Sir Mortimer

X

The Sea Wraith, an ancient ship, gray and patched of sail, battered and worn with a name for all disaster, sailed the Spanish seas as though she bore a charmed life—and her crew that was the refuse of land and sea, used to license, to whom mutiny was no uglier a word than another, kept the terms of an iron discipline—and her Captain waked and slept as one aware of when to wake and when to sleep.

There was fever between the decks; there was fever in black hearts; of dark nights a corposant burned now at this masthead, now at that. Mariner and soldier knew the story of the shadowy figure keeping company with the stars there above them on the poop-royal. Did he keep company only with the stars and with the boy, his familiar? The sick, tossing from side to side, raved out curses, and the well saw many omens. Dissatisfaction, never far from their unstayed minds, crept at times very near, and superstition sat always amongst them. But they reckoned with a Captain stronger for this voyage than had been Francis Drake or John Hawkins, and stranger than any under whom they had ever sailed. He was so still a man that they knew not how to take him, but beneath his eyes vain imaginings and half-formed conspiracies withered like burnt paper. He called upon neither God nor devil, but his voice blew like an icy wind upon the heat of disloyal intents, and like the white fire that touched now stem, now stern, so his will held the ship, driving it like a leaf towards the mainland and the fortress of Nueva Cordoba.

The ship that seemed so aged and disgraced yet had a strength of sinew which made her formidable. All things had been patiently cared for by the man who, selling his patrimony, had labored against wind and tide to the end that he might carry forth with him such an armament as scarce had been the Cygnet's own. Tier on tier rose the Sea Wraith's ordnance; she carried warlike stores of all sorts that might serve for battle by sea or land. If his money could not buy such men as stood ready to ship with Drake and Hawkins, yet in his wild, sin-stained crew he had purchased experience, the maddest bravery, and a lust of Spanish gold that might not be easily sated. The qualities of a captain over men he himself supplied.

In his confidence neither before nor after their sailing, yet the two hundred men of the Sea Wraith guessed well his destination, but for themselves preferred the island towns—Santiago and Santo Domingo in Hispaniola. There were wealth and wine and women, there the fringing islets where booty might be hidden, and there the deep caves where foregathered many small craft misnamed piratical. "Lord! the Sea Wraith would soon make herself Admiral of that brood, leading them forth from those hidden places to pounce upon Santo Domingo, that was the seat of government and as wealthy a place as any in the Indies!—the Sea Wraith and her Captain, that was a good Captain and a tall!—ay, ay, that would they maintain despite all land talk—a good Captain and a tall, 'spite of Dick Carpenter's dream—"

"What was Dick Carpenter's dream?" asked the Captain, seated, sword in hand and hat on head, before a deputation from the forecastle.

The speaker fidgeted, then out came the clumsy taunt, the carpenter's dream. "Why, sir, he dreamed he saw the women of the islands, sitting by the shores, a-sifting gold-dust and a-weighing of pearls;—and then he dreamed that he looked along the sea-floor, leagues and leagues to the south'ard, until he saw the very roots of the mainland, and the great fish swimming in and out. And a many and a many dead men were there, drawn into ranks, very strange to see, for their swollen flesh yet hung to their bones, and they beckoned and laughed; and Captain Robert Baldry, that was once, on a Guinea voyage, Dick Carpenter's Captain, he laughed the loudest and beckoned the fastest. And, Sir Mortimer Ferne, an it please you, we've no longing to follow that beckoning."

"Thou dog!" said the Captain, with no change of mien. "Presently Dick Carpenter and thou shall have food for dreams—bad dreams, bad dreams, man! Thou fool, have I set thee quaking who, forsooth, would mutiny! Begone, the whole of ye, and sail the whole of ye wheresoever I list to go!"

Seeing that the Sea Wraith obeyed him still, her crew believed yet more devoutly that a secret voice spoke in his ear and a dark hand gave him aid. It was later, when he began to feed them gold, that they who owned caps threw them up for him, and they whose brains had only nature's thatching shouted for him as for a demigod. A Spanish squadron bound for The Havannah was met by a hurricane, several of its ships lost, and the remainder widely separated. The hurricane past, forth from an island harbor stole the Sea Wraith that so many storms had beleaguered. Gray as with eld, lonely as the ark, a haggard ship manned by outcasts, she spread her vampire wings and flitted from her enshadowed anchorage. An hour later, like a vampire still, she hooked herself to a gay galleon and sucked from it life that was cheap and gold that was dear; then descrying other sails, she left that ruined hulk for a long and fierce struggle with a Portuguese carrack. The battle waxed so fell that the carrack also might have been worked by men who had all to win and naught to lose, and captained by one who bared his brow to the thunder-stone.

