers marked by Mr. Wicker's meticulous hand, the carved cupboard at the end of the room, and the Indian rug of many colors under his feet. Last of all he brought his look back to Mr. Wicker, sitting in the winged leather chair.

Mr. Wicker had a strange expression on his face. He was smiling but at the same time he looked sad. And for the first time Chris saw some curious-looking garments folded neatly on a stool before the fire. Mr.

Wicker, watching him as he gazed about, saw the question in his eyes.

"Do you not recognise these things, Christopher?" he asked.

Chris looked more closely, touching nothing. His voice was bewildered.

"Well--it seems to me I may have seen them before--they sort of look familiar, but--I couldn't be sure."

His master's voice was gentle. "They are your twentieth-century clothes, my lad. The ones you wear in your own time. And deeply as it hurts me to say it, the moment has come for you to put them on."

Chris raised startled worried eyes to the dark penetrating ones watching him so quietly from the high-backed chair. "Not _yet_? I don't have to go _now_, do I, sir?" And as he saw insistence in Mr.

Wicker's face he began to expostulate as a child does when it wants to r.e.t.a.r.d its bedtime.

"But I've scarcely got back--I mean, here. And we've only had one talk--I'm sure there'll be other things I've forgotten to say that you should know--"

He threw out his hands as if to grasp at something that might hold him there.

"And--and--I didn't say good-bye to Captain Blizzard or Mr. Finney.

They were wonderful to me, really they were! And"--his voice suddenly became very small and high, disappearing to a whisper at the end--"and Becky and Ned and dear Amos--"

He stood there against the door, swallowing hard with his head down, his stomach and his throat a ma.s.s of hateful knots and the whole of him swamped with unhappiness. Mr. Wicker had never moved, his elbows on the arms of his chair, and his folded hands just touching his chin.

At last Chris whispered: "Does it have to be?"

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"It has to be," said Mr. Wicker.

Without a word, Chris took the folded clothes that seemed so unfamiliar off the stool and dressed behind the other leather chair, his lower lip trembling. Mechanically, as boys will, he shifted everything from his pockets to those of the trousers he had just put on. With careful slow gestures he folded up the knee breeches, the full-sleeved shirt, the long white hose and silver buckled shoes, the flare-backed jacket last of all, and put them where his clothes had been.

Mr. Wicker then spoke, getting slowly to his feet and standing with his back to the fire.

"I am afraid I shall have to have the leather pouch, Christopher," he said, holding out his hand. Chris took it off and put it in the long, strong hand of the magician.

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