THE STORM
We heard the _Walrus_ before we had sight of her--the slatting of a
head-sail, a rattling block, a vague creak of cordage. Then an
impression of a mighty shadow, a towering spiderweb of spars and lacy
rigging, stealing ghost-like from the enshrouding dark.
She floated nearer. Nearer still. And nearer. It seemed that the
two vessels must collide, and the suspense became unbearable. I
wondered at my great-uncle’s restraint. Would he never--I gasped
with relief as his cool, even tones clove the silence.
“Touch off, Coupeau.”
Crash! The deck leaped underfoot; the anchored hull surged forward.
A red sheet of flame girdled the _James’_ side, and in the instant’s
glare the _Walrus_ was revealed in stark detail against a setting of
glittering, black water and low, forested shores. I saw a man in her
foretop, aimlessly balancing a grenade. I saw men staring curiously
from the gunports as our broadside smashed into them. I had a
glimpse of the brutal face of Bones, peering over the bulwarks, a
cutlass in his teeth.
The darkness returned, and a multitude of echoes dinned back and
forth across the inlet. There was a rending and cracking of timbers,
with such screams as I never hope to hear again, the screams of
wicked men who face an unexpected death, oaths and blasphemy and
piteous appeals, all blended into one terrible, heart-searching whole.
My great-uncle’s level voice dominated the confusion as easily as it
had the silence.
“Cut your cable, Saunders!”
Flint’s bellow answered from the _Walrus_.
“Give it to ’em, ye cowardly swabs! Stand to your guns!”
The red tongues of the _Walrus’_ guns licked out at us; the
staggering roar of their discharging smote the night. The fabric of
the _Royal James_ quivered and shook as the iron hail lashed into
her. A moaning and screeching rose from waist, fo’csle and gundeck:
“Oh, God!”
“My leg! My leg!”
“It hurts! Sweet Christ, how it----”
“They’re out! My guts are a-runnin’ out!”
“Where’s my arm? Oh, God, where’s my arm?”
But a third time my great-uncle mastered the uproar.
“Make sail, Martin!”
Coupeau had reloaded his guns, and the _James_ fired a second
broadside with the same crushing unanimity as before. The _Walrus_
receded as if our fire had had the effect of physically repelling her
from us. Clouds of smoke came between the ships, and I perceived
that we were benefiting from the severing of the anchor-cable. The
ebb tide was already sweeping us down the Anchorage toward the open
sea.
The _Walrus_ shot off another ragged broadside, which for the most
part splashed water or scattered mud, and then settled to a pegging
chase, the Long Toms on her fo’csle barking fitfully as they tossed
the twelve-pound shot athwart our decks. Our guns were silent. Our
gundeck spewed forth men, whom Martin hustled to the yards to shake
out every sail to catch the errant wind that veered gustily from
southeast to southwest.
Colonel O’Donnell waved his fist at my great-uncle.
“What madness will have taken ye now, Murray?” he cried. “There was
the grand chance ye had to finish the rascals once and for all. Are
ye feared of them that ye turn tail--you that ha’ struck first blow;
aye, and second, too?”
“Not at all, sir,” rejoined my great-uncle. “Having struck first
blow and second blow, as you so aptly phrase it, I am of a mind to
strike also the _coup de grace_. And this with as trifling damage to
my own vessel as is possible.”
“Man, you’ll never have another such chance as that ye just cast
away,” mourned the Irishman.
“For a soldier, _chevalier_, you reveal astonishing lack of
judgment,” returned my great-uncle. “Had I remained to finish
conclusions with Captain Flint in the narrow space of the anchorage I
might conceivably have gained the victory, but it must have been by
means of subordinating brains to brawn, and with loss in proportion
thereto. I prefer to force him to sea, where, by maneuvering and
proper strategy, I can secure the same object at a half or a third of
the cost.”
“’Tis all the same,” retorted O’Donnell. “If ye sink him, ye lose
his treasure.”
“Quite true,” assented Murray. “But what would you say to driving
him ashore, eh?”
What O’Donnell would have answered to this I know not; for there was
a sudden drumming of feet on the deck, and Moira cast herself into
his arms.
“Oh, _padre_,” she cried tearfully, “and are ye safe from the cannon?
I waked in my bed with their roaring, and it came over me we were on
the _Santissima Trinidad_ once more, and poor Señor Nunez, the
apothecary, groaning from his death-wound--and him that was looking
forward to the quiet end of his days in the little house by Alcantara!
“And then I was thinking ’twas all a horrid dream. But the cannon
blatted again, and the ship trembled, and there was a shriek at my
very door. So out I ran in my shift, and Diomede the blackamoor was
lying in his blood on the cabin floor, and Ben Gunn beside him
a-praying. And with that I put on me enough clothing for decency’s
sake, and came to find ye, for my four bones are clattering with
fear, and that’s Heaven’s truth!”
O’Donnell drew her close.
“There, there, acushla,” he said with a tenderness he had only for
her. “The worst will be over. There’s naught for ye to fear.”
She reached up and stroked his face.