Like harpies they fought, but when night came there was only the Sea Wraith scudding to the south, and that pied crew of hers knocking at the stars with the knowledge that ever and always their judgment (even though he asked it not) jumped with the Captain's, and that before them lay the gilded cities and the chances of Pizarro. It was of his subtlety that the Captain never used to them fair promises, spake not once a sennight of gold, never bragged to them of what must be. Oh! a subtle captain, whose very strangeness was his best lieutenant upon that eldritch, nine-lived ship, through days and days of monstrous luck. "Baldry's luck," quoth the mariner who had sailed with the Star, then held his breath and looked askance at his present Captain, who, however, could never have heard him up there on the poop-deck! Natheless that night the man was ordered forward, and finding Sir Mortimer Ferne sitting alone, save for the boy, in the great cabin, was bidden to talk of Robert Baldry. "Speak freely, Carpenter,—freely! Why, thou art one of his friends, and I another, and we go, somewhat at our peril, to hale him from perdition! Why, thou thyself saw him beckoning to us to hasten and do our friendly part! So praise thy old Captain to me with all thy might. We'll fill an empty hour with stories of his valor!" He put forth his hand and turned the hour-glass, and the carpenter began to stammer and make excuses, which no whit availed him.

At last, one afternoon, they came to Margarita, and, the ship needing water, they entered a placid bight, where a strip of dazzling sand lay between the rippling surf and a heavy wood, but found beforehand with them a small bark from the mainland, her crew ashore filling barrels from a limpid spring, and her master and a Franciscan friar eating fruit upon her tiny poop. The dozen on land showed their heels; the worthless bark was taken, a party with calivers landed to complete the filling of the abandoned casks, and the master and the friar brought before the Captain of the Sea Wraith where he sat beneath a great tree, tasting the air of the land. An insatiable gatherer of Spanish news, it was his custom to search for what crumbs of knowledge his captives might possess, but hitherto the yield, pressed together, had not made even a small cake of enlightenment. He was prepared to have shortly done with the two who now stood before him. The seaman cringed, expecting torture, furtively watching for some indication of what the Englishman wished him to say. A fellow new to these parts and ignorant, he would have sworn a highway to El Dorado itself if that was the point towards which his inquisitor's quiet, unemphatic questions tended; but he knew not, and his lies fell dead before the grave eyes of the man beneath the tree. At last he was tossed aside like a squeezed sponge and the Franciscan beckoned forward, who, being of sturdier make, twisted his thumbs in his rope girdle and prepared to present a blank countenance to those queries of armaments and treasure which an enemy to Spain would naturally make. But the Englishman asked strange questions; so general that they seemed to encompass the mainland from Tres Puntas to Nombre de Dios, and so particular that it was even as if he were interested in the friar himself, his order, and his wanderings from town to town, the sights that he had seen and the people whom he had known. The questions seemed harmless as mother's milk, but the friar was shrewd; moreover, in his youth had been driven to New Spain by flaming zeal for the conversion of countless souls. That fire had burned low, but by its dying light he knew that this man, who was young and yet so still, whose lowered voice was but as sheathed steel, whose eyes it was not comfortable to meet, had set his hand to a plough that should drive a straight furrow, was sending his will like an arrow to no uncertain mark. But what was the mark the Franciscan could not discover, therefore he gave the truth or a lie where seemed him best, increasingly the truth, as it increasingly appeared that lies would not serve. He also, seeing that with gathering years he had begun to set value upon flesh and bone, wished to please his captor. He glanced stealthily at the scarred and ancient craft in the windless harborage, idly flapping her mended sails, before he said aught of the great English ships that in pomp and the fulness of pride had entered these waters now months agone. The Englishman had heard of this adventure—so much was evident—but details would seem to have escaped him. He knew, however, that there had been first victory and then defeat, and he too looked at his ship and at the guns she carried.

"The town was sacked, but the castle not taken," he said. "What, good brother, if I should break a lance in these same lists?"

"It would be broken indeed," said the friar, grimly. "An it please you, I will bear your challenge to Don Juan de Mendez."

"To Don Luiz de Guardiola," said the man beneath the tree.

