Let's see, he began in his mind, a bunch of the men were singing—Bowie was one of 'em. They went down to their quarters first. They were really closest to the hatch. Mr. Finney called Abner up to the bridge, and Abner came back and went down a while later. Guess Mr. Finney went to his quarters—I don't remember seeing him cross the deck or come over that way at all.

Then—let's see—Captain Blizzard took a turn around the deck. It was getting dark. He joked with the cook at the galley door, and probably went on, for I didn't see him come by again. Next, Ned Cilley was relieved at the helm by Elbert Jones, who took over. Ned went on down.

Or did he? Chris wrinkled his brow with concentration. I guess so, he thought, but I don't know so. It looks to me as if it could have been one of several people, and I'll be switched if I know who. I'll keep my eyes open. Maybe whoever it was will give himself away somehow and give me a clue.

The Mirabelle was nearing Tahiti. The air was balmy, and already a different fragrance pervaded it, together with a softer quality which Chris now knew meant land.

At noon one day Captain Blizzard announced to Chris and Amos: "Should the wind keep up as it is now, by nightfall or by dawn at the latest, we should sight Tahiti. We've water and fresh stores to take on there." He beamed over his many chins at the two boys. "'Tis a fair place, is Tahiti, and one you lads will have an interest and a pleasure in seeing."

Chris lost no time, as soon as he could do it without being noticed, in hurrying down to his cabin. Locking the door, he took the conch shell from his sea chest and held it to his ear. The voice of his friend—so far distant now!—came to his ear and Chris smiled with the pleasure this brief link with home gave him.

"Nearly to Tahiti, eh, my lad?" came Mr. Wicker's voice. "Then listen carefully. Ask for a private interview with the Captain, and when you are alone with him, tell him that these are my orders: He is to sail on past his usual anchorage, making all speed. You will know the reason for it at sundown today. Tell Captain Blizzard to go around the point—he will know—and continue for twelve leagues farther on. This must be done by night, for he must not slacken. Then he will see by moonlight a reef. The water is phosphorescent, and when it breaks over the reef it will shine in the night. Then must he heave to, and you will go over the side, and as a fish, find out the channel, for the coral is dangerous and the way into the cove almost impossible to find even by day.



"The land there is like a cup with a chip in its rim; the chip is the entrance to the cove. This entrance, overhung by slanting trees and jungle, is just large enough to allow for the passage of the Mirabelle.

"Nevertheless," went on Mr. Wicker's voice in the shell, "the masts and the sides of the ship could be seen from the sea. So with all haste, once anchored in the cove, the men must go ashore, bring back palm fronds and leafy branches and camouflage—as you say in your time—the Mirabelle from her topmost mast to the water's edge.

"Let the men rest, but by midafternoon have them hide along the shore facing the sea, for they shall all be witnesses to what is to transpire. Then you must do your part, for you must board Claggett Chew's ship and see to it that his vessel does not gain many days' advantage over the Mirabelle. By daylight the Mirabelle will find her way safely to sea again, and you will rejoin her with the aid of the rope." The voice paused and then enquired, "Is all this clear?"

Chris tapped three times, his heart thumping with excitement at the prospect of the imminent action.

Going up to the Captain's cabin, he took advantage of a moment when Mr. Finney and Amos were outside to ask Captain Blizzard if he might speak with him alone.

"Certainly my boy," boomed out the Captain, his blue eyes abruptly keen and penetrating. "Mr. Finney will be some time on deck. We cannot be overheard in here."

He motioned to a stool as he let himself fall heavily into a teakwood armchair made especially for his bulk. But Chris was too excited to sit down, and delivered his message standing.

When he described how in the night—that very night, he realized with a jumping pulse—he was to go over the side of the Mirabelle and find out the channel, the Captain looked at him piercingly.

"How now, lad," he said in his deep voice, "how are you to find the channel in the dark?"

This was a question Chris was unprepared for, but he took a long breath which gave him a moment of extra time, and then replied.

"I—I see uncommonly well by night, Captain sir," he said, "and I'm a very strong swimmer."

His face froze with nervousness that this might not do as an answer, and he stood stiff and still before Captain Blizzard. The Captain sat forward in his chair looking at him for a long moment, considering. Then he said: "Well, I do not care for it, I cannot say I do. This ship is more to me than wife or mother or family. She's all I have, young man, and you can understand that to trust her to so young a lad, clever though you may be, to go safely past jagged coral reefs into a cove I never even guessed at, well"—he threw out a hand and then rubbed his chin with it—"You can understand I do not fancy it. However," and he leaned back in his chair again, "I take orders from Mr. Wicker, the owner of the Mirabelle, and since he says so, this is how it must be."

He paused, fingering his lower lip and looking sideways in a reflective fashion at Chris standing before him.

"He told me you would have information from him for me, from time to time. We shall say no more, but I trust you understand the responsibility you have? This ship, its cargo, and its men will be in your hands."

Chris felt cold for a moment, chilled as he had never been before, but he spoke up firmly. "Yes sir. I think I can do it safely, or I should not try, sir."

Captain Blizzard's round pink face creased in his winning smile. "Aye, aye. No doubt. Just bear it in mind at the time, eh lad?"

"I shall sir," Chris replied.

He then went on to describe what else was to follow—the covering of the ship with leaves to make it blend with its surroundings. Camouflage was not a word the Captain, or anyone else of his time, yet understood.

"After we see—whatever we are to see," Chris ended, "I'll be absent for a while. What can be said during that time, sir?" Chris thought to ask. Captain Blizzard pondered for some minutes, and Chris was grateful that he asked no questions. At last he answered.



"I shall say you have a tropical fever, Christopher," he said. "I am somewhat skilled in medicaments—I have to be, as captain of a ship, and the crew know it. I shall say that you are in my own cabin so that I can care for you. I shall allow no one to enter it but myself. It will be a most contagious fever for a time," he added with his eyes twinkling. "I shall bring you food with my own hands. Nothing much—broth and gruel, and I daresay I can eat it myself if I cannot throw it out the porthole!" He winked at Chris. "Have no fear on that score, Christopher." He looked steadily at the boy in front of him. "You have your part to carry out, I have mine."

Not since he had left Mr. Wicker had Chris felt such confidence as he did in the words and actions of Captain Blizzard. He knew now that his absence, for as long as he had to be away, would be covered up and satisfactorily accounted for.

Their conversation had taken some little while. As they went over for the last time all the details of what lay ahead of them in the next few hours, Chris, glancing out the windows of the Captain's cabin, saw the splendors of a tropical sunset streaking the sky.

"Oh sir!" he cried, "Mr. Wicker said we'd know the reason why we must take shelter tomorrow at sundown today. And now it is sundown!"

With quite surprising silence and agility for so large a man, Captain Blizzard was out of his chair and half-way to the door of his cabin before Chris had much more than finished speaking. Over his shoulder, continuing with rapid quiet steps to the bridge of the Mirabelle, he said: "Run down to your cabin and fetch up that good spyglass of yours, my boy. We shall have a good look, for as you know, night falls in a few moments after sundown in these waters."

Racing to his cabin and back, even in those few seconds Chris could see a change in the sky. The brilliance of the colors, their extravagant and awe-inspiring cloud effects, had taken on an intensity of light which meant they were at their peak.

Standing beside Captain Blizzard on the bridge, Mr. Finney and Amos just beyond, Chris and the Captain looked through Chris's powerful spyglass at the wide stretch of the horizon.

All around lay only the sea and the dazzling sky. Not even a porpoise or flying fish broke the surface of the water which was placid save for the long swells over which the Mirabelle dipped her white sails. The color ebbed from the sky as if drained from some celestial bowl, and in the place of the scarlets and turquoise, the clear yellows and the plums, came a deep blue that was the forerunner of a fine clear night.

Chris turned slowly, his glass to his eyes, searching the edge of what was now their world, and especially the line where the sea and sky meet.

All at once, as if a white dagger had stabbed the rim of the ocean, white sails grew upward against the encroaching night, and Chris found what he had been looking for.

"There sir!" he cried, pointing to the distance, and the Captain and Mr. Finney swung their glasses to where his finger led, far astern of the Mirabelle.

Captain Blizzard's round cheerful face hardened as he looked, and Mr. Finney's lugubrious countenance seemed positively despairing, while Amos hopped on one foot crying: "Leave me look through your glass, Chris! What do you see? What is it you-all see?"

It was Captain Blizzard who answered him.

"We see the Venture, Amos, Claggett Chew's ship, coming up fast astern. Let us all pray that the wind holds."



CHAPTER 22

The captain, turning quickly, bellowed for all hands to come on deck. When they were assembled below him he spoke. "Men, you have followed me for many a voyage and I have always brought you safely home. Is it not so?"

A good-humored and enthusiastic roar of assent came from the sailors. Captain Blizzard began again.

"What lies ahead of us in the next few hours will not make good sense to many of you. Nevertheless I ask for your instant help, and you shall see what lies at the end of my orders when we reach that time. Are you with me?"

"AYE!" cried the sailors, their faces close together below their captain, and upturned to see him and catch every word. All but Zachary Heigh, Chris noticed. Zachary remained sullen and apart, his arms folded on his chest, taking no part in the enthusiasm of his companions.

"Well and good," roared Captain Blizzard. "I thank you. Now crowd on all the sail she will take, boys, for the Venture follows hard upon us!"



