Lancelot was leaning against the mantelpiece, and Marjorie and my Captain were sitting by plying him with questions and listening eagerly to his answers. Lancelot had drawn off his travelling boots and spruced himself, and looked a comely fellow. When I entered he broke off in what he was saying to clasp my hand again, while the Captain rang for dinner, expressing as he did so the civilest regrets at my mother's absence. Then we all sat to table and dined together in the pleasantest good-fellowship.

Never shall I forget that dinner, not if I live to be a hundred—which is not unlikely, for I come of a long-lived race by my mother's side, and winds and waters have so toughened me that I ought to last with the best of my ancestors. There was a Latin tag Mr. Davies used to tease me with about the Feasts of the Gods. Feasts of the Gods, forsooth! They could not compare, I'll dare wager, with that repast in the Dolphin Room of the Noble Rose, on that crisp spring day when I and the world were younger.

I might well be excused, a raw provincial lad, if I did feel shyish in the presence of such gentlefolk. But they were such true gentlefolk that it was impossible for long not to feel at ease in their society. So when I learnt that Lancelot had not changed one whit in his love for me, and when I found that not the Captain alone, but his beautiful niece too, did everything to make me feel happy and at home—why, it would have been churlish of me not to have aided their gentleness by making myself as agreeable as might be.



The Captain had so much to say of his scheme or dream, and we were so content to listen like good children, that we did not rise from table till nigh three o'clock. It was such a happy dream, and so feelingly depicted by the Captain, that it never occurred to me for a moment to doubt in any wise its feasibility, or to feel aught but sure that I was engaged in the greatest undertaking wherein man had ever shared. When we did part at last, on the understanding that I was to attend upon the Captain daily, I shook hands with Marjorie as with an old friend. I was for shaking hands with Lancelot, too, but he would not hear of it. He would walk home with me, he said; he could not lose me so soon after finding me again. So we issued out of the Noble Rose together, arm-in-arm, in very happy mind.

We walked for a few paces in silence, the sweet silence that often falls upon long-parted friends when their hearts are too full for parley. Then Lancelot asked me suddenly 'Is she not wonderful?' and I could answer no more than 'indeed,' for she seemed to me the most wonderful creature the world had ever seen, which opinion I entertain and cherish to this very day and hour.

'Is she not better than her picture in little?' he questioned, and again I had no more to say than 'indeed,' though I would have liked to find other words for my thoughts. By this time we had come to the way where I should turn to my home, but here Lancelot would needs have it that we should go and visit Mr. Davies's shop in the High Street. I must say that this resolve somewhat smote my conscience, for it was many a long day since I had crossed Mr. Davies's threshold; but I would not say Lancelot nay, and so we went our ways to the High Street and Mr. Davies's shop. And indeed I am glad we did so.



CHAPTER XII

MR. DAVIES'S GIFTS

Mr. Davies did not seem at all surprised to see us when we entered, and he turned round and faced us.

The poor little man had lived so long among his musty books that the real world had become as it were a kind of dream to him, wherein people came like shadows and people went like shadows, and where still the battered battalions of his books abided with him.

But he seemed very well pleased to see us, and shook us both warmly by the hands and called us by our right names, without confounding either of us with the other, and had us into his little back parlour and pressed strong waters upon us, all very hospitably.

Of the strong waters Lancelot and I would have none, for in those days I never touched them, nor did Lancelot. I never drank aught headier than ale in the time when I used to frequent the Skull and Spectacles, and as for Lancelot, who was a gentleman born and used to French wines, he had no relish for more ardent liquors. Then he begged we would have a dish of tea, of which he had been given a little present, he said, of late; and as it would have cut him to the heart if we had refused all his proffers, we sat while he bustled about at his brew, and then we all sipped the hot stuff out of porcelain cups and chatted away as if the world had grown younger.

Mr. Davies was full of curiosity about our departure and the Captain's purpose, and did not weary of putting questions to us, or rather to Lancelot, for he soon found that I knew but little of our business beyond the name of the ship. To be sure, I do not think that Lancelot really knew much more about it than I did, but he could talk as I never could talk, and he made it all seem mighty grand and venturesome and heroic to the little bookseller.

When we rose Mr. Davies rose with us and followed us into the shop, when he insisted that each of us should have a book for a keepsake. He groped along his shelves, and after a little while turned to us with a couple of volumes under his arm.

Mr. Davies addressed Lancelot very gravely as he handed him one of the volumes.

'Master Lancelot,' he said, 'in giving you that book I bestow upon you what is worth more than a king's ransom—yea, more than gold of Ophir and peacocks and ivory from Tarshish, and pearls of Tyre and purple of Sidon. It is John Florio's rendering of the Essays of Michael of Montaigne, and there is no better book in the world, of the books that men have made for men, the books that have no breath of the speech of angels in them. Here may a man learn to be brave, equable, temperate, patient, to look life—aye, and the end of life—squarely in the face, to make the most and best of his earthly portion. Take it, Master Lancelot; it is the good book of a good and wise gentleman, and in days long off, when I am no more, you may remember my name because of this my gift and be grateful.'

Then he turned to me and handed me the other book that he had been hugging under his arm.

'For you, my dear young friend,' he said, 'I have chosen a work of another temper. You have no bookish habit, but you have a gallant spirit, and so I will give you a gallant book.'

He opened the volume, which was a quarto, and read from its title-page in his thin, piping voice, that always reminded me somewhat of his own old bullfinch.

'A New, Short, and Easy Method of Fencing; or, the Art of the Broad and Small Sword, Rectified and Compendiz'd, wherein the practice of these two weapons is reduced to so few and general Rules that any Person of indifferent Capacity and ordinary Agility of Body may in a very short time attain to not only a sufficient Knowledge of the Theory of this art, but also to a considerable adroitness in practice, either for the Defence of his life upon a just occasion, or preservation of his Reputation and Honour in any Accidental Scuffle or Trifling Quarrel. By Sir William Hope of Balcomie, Baronet, late Deputy-Governor of the Castle of Edinburgh.'