"Pardon, señor, but Juan de Mendez is at present Governor of Nueva Cordoba. Don Luiz de Guardiola has been transferred to Panama."

The Englishman arose and looked out to sea, his hand above his eyes because of the flash and sparkle of the sun upon the water. The Franciscan, having told the truth, wondered forthwith if falsehood had better served his turn. Face and form of his interlocutor were turned from him, but he saw upon the hot, white sand the shadow of a twitching hand. Moments passed before the shadow was still; then said the Englishman, in a changed voice:

"Since you know of its governors, old and new, I judge you to be of Nueva Cordoba. So you may inform me of certain matters."

"You mistake, señor, you mistake," began the Franciscan, somewhat hastily. "The master of the bark will bear witness that I came to Margarita upon the Santa Maria, sailing directly from Cartagena, but that, being ill, I chose to recover myself at Pampatar before proceeding (as you now behold me, valorous señor) to Hispaniola, and thence by the first vessel home to Spain, to the convent of my order at Segovia, which is my native town. I know naught of Nueva Cordoba beyond that which I have told you."

"Why, I believe thee," answered the Englishman, his back still turned. "You go from Cartagena, where, Franciscan and Dominican, you play so large a part in this world's affairs, to your order at Segovia, which is an inland town, and doubtless hath no great knowledge of these outlandish parts. Your tongue will tire with telling of wonders."

"Why, that is true," answered the other. "One lives not fifteen years in these parts to carry away but a handful of marvels." Relieved by the easiness of his examination and the courtesy of his captor, he even smiled and ventured upon a small pleasantry. "You cannot take from me, redoubtable señor, that which my eyes have seen and my ears have heard."

Ferne wheeled. "Give me the letter which you bear from your superior at Cartagena to the head of your order at Segovia."

As he recoiled, the Franciscan's hand went involuntarily to the breast of his gown, and then fell again to his side. The Captain of the Sea Wraith whistled, and several of the mariners, who were now rolling the water-casks down the little beach to the waiting boats, came at his call. "Seize him," ordered the Captain. "Robin, take from him the packet he carries."

When he had from the boy's hand a small, silk-enwrapped packet, and had given orders for the guarding of the two prisoners, he turned and strode alone into the woods, which stretched almost to the water's edge. It was as though he had plunged into a green cavern far below the sea. In slow waves, to and fro, swayed the firmament of palms; lower, flowering lianas, jewel-colored, idle as weeds of the sea, ran in tangles and gaudy mazes from tree to tree. He sat himself down in the green gloom, broke seal, unwrapped the silk, and read the letter, which he had acutely guessed could not fail of being sent by so responsible a hand as the friar's from one dignitary of the order to another. Much stateliness of Latin greeting, commendation of the returning missionary, mention of a slight present of a golden dish wrought in alacrity and joy by Indian converts; lastly, and with some minuteness, the gossip, political and ecclesiastical, of the past twelfth month. The sinking of the Spanish ships and the sacking of the town of Nueva Cordoba by English pirates, together with their final defeat, were touched upon; but more was made of the yield to the Church of heretic souls, in all of whom Satan stood fast. The Holy Office had delivered them to the secular arm, and the letter closed with a circumstantial account of a great auto-de-fé in the square of Cartagena. Without the wood, upon the edge of white sand, the men of the Sea Wraith waited for their Captain. At last he came, so quiet of mien and voice that only Robin-a-dale stared, caught his breath, and gazed hard upon an ashen face.

Ferne's orders were of the curtest: Begone, every man of them, to the Sea Wraith, and lie at anchor waiting for the morning. For himself, he should spend the night ashore; they might leave for him the cockboat, and with the first light he would come aboard. The two prisoners,—place them in the ransacked bark and let them go whither they would or could. He glanced in their direction, then turning sharply, crossed the sand to stand for a moment beside the Franciscan.

"Prithee, thou brown-robed fellow, how looked he in a sanbenito—that tall, fierce, black-bearded Captain that your Provincial mentions here?" The parchment rustled in his hand.

The friar quailed before the narrowed eyes; then, the old flame in him leaping up, he answered, boldly enough, "It became him well, señor,—well as it becomes every enemy to Spain and the Church!"

The other slightly laughed. "Why, go thy ways for a man of courage! but go quickly, while as yet in all this steadfast world I find no fault save with myself."