Without a word the men sprang to work, darting up the masts and out over the rigging like monkeys. Every bit of sail the Mirabelle possessed bellied out on the night breeze, and Chris could feel the ship leap under his feet as the additional canvas caught the wind and the graceful ship surged forward.

Night fell before the men had finished and Chris and the Captain could no longer see the sails of Claggett Chew's Venture.

The Captain turned to Chris. "It would be my advice, lad, to go below and sleep for a bit. You too, Amos. I shall send Ned to awaken you when land is sighted."



This seemed good reasoning, and the two boys went below where they snatched a few hours' sleep. It seemed only a minute to Chris from the time he lay down in his hammock, knowing he was too excited to sleep, until Ned Cilley was at his side with a lantern, bringing food for Amos and himself.

"Best eat up, lads," Ned told them, "and join the Captain, sez he to me, for land is just ahead and the Captain do be waiting you on the bridge, Chris, me lad."

The food was bolted down in no time and Chris, feeling fresh and alert, ran up to the warm darkness of the bridge.

To his surprise the usual lanterns were not lit; only a small shaded light shed its rays on the compass near the wheel.

At his questioning look Captain Blizzard muttered: "Impossible to tell how close behind the Venture may be. We have come quickly, but they have the faster ship. I have no wish to give them more clue than necessary as to where we may be." He looked keenly toward the bow, his hands clasped behind his back. "Land is off the starboard quarter, and Abner Cloud is out on the bowsprit looking for the reef. We have passed our anchorage—they expected us, or some other ship, for fires were lit on shore. Sail has been taken in; we are going slowly and will soon be there, by my reckoning."

His eyes grown used to the dark, Chris now saw that it was a remarkably light night. There was no moon, but a myriad of stars gave a clear pallid sheen to the sea. Chris, looking to his left, could make out the blacker mass against the stars that was Tahiti. The Mirabelle was close inshore, and the scent of hot sand from the beaches, of flowers and of plants, made Chris take many deep grateful breaths.

"May I go forward and be with Abner?" he asked the Captain.

"Aye," replied that good man, for by this time Chris was as surefooted as any sailor and for the last month or more had been clambering barefoot in the rigging with the best of them. "Aye lad," the Captain told him, "and hurry. Happen your eyes are sharper than Abner's. Sing out when you spy the reef. We will heave to, and then God be with you, my lad, to find us out the channel to the cove!"

Chris ran forward to the bow of the Mirabelle, and out along the bowsprit where, at the tip, he could see the long form of Abner Cloud stretched out at full length. They murmured a greeting and waited, eyes straining ahead.

Then both saw the phosphorus gleam and fade, gleam and fade as the waves broke over the coral. Eerie jade-green and white-gold, the phosphorus shone in the starlight.

"Reef-ho!" sang out Abner, and the sound of his shout was echoed back from the closeness of the shore in faint dangerous mockery. "Reef-ho!"

"Reef-ho!" came a third time from the bridge, and then "Heave-ho!" thundered Captain Blizzard. "Drop anchor, lads!"

Abner left his place to go back and lend a hand, and in his sudden solitude Chris grasped a rope and swung down to the water.

A porpoise slipped away from the Mirabelle and moved this way and that to get its bearings. Then the mass of the reef to the left and the hidden shelf of a second but obscured underwater reef to the right made dark patches in the phosphorescence. Far below lay the ghostly spread of sand, and the porpoise nosed its way forward.

The channel to the cove proved to be some five hundred yards long, and it seemed no time before the porpoise passed from the shadow of the trees at the shore into the starlit cup of the cove. Taking a turn about in the enjoyment of flipping its fins and giving a leap or two, the big fish then went back toward where the Mirabelle hung suspended on the glassy sea.

A boy it was that pulled himself up hand over hand along the anchor rope and stood dripping sea water on the bridge before Captain Blizzard.

"I've found the channel, sir," he said, abruptly conscious of his importance from the admiring way in which Amos was staring at him. "There's a dangerous shelf of coral that juts out on the port side—if you let me go first, and the men man the boats and row her in, I think we shall do it safely even in this light."

Captain Blizzard looked at him, his expression both serious and trusting.

"Well lad, we do what we must, and you and I understand one another. Ahoy there!" he roared down to the shadowy decks from which the black spikes of masts rose high to break the sky. "Man the boats! We shall tow the Mirabelle to cover, for there's a channel here!"



He turned to Chris as the sound of running feet and of the boats being hoisted overboard came loudly in the stillness of the night.

"Now Christopher, my boy, do you go down and go over the side again, and remember what we spoke of a few hours agone!"

The next half-hour was an exhausting one for poor Chris. It was an impossibility for him to keep for long at a time, either his own, or the shape of the porpoise. He had to enter the water under the eyes of the sailors waiting with their oars poised above the sea, in the shape they knew; Christopher Mason. But once he dived under, in order to seek out the treacherous channel in the half-light, he needed his fish's eyes and senses. He therefore would swim a few yards as a fish, but had to surface again as himself in order to let the men see him, and call: "The length of two boats, keeping to starboard, boys. Then ease her over this way—to port."

So it went, almost foot by foot until the Mirabelle was safe inside the cove and turned broadside to the entrance. Then, and only then, with the anchor safely dropped to the white sandy depths of this hidden harbor, did Chris, tired to his very bones, climb up the ladder and over the ship's side. There remained the camouflaging of the Mirabelle, for the stars were fading and before long, dawn would banish secrecy.



But Captain Blizzard and Mr. Finney awaited Chris on deck. Captain Blizzard had his hands clasped behind his back in his habitual gesture, and as Chris stood before him swaying with fatigue, there was a look on the Captain's face that Chris had never seen there before. The usually cheerful, joking man was grave, while Mr. Finney, so sober and forlorn as a rule, looked positively jubilant.

"My good lad," the Captain said, "you said you could do it, but truth to tell, I doubted it from the bottom of my heart. Now that you have succeeded where I am sure no other could have done as well, I find I have no words of praise good enough for ye." He looked almost tenderly at the tired boy. "I am proud of you, Christopher. You did a man's task with a boy's body and mind. And it took a man's spirit, too."

Without further words the Captain of the Mirabelle held out his pudgy hand to hold Chris's in a steadying grip, and Mr. Finney swung out his hand, his long face breaking into one of the rare smiles Chris was ever to see on it.

"Now, me boy," thundered the Captain, "do you go to your well-deserved rest. Depend upon it, we shall cover the ship with green until she looks like the proverbial Christmas hall decked with boughs of holly, as the song goes!" he added chuckling. "A little later in the day you shall be called to see what you make of the result. And now, to bed with ye both!" and he clapped Amos on the back.

Never had his hammock seemed more like a cloud to Chris than it did on that night, nor was sleep ever more engulfing.



CHAPTER 23

When Chris awoke he saw that Amos had already stolen out of the cabin, for his hammock was rolled up and put away. By the strength of the sun and the heat that seeped even through the boards of the ship, Chris judged that the morning was well advanced.

Dressing was rapid, for Chris, like the rest of the sailors in the tropic heat, wore only his breeches. His bare chest and shoulders were tanned and healthy and the soles of his bare feet as tough as shoe leather.

Running up to the bridge he was startled at first, at coming on deck, at the sudden green shade everywhere. Then looking up he saw that to their very peaks the masts and rigging of the Mirabelle had been hidden with palm fronds. That side of the ship that could be seen from the sea through the narrow channel entrance had been completely covered with green. The work was not yet finished, but most of the crew were sleeping during the hot hours, while a handful had volunteered to complete the job.



The cove by daylight was even lovelier than it had seemed by starlight the night before. The deep water, with a white base of coral sand, flashed in emerald, turquoise, or sapphire blue. Its clarity and sparkling colors put the Jewel Tree into Chris's head and he had a moment's throb of fright when he realized that it was this very night that he must board the Venture to impede her progress toward the Chinese prize.

He put these thoughts from his mind until the time came, and decided to tackle what was most pressing. The most urgent matter that first claimed his attention was breakfast, and when he reached the bridge he was delighted to see fruits from the island piled in shady corners. These and bread and cheese made up his meal, which he ate while watching the final leaves and fronds put in place on the sides of the Mirabelle.

Captain Blizzard came up to him, his hands clasped behind his back, and nodded toward the men pulling themselves slowly over the ship's side and falling exhausted into the shade to sleep for a few hours.

"They will be fresh enough in a while," he said, "and then we shall one and all row ashore to see what we shall see."

He paused, and Chris, looking up, saw that the Captain's gaze was fixed on Zachary Heigh. Zachary was obviously not only far from sleeping, but was restless, jumping up to look out to sea and then sitting down again. It would be only a few minutes more before up he would jump once more to pace the deck or lean at the ship's rail.

"It would seem," the Captain said casually, "that Zachary has something on his mind."

Mr. Finney joined Chris and the Captain at that moment, and looking down at Zachary nodded his long sad face in lugubrious agreement. Chris opened his mouth to say something to the Captain of what he had seen Zachary doing. Before the words could leave his mouth, he was interrupted by the appearance of red-faced Ned Cilley. Cheerful as a sand flea at the prospect of going ashore, Ned had come from his rest with a small company of the sailors to ask permission of the Captain if they might leave the ship.

"Well, why not?" the Captain demanded. "And why not take along the rest too? We were all to go ashore presently, in any case. Those who still want to sleep can do so even more comfortably on the shady sand under the palms."