“Troth, and I was thinking that same if I could but come at you,
_padre_,” says she. “But ’tis terrible fearsome to be sleeping by
your lone self, and awake in the midst of a sea-fight.”
Her father swore under his breath.
“Ah, ’tis I was the weak, foolish fellow to drag you into such a
venture! There’ll come a day I must answer----”
She stopped his mouth with her hand.
“As if I’d be anywhere else than just here!”
I turned my head, not wishing to be prying into their affairs, and a
quarter-mile astern I saw a jet of flame and heard the smacking
report of one of the _Walrus’_ chase-guns.
Moira said something more that I did not hear, and he interrupted her.
“Get ye below, my maid until we----”
There was a harsh, whistling sound in the air, and the hairs on one
side of my head rose up, and on the heels of this came the thud of a
shot as it struck timber.
“Close, egad!” commented my great-uncle.
O’Donnell swayed strangely and drooped over his daughter’s shoulder.
“_Padre!_” The dazed grief in her voice was tragical. “Why won’t ye
stand? Are ye hit? Oh, blessed Virgin, there’s no sense left in
him! Bob, Master Peter, help me! He’s so--so--heavy.”
Peter and I jumped to aid her, and Murray was not far behind us. We
lowered O’Donnell’s tall body to the deck, and I ran for a lanthorn.
When I returned with it my great-uncle had assumed command of the
situation.
“We can feel no blood or broken bones,” he said. “Hold your light
here by his head, if you please, Robert.”
The yellow glow played over the Irishman’s long face. His lips were
drawn back in what had been a smile; his eyes were fixed and glassy;
no pulse beat in his corded throat. Moira crouched beside him,
chafing his limp hands and crooning a medley of endearments in
English, Irish and Spanish. Murray, opposite her, thrust exploring
fingers into the bosom of her father’s shirt. A startled look
appeared in my great-uncle’s lambent eyes, but his features preserved
their immobility.
“’Tis useless to cry to him, lass,” he said gently. “He doth not
answer, you see.”
“But he will!” she protested. “Sure, ye must soon be finding what is
wrong with him, sir. It may be a sup of brandy would bring him
round.”
My great-uncle reached across and plucked from her grasp the hand she
had been rubbing.
“Come,” he said, rising, “we will ask Peter to carry him to his
berth, shall we?”
“But--but--we must bring him to!”
“We can not bring him to,” he answered kindly.
She stood up, bewildered.
“Not--bring--him--to? But why?”
“Because his heart no longer beats,” said my great-uncle. “Quick!
Catch her, Robert.”
She lay like a tired child in my arms.
“Dead!” she murmured faintly.
“He can not be dead!” I exclaimed. “There’s not a wound on him.”
“_Neen_,” said Peter.
He picked up the lanthorn from where I had dropped it on the deck and
directed the light upon the upper part of Colonel O’Donnell’s head.
A blue bruise like a scar was spread across the Irishman’s left
temple.
“A graze-shot,” pronounced Peter. “Der cannonball came dot close.
_Ja_!”
“But the skin is not even broken,” I objected.
“_Ja_, but dot don’t matter.”
Murray bent over and fingered the bruise.
“Peter is right,” he said. “’Twas the concussion affected the brain.
I have heard of such a freak shot, but never seen it happen before.”
Moira clung to my arms.
“And he is really dead? The _padre_ is really dead? And he
unshriven, without a comfort of the Church! Oh, holy saints, be his
advocates! Sure, was there ever a crueler end?”
She collapsed in a passion of weeping.
“Conduct her below, Robert,” said my great-uncle. “We will follow
you.”
She suffered me to lead her from the poop without objection, more
like a child than ever, sobbing and protesting and repeating the same
things over and over again, in an abandonment of grief which only the
Irish can attain.
“’Tis you are the kind friend,” she stammered when we had reached her
stateroom, “And oh, Bob, I have the sore need of you, I that am an
orphan in a pirate ship. Troth, I haven’t a friend in the wide world
unless it be you and Master Corlaer. But I am the bad, selfish girl
to be thinking of my own plight, and the father that loved me this
moment gone up to Peter’s Gate, and him without the holy wafer to his
lips or so much as a prayer said over him. Ah, what ill deed did we
do, either one of us, that he should be taken from me so, without a
word of parting? The sisters were always after saying we must
reconcile ourselves to God’s mercy, but ’tis little mercy has been
shown to me.”
I quieted her at last, brought her a swallow of brandy and induced
her to lie down.
“I mustn’t be crying the way I will have done,” she apologized,
gulping her sobs. “Himself will be needing all the prayers I can
say, and a boiling of candles, too. Do you go on, Bob--only promise
you’ll not leave me by my lone if there’s more fighting. I could
never stand to hear the thundering of the cannon
after--after--that--and no one by to bid me take heart o’ grace.”
The gray dawnlight was seeping through the stern windows when I
rejoined my great-uncle and Peter in the main cabin. Peter was as
placid as ever, puffing industriously at a long clay pipe; but my
relative displayed more concern than I remembered to have observed in
him at any time in the past.