He stood to watch the embarkment of the mariners, who, if they wondered at this latest command, had learned at least to wonder in silence. But Robin-a-dale hung back, made protest. "Go!" said his master, whereupon Robin went indeed—not to the awaiting boat, but with a defiant cry end a rush across the sloping sand into the thick wood. The green depths which received him were so labyrinthine, so filled with secret places wherein to hide, that an hour's search might not dislodge him. The sometime Captain of the Cygnet let pass his wilfulness, signed to the boats to push off, awaited in silence the fulfilment of all his commands; then turning, rounded the eastern point of the tiny bay, and was lost to sight in the shadows of the now late afternoon.

The sun went down behind the lofty trees; the brief dusk passed, and the little beach showed faintly beneath the stars, great and small, of a moonless night. Above the western horizon clouds arose and the lightning constantly flashed, but there was no thunder, and only the sound of the low surf upon the shore. Robin, creeping from the wood, saw the Sea Wraith at anchor, and by the distant lightning the bark from Pampatar drifting far away without sail or rudder. Rounding the crescent of gleaming sand, he lost the Sea Wraith and the bark, but found whom he sought. Finding him, he made no sign, but sat himself down in the lee of a sand-dune, and with a memory swept clear of later prayers, presently began in a frightened whisper to say his

"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—"

Half-way down the pallid beach stood Ferne, visible enough even by the starlight, now and then completely shown by one strong lightning flash. His doublet was thrown aside, his right arm advanced, his hand grasping the hilt of his drawn sword. But the sword point was lowered, his breast bared; he stood like one who awaits, who invites, the last thrust, in mortal surrender to an invisible foe. The lines of the figure expressed a certain weariness and suspense, as of one who would that all was over, and who finds the victor strangely tardy. The face, seen by the occasional lightning flash, was a little raised, a little expectant.

Robin-a-dale, seeing and comprehending, buried his head in his arms and with his fingers dug into the sand. Now and then he looked up, but always there was the pallid slope of the beach, the intermittent break of the surf that was like the inflection of a voice low and far away, the stars and the groups of stars, strange, strange after those of home, the lightning from the western heavens, the duellist awaiting with lowered point the coming of that antagonist who had so fiercely lived, so fiercely died, so fiercely hated that to the reeling brain of his challenger it well might seem that Death, now holding the door between betrayed and betrayer might not prevail.

The boy's heart was a stone within him, and he saw not why God allowed much that went on beneath His throne. A long time he endured, half prone upon the sand, hating the sound of the surf, hating the flash of the lightning; but at last, when a great part of the night had passed, he arose and went towards his master. The shadow of the dune disguised the slightness of his form, and his foot struck with some violence against a shell. The lightning flashed, and he saw Ferne's waiting face.

"Master, master!" he cried. "'Tis only Robin,—not him! not him! Master—"

Stumbling over the sand, he fell beside the man whose soul cried in vain unto Robert Baldry to return and claim his vengeance, and wrenched at the hand that seemed to have grown to the sword-hilt. "You are not kind!" he wailed. "Oh, let me have it!"

"Kind!" echoed Ferne, slowly. "In this sick universe there is no kindness—no, nor never was! There is the space between rack and torch." In the flashing of the lightning he loosed his rigid clasp, and the sword, clanking against the scabbard, fell upon the sand. The lightning widened into a sheet of pale violet and the surf broke with a deeper voice. "Canst thou not find me, O mine enemy?" cried Ferne, aloud.

Presently, the boy yet clinging to him, he sank down beside him on the sand. "Sleep, boy; sleep," he said. "Now I know that the gulf is fixed indeed, and that they lie who say the ghost returns."

"It is near the dawning," said the boy. "Do you rest, master, and I will watch."

"Nay," answered the other. "I have pictures to look upon.... Well, well, lay thy head upon the sand and dream of a merry world, and I myself will close my eyes. An he will, he may take me sleeping."

Robin slept and dreamed of Ferne House and the horns of the hunters. At last the horns came so loudly over the hills that he awakened, to find himself lying alone on the sand in a great and solemn flush of dawn. He started up with a beating heart; but there, coming towards him from a bath in the misty sea, was his master, dressed, and with his sword again in its sheath. As he made closer approach, the strengthening dawn showed the distinction of form and countenance. To the latter had returned the stillness and the worn beauty of yesterday, before the bark from Pampatar had brought news. The head was bared, and the light fell curiously upon the short and waving hair, imparting to it, as it seemed, some quality of its own. Robin, beholding, stumbled to his feet, staring and trembling.