So in an instant the decks of the Mirabelle were crowded with laughing jostling men, duties over for that day, tumbling down the ladders to the dinghies in which they rowed ashore.

Chris and Amos were shoved along with their friends, Chris hiking up his breeches to cover the coil of the magic rope around his waist; the leathern bag hanging in plain sight about his neck. The sailors had often teased him about it, saying that he kept his riches there, but they made no attempt to snatch it from him. There had been no time to warn the Captain, but as the last boatload of sailors leaped into shallow water and scattered under the shade of the trees, Chris searched and searched again for three faces among the crowd that he did not find. Zachary Heigh, the Captain, and Mr. Finney were not to be found.

Aghast, as he understood now what Zachary's plan was—to blow up the Mirabelle just as the Venture and its crew came near enough to shoot down the unarmed men—Chris rushed back to the water's edge and stood there hesitating in the powerful sun. How could he change himself to a fish or other shape, unobserved? The sailors from the Mirabelle were everywhere—in the thickets for the shade, as well as along the edge of the cove where he now stood, indecisive. To use the rope was just as impossible, for the beach was broad and Chris was acutely aware that he stood out like a single tree in a field, there on the white sand in the broiling sun.

"Better come outen that sun, Chris!" someone called to him. "There's too much of heat in it to be good for unkivered heads!"

Chris knew the voice of the sailor was right, and was on the point of jumping into one of the dinghies, where they lay pulled up on the beach.

Far out on the cove, the decks of the Mirabelle were deserted and unlike themselves, so empty of life. Sweat started out on Chris's forehead, as he imagined Zachary in the hold lighting the fuse, and he wondered where the good Captain and Mr. Finney might be. He wondered too if he could row over in time, or if he would be blown up with the ship.

The boy had his hands on the scorching wood of a dinghy, his muscles tensed to thrust it into the waters of the cove, when out over the still harbor, jangling in the heat, came a prolonged and piercing scream. Hot as he was, Chris felt himself go cold at the sound. He knew instantly, although he had never heard it before, that this was the death cry of a man. The scream came a second time, terrified and despairing, and out over the water following it came a low, scattered rumble.

Silence fell for several frozen seconds, and then all at once Chris became aware as he stood rigid with horror by the boat that the sailors of the Mirabelle had rushed out from the coolness of the shore to stand stiff and appalled beside him. A babble of voices broke out, and one by one the boats were hastily launched, heading back to the ship, leaving Chris shaking and unnerved on the sand. Over the water as brawny backs bent to the oars the words came floating back:

"Someone's dead for sartin sure—"

"Who was left on board, you say?"

"Leave the lads—no sight for young-uns."

"Pull, you lazy lubbers! The Capt'n and Mr. Finney bean't among us!"

It was a little later that Chris remembered Amos having taken his arm and led him into the shade, and of how sick he was—the heat and the scream, the fear, and a sense of having failed in warning the Captain, combining to churn his insides into a queasy place that violently rejected his pleasant breakfast of so short a time before. Then weak, but somehow feeling better, Chris lay in the cool while Amos found a cold pool of water with which he bathed his friend's face, and then sat fanning him without a word.

Chris must have dozed, for when he came to himself the light had changed, and men were carrying a shapeless bundle wrapped in canvas to a grave dug in the sand. Chris started up and joined the men gathered solemnly about the grave, and as he searched among them, knew a great sense of relief and joy when he saw, standing at the grave head, the Captain and Mr. Finney. As Chris came up to them, Captain Blizzard was speaking, a Bible in his hand.

"Men of the Mirabelle, by rights as captain of the vessel I should read the burial service for Zachary Heigh, that met his death by accident, boxes and crates killing him in the hold the way they did. But," and the Captain scanned the tough weather-beaten faces near him slowly, one by one, "you that helped to uncover him know what he meant to do. We harbored a viper, men, who meant to destroy our ship and cargo and leave us to who knows what fate? Had not the bung of that keg of molasses above the lighted fuse most providentially fallen out and the fuse been put out by the sirup, no doubt neither Mr. Finney nor I nor the Mirabelle would be here to tell the tale."

He paused again, but there was not a stir from his audience. From under their dirty headkerchiefs or straggly unkempt hair, the men who knew no other life but the sea, no happiness or danger unconnected with it, never took their eyes from their captain.

"So, men," Captain Blizzard resumed, "the gunpowder that was meant to be the end of our fine ship is now safe and out of harm's way, and the traitor who intended this infamous deed has been dealt with by fate and killed in a tomb of his own finding. Therefore, feeling as I do for my ship and my men, I cannot bring myself to read the holy words over this man who had no charity in his heart."



Captain Blizzard handed the Bible to Ned Cilley and stood with his hands behind him, nodding his head as if to stress his words.

"Yet," he said, "he is being buried far from home and kith or kin. It is not proper that he should be left without even a token of respect." He gestured with his plump hand to the Bible. "Do you settle among yourselves who shall do the reading, but pardon me that I am so small a man, that I cannot forgive a villain!"

So saying he turned slowly away, followed by Mr. Finney, who was more than usually sober and solemn. Into the dry clatter of palm fronds rose the rough voice of Ned Cilley laboriously reading.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life—"

But Chris, watching the disappearing backs of the Captain and first mate, was thinking what a curious and fortunate thing it was that the bales had fallen on Zachary just at the right time, and when there was not a ripple on the cove.

Chris watched the fat short man and the tall lean one go, resolution and anger still evident even in the set of their shoulders. The boy was thoughtful, thinking back over what Ned had said of them, that first day on the docks: Faithful! he seemed to hear Ned say, that's true of the two of 'em! Whatever they can do for Mr. Wicker is law for Elisha Finney and Captain Blizzard.

Chris thought them two very remarkable men indeed.



CHAPTER 24

Barely were the last spadefuls of sand packed down into Zachary Heigh's grave when Amos, who had wandered to the beach facing the sea and long outer shoreline, sang out: "Ship ahoy!"

Remembering their orders the men rushed over from the cove but remained hidden behind trees or shrubs. Chris and Amos climbed a tree from whose branches they had a fine unobstructed view up and down the coast. To the left, far distant, a point of land jutted out into the sea, tropical trees carrying their green out in a long curve. To the right, just appearing from the direction in which they themselves had come a few hours previously, came a majestic ship black from stem to stern. Black was its hull, but black too were its sails. It looked exceedingly ominous on the afternoon blue of the sea, and as it came almost level with the channel to the cove, its sails were lowered and the watchers on shore could hear the splash of the anchor as it was heaved overboard.

Then Ned Cilley, oldest of the Mirabelle's sailors, came panting up from the cove and Zachary's grave to look out from the leaves at the base of the boys' tree.

"Oh, Lordy, Lordy!" he exclaimed when he caught sight of the black ship, the last of her somber sails being taken in, "what did I tell you, lads?" he cried, addressing anyone and everyone near enough to hear him. "That be the Black Vulture, the pirate ship. No vessel is safe near the Black Vulture! What a God's mercy that all of us, and the Mirabelle, are out of sight, for the men aboard the Vulture know no pity, lads!"

Growls and murmurs rumbled along the shore from clump to clump of leaves where the men stood hidden. Chris pulled his spyglass from his pocket and looked eagerly at the pirate ship only a little way out from shore.

It looked familiar, although Chris had had time to see so few ships he could not be certain. He shifted the glass, looking at details here and there, and at the name in gold carved letters against the black-painted side. Vulture. The letters stood out neat and clear and then Chris's heart stopped and started again.

"Ned!" he called down softly, for sound carries far and clearly over water, as every sailor knows, "Ned, don't most ships just paint the name on the side?"

"Aye lad, that they do," Ned replied in a puzzled tone, looking up through the leaves at the two boys.

"Then isn't it unusual to have letters carved of wood and gilded, on the side of a ship?" Chris persisted.

"Aye, that it be." Ned's puzzled tone was sharper now and he looked up at Chris and then out to the pirate vessel. "What're ye aimin' at now, me lad, eh?" Ned asked. "What's in your mind?"

"Just tell me what ships you know whose name is not painted on but set in carved letters, Ned," Chris said, and he lowered his glass and looked down.



Their conversation, in the silence, had had some quality of excitement in it that had been caught by the others, for when Chris glanced down he saw half the ship's company knotted around the base of the tree, and a half-circle of faces turned up to his, along with Ned's.

Ned's face puckered with effort for a few moments, as he muttered: "Let me see, now. There's the Southerner—no, that's painted on, or the Priscilla Drew—no; that's painted too." He turned, searching the faces of his friends. "Come, boys, what ship has carved letters for her name, not painted ones? Where's a better memory nor mine?"

The Captain and Mr. Finney came to join the crowd, standing back in the shadow of the palm grove. Both men were listening attentively. It was Bowie who finally spoke up slowly, as if unwillingly.

"There's only one ship that ever I did see with carven letters on her side, and that was Chew's ship, the Venture."

He was surrounded at once by a low murmur of assent from all sides. "Aye aye!" "That be so!" "'Tis so!" Chris from his higher perch, pointed an accusing finger out to sea.

"Look then, for there's your same ship! The Venture and the Vulture are one and the same! Here—take my glass," he cried handing it down. "See the two second letters—they are just a bit aslant. Weeks ago, at home, I thought it seemed strange that the E and the N looked loose. But loose they are! Once at sea they're changed—bolted in, maybe, I don't know how—and there's your merchant ship at home and pirate ship at sea!"

The men turned, wonderingly but angrily too, for the remembrance of what Zachary Heigh had tried to do, and so nearly succeeded in, rankled, and they now began to understand many things. Voices began to rise dangerously high in the growing ill-feeling.

"Ah—the dirty dog—"

"And his friend with the airs!"

"Have we then been harboring the like of him at home?"

"Aye—to let him go free to scuttle the next fine ship, take all her cargo, and leave her valiant men to drown!"

The Captain came forward, his hands upraised. "How-now, men, be still! We are here to see what may take place, but if your voices should carry, as well they may, over the water, we should have little chance of it. Do you be still and watchful."

A low cry came from Amos, who had not taken his eyes from the sea.

"Look! Around the point! Here comes another ship—looks like that was what the ol' blackbird was a-waiting for!"

Sure enough, as the fine white sails of a good-sized vessel made its way around the point of land, distant shouts and confusion could be heard on the Vulture. Looking through his glass, which he lent to Amos every few moments, Chris could make out scurrying figures on the deck of the pirate ship, men springing up the rigging and others walking up the anchor as quickly as they could. On the bridge Chris could see the tall gaunt height of Claggett Chew. The humpbacked figure of Simon Gosler stood rubbing his hands, at one side of his master, while on the other, observing the work of the sailors with a supercilious air, leaned a familiar and ridiculous figure. Dressed as if for a court ball at Versailles and holding his lorgnette a few inches from his nose, Osterbridge Hawsey remained elegantly aloof from anything so degrading as hard work. He looked on with a superior smile as the black sails were unfurled, the anchor was heaved dripping from its bed, and the hard-pressed dirty crew made all speed to go in advance of the oncoming ship. Still others among the pirates could be plainly seen manning the guns that had already been brought out from their hiding places, while still more stood by to furnish their comrades with cannon balls and powder. Amos became so excited he leaned too far forward, and, nothing learned from his nightly difficulties with his hammock, fell out of the tree onto the heads and shoulders of the men below, causing astonishment and swallowed laughter before he was hoisted back up again.

"Bless my cap and buttons!" Ned Cilley cried, "there's to be a fight for sartin. I can see the flash of light on the swords and axes!"



Quicker than it would take to tell, the Vulture, black sails spread, moved forward to head off the merchantman evidently homeward bound from China.

The pirate ship sailed down the coast, turned, and forced the oncoming vessel to stop. Then, as well as the watchers could guess, a parley ensued, but if the pirates thought the prey would be an easy one they were mistaken, for the merchantman came forward suddenly, all sails set, in an effort to ram the Vulture. But the rich cargo vessel was hopelessly at a disadvantage. The pirate guns opened fire, ropes were thrown over to the peaceful ship, and with yells of triumph that carried even above the tumult of the fighting, the pirate crew leapt on board. Tiny figures could be seen falling into the water from the merchantman, and in a bitter hour or so the sound of fighting died out altogether.

The men watching from the shore had been kept there only by the obedience the Captain was able to extract from them, for rage was in the heart of every man at the sight they were forced to see, but were powerless to prevent. Even among such hard-bitten old salts as they all were, more than one could be seen mumbling a prayer for the unfortunate men who had put up such a gallant fight.



"Come, lads," Captain Blizzard said to them at last. "We have seen what we had to see, and many is the witness now against Claggett Chew and all his company!"

"Aye! Aye! That we are! We'll bear witness to such villainy—they should all hang for it!" the voices cried.

"Then let us go back to our own ship, for the dreaded Vulture is not yet gone, and unarmed as we too are, what chance have we against cannon balls and armed men?"

The men turned about and trouped back to the dinghies, while Captain Blizzard stayed behind a moment to speak to Chris.

"My boy," he said, his hand on Chris's shoulder, as in front of them in the late afternoon light the men of the Mirabelle made their way back to the ship, "'tis my advice you had best return with us now, or you might be missed by one or another of the men, and they have much time to think. You shall do what has been set for you to do—we shall stay here another day to take on water and fresh fruits."

He looked smilingly down at Chris but his eyes were concerned. "It will not be a moment too soon for me until I see you safe and sound on board again, my lad," he said, "for I like you well and would have no smallest harm come to you."

Together they went down to the beach and the waiting dinghy. Chris dared not look at the sky above them for he knew night was darkening it, and with the night he must leave.



CHAPTER 25

As soon as the night was dark enough, Chris loudly complained of not feeling well—of being hot and dizzy, and in no time Captain Blizzard had, as loudly, told him he was to go to bed on a cot in the Captain's cabin. Captain Blizzard closed the door behind him, and in Amos's and Ned Cilley's hearing, told Mr. Finney that he was much afraid that Chris had a touch of the sun and was coming down with a tropical fever.

Chris remained alone in the cabin from that time. Soon, in the cool of the night, the sailors of the Mirabelle set out in dinghies to a cascade of fresh water that emptied itself into the cove at its farther end, taking with them casks and barrels to replenish the ship's water supply. Their deep voices swept back over the water to where Chris stood by the open port of the Captain's cabin. He was forcing himself toward the moment when he must board the Vulture. His resolve was held back by his mounting anxiety as to how best to carry out what would be necessary, and a strong natural reluctance to leave the Mirabelle.

Leave it he must. He stood pondering on what shape to assume, and when he heard the cry of a belated night bird, and saw it coast by on silent wings to vanish in the night, he decided to take that shape. It took all his courage and determination, but this was the first step toward what he had trained for so long to do, and he knew he must do it, and at once. The boy looked a last time around the cabin, then spoke the magic formula in his mind, and, with a sudden enjoyment in the sense of flight, he soared away from the ship out over the cove.



The bird swept twice around the Mirabelle, rising higher as it went. Below, the few lights of the ship had been carefully hooded away from the sea, and the bird, spiraling lightly on air currents, drifted out from land.



The black bulk of the Vulture was easy to find in the clearness of the night. She was riding at anchor close inshore farther down the coast, and final boatfuls of men were returning from the merchantman carrying the last of the spoils. Sweeping by toward the beach Chris saw that most of the bandit crew were already drunk, shouting and carousing around fires where they roasted wild creatures they had earlier killed. He noticed that a few Tahitians stood apart at the joining of the palm forests and the sand, watching the coarse faces of the drunken men. The Tahitians, fitting so well into the beauty of their island, gold of skin and crowned with flowers, carrying themselves with dignity, were as far removed as could be imagined from the idea of pagan men. They contrasted sharply at that moment with those from "civilization," who in filthy rags of clothes and wild disorder of gestures and voices staggered about aimlessly gorging food and drinking. The watching pagans glanced from the brawling pirates back a short distance down the beach where already a few bodies had been washed ashore from the fight. Their distaste and bewilderment were plain.

Chris soared high above the din and the smoke of the fires, and then seeing Osterbridge Hawsey being rowed back to the Vulture, followed after.

Osterbridge Hawsey had two baskets at his feet. One was filled with carefully chosen fruits, and the other with the exotic flowers of the island. Hastily changing himself into a green parakeet, Chris alighted on the rail of the Vulture just as Osterbridge Hawsey reached the top of the ladder. Determined to make a good impression and perhaps catch Osterbridge's fancy, Chris, in his bright parakeet plumage, bobbed his head and sidled up and down the ship's rail, eyeing Osterbridge Hawsey with his head on one side as he had seen parakeets do.

The maneuver succeeded, for Osterbridge, with a little cry of pleasure, declared himself enchanted.

"I must have that little bird!" he exclaimed, and carefully taking off his fashionable hat—even more out of place in the tropics than it had been on the Georgetown docks—he slapped it quickly over the parakeet which allowed itself to be captured.

This, Osterbridge Hawsey's own prize, made him crow with delight. Clambering as gracefully as possible over the battle-scarred side of the Vulture, he took the parakeet gently out from under his tricorne.

"A parakeet—as I live!" he shrilled, sounding very like a parakeet himself. "My soul—what a prize!" he rattled on, entirely to himself as it turned out, for the sailors were not at all interested in a pet. Exhausted from the battle or drunk from captured wine, and all despising the fastidious ways of Osterbridge Hawsey, they paid not the slightest attention. They obeyed occasional orders from him, for they knew they would be whipped by Claggett Chew if they did not, and so hauled up the baskets of fruits and flowers, dumped them unceremoniously in the Captain's cabin, and left as quickly as they could to rejoin their shipmates on shore.

Holding the parakeet firmly, Osterbridge Hawsey tied a long silk cord to its right leg, fastening the other end to the arm of his chair so that he could closely observe his new pet.

Chris did not disappoint him. As the parakeet, he played the clown for all he was worth. He strutted up and down, and bobbed his head whenever Osterbridge Hawsey spoke, so that it appeared that the brightly feathered bird was in constant agreement with his captor. Or he would cock his head to one side as if weighing one of Osterbridge's remarks, in a truly comical manner.

Looking about meanwhile with his black beady eyes, Chris saw that Claggett Chew was lying in a bunk against one wall, nursing his left leg which had been given a sword thrust in the fight. He was obviously in pain and perhaps feverish, and Osterbridge Hawsey's childish talk irritated and bored him so that he turned his face to the wall. Light from the swinging lamp that Chris remembered from many weeks before threw black hollows into Claggett Chew's eye sockets and deeply lined face. Now and again he could be heard grinding his teeth at the pain of his wound, but Osterbridge Hawsey, throwing his fine coat and plumed hat to one side, lightheartedly amused himself by trying to tempt his new pet with some fruit.