“I trust you were able to calm the poor lass?” he greeted me. “Stap
me, what a sorry business! I’d never have chosen O’Donnell for a
traveling companion, but without him I know not what to do. The
whole venture----”
He shook his head and stared out the window beside him, clicking the
lid of his snuffbox open and shut.
“But we have first to attend to the _Walrus_,” he added presently.
“I shall do so with the less reluctance after that last shot. The
cursed luck of it! A beaten enemy’s blow in the dark, blindfolded,
by gad! And to think it must strike down of all men the one most
essential to my schemes. I could-- Well, well, no matter! We must
triumph over the unexpected. ’Tis the chasm all great leaders must
cross to win the final victory.”
I found myself somehow instinctively hostile to his attitude.
“What have you done with Colonel O’Donnell?” I asked coldly.
“Peter carried him to his stateroom. We will give him decent burial
when we return to the island. And perhaps some day we can come for
him in state with a squadron of King’s ships and bear him home to a
grave in the land he was exiled from.”
My great-uncle’s spirits brightened noticeably as he contemplated the
picture his words presented.
“Yes, yes,” he murmured half to himself. “What O’Donnell could have
done surely I can do. Our friends in Avignon will help. And Robert!”
He turned to me.
“Ah, my boy, this unfortunate incident is my best justification for
pressing you in my cause. What should I do without you and Peter?
’Twill be for you two, with Mistress Moira, to establish our
connections with the king’s agents in France.”
“You seem to forget I am no Jacobite,” I answered unpleasantly.
“Tut, tut, you shall be as stout a Jacobite as Prince Charles
himself.”
“Not I!”
He smiled.
“We’ll leave that to Mistress Moira.”
“Maybe you forget der _Walrus_,” interposed Peter.
“Not so, Peter. I shall dispose of the _Walrus_ within the next few
hours.”
“Andt _Gott_,” added Peter as if Murray had not spoken.
My great-uncle laughed merrily.
“My dear Peter, men of judgment will inform you that there is no
God--or, if we concede a God, there is every reason to assign a
superior degree of power to the inevitable Devil representing the
opposing virtue of godliness. Indeed, did I incline to bow down
before any superhuman authority I should elect Satan by preference.
But a ripe experience has inclined me to the view that the Devil is
as much a figment of men’s imaginations as God. Since the beginning
of recorded time a priestly caste-- But here we are drifting into a
philosophical discussion; and as you very properly reminded me, the
_Walrus_ awaits our attention. Let us go on deck.”
“Der wise man don’t know eferyt’ing,” answered Peter. “_Neen_!”
“Essentially true,” agreed my great-uncle. “I must confess myself
ignorant of such staple points as why we are here, the excuse for
human existence, the relative significance of this world of ours, the
utility of the differing qualities of goodness and evil. But any
serious consideration, friend Peter, must convince as profound a
thinker as yourself that the very existence of men and women is of
itself prima-facie evidence that there can be no Divine Author of
omnipotent or sentient powers.”
“We better go on deck,” said Peter.
“After you,” protested my relative as we rose. “’Tis a pleasure to
debate with you, Peter. Take care, pray! Gunn has not removed all
of the evidence of Diomede’s passing. Strange, is it not, how a
black fellow like Diomede and a man who hath been the confidant of
princes like O’Donnell should both be abolished by a simple organic
disruption? That alone, Peter, should suffice to disprove the humbug
of an all-wise Providence. An all-wise Providence, forsooth! Here
am I, arranging to reconstruct for the better a most unhappy trio of
kingdoms, with consequences bound to improve the well-being of the
entire world, and my plan is suffered to be placed in jeopardy by an
ignorant sailor’s blind shot in the dark! What could be more absurd?”
Peter did not answer him, and we passed out upon the maindeck, where
sailors were busy removing the traces of the _Walrus’_ first
broadside which had wrought a certain amount of minor damage and
caused the deaths of several men. ’Twas now light enough to see
about us, but the light was of a quality I had never known before--a
hard, coppery glare, with the sun obscured from view. The sea was
quite flat, and the wind continued intermittent, veering from
one-quarter of the south to the other. Spy-glass Island lay to
larboard, its contour amazingly distinct--as if it were bitten into
the frame of steel-blue sea and dully shimmering sky that encompassed
it. The _Walrus_, like the _James_, had cleared Captain Kidd’s
Anchorage, and was running due north before the wind betwixt us and
the islet called Skeleton Island.
Murray bent a shrewd eye aloft and hailed Martin.
“How is it you carry no sail on the mizzen?” he demanded.
“Account o’ that there last ---- ---- ---- shot, cap’n,” answered the
mate, tugging his forelock. “If ye look to it ye’ll see as how a
---- ---- twelve-pounder bored into her.”
We all followed his pointing finger to a gouge beneath the mizzen
yard. The shot that had grazed Colonel O’Donnell’s head had done
more than graze the mizzen. The mast was whittled away to a depth of
several inches as cleanly as if a giant’s ax had chopped into it.
My great-uncle took snuff very slowly.
“What luck! What luck!” he muttered.