"Why dost thou shake so?" asked the Captain of the Sea Wraith. "And thou art as white as is the sand! God forfend that the fever be on thee!"

More nearly the old voice of before these evil days of low, stern utterance! More nearly the old, kindly touch! Robin-a-dale, suddenly emboldened, caught at hand and arm and burst into a passionate outcry, a frenzy of entreaty. "Home! home! may we not go home now? They're all dead—Captain Robert Baldry and Ralph Walter and all! And you meant no harm by them—O Jesu! you meant no harm! There's gold in the hold of the Sea Wraith for to buy back Ferne House, and now that you've won, and won again from the Spaniard, the Queen will not be angry any more! And Sir John and Sir Philip and Master Arden will bid us welcome, and men will come to stare at the Sea Wraith that has fought so many battles! Master, master, let us home to Ferne House, where, at sunset, in the garden, you and the lady walked! Master—"

His voice failed. Sir Mortimer loosed the fingers that yet clung to his arm. "When I am king of these parts, thou shalt be my jester," he said. "Come! for it's up sail and far away this morning,—far away as Panama. I am thirsty. We'll drink of the spring and then begone."

When they had rounded once more the wooded point they saw the Sea Wraith, and drawn up upon the sand its cockboat. The sun had risen, so that now when they entered the forest there was ample light by which to find out the slowly welling spring, so limpid in its basin as to serve for mirror to the forest creatures who drank therefrom. All the tenants of the forest were awake. They hooted and chattered, screamed and sang. Orange and green and red, the cockatoos flashed through the air, or perched upon great boughs beside parasitic blooms as gaudy as themselves. Giant palms rustled; monkeys slid down the swinging lianas, to climb again with haste, chattering wildly at human intrusion; butterflies fluttered aside; the spotted snake glided to its deeper haunts. Suddenly, in the distance, a wild beast roared, and when the thunder ceased there was a mad increase of the lesser voices. Sound was everywhere, but no sweetness; only the mockery, gibing, and laughter of an unseen multitude. From the topmost palm frond to the overcolored fungi patching the black earth arrogant Beauty ruled, but to the weary eyes that looked upon her she was become an evil queen. Better one blade of English grass, better one song of the lark, than the gardens of Persephone!

Ferne, kneeling beside the spring, stooped to drink. Clear as that fountain above which Narcissus leaned, the water gave him back each lineament of the man who, accepting his own earthly defeat, had yet gathered all the powers of his being to the task of overmastering that bitter Fate into whose hands he had delivered, bound, both friend and foe; the man for whom, now that he knew what he knew, now that the fierce victrix had borne away her prey, was left but that remaining purpose, that darker thread which since yesterday's snapping of its fellow strands had grown strong with the strength of all. Before the water could touch his lips he also saw the mark one night had set upon him, and drew back with a slight start from his image in the pool; then, after a moment, bent again and drank his fill.

When Robin-a-dale had also quenched his thirst the two left the forest, and together dragged the cockboat down the sand and launched it over the gentle surf. Ferne rowed slowly, with a mind that was not for Robin, nor the glory of the tropic morning, nor the shock of yesterday, nor the night's despair. He looked ahead, devising means to an end, and his brows were yet bent in thought when the boat touched the Sea Wraith's side.

As much a statesman of the sea as Drake himself, he knew how to gild authority and hold it high, so that they beneath might take indeed the golden bubble for the sun that warmed them. He kept state upon the Sea Wraith as upon the Cygnet, though of necessity it was worn with a difference. For him now, as then, music played while he sat at table in the great cabin, alone, or with his rude lieutenants, in a silence seldom broken. Now, as he stepped upon deck, there was a flourish of trumpets, together with the usual salute from mariners and soldiers drawn up to receive him. But their eyes stared and their lips seemed dry, and when he called to him the master who had fought with Barbary pirates for half a lifetime, the master trembled somewhat as he came.

It was the hour for morning prayer, and the Sea Wraith lacked not her chaplain, a man honeycombed with disease and secret sin. The singing to a hidden God swelled so loud that it rang in the ears of the sick below, tossing, tossing, muttering and murmuring, though it pierced not the senses of them who lay still, who lay very, very still. The hymn ended, the chaplain began to read, but the gray-haired Captain stopped him with a gesture. "Not that," he commanded. "Read me a psalm of vengeance, Sir Demas,—a psalm of righteous vengeance!"

---

Back | Next | Contents