"Claggett!" he cried, as if Claggett Chew could possibly be interested in a parakeet at that point, "do look at what I captured! This is my very own spoils of war!" he crowed.

Claggett Chew made an impolite noise and said nothing. "Well," Osterbridge Hawsey gave a shrug as answer to the noise, "you know how I detest fighting. It is vulgar, messy, and noisy. I can imagine no possible good word to say for it. And I see no reason why you could not have made them give up their cargo without a skirmish. Ugh!" he said, at the remembrance.

"Now, a good gentlemanly fight with a rapier is quite another thing," he went on. He smirked and made a face at the parakeet who did its best to smirk back. "That is a graceful and fine art. Refined, and not at all degrading to one's character."

No sound from Claggett Chew. Osterbridge Hawsey rattled on and Chris, pecking at the fruit proffered him, thought that sometimes Osterbridge Hawsey might quite possibly talk just as gaily to himself as he did to the unresponsive Claggett Chew.

"Claggett—your men!" his voice rose. "Really. They are making an exhibition of themselves on the beach. Just as well there is no one to see but some aborigines. Quite revolting. How can you bear to associate with such types, when you are so much above them yourself—but there, I must not pique you, must I, poor Claggett? I expect your wound smarts a trifle?"

Claggett Chew turned his face toward Osterbridge Hawsey, his eyes blazing with rage and his mouth working with the fretful annoyance of an ill man, but he only muttered and turned away again.

"Do you know," his more delicate friend pursued, stretching out a long finger for the parakeet to perch on, which to his evident pleasure it instantly did, "Do you know, Claggett, this dear little creature seems fearless and almost human? Quite touching."

He paused, admiring the vivid colors of the feathers which perhaps awoke a kindred feeling in Osterbridge Hawsey, loving a fine display as he did.



"I shall give you a name, my little feathered captive," he said, and pondered. "I wonder what would be suitable? Something French, undoubtedly." He waved a hand and the lace at his wrist fell forward in a not overly clean frill. "Louis, after the dear king? No—that would be too great an honor for so small a bird, gaudy though you are. I think, 'Monsieur,' after the king's brother. That's it. Little Monsieur." He broke off, dreamily. "To think that I once knew such a royal, such a distinguished man!" He sighed reminiscently.

For the first time words came from Claggett Chew. He bit them off as if the saying of them cost him very great effort.

"More extinguished than distinguished, I would say."

Osterbridge Hawsey permitted a sad condescending smile to cross his face and he shook his finger at Claggett Chew. "Ah, Claggett—you never knew him, you see. I am sure you would have liked him—such charm! So distingue. Oh dear me yes. A most unusual royal personage," Osterbridge Hawsey said, smiling happily at his parakeet. "Most of them are so much alike—"

He singled out several fresh fruits, peeling some for Claggett Chew. Silence fell over the cabin except for Osterbridge Hawsey's delicately smacking lips as he finished the fruit and licked his fingers one by one, the increasingly heavy breathing of Claggett Chew, who fell asleep, and the distant sound of shouts and clamor from the shore. Osterbridge Hawsey made a pouting face at the sleeping figure of Chew; evidently Osterbridge was bored. He went to the door and clapped his hands, but no one responded. Except for the two men and the parakeet, the Vulture was deserted.

Osterbridge Hawsey came back into the cabin holding a bottle of wine which he uncorked and poured into a glass. Chris, foreseeing what would follow, hopped up to the back of his new master's chair where he hoped he would be forgotten, and tucked his head under his wing in case Osterbridge should look at him.

Waiting for the right moment was the hardest thing Chris had to do, but he knew, as Osterbridge Hawsey drank glass after glass and his book fell from his fingers, that the right moment would not be long in coming.



CHAPTER 26

The tropic coolness of the night intensified as the hours advanced. An added freshness swept out from the shore carrying its scent of flowers and earth. The feasting pirates had evidently fallen asleep over their food and empty wine mugs, for they did not return.

With a growing sense of uneasiness, Chris cautiously brought his head out from under his jade-green wing. He had had for the past hour the eerie feeling of being stared at, and he pecked at his scarlet and yellow breast feathers while sending a glance about the cabin.

He knew without having to look, where the source of his uneasiness lay. Claggett Chew had turned on his right side and fixed him with a pale, piercing, and unblinking eye. So fixed, it was, that for a heart-thudding moment Chris imagined his enemy to be dead. But after a longer pause than usual, the pale heavy lids finally blinked, though the unwavering eyes did not move from where Chris was perched, as nonchalantly as he knew how to, on the back of Osterbridge Hawsey's chair.

The intelligence behind the stare was infinitely keen and resourceful. Chris, preening himself in a difficult effort to appear what he was not, knew that if Claggett Chew had not already guessed his disguise, he was certainly more than suspicious.

Hastily, and with increasing starts of fear that sent the blood spurting through his veins, Chris cast about in his mind as to how he could distract Claggett Chew. As a parakeet, he was chained by the tough silk cord that bound his bird's foot. He glanced down. Osterbridge Hawsey's now sleeping head lolled like a child's to one side. Chris eyed the length of the coral silk cord, and then hopped lightly from the back of the chair to Osterbridge Hawsey's shoulder. A blink of his parakeet's eyes, from under their gray lids, showed him that Claggett Chew had him fixed in a penetrating and unwavering stare. In his role as parakeet, he moved sideways up Osterbridge Hawsey's shoulder, making for the shelter that the lolling head would afford to hide him from his enemy's eyes.

As he moved step by step, the parakeet made small low, raucous noises—not loud enough to awaken Osterbridge Hawsey, but enough, he hoped, to make him seem a natural creature to the man who watched him so intently. As he neared Osterbridge Hawsey's neck, seeing the ridge of collar on which he intended to perch, Chris took heart and with a last quick effort, climbed the collar to hide behind Osterbridge Hawsey's head, under the thick cluster of curls tied with what was now a ratty black bow. He was, in this precarious shelter, about to change himself into a fly, when a scraping noise froze him with fear. Looking around Osterbridge's neck he saw that Captain Chew was making desperate efforts to get out of his berth, and had not taken his eyes from the place where he had last seen the parakeet. Chris knew in that moment with what an astute and formidable enemy he was faced. Paralyzed, he remained in his green and red parakeet feathers watching the motions of the injured pirate.

Claggett Chew might be suspicious but he was also a fevered and badly wounded man. From his insecure hiding place, terrified at every sleeping movement from Osterbridge Hawsey, and even more fearful of what Claggett Chew intended, Chris stared out as purposefully as Claggett Chew had only a few moments before.



The ashen-faced man across the room in the glare of the hanging lamp heaved and pushed at the sides of the bunk, his eyes brilliant with high fever; the sweat of illness and strain glistening over his bare head and colorless face. He ground his teeth at the sudden, almost intolerable flashes of pain that gripped him when he moved his leg. Still he persevered, grasped at a corner of the bunk and pushed himself upright.

If it was possible for his white face to become paler, some last vestige of color seemed to leave it. Claggett Chew threw up an arm to catch on something to steady himself, swayed and closed his sunken eyes. His arm caught the lamp, which, rocking, threw jet shadows as jagged as its light was harsh. Claggett Chew's prominent broken nose, and the deeply grooved lines running down from it to the thin lips under his mustache, changed the cruelty of his face into a brutal mask. To Chris, he scarcely looked human. He was a picture of all that was heartless and evil. But holding to the edge of his bunk, weakened and ill though he was, the power of his will still ruled his body.

He doesn't know when he's licked, Chris thought, and not knowing—he isn't!

Then, trying to hoist himself upright, Claggett Chew began beckoning and appealing to Osterbridge Hawsey, and Chris shook at the momentary possibility that some noise or word would awaken his sleeping hiding place.

"Osterbridge! Osterbridge!" Claggett Chew cried hoarsely. "Wake up! Hear me!—Fire take your eyes!" he muttered in his rage, "can you not rouse? Osterbridge! Osterbridge!"

But after a slight shift in position, Osterbridge Hawsey slept on. Claggett Chew, his face livid with pain, blood weaving down his chin where he had bitten his lip in an attempt to stifle his groans, managed to push himself up and totter to a chair against which he leaned weakly, calling out again: "Plague your bones! Osterbridge! You sot! Help me—you sleazy fashionable!"

He started across the few feet of floor separating him from his friend, and, stooped though he was to adjust his height to the low-ceilinged cabin, nevertheless his bulk was a terrifying sight as he stumbled and staggered forward. His hairless head nearly scraped the ceiling, and his shoulders were as broad across as those of two men. His hands, white but strong and bony, twitched at the finger ends as if they were unused to idleness without hurting, or without the handle of his whip to grasp.

Two steps forward, Chris saw, was all Claggett Chew needed to show him where the parakeet had gone, snatch him up, and snuff out his life as a candleflame is pinched between finger and thumb. Chris was tearing with his beak at the silk cord on his foot, raking at it between every look he sent towards Claggett Chew. Chris knew that if the pirate touched Osterbridge Hawsey, or worse, fell, the touch or the noise would succeed in awakening the heavily sleeping fop and the parakeet, exposed, would be an easy prey for Claggett Chew.

The Captain of the Vulture, sweat rolling down his tortured face, his eyes starting from their deep-sunk sockets with the strain of keeping himself on his feet, began roaring at Osterbridge once more.

"Osterbridge! Scummy no-good! Wake! That parrot has a scar on his jaw such as I once gave a boy! Osterbridge!" he roared with a final terrible effort.

Then everything happened at once. Osterbridge Hawsey was aroused at last and sat up abruptly, heavy-headed and bleary, thickly asking: "Claggett! What a noise! Cannot a man be allowed to doze in peace? Where are your manners?"

In the same instant, Claggett Chew reached out to pluck the parakeet from behind the sheltering head and neck of "the fashionable." Chris, with a superhuman effort, changed himself to a mouse, tearing his foot from the frayed cord that held it, and leaped into the air. Simultaneously, Claggett Chew, overcome by the approaching blackness he had been fighting, crashed to the floor unconscious.



CHAPTER 27

A mouse streaked out the door of the Captain's cabin and did not stop until it reached the farther end of the Vulture, where it hid quaking behind someone's old shoe. The little creature, quieting down at last and feeling its heart regain a more familiar rhythm, sniffed distastefully at the shoe. It was plain to see, it thought, that the Vulture was an untidy, ill-cared-for ship. Old shoes were never left lying about on the Mirabelle.

The thought of the Mirabelle brought Chris's mission on the pirate ship into sharper focus. He glanced up at the sky; there was little time left in which to work safely, for Claggett Chew's sharp eyes had noticed the infinitesimal scar on his cheek and his astute brain had put two and two together. Chris wondered, with a new start of horror, if Claggett Chew could read his thoughts, and if this was why he had stared at him with such intensity.

Well, he shrugged, he knew what had to be done and if he worked quickly, and Claggett Chew's swoon lasted long enough, not even he could stop him. Looking about to make sure he was unobserved, he took his own shape again with a sigh of relief. It was almost like holding one's breath for long periods of time, to be in the shape of a bird or a mouse, but to be himself, he knew, held even greater dangers.

For the first time he opened the leather bag at his neck and felt inside. The first thing his fingers closed on he pulled out. He turned the object in his palm toward the starlight to see what it might be.

It was a folding knife in a case of tortoise shell inlaid with strange signs in silver and mother-of-pearl. Chris opened it—the blade was razor-sharp—and put it experimentally point down on the wood of the deck. As if by itself the blade revolved with immense speed, sinking in so fast that only just in time did Chris snatch it out and hold it more tightly. Trying it out he found that the blade would go through anything, sometimes so easily as to scarcely seem to cut, leaving no trace of a mark, it was so keen. At other times when he pressed on it, the blade whirled around, boring a hole as deep as might be necessary.

What a useful gadget! Chris thought.

This is just what I need and now is the time! he said to himself, and sprang up the nearest of the Vulture's three masts.

What he had to do would take long, and there was little time left that night in which to do it. For he intended slitting the lines of the rigging here and there, not so deeply that they would give way at once and be soon repaired, but so that with the first hard blow the lines would break.

Growing daylight should have warned him long before he was done, for Chris wished also to slit the sails, very slightly, when they had been unfurled and the Vulture was under way. The sound of voices broke his absorption in his task. Looking down from the top of the mainmast where he clung, Chris saw a boatload of returning sailors and realized with a start that it was nearly sunup. In a moment a rat ran down the mast to disappear into the foul-smelling hold of the pirate vessel.

How long must he wait in the hold? Chris wondered. Although he might be in the shape of a rat, it was only his outward form that had changed. He could not eat grain or refuse that was not suitable for a human, and he did not relish having to hold his own in a fight with a true rat, there in the darkness. He contemplated boring a hole in the hull of the Vulture but decided to wait until the ship was under sail. He bitterly regretted not having brought food with him, feeling hungry after his exertions about the ship. There was nothing else for it but to hide as safely as he could in his own shape.

This he did, after a thorough search in his rat form to find what seemed a safe, hidden place high at the top of a pile of the loot stolen from the merchantman. There the exhausted boy, curled closely against any sudden movement of the ship, fell into a sound sleep.

The dip and sway of a sailing ship cutting the seas, and a ravenous appetite, combined to wake Chris. For the first few moments he was confused at where he was. Little or no light seeped into the hold, and he was further troubled by having no idea how long he might have slept.

His first thought was to find food. Climbing down from his sleeping place he felt his way back to the ladder leading up to the deck. The hatch at the top of the ladder was open and through it came a long faded shaft of light and a freshening draught of air. By the quality of the light, Chris judged the time to be well along in the afternoon. He was debating with himself whether or not to change his shape and venture up to find something to eat, when on one of the lower treads of the plank ladder he caught sight of a plate of food.

Chris stood staring at it for a moment. His mouth watered, for he had not eaten in many hours and the sight of meat, bread, and fruit was almost more than he could resist. But resist it he did, for he argued in himself: If this has been put here, it must be for me. If it is for me, it may well be poisoned. I shall not be tempted, much as Claggett Chew would like me to be! He therefore left the plate of food where it was, hoping the rats would find it before long and he would have proof, through their actions, whether or not his theory was right. Then, as a shadow fell over the hatch far above his head, Chris hastily became a fly, soaring up to hit Simon Gosler on the nose.

Crawling in a leisurely fashion on the beggar's hump, he lingered long enough to see what the cripple was about. Simon was looking down the steep ladder, shading his rheumy eyes against the brilliance of the setting sun with one filthy, crooked hand. Chris, crawling nearer, could make out what the old man was muttering under his breath.

"The Cap'n, he say go down an' see, is the food et up, sez he. But 'tis a weary hard way for a pore ol' cripple to hop down thet steep ladder. I'll not do it. He's a sick and fevered man. I shall say it was et up—the rats will have got it before I get to his cabin, in any case, an' then who's to be the wiser? Besides, there's no boy on this ship. What a fancy!" he muttered. "He is an ill man, is Claggett Chew. May his bones rot! I need do no more for him than what I have a mind to, knowing as many of his misdeeds as I do. Hah!" He rubbed his hands with anticipation. "Any day, Simon Gosler could be Cap'n of the good Vulture, an he say the word to the right quarter!" His eyes, no longer hidden behind black patches, narrowed with cunning. "And in the meantime, who gets the best share of the spoils?"



The beggar broke off in a cackle of glee, rubbing his dirty gnarled hands with satisfaction, and turned away to go back to the Captain's cabin with his message.

Chris flew away in the direction of the cook's galley, where as a fly he found it easy enough to eat his fill of meat and what few good things the Vulture afforded.

Refreshed, he flew hard against the wind in order not to be blown off the ship entirely, up to the safety of a part of the rigging from where he could ponder on what he had heard, and see whatever there was to be seen.

Tahiti seemed to have been left far behind, for the Vulture was well out to sea, and no smallest cloud on the horizon gave any hint of distant land. The sailors had set the sails and a good breeze filled the black canvas of the pirate ship. The pirates themselves, still surly from having eaten and drunk too well after the fight of the day before, were quarrelsome and tired and lay about in sprawling groups on the deck far below. Looking aft, Chris saw Simon Gosler hobbling from the Captain's cabin, and Osterbridge Hawsey's graceful, overdressed figure outlined in the doorway. On an impulse, Chris flew down to hear what they were saving.

"I thank you, Gosler, for your message," Osterbridge was saying, "for Captain Chew seems much relieved to have heard it, and I think will now rest quietly and sleep. Who is it, you say, who has some knowledge of medicine—the ship's carpenter?"

Here Osterbridge Hawsey rolled his eyes upward and shrugged his expressive shoulders.

"Dear me! At least to be a sawbones, he has the saw!" he said disdainfully.

"And knows how to drive a nail into a coffin too, master," whined the beggar.

"Enough!" cried Osterbridge in sudden anger. "Fetch him at once, and tell the cook, as you pass the galley, to bring the Captain some plain hot broth! He is much fevered."

The atmosphere seemed right to Chris for all he had to do. Without Claggett Chew's commanding and forbidding presence, the pirates would be in a turmoil. Chris returned to the higher rigging to wait until darkness should be more profound.

It was not long before the tropic night fell, deeply blue in the first hours until the stars should give off their high clear light. As the Vulture rolled and pitched over the sea far down beneath him, Chris clung to the rigging and took the chance of changing himself into his own shape. Then, with all the haste he could, he moved a hundred feet above the hard decks, up the masts and along the sails, setting the new knife gently here and there to part the fibers of the cloth. As he went the lines were touched occasionally in vital spots.

It took long, for it had to be done with care. Chris scarcely made a move without looking down to see whether the sailors might not have glanced up at the dusky full-bellied sails, but they were weary after two such hard-filled days and soon fell asleep on the planks of the open deck. Only Simon Gosler hobbled in and out, watching a sailor here, stealing from another there, lifting his head slowly above the window of the Captain's cabin to spy on what went on inside. Like a dark malevolent spirit, Simon Gosler, crippled in thought and body, moved restlessly about the pirate ship.

Chris completed his task on the sails and rigging and slipped down to hide behind the third mast as he looked out to see where Simon Gosler might be. He could see him nowhere, and holding his breath, stepped over two sleeping pirates sprawled on their backs on the deck to reach the hatch of the hold. He had one last task to perform before leaving the Vulture.

The hatch top was open, laid back as before, and Chris, feeling some danger, changed to a mouse as he crouched on the top rung.

Hesitating, sniffing the fetid air of the hold, he finally ran down the ladder edge. There he sensed imminent death at its foot in time to leap as far as he could as he reached the last few rungs of the ladder. For Simon Gosler stood waiting at the bottom armed with a club, which he brought down with a splintering crash on the wooden crossbars as the mouse ran past and leapt out of sight. Curses instantly filled the hot air like so many wasps. Simon Gosler thrashed around with the club laying it about him on the floor, narrowly missing several times, and yelling at the top of his raucous lungs for companions to help him. In no time figures carrying flaming torches clattered down into the hold and Chris, his own shape regained, knew he would have to be quick as he had never been quick before.



With a flick the new knife was open in his hand and the blade pressed with all his strength against the hull of the Vulture. He was crowded into a corner as far as possible from the advancing row of torches and shouting men. Frantic rats, terrified by the flames of the torches and the reverberating noise, scampered over Chris's feet or ran up over his bending back and shoulders, but he did not move. The blade whirled in the stout wooden side of the Vulture, but it seemed no time before the flicker and wavering red of the nearest torches sent their flares over him from a distance. Chris could make out the silhouette of hunting figures as the first black trickle of sea water pierced through the side of the ship and stained the dry planks. Still the boy pushed the knife on a moment more until the water was a steady spurt, wetting his hand with its coolness. Then, as the torches sent their flames moving into the obscure corner where he had been, a fly soared up and out, over an empty metal plate and four dead rats, over the stooped screaming figure of a humpback, and a scattered line of searching men, out to the freshness of the night and the open sea.

Only Osterbridge Hawsey, curious at the torches and the shouting, looked out the cabin door in time to see a tiny boat scud past, back toward Tahiti. And only in his befuddled dreams did he puzzle over how the small craft could sail against the wind, or wonder how it could sail so well, when it seemed to be made of rope.



CHAPTER 28

Chris and Amos lay belly down in a low clump of pine scrub at the top of a precipitous rocky pinnacle. Below them in the blistering noon lay the palace walls of the Lord of the Seven Seas, Descendant of the Sun and the Moon, Overlord of the Mountains and the Plains, Prince of all the Isles, Father of Plenty, and Brilliance-Before-Which-All-Cast-Down-Their-Eyes, the Emperor of China.

The two boys were uninterested in titles. Somewhere within that city-within-a-city, inside the enormous spread of the palace walls that were surrounded in their turn by the city of Peking, lay the goal they had come so far to seek, the Jewel Tree of the Princess of China. Now, like a general planning his campaign, Chris lay looking down at the high angular walls, thinking of how he would gain entry.

On regaining the Mirabelle in a boat made from the magic rope, Chris had reappeared among his friends, "recovered" from his fever. He had given much thought to what he considered would be the last dangerous section of the journey, and after listening to what his master said through the shell, was permitted to take Amos on this stage of the voyage. It was reasoned if something happened to Chris, Amos might be able to carry out their mission by himself.

The boys had come to Peking on camel-back, a camel made from the magic rope. As Amos had never seen a real camel, he thought the rope animal quite natural, and as remarkable a creature as a real one. Chris took care to make it or disentangle it out of Amos's sight, and so many were the strange and wonderful things to be seen, that Amos had no time to concern himself over the reality of a camel.

The arid countryside was blanched by the excessive heat. Flies droned over the dates and figs that the boys pulled from their pockets to eat. Amos wriggled with excitement as he pointed out details to Chris.

"Chris! Look at that procession going in the big gate! All those pigtailed gentlemen dressed in embroidered coats. I like that blue one with butterflies on it. No, I'd sooner have the black satin one with the dragon in red and yellow!" He looked again more closely. "Or the one with the peacock in green and purple. Which would you sooner have?"

Chris paid little attention to Amos's exclamations. Leaning on his elbows and looking at the scene below, his mind worked busily on these last vital problems. But Amos was not waiting for an answer. His mind was on the present moment and the present scene, forgetful of what lay ahead of them, a few hours away. He chattered on.

"I like their funny black hats and droopy mustaches. Why don't they look like us, Chris?" he asked. And then, "Who-all's in the curtained stretcher they're carrying?"



"It's a palanquin, Amos. They carry dignitaries in them."

"Hate to be a dignitary in all this heat," Amos said, unenviously. "What are they doing now?" he enquired, and both boys parted the prickly pine needles to look out and down.

The leader of the procession rapped three times on the great gate with a gold staff. Sentinels and guards came forward, walking on the broad gate top, and after talking with the members of the procession, turned to give an order.



Gaily dressed trumpeters with dragon masks on the visors of their helmets raised long brass trumpets. A prolonged throbbing "Wai! Wo!" shuddered out, and the great outer gates of the palace, studded with pronged spikes of carved metal, swung slowly outward. Sixteen men came into sight, eight on either side, pushing wide the gates.

"Gee! Imagine the weight of those doors!" Chris murmured, and taking out his spyglass looked through it. "Golly Moses!" he exclaimed. "Take a look, Amos. Those gates are made of bronze, nearly three feet thick! And now they have the gates open, look at the depth of the walls. They're as deep through as a room!"

The waiting procession, the richly dressed courtiers and curtained palanquin, moved inside and the gates were slowly pulled close by lines of men dragging at ropes and chains to shut them. From within the main gate drifted out the sound, becoming fainter and fainter, of other trumpets sounding the order for the opening of other gates. Ten times, the boys counted, the trumpets blew, and the same "Wai! Wo!" throbbed against the sultry air.

"Lawsy me!" Amos sighed, when no more trumpets were to be heard. "Ten walls and ten gates—at the very least! 'Course we don't know—" He rolled his worried eyes toward Chris, "We don't know whether those folks got to the Emperor or not. Likely he's in behind a couple more walls, just to be on the safe side." He searched his friend's face. "How are we going past all that many guards and trumpets, Chris? Even if we could tie up a guard or two, how in the world we going to push open gates that heavy?"

Amos need not have been so concerned, for Chris had a good plan. But just at that moment the heat overcame Chris. Putting his head down on his arms, he slept.

Amos slept too, and it must have been several hours later that the rising sound of a crowd talking and laughing with excitement penetrated their sleep and brought them to consciousness. For a moment they both lay rubbing their eyes and peering out. Then they realized, by the growing crowd on either side of the palace gate and along the narrow street leading away from it, that someone of importance was about to come from the palace and parade through the streets of Peking.

"Wonder what goes on?" Chris muttered, as the crowds below swelled and grew. Boys climbed upon one another's shoulders, teakwood stools were brought for the richer people to stand on, and along the street that led away to the right around the palace walls, Chris and Amos could see embroidered silks hung from all the windows, and Chinese people in their best holiday clothes laughing excitedly. All were looking toward the gates, and at last, from far within, even more distantly than before, came the first sound of trumpets. These had a sweeter, clearer sound than those the boys had heard at noon.

"Never heard a sweeter note," Amos said. "Might be made of silver, 'way they sound."

The boys counted, and twelve times the low, lovely notes swung out on the air.

"Twelve gates!" Chris said to Amos, "And look, you were right, they are silver trumpets!"

The trumpeters atop the great outer gates were now differently dressed, and there were not two but a dozen lined along the deep palace walls. The trumpets, ten feet long, were curved, and of silver that in the sunlight dazzled the eye. As they were blown, the final gates were pushed aside.

A long procession emerged of such fantasy and variety of color that the two boys were spellbound. Elephants and camels, llamas and horses, all richly caparisoned in Eastern silks, passed along with their riders. Guards with curved swords and many-thonged whips formed a double hedge between those in the procession and the bystanders. Still others led leopards and black panthers on chains as an added protection to those they guarded. Palanquin after palanquin passed by, but still the crowd seemed to be waiting for something.



Then, as the silver trumpets continued their sweet lingering notes, a murmur arose from the crowd. Four lines of youths preceded a palanquin more finely decked than the rest, and the murmur rose. After it came four lines of Chinese girls, fanning the air with peacock fans on long staves, fans of white egret feathers, and ostrich plumes dyed a yellow gold.



"Amos!" Chris breathed, "That color! Yellow is the royal color of China!"

He did not have to elaborate his thought, for the palanquin that finally came in sight showed by its richness that it could belong only to royalty, and by its beauty and grace, only to a woman. Made of silver and rock crystal, studded with diamonds and pearls, and hung about with sheer curtains of embroidered yellow silk, the palanquin belonged without doubt to a young girl of the royal house. As it appeared under the high arch of the outer gate, a roar of joy and greeting arose from the waiting crowd and with one accord every man bowed low, covering his eyes with the wide sleeve of his left arm. The women and girls in the crowd, and those leaning from the upper stories of the houses, threw down before the palanquin objects that flashed and twinkled in the sun.

Remembering in time, for he had been so much absorbed he had momentarily forgotten it, Chris whipped out his spyglass and looked at the curtains of the palanquin. The thin silk was transparent enough under the strong focus of the glass, and behind it Chris could perceive, leaning delicately against silk cushions, a Chinese girl as beautiful as a dream. Her slightly uptilted eyes were large and dark, her skin put a magnolia flower to shame, her mouth was lifted in a charming smile, and her long exquisite fingers held a spray of jeweled flowers. All about the palanquin rained a shower of jeweled buds and petals, for no doubt a real flower was thought too inferior for the only child of the Descendant of the Sun and the Moon, Prince of all the Isles, and Lord of the Seven Seas, the Princess of China.



CHAPTER 29

Chris put down his spyglass and the two boys, hidden on the piny knoll, watched the procession out of sight.

"I'm supposed to take something from her," Chris said with his eyes sparkling, "but I know now what I'm going to give her back in return. I feel sort of sorry for that girl," he added thoughtfully.

"What're we going to do, Chris?" Amos wanted to know. "What-all comes next, and have we some more of those dates?"

Chris passed him some. "We have to wait until dusk anyway," he said, his voice abstracted, "and by the look of the light that won't be long."

The piny knoll was steep and rocky and only two adventurous boys would ever have reached the top. Too precipitous on which to build houses, it rose far above the surrounding roofs of Peking. The green and scarlet of curved tiles spread under the boys' sight like a curling sea. Before them, stretched out in long angular wings to right and left, swept the palace walls.

Listening and watching, the boys gathered by the silver trumpet notes that the Princess and her retinue had re-entered the palace walls by another gate.

Thinking about it Chris mused: I wonder if that first palanquin held someone she's to marry? It could be. And if so, this may be her last appearance to the people of the city before leaving for a new domain. She would probably take the Jewel Tree with her. I can't imagine a woman leaving a thing like that behind. He paused, remembering. She held a spray of jeweled flowers in her hand, maybe off the Tree, and I never saw anything like it. Well, can't do a thing until dusk comes down.

The evening was not long in coming, and Chris, who had been sitting cross-legged under the little crooked pines, looked across with great concern to where Amos lay on his back, dozing.

I can't take him along, Chris thought, and I can't leave him alone, if I should get caught. What in the world do I do?

Then, remembering the bag of magic "odds and ends," Chris put his hand inside it and drew out a small folded piece of silk and netting. On it a piece of paper, like a label, showed Mr. Wicker's fine script. Chris looked closer and read: "Strike 3."

"Strike 3."

Chris held the folded object in his hand, and then glanced at Amos. Amos slept. Going softly out of the pine grove to a narrow ledge of rock where he was out of sight, Chris put the object down and said: "Strike three."

Nothing happened. The object remained an object. Then, suddenly understanding, Chris struck the stone ledge three times.

At once the folded object began to unfold itself and to puff itself up like a little mushroom. In a matter of seconds, Chris could see what it was becoming, and before he could wink ten times, a balloon with a basket hanging from it, quite big enough for two boys, hung swaying in the air. Chris examined it with pleasure and then struck the ground three times again. The balloon gently collapsed and refolded itself, basket and all, into its original neat shape.



"Now, if that isn't handy!" Chris exclaimed. Then, looking at the light fading from the sky, he picked up the folded balloon and went to waken Amos.

"Amos!" he said, shaking his friend's shoulder, "it's time for me to go. Are you awake?"

Amos blinked a few times and said he thought so.

"Then listen to me," Chris told him earnestly, "and listen hard!" Amos sat up more alertly.

"I have a handy thing here which is for you to use only—do you hear? only if I don't come back."

Amos's eyes began to get brighter and he swallowed.

"Don't come back? Law! Chris, don't you leave me in this heathen country where nobody understands good English!" he cried. "Why, unless I'd steal, and Miss Becky told me never to do that—but unless I did, how could I eat in these foreign parts?"

Chris sat back on his haunches. "Well, I don't know how you could, myself. But don't you cross any bridges until you come to them. Look." He held out the folded balloon. "If I'm not back by two sunups from now—I may have to hide all during tomorrow—if I'm not back by then, put this package out beyond the trees in the clearing. That's very important. You've got that?"

"I haven't got anything but a few old dried-up fruits," Amos pouted. "That's all."

"No, Amos!" Chris gave him another rousing shake. "I mean, do you understand that much?"

Amos brightened at once and broke into a broad grin.

"Oh yes, of course. Why didn't you say so in the first place? You said, put the package out in the clear. Where's that, on this tippy-top of a hill?" Amos asked, looking about.

"The ledge near where we climbed up. That's big enough," Chris reminded him.

"Oh yes," Amos said, looking wise.

"Well," Chris took up again, "you put the package on the ledge and strike the ground three times—"

"Like this?" And before Chris could stop him, Amos had struck the earth beside him twice before Chris seized his hand in mid-air.

"Amos! Not now! I said only if you have to get away. If someone comes after you, or if I don't come back. Promise me not to strike three at all except for either of those two reasons."

Amos raised his right hand looking very solemn. "I promise," he said. "Only," he added, looking bewildered and already somewhat forlorn, "what happens when I do hit three times?"

"Why, it's a mag—it's a special kind of balloon," Chris began, after correcting what had almost been a bad slip.

"A what?" Amos stuck his head forward, trying hard to understand.

"A balloon. Oh."

Chris stopped and stared at Amos. Perhaps balloons had not yet been invented. How very confusing!

"It's something that will hold you up in the air. There's a basket for you to sit in—"

"No sir!" Amos cried, wagging his head decisively from side to side. "Me in the air over the roofs and high up? No indeedy, Chris! Not me."

Chris was becoming exasperated. He had important things to do.

"Look, Amos. If you have to use it, you'll be in such a bad fix that being up in the air will seem like the very best thing that could happen. Stop running. I'll be back—I hope."

He turned away toward the ledge and clearing.

"And now, wish me luck, and stay here and wait for me. Don't follow me now, or watch, or I might fail."

Amos jumped up from the pine-covered ground. "Oh, Chris!" he cried, his voice sharp with distress, "can't I go? You might get hurt. There's no telling what could happen if you're all alone!"

Chris was tempted to take his friend with him but someone must get the news back to the Mirabelle if he should fail. If this happened, he did not doubt but that the magic balloon would carry Amos safely to the ship.

"No," he said after a long moment. "Better not. But I'd sure like to, Amos. Now don't lose that package. It's your escape. Wish me luck."

Amos clasped his hand, and then, rushing off, dashed back again.

"Here, Chris. Our fruits. Better not to eat strange food in this foreigny place. Good luck," he added.

Chris stuffed the dried fruit in his pocket. Amos turned back into the darkening pine knoll, and Chris pushed his way out to the narrow steep ledge, hanging high above the roofs of Peking.

Chris uncoiled the magic rope from around his waist, and standing as far out on the rock ledge as he dared, in order to have the greatest possible freedom of movement, he attempted for the first time to draw an eagle in the air with the rope. It was a complicated, fast maneuver. The rope twisted and whipped in the air, and the result was a molted-looking, droop-tailed buzzard. Its wings were not wide enough, its back very insecure to look at. In short, Chris knew, it was a total failure.

He tried again, racing against the oncoming darkness, and this time he succeeded, although, when he pulled it close and straddled the body of the magic bird, his heart was in his throat that it might unfurl itself, become just a rope, and hurl him to his death far below.

But this second eagle seemed secure enough. Chris pressed his hands on the wings spread out on either side, with a jolt they flapped, and the boy's strange conveyance moved somewhat unsteadily through the air.

Chris, frightened but resolute, found that by touching the head of the bird in the direction he wanted to go, the magic eagle would turn, and after a few moments to test out his new method of travel, Chris coasted over the gaily tiled roofs as he hunted for something.



Peking at that time had many palaces. Wealthy Chinese and people of title and family owned beautiful houses set in terraced gardens surrounded by parks and ancient trees. Somewhere, Chris had heard of this and remembered it, and now in the dusk that was nearly night, the eagle carried him silently over the city as he looked for what he wanted to find.

At last the very fragrance, rising up toward him on the night air, guided him to a large palace set in gardens. Pools of water reflected the first stars among their lilypads. The shaded walks and lawns were deserted at that hour.

Swooping down and flying back and forth to make sure he would not be seen, Chris grounded the eagle, and holding fast to one wing tip in case he should have to take off in a hurry, he walked up and down, examining and searching.



CHAPTER 30

The night was too clear to suit Chris for the dangerous work that lay ahead. The eagle bore him up again from the garden, and turning back, lifted high in the air as it neared the maze of walls of the Emperor's palace.

Chris longed to fly lower but he was afraid that one of the many guards might give the alarm. The eagle flying between the palace and the moon cast a quick-racing shadow over wall and ground. The one advantage on such a clear night, Chris thought, when he could be easily spotted, was in the silence of the magic bird. He bent over to peer down between the eagle's beaked head and widespread, beating wings.

Wall after wall, palace and garden within palace and garden, he saw. Windows were lit like fireflies far below him and the series of courtyards opened themselves in seemingly endless duplication. How, he wondered, could he ever find the inner garden—well hidden, certainly—where the Princess of China walked under trees and looked at her goldfish in long clear pools? Then he remembered with a start the folded paper seized so long ago in a ship anchored on the Potomac. A cabin under a smoking lamp, the strong scent of flowers, a monkey's form, came back into his memory and he felt in the leather pouch for Claggett Chew's plan.

His fingers touched it and brought out the creased, finger-marked scrap of paper. In the moonlight he unfolded it, sitting on the eagle's back high above the walls and palaces of the Emperor of China. He found that he could follow, from his height, and check with the map, building by building and one courtyard after another. Moving cautiously forward in the air, he looked at the heavy cross-mark made by Claggett Chew the night the Mirabelle had set sail. Then, all at once beneath him, Chris made out walls ahead that seemed higher than the others. He flew over temples with gently rocking bells hung at their curled eaves, and over peaked rooftops of carved stone until, reaching a place apparently identical with the cross on the map, he dared to drop a little lower above a certain courtyard.

As he did so he saw that the guardhouses were set about on the top of the wall, which measured about ten feet from side to side. All faced outward away from the gardens they protected, hidden now in shadow.