I should not have carried such a string of words in my memory merely from hearing Mr. Davies say them over once. But they and the book they spoke of became very familiar to me afterwards, and I know it and its title by root of heart.

Lancelot thanked him for us both in well-chosen words, such as I should never have found if I had cudgelled my brains for a fortnight.

Then we wrung Mr. Davies's hands again, and he wished us God-speed, and we came out again into the open street, where the day had now well darkened down.

As we walked along the High Street with our books under our arms Lancelot gave me many particulars concerning his uncle's scheme and his means for furthering it.

It would appear that Captain Marmaduke had for some time cherished the notion of an ideal colony. The thought came originally into his head, so Lancelot fancied, from his study of such books as the 'Republic' of Plato and the 'Utopia' of Sir Thomas More, works I had then never heard of, and have found no occasion since that time to study. But, as I gathered from Lancelot, they were volumes that treated of ideal commonwealths.

Captain Amber's first idea, it appeared, was to establish his little following in one of His Majesty's American colonies. But while he was in the Low Countries he had heard much of those new lands at the end of the world, wherein the Dutch are so much interested, and it seems that the Dutch Government, in gratitude to him for some services rendered, were willing to make him a concession of land wherein to try his venture. At least I think, as well as I can remember, that this was so; I know that somehow or other the Dutch Government was mixed up in the matter.

What further resolved Captain Amber to go so far afield was, it seems, the friendship he had formed while at Leyden with Cornelys Jensen. This Jensen was a fellow of mixed parentage, a Dutch father and an English mother, who had followed the sea all his life, and knew, it seemed, very intimately those parts of the world whereto Captain Amber's thoughts were turned.

Jensen was such a plausible fellow, and professed to be so enraptured with Captain Amber's enterprise, that the Captain's heart was quite won by the fellow, and from that time out he and Cornelys Jensen were hand and glove together in the matter. Very valuable Jensen proved, according to the Captain; full of experience, expeditious, and a rare hand at the picking up of stout fellows for a crew. I found that Lancelot did not hold him in such high regard as his uncle did, but that out of respect for Captain Amber's judgment he held his peace.

As for the Captain's brother Nathaniel, his whole share in the enterprise consisted in the advancing of moneys, on those ungentle terms I have recorded, upon the broad lands and valuables which made my Captain a man of much worldly gear.

Lancelot brought me to my door, we still talking of this and of that.

Lancelot came within for a little while and kissed my mother, who hung on his neck for a moment and then cried a little softly, while Lancelot spoke to her with those words of grave encouragement which seemed beyond his years. Then he wished us good-night, and I saw him to the door, and stood watching his tall form stepping briskly up the street in the clear starlight.

The girl I spoke of but now, she in the play-book who lived like a man in the greenwood, says—or bears witness that another said—that none ever loved who loved not at first sight. This was true in my case. For that unhappy business with the girl Barbara, though it was love sure enough, was not such gracious love as that day entered into me and has ever since dwelt with me.

Of course I had much to tell my mother and she listened, as interested as a child in a fairy tale to all that had been said and done in the Noble Rose. But most of all she seemed surprised to hear that a girl was going to sea with us. She questioned me suddenly when I had made an end of my story:

'What do you think of this maid Marjorie, Raphael?'

I felt at the mention of her name that the blood ran red in my face and I was glad to think that the light in the room was not bright enough to betray me, for I felt shy and angry at my shyness and knew that my cheeks flamed for both reasons. But I tried to say unconcernedly that truly Captain Amber was much blessed in such a niece and Lancelot in such a sister. Yet while I answered I felt both hot and cold, as I have felt since with the ague in the Spanish Islands.

We spoke no more of Marjorie that evening but at night I lay long hours awake thinking of her, and when at last I fell asleep I slipped into dreams of her, with her yellow hair, and the yellow flowers in her girdle and the kindness of Heaven in her steadfast eyes.

There are many kinds of love in the world, as there are many kinds of men and many kinds of women, but my love for Marjorie Amber was of the best kind that a man can feel, and it made a man of me.

I have lived a wild life and a vagrant life, I know; but, anyway, my way of life has been a clean way. I have never been a brawler nor a sot, and I have never struck a man to his hurt unless when peril forced me. I have never fought in wantonness or bad blood, but only out of some necessity that would not be said nay to. And, indeed, there have been times when I have let a man live to my own risk. So I hope when my ghost meets elsewhere with the ghosts of my enemies that they will offer me their shadowy fingers in proof that they bear me no malice and are aware that all was done according to honourable warfare. There is the blood of no vindictive death upon my fingers. What blood there is was blood spilt honestly, in a gentlemanly way, in a soldierly way; and there is a blessed Blood that will cleanse me of its stain.

That I can make this boast I owe in all thankfulness to two women. To my mother first, and then to the girl who came to me at the very turn of my life. If I can say truthfully that year in and year out my life has been a fairly creditable one for a man that has followed fortune by sea and by land the Recording Angel must even set it down to the credit of Marjorie.



CHAPTER XIII

TO THE SEA

From that out the days ran by with a marvellous swiftness. There was much to do daily; in my humble way I had to get my sea-gear ready, which kept my dear mother busy; and every day I was with Captain Marmaduke and Lancelot and Marjorie, and every day we all worked hard to get ready for the great voyage and to bring our odd brotherhood together.

It certainly was a strange fellowship which Captain Amber had gathered together to sail the seas in the Royal Christopher.

Most of them were quiet folk of the farming favour, well set up, earnest, with patient faces. There were men who had been old soldiers; there were men who had served with Captain Amber. These were to be the backbone of his colony. Some brought wives, some sisters; altogether we had our share of women on board, about a dozen in all, including the woman whose care it was to wait upon the Captain's niece.

But I did not see a great deal of them, for they lay aft, and it was my Captain's pleasure that I should dwell in his part of the ship; and he himself, though he carried them to a new world and to warmer stars, did not mingle much with them on shipboard. For my Captain had his notion of rank and place, as a man-at-arms should have. He passed his wont in admitting me to his intimacy, and that was for Lancelot's sake.

As for the hands, the finding of them had been, it would seem, chiefly entrusted to the hands of Cornelys Jensen. I saw nothing of them until the day we sailed. What I saw of them then gave me no great pleasure, for several reasons. Many of them were fine-looking fellows enough. All were stalwart, sea-tested, skilled at their work; most seemed jovial of blood and ready to tackle their work cheerily. Some of them were known to me by sight and even by name, for Cornelys Jensen had culled them from the sea-dogs and sea-devils who drank and diced at the Skull and Spectacles. That was not much; many good seamen were familiars of the Skull and Spectacles. But what I misliked in them was the regard they seemed to pay to the deeds and words of Cornelys Jensen. It was but natural, indeed, that they should pay him regard, seeing that he was the second in command after Captain Amber. But it seemed to me then, or perhaps I imagine—judging by the light of later times—that it seemed to me then that their behaviour showed that they looked upon Jensen rather than my Captain as the centre of authority in the ship. Certainly most of them were more of the kidney of Cornelys Jensen than of Marmaduke Amber.

I ventured to break something of my thought to Captain Amber, but he laughed at me for my pains, saying that Jensen was a proper man and very trustworthy, and a man with a better eye for a good seaman than any other man in the kingdom. So I had no more to say, and Cornelys Jensen went his own way and collected his own following unhindered.

Whatever I might think of the crew, there was but one thought for the ship. A finer than the Royal Christopher at that time I had never seen of her kind and size. She was a large ship of the corvette kind, with something of the carack and something of the polacca about her. We boast greatly of our progress in the art of putting tall ships together, and, if we go on at the rate at which, according to some among us, we are going, Heaven only knows where it will end, or with what kind of marine monsters we shall people the great deep. But I cannot think that we have done or ever shall do much better in shipbuilding than we did in the days when I was young.

The hands of the clock wheeled in their circle, and the day came when all was ready and we were to sail.

I was leaning over the side, looking at the downs and the town where I had lived all my life, and which, perhaps, I might never see again. My mother was by my side, and we were talking together as people talk who love each other when a parting is at hand. All of a sudden I became aware of a boat that was pulling across the water in the direction of our ship. It contained a man and a woman, and when it came alongside I saw who the man and the woman were, and saw that they were known to me; and for a moment my heart stood still, and I make no doubt that my face flushed and paled. For the woman was that girl Barbara who had made the Skull and Spectacles so dear and so dreadful to me, and the man was that red-bearded fellow who had clipped her closely in his arms on the day when I went there for the last time. The man who was rowing the boat was none other than the landlord of the Skull and Spectacles, Barbara's uncle.

I drew back before they had noticed me, and I drew my mother away with me. The pair came on board, but I kept my back turned, and they went aft without noting me. It would seem as if Cornelys Jensen had been but waiting for them to set sail, for now he gave the order that all should leave the ship who were not sailing with her. Then there was such sobbings and embracings and hand-claspings ere the relatives and friends who were staying on shore got down the side into the craft that was waiting for them. My mother and I parted somehow, and I saw her safely into the dinghy which I had chartered for her benefit, handled by a waterside fellow whom I knew well for a steady oar.

Everything then seemed to happen with the quickness of a dream. One moment I seemed to see her sitting in the stern of the boat, waving her handkerchief to me; then next there came a rush of tears, that blotted out everything, my mother and the town and all; the next, as it seemed to me, though of course the interval was longer, we were cutting the water with a fair wind, and the downs and the cliffs seemed to be racing away from us. The Royal Christopher had set sail for its haven at the other end of the world.



CHAPTER XIV

THE SEA LIFE

The fair weather with which we were favoured during the early part of our voyage made the time very delightful and very instructive to me. Indeed, I learnt more during those happy weeks of matters that are proper for a man to know than I had even guessed at in the whole course of my life. For the Captain, who was an accomplished swordsman, and Lancelot, who was a promising pupil, were at great pains to teach me the use both of the small sword and the broadsword, at which they exercised me daily upon the deck. Captain Amber had a great regard for Sir William Hope of Balcomie's book, wherein I made my daily study, and he or Lancelot would make me practise all that I read.

I was ever apt at picking up all things wherein strength and skill counted for more than book-learning, and I am glad to think that they found me an apt pupil. Indeed, before we had got half-way on our journey I was almost as pretty a swordsman as Lancelot, and the Captain used often to declare that in time I should be better than he himself was. But this, of course, he said only to encourage me, for indeed I think I have never seen a better master of his weapon than Captain Amber, and neither I nor Lancelot ever came near him in that art.

Captain Amber was my teacher in other things than swordcraft. He set himself with a patience that knew no limit to make me learn such things as are useful in the sea life, and indeed he found me an apter pupil than poor Mr. Davies had ever been able to make of me. He was himself versed in the mathematical sciences, in navigation, in astronomy, dialling, gauging, gunnery, fortification, the use of the globes, the projection of the sphere upon any circle, and many another matter essential for the complete sailor, soldier, or navigator and adventurer of any kind.

He instructed me further in matters military, for, as he said, a stout man should be able to serve God and his King as well by land as by sea. So he put me through a rare course of martial education, discoursing to me very learnedly on the principles of fortification as they are expounded by the ingenious Monsieur Vauban, and showing me, in the plans of many and great towns, both French and German, to what perfection their defence may be carried. He showed me how to handle a musket and a pike, and the manage of the half-pike joined to the musket, and instructed me in the drilling of troops and in the forming of a brigade after the Swedish method, for which he had a particular affection.

He harangued me much upon the uses of artillery, illustrating what he said by the example of the ship's cannon, until I felt that I should only need a little practice to become a master gunner. And he set forth to me by precept—for here he had no chance of example—drill of cavalry and the importance of that arm in war, and promised me that I should learn to ride when we had reached our Arcadia.

In all these exercises Lancelot, whose cabin I shared, took his part. He knew so much more than I did that I feel very sure that my companionship in these studies was but a drag upon him. Yet he never betrayed the least impatience with me or with my more sluggish method of acquiring knowledge. Now, as always, he was my true friend. If every day taught me more to admire Captain Marmaduke, every day bade me the more and more to congratulate myself upon being blessed with such a comrade as Lancelot.

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 passion; 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 repetition 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 chink, through which a line of light showed from within. Thinking that if I peeped through this chink 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.



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 compass. 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 passage 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 pass 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 passage—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 passage 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 reassure the passengers 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.

'It was no fault of mine,' he said between his teeth. 'I took all the care I could. I saw all this froth at a distance, and I asked the steersman what it was, and he told me that it was but the sea showing white under the light of the moon.'

Captain Marmaduke gave a little groan of despair.

'What is to be done?' he asked. 'Where are we?'

'God only knows where we are,' the man answered, still in that sullen, shamefaced way. 'But for sure we are fast upon a bank that I never heard tell of ere this night.'

As they were thus talking, and all around were full of consternation, I saw that Marjorie had come up from below and was standing very still by the companion head. She had flung a great cloak on over her night-rail, and though her face was pale in the moonlight she was as calm as if she were in church. When I came nigh her she asked me, in a low, firm voice, what had happened.

I told her all that I knew—how the ship had by mischance run on some bank through the whiteness of the moonlight misleading the steersman. With another woman, maybe, I should have striven to make as light as possible of the matter, but with Marjorie I knew that there was no such need. I told her all that had chanced and of the peril we were in, as I should have done to a man.



When I had done speaking she said very quietly: 'Is there any hope for the ship?'

I shook my head. 'I am very much afraid——' I began.

She interrupted me with a little sigh, and stepped forward to where Captain Marmaduke stood giving his orders very composedly. Lancelot was busy with Jensen in reassuring the women-folk and getting the men-folk into order. I must say that they all behaved very well. With many of the men, old soldiers and sailors as they were, it was natural enough to carry themselves with coolness in time of peril, but the women showed no less bravely. This, indeed, was largely due to the example set them by Barbara Hatchett, who acted all through that wild hour as a sailor's daughter and a sailor's wife should act. Her composure and her loud, commanding voice and encouraging manner did wonders in soothing the women-kind, and in putting out of their heads the foolish thoughts which lead to foolish actions.

Marjorie went up to Lancelot and laid her hand upon his sleeve. He looked at her with the smile he always gave when he greeted her, and he spoke to her as he might have spoken if he and she had been standing together on the downs of Sendennis instead of on that nameless reef in that nameless danger.

'Well, dear,' he said, 'what is it?'

'What do you wish me to do?' she asked.

'Comfort the women-folk, dear,' he answered. Then, catching sight as the wind moved her cloak of her night-rail, he added quickly: 'Run down and dress first.'

'Is there truly time?'

'Aye, aye, time and to spare. We may float the ship yet, God willing. Do as I bid you.'

She lingered for a moment, and said softly:

'If anything should happen, let me be next you at the last.'

I was standing near enough to hear, and the tears came into my eyes. Lancelot caught his sister's hand and pressed it as he would have pressed the hand of a comrade. Then she turned away and slipped silently below.

I am glad to remember that good order prevailed in the face of our common peril. Our colonists, men and women, kept very quiet, and the sailors, under Cornelys Jensen, acted with untiring zeal. I must say to his credit that Jensen proved a cool hand in the midst of a misfortune which must have come as a special misfortune to himself. It is a curious fact, and I know not how to account for it, unless by the smart knock on my head and the confusion of events that followed upon it, but all memory of what I had seen and heard In Jensen's cabin had slipped from my mind. No—I will not say all memory. While I watched him working, and while I worked with him, my head—which still ached sorely after my tumble—was troubled, besides its own pain, with the pain of groping after a recollection. I knew that there was something in my mind which concerned Cornelys Jensen, something which I wanted to recall, something which I ought to recall, something which I could not for the life of me recall. What with my fall, and the danger to the ship, and the strain of the toil to meet that danger, that page of my memory was folded over, and I could not turn it back. I have heard of like cases and even stranger; of men forgetting their own names and very identity after some such accident as mine. All I had forgotten was the evil scene in Jensen's cabin, the three evil schemers, their evil flag.

I was a pretty skilled seaman now, thanks to my Captain's patience and my own eagerness, and I was able to lend a hand at the work with the best. The first thing we did was to throw the lead, and sorry information it yielded us. For we found that we had forty-eight feet of water before the vessel and much less behind her. It was then proposed that we should throw our cannon overboard, in the hope that when our ship was lightened of so much heavy metal she might by good hap be brought to float again. I remember as well as yesterday the face of Cornelys Jensen when this determination was arrived at. He saw that it must be done, but the necessity pricked him bitterly. 'There's no help for it,' he said aloud to Hatchett, with a sigh. Captain Marmaduke took the expression, as I afterwards learnt, as one of pity for him and his ship and her gear of war. But it set me racking my tired brain again for that lost knowledge about Jensen which would have made his meaning plain to me.

It was further decided to let fall an anchor, but while the men were employed upon this piece of work the conditions under which we toiled changed greatly for the worse. Black clouds came creeping up all round the sky, which blotted out the moonlight and changed all that white foam into curdling ink, and with the coming of these clouds the wind began to rise, at first little and moaningly, like a child in pain, and then suddenly very loudly indeed, until it grew to a great storm, that brought with it sheets of the most merciless rain that I had then ever witnessed. Now, indeed, we were in dismal case, wrapped up as we were in all the horrors of darkness, of rain and of wind, which added not merely a gloom to our situation, but vastly increased danger. For our ship, surrounded as she was with rocks and shoals, though she might have lain quiet enough while the sea was calm, now before the fury of the waves kept continually striking, and I could see that the fear of every man was that she would shortly go to pieces.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE NIGHT AND MORNING

It seemed such a heart-breaking thing to be hitched in that place, so immovable, while the seas were slapping us and the wind so foully misbehaving, that I declare I could have wept for bitterness of spirit. But it was no time for weeping; we had other guesswork on hand, and we buckled to our work with a will. We agreed that the straightest course open to us was to cut away the mainmast, and this we promptly set about doing. There are few sadder sights in the world than to see stout fellows striving with all their strength to hew down the mainmast of a goodly ship. The fall of a great tree in a forest preaches its sermon, but not with half the poignancy of a noble mast which men who love their vessel are compelled to cast overboard. As the axes rose and fell it seemed to me as if their every stroke dealt me a hurt at the heart. As the white wood flew it would not have surprised me if blood had followed upon the blow—as I have read the like concerning a tree in some old tale—so dear was the ship to me. A man's first ship is like a man's first love, and grips him hard, and he parts from neither without agony. When at last our purpose was accomplished, and the mast swayed to its fall, I could have sat me down and blubbered like a baby.

And yet in another moment, so strange is the ordering of human affairs and so much irony is there in the lessons of life, we who were all ready to weep for the loss of our mainmast would have been only too glad to say good-bye to it. For while its fall augmented the shock, and made us in worse case that way, we were not lightened of it for all our pains, for it was so entangled with the rigging that we could not for all our efforts get it overboard. We were now in sheer desperation, for it did not seem as if we could ever get our ship free, but must needs bide there in our agony until she broke and gave us all to the waters. But a little after there came a gleam of hope, for the furious wind and rain abated, and finally fell away altogether, and at last the longest night I had ever known came to an end, and the dawn came creeping up to the sky as I had often seen it come creeping when I awakened early lying on my bed in Sendennis. Oh, the joy to hail the daylight again, and yet what a terrible condition of things the daylight showed to us! There was our ship stuck fast on the bank; there was her deck all encumbered with the fallen mast and the twisted ropes and the riven sails. Every man's face was as white as a dish, and there was fear in every man's eyes. Nor was it longer possible to pacify all the women-folk or the children, now that the daylight showed them the full extent of their disaster, and every now and then they would break forth into cries or fits of sobbing which were pitiful to hear. Marjorie did much to calm their terrors, as did Barbara Hatchett, both of whom showed very brave and calm; and, indeed, the only pleasing memory of all that time of terror is the thought of those two women, the one in all the pride of her dark beauty, the other in all the glory of her fair loveliness, moving about like ministering angels amongst all those people whom the sudden peril of death had made so fearful and so helpless. The beautiful woman and the beautiful maid—none on board had braver hearts than they!

You may imagine with what eagerness we scanned the sea for any sight of land. But though Captain Amber searched the whole horizon with his spy-glass, we could find nothing better than an island which lay off from us at a distance of about two leagues, and what seemed to be a smaller island, which lay further from us. This did not offer any great promise of refuge to us, but as it was apparently the only hope we had we all strove to make the best of it, and to pretend to be greatly rejoiced at the sight of even so much land.

Captain Amber immediately ordered Hatchett to man one of the ship's boats and to make for those islands to examine them, a task that now presented no difficulty, for the wind had fallen away and the sea was smooth as it had been turbulent. I would fain have gone with the boat for the sake of the change, for I was sick at heart of the moaning and the groaning of the poor wretches on board, but Captain Amber did not send me, and I had no right to volunteer; and, besides, I was still troubled by a confused sense of something that I had to tell him; some danger that I was instinctively seeking to ward off from him—and from her.

There was something piteous in the sight of that single boat creeping slowly across the sea towards those distant islands, and I watched it as it grew smaller and smaller, until it was little more than a mere speck upon the waters.

Everything depended for us upon the fortunes of that boat, upon the tidings that it might bring back to us. I am proud to say that my thoughts went out across that sea to the home where my mother was, who prayed day and night for her boy's safety, and that my lips repeated that prayer she had taught me while I supplicated Heaven with all humility of heart, if it were His will, to bring us out of that peril.

We spent the time during the boat's absence in clearing the decks as well as we might, in renewing our efforts to pacify our women-kind, and in fresh attempts, which, however, were unavailing, to get our mast overboard. Captain Amber had gathered together those of his men who were old soldiers, and, having addressed them in a stirring speech, which made my blood beat more warmly, he set them to various tasks in preparation for what now appeared to be inevitable—our leaving the ship. The brave fellows behaved as obediently as if they had been on parade, as courageously as if they had been going into action. They were picked men of fine mettle, and they were yet to be tested by severer tests, and to stand the test well.

At about nine o'clock or a little later the boat returned. We could see it, of course, a long way off, as it made its course towards us, but none of those on board made any sign to us, which we took, and rightly, too, to be a sign of no great cheer. Then our hopes, which had begun to run a little higher, ebbed away again, and we waited in silence for the boat to come alongside and for Hatchett to climb on board and to make his report to Captain Marmaduke. This he did in private, Captain Marmaduke taking him a little apart, while we all looked on and hungered for the news.

We had not long to wait, and when it came it was not so bad as we had feared, if it was not so good as some of us had hoped for.

Captain Amber came forward to the middle of the deck, where everybody was assembled waiting for the tidings.

'Friends and companions,' he said, 'our explorers report that yonder island is far from inhospitable. It is not covered by the sea at high water, as we feared at first; it is much larger than it seems to us at this distance; there will be ample room for us all during the short time that we may have to abide there before we sight a ship. I must indeed admit to you that the coast is both rocky and full of shoals, and that the landing thereupon will not be without its difficulties, and even its dangers, but we came out prepared to face difficulties and dangers if needs were, and these shall not dismay us. As for the further island, we may learn of that later.'

He looked very gallant as he said all this, standing there with the morning sunlight shining upon his brave face and upon his fine coat—for by this time he was fully habited and in his best, as beseemeth the leader of an expedition when about to disembark upon an unfamiliar shore. All around him had listened in silence while he spoke, but now, at the close, some of the soldier-fellows set up a kind of cheer in answer to his speech. It was not very much of a cheer, but it was better than nothing in our dismal case. It served to set our bloods tingling a little, so Lancelot and I caught it up, and kept it up too, with the whole strength of our lungs, till the example spread, and soon we had every man on deck huzzaing his best, while Cornelys Jensen and Hatchett swung their caps and lifted their voices with the best. It was a strange sound, that hearty British cheer ringing out through that lonely air; it was a strange sight, all those stout fellows marshalled as best they might on the sloping deck and fanning their scanty hopes into a flame with shouting, while the ruined mast, thrust over the side, pointed curiously enough straight in the direction of those islands whose hospitable qualities we were soon to try.

It was soon decided, after a brief conference between Captain Amber and Cornelys Jensen, that we should transfer our company as fast as might be to the near island, for there was no knowing when the smooth weather might shift again and how long our Royal Christopher would hold together if the waves, which were now lapping against its sides, grew angrier. It was resolved that the most pressing business was to send on shore at once the women and children and such sick people as we had on board, for these, as was but natural, were the most troublesome for us to deal with in our difficulty, being timorous and noisy with their fears, and setting a bad example.

So when it was about ten of the clock, or maybe later, for the time slipped by rapidly, we got loose our shallop and our skiff and lowered them into the water, and got most of the women and the children and the sick folk into them and sent them off, poor creatures, across the waste of waters to the islands. Barbara Hatchett went with them, for her firmness and courage served rarely to keep them quiet and inspire them with some little fortitude. As for Marjorie, she would by no means leave the ship so long as Lancelot was on board, so she stayed with us, at which I could not help in my heart being glad, in spite of the danger that there was to everyone who stuck by the ship.

While these first boat loads were away we on board made efforts for the provisioning of our new home, getting up the bread and such viands as we could, and packing them in as portable a manner as might be for the next journey. But by this time unhappily we began to be threatened by a fresh trouble. No sooner were we free from the women-folk and the children, whose presence had hampered us so sorely, than a far more pressing vexation came upon us. For certain of the sailors, who up to this point had behaved well enough, suddenly flung aside their good behaviour. They had got at the wine, of which, unhappily, in the first confusion of our mischance no care had been taken, and many of them were roaring drunk, and capable of doing little service beyond shouting and cursing at one another. When Cornelys Jensen saw this he did his best to prevent them, and though some of them were too sullen to obey him, he did at last contrive with threats and oaths to keep such of the sailors as were still sober away from the liquor. By this time Lancelot, facing the new danger, got from his uncle the key of the storeroom where the arms were kept, and served out weapons to all those on board who had been soldiers and who loved Captain Amber. A pretty body of men they made, each with a musket on his shoulder, a hanger by his side, and a brace of pistols in his belt. They were all reliable men—many of them, indeed, had experienced religion, and had in them something of the old Covenanting spirit, which had worked such wonders under General Cromwell.

I could see that Cornelys Jensen was very ill-pleased with this act on our part, but he could say nothing, for the thing was done before he could say or do aught to prevent it, and very fortunate it was that we had done so betimes, for now Captain Marmaduke had under him a body of sober, disciplined, well-armed men, who would obey him and stand by him to the last extremity. I myself had slung a hanger by my side and thrust a brace of pistols into my girdle, and I believe that I well-nigh rejoiced in the peril which gave me the chance to carry those weapons and to make, as I fancied, so brave a show. Lancelot armed himself too in like fashion, for he served as second in command of our little troop under Captain Amber. For my part, I held no rank indeed in the little army, but I looked upon myself as a kind of aide-de-camp to my Captain.

With half a dozen of those men we gathered together all the cases of wine that had been brought out and placed them back in the spirit room, over which we mounted two men as guard. It was idle to try and lock the door, for the lock had been shattered, possibly when we ran aground, and would not hold. But we locked the door of the room where our weapons and ammunition were, and placed another guard there.

I think many of the sailors were mightily annoyed at this action of ours, and gladly would have resented it. But there was nothing they could do just then, and though Cornelys Jensen was more savage than any of them, he wore a smooth face, and kept them in check by his authority. Though we did not dream of it then, it was a mighty blessing for us, that same shipwreck, for if it had not come about just when it did worse would have happened. As matters now stood, our little party—for it was becoming pretty plain that there were two parties in the ship—was well-armed, while the sailors had no other weapons than their knives.



CHAPTER XIX

HOW SOME OF US GOT TO THE ISLAND

But between our need for watchfulness and the drunkenness of many of the crew the time slipped away without our doing as much as we should have done under happier conditions. Thanks to the confusion that their wantonness had caused, we did but make three trips in all to the island in that day, in which three trips we managed to send over about fifty persons, with some twenty barrels of bread and a few casks of water. Had we been wiser we should have sent more water, for we could not tell how distressed we might become for want of it on the shore if we did not find any spring of fair water on the island. However, I am recording what we did, and not what we ought to have done, and I can assure my friends that if ever they find themselves in such straits as we were in that night and day they will have reason to be thankful if they manage to keep all their wits about them, and to conduct their affairs with the same wisdom that they, as I make no doubt, display in less pressing hours. For myself, my wits were still wool-gathering, still were striving to remember something which for the life of me I could not manage to remember.

It was well-nigh evening, and twilight was making the distant land indistinct, when Hatchett came back from the last of those three voyages with very unpleasant tidings—that it was no use for us to send over any more provisions to the island, as those who had been disembarked there were only wasting that which they had already received. Indeed, Hatchett painted a gloomy picture of the conduct of those colonists who were now on shore, declaring that they had cast all discipline and decorum to the winds, and that they needed stern treatment if they were to be prevented from breaking out into open mutiny.

There were, of course, a great variety of folk among our colonists, and many of them were weak and foolish creatures enough, as there always will be weak and foolish creatures in any community of human beings until the human race grows into perfection, as some philosophers maintain that it will. Now, it certainly was precisely this element in our little society that had been shipped off to the island, for, with the women and children, it was the men who were most womanlike in their noise, or most childlike in their fears, whose safety we had first ensured. From what our Captain knew of these people, well-meaning enough under ordinary conditions, but timorous and foolish under conditions such as we now were in, he guessed that disorganisation and disturbance might be likely enough. Therefore he resolved, and his resolve was approved both by Hatchett and by Jensen, that he would go over himself to the island and restore order among the malcontents.

Now I will confess that when I heard of this my heart sank, for I took it for granted that Marjorie would go with Captain Marmaduke, and indeed it seemed only right that she should go rather than remain upon the Royal Christopher with only a parcel of rough men aboard her, and those rough men sorely divided in purpose, and each division mistrustful of the other. All through those long hours of shipwreck sorrow my spirits had been cheered by the sight of her beauty and the example of her calm. She weathered the calamity with the bravest temper; never cast down, never assuming a false elation, but bearing herself in all just as a true man would like the woman he loved to bear herself in stress and peril. I have read of a maid in France ages back who raised armies to drive my ancestors out of her fatherland and I think that maid must have looked as my maid did and had the same blessed grace to inspire courage and love and service.

So when I thought that Marjorie was about to quit the ship I felt such a sudden wrench at my heart as made me feel sick and dizzy, like a man about to faint. The water came into my eyes with the saltness of the sea, and words without meaning—words of pain, and grief, and longing—seemed to seek a form at my lips and then to perish without a breath. But at last, with an effort, I shook myself free of my stupor. I might never see her again, I told myself; this might be our latest parting, there on that wretched deck, in that crowd of faces painted with fear and fury, with the sullen sea about us which would so soon divide us. Come what might come of it, I swore that I would say my say and not carry the regret of a fool's silence to my grave. For though my heart seemed to beat like the drums of a dozen garrisons, I made my way across the slippery deck to where the girl stood, for the moment alone, with the wind flapping her hair about and blowing her gown against her. She was looking out at the island when I came close, and there was so much noise aboard and beyond that she did not hear my coming till I stood beside her, and called her name into her ear. Then she turned her pale face to me, and small blame to her to look pale in those terrors; but her eyes had all their brightness, and there was no sign of fear in them or on her lips. I thought her more beautiful than ever as she stood there, so calm in all that savage scene of ruin, so brave at a time when stout men shook with fear.

'Marjorie,' I said, 'I want to tell you something. I hope in God's mercy that we may meet again, but God alone knows if we ever shall. And so I want to tell you that, whatever happens to me, sick or well, in danger or out of it, I am your servant, and that your name will be in my heart to the end.'

She had heard me in quiet, but there was a wonder in her face as she listened to the words I stumbled over. In fear to be misunderstood, I spoke again in an agony.

'Marjorie,' I said, 'dear Marjorie, I should never have dared to tell you but for this hour. But I may never see you again, and I love you.'

And then I lost command of myself and my words, and begged her incoherently to forgive me, and to think kind thoughts of me if this were indeed farewell. She was silent for a moment, and there came no change over her face. Then she said softly:

'Why do you tell me this now? Is there some new danger?'

I stared at her in wonder.

'Marjorie,' I cried, 'Marjorie, are you not going to leave the ship?' She shook her head.

'I stay with Lancelot,' she answered quietly. 'It is an old promise between us. Where he is I abide. That is our compact.'

I cannot find any words for the fulness of joy that flooded my heart as Marjorie spoke. I would still be near her; the ruined ship remain a sacred dwelling. But in my error I had blundered, overbold, and I tried to explain confusedly.

'Marjorie,' I said, 'I thought you were going and I dared to tell you the truth. It is the truth indeed, but I should not have told it.'

She held out her hand to me with a kind smile as I clasped it.

'We are good friends,' she said. 'You and I and Lancelot. Let us remember nothing but that, that we are good friends, we three. I always think well of you; always deserve that I shall think well of you. Be always brave and good and God bless you!'

She let go my hand as she spoke and I turned away and left her, stirred by a thousand joys and fears and wonders.

By this time Captain Amber had made all his preparations, albeit with no small reluctance, to quit the ship. He picked out some ten of his men from those that had served him of old and that were now equipped as men of war. Then he formally entrusted to Lancelot the ship and the lives of all aboard her. Marjorie, who now came to him, he kissed very tenderly, making no attempt to urge her to accompany him. He knew the two so well and their love and loyalty each to the other. Then he took me by the hand and bade me serve Lancelot as I would serve him, which I faithfully and gladly promised to do, and so he went over the side into the skiff, with his men and Hatchett, and the sailors that were handling the skiff, and made his way towards the island.

It was now that a thing came to pass which relieved my mind of a care only to increase our anxieties. When the skiff was a little way from the ship my Captain, looking back to where we lay, drew from his pocket his kerchief, which was a big and brightly-coloured kerchief, such as men love who follow the sea, and waved it in our direction as a signal of farewell, and, no doubt, of encouragement. Now, I cannot quite tell the train of thought which the sight of that action aroused in my mind, but I think that it was something after this fashion. The waving of that kerchief reminded me of the waving of a flag, and the moment that the word flag came into my mind I suddenly remembered what it was that I had been trying to remember through all those weary hours. As in a mirror I saw again the interior of Jensen's cabin and the beautiful face of Barbara, smiling as she stooped over her hideous standard. I saw again that vile black flag, and as the picture painted itself upon my brain the consciousness of our peril came upon me in all its strength.

Without a doubt, the first thing to do was to tell Lancelot what I knew. It was too late now to tell the Captain. Even if he were not too far to see and understand such signals as we might make to him to return, it would not do to let Jensen and the rest of the crew know that we had fathomed their treachery. So I argued the matter to myself. It was certain that Jensen had no notion that I was any sharer in his dark secret, for though I could read in his face his dislike, I could see there no distrust of us. The first thing to be done was to break the bad news to Lancelot.

I drew Lancelot aside and told him what I had seen. At first he was amazed and incredulous; amazed because I had not warned Captain Amber before, and incredulous because, when I explained my forgetfulness through my fall and the hurt to my head, he would needs have it that I imagined the whole matter. But I was so confident in my tale that I shook his disbelief—at least, so far that he declared himself willing to take all possible precautions.

As matters stood we seemed to be in the better case. We had well-trained, well-armed men on our side; we had the supply of arms and ammunition in our care and under our guard; if the sailors were more numerous than we, they were practically unarmed. It was clear to both Lancelot and myself that the shipwreck, which had seemed so great a misfortune, was really the means of averting a more terrible calamity. We could not doubt that the intention of Jensen and his accomplices had been to seize the ship suddenly, taking us unawares when we were asleep, cutting most of our throats, very likely, and, after seizing upon the supply of arms, overawing such of the colonists and others as should be unwilling to convert the noble Royal Christopher into a pirate ship.



CHAPTER XX

A BAD NIGHT

Now our Captain had not been very long gone when the fair weather proved as fitful as a woman's mood, and the smiling skies grew sullen. That same moaning of the wind which we had heard with such terror on the preceding evening began to be heard again, and its sound struck a chill into all our hearts. The evening sky waxed darker, and the water that had been placable all day grew mutinous and mounted into waves—not very mighty waves, indeed, but big enough to make us all fearsome for the safety of our ship, for where the Royal Christopher was, perched upon that bank of ill omen, the force of the water was always greatest in any agitation, and there was ever present to our minds the chance that she might go to pieces before some sudden onslaught of the sea. In the face of that common peril we all forgot our watchfulness of each other, and Jensen and the sailors worked as earnestly to do all they could for the safety of our vessel as on our side Lancelot and I and the stout fellows under our command worked.

It was in all this trouble and hubbub that Marjorie showed herself to be the gallantest girl in the world. She was resolved to stay with Lancelot, but she was no less resolved to hamper him not at all by her presence. So when I came at dusk to the Captain's cabin to consult with Lancelot, who had shifted his quarters thither, I found his sister with him, but very changed in outward seeming. For she had slipped on a sea-suit of Lancelot's and her limbs were hid in a pair of seaman's boots and her fair hair coiled out of sight under a seaman's cap, and in this sea change she made the fairest lad in the world and might have been my Lancelot's brother to a hasty eye. She had a mind, she said, to play the man till fortune mended, and vowed to take her share of work with the best of us. At which Lancelot smiled sweetly and commended her wisdom in changing her rig, and as for me I would have adored her more than before, had that been possible, to find her so adaptable to danger. But there was little for her to do save to encourage us with her comradeship, and that she did bravely through it all, acting as any boy messmate might, and taking her place so naturally and simply in those hours of trial that it was not until later that I thought how strangely and how rarely she carried herself and how quietly she played her part.



I shall never forget that terrible night on board the ship, with the waves smacking our poor sides, that groaned at every blow, and the wind moaning through the ruined rigging in a kind of sobbing way, as if all the elements were joining in a requiem for our foredoomed lives. There was never a moment when we could be sure that the next might not be our last; never a moment when we could not tell that the next wave might not sweep the ship with riven timbers into hopeless wreck, and plunge us poor wretches into the stormy seas to struggle for a few seconds desperately and unavailingly for our lives.

Through all that dismal night there was but little for us to do, and so I passed a portion of my time in the cabin fortifying my heart with the perusal of the book Mr. Davies gave me. I did not on that night neglect the thoughts of religion. Indeed, if I had been of a mind to, which Heaven be praised I was not, I could not have very well done so. For among our people there was a reverend man, one Mr. Ephraim Ebrow, whom extreme poverty had tempted to accompany Captain Amber's party, and this excellent man was at all times ready to deliver an exhortation, or to favour us with readings from the Holy Book. He was truly one of the Church Militant, and came of an old fanatique stock, and in moments of danger he was as gallant and as calm as any seasoned adventurer. He had a very fine voice, and it was no slight pleasure to hear him put up a prayer, or deliver a sermon, or read out chapters of the Scriptures in the authorised version. He himself, because he was no mean scholar, was wont to search the Scriptures from a Hebrew copy which he always carried with him. On this night he read to us many portions of the Scriptures, and got us to pray with him, and did many things of the kind that went to stay our alarm and strengthen our trust in the merciful wisdom of Providence. But that I found balm in the Holy Word was no reason why I should not find courage also from the plain words of a plain swordsman. So I read in my book by the light of a ship's lantern, and tried to give my thoughts to the exercise of weapons.

While I was reading thus in the cabin the door swung ajar, for ever since the accident the furniture of the ship was all put out of gear. Presently I heard the tramping of feet along the passage, and then the door was pushed open and Cornelys Jensen stood in the doorway and stared at me. I lifted my eyes and stared back at him.

'This is a wise way of passing the time,' he said with a sneer. 'Book-learning, forsooth, when the ship may go to pieces every instant.'

The tone of his voice galled me, and I answered him angrily, perchance rashly.

'I am no bookman,' I said. 'But there is nothing to do at this hour, and I feel no need for sleep.' For we had divided the night in watches, but I was wakeful as a hare that is being chased, and could not close my eyes to any purpose.

'Nay,' said I, 'there are worse things than reading a good book. Where is your black flag, Master Jensen?'

You should have seen how, just for a moment, he glared at me. He was armed, of course, and I think at that moment that he was sorely minded to take my life. But I had a pistol on the table, and my hand lay on the pistol, and the muzzle pointed across the table very straightly in the direction of Cornelys Jensen. Then the angry look fell away from his face, and he broke into long, low laughter, moving his head slowly up and down, and fixing me very keenly with his bright eyes.

'You are a smart lad,' he said at last. 'What the plague have you to do with my black flag?'

'What have you to do with it were a question more to the point,' I answered him, and I make no doubt now that in speaking as I did I was doing a very foolish thing. But I was only a boy, and inexperienced, and indeed all my life I have been given to blurting out things that mayhap I had better have kept to myself.

He laughed again.

'Nay,' he said, 'it is one of my most treasured possessions. I hauled it down with mine own hands from a pirate ship in my youth, when we captured the bark of that nefarious sea rover Captain Anthony. I have carried it with me for luck ever since, and it has always brought me luck—always till now.' Then he nodded his head again slowly twice or thrice. 'I will give it to you if you wish, Master Ralph,' he said; 'I will give it to you for luck.'

'I do not want it,' I said angrily, being somewhat confused with the turn things had taken. 'I am not superstitious for luck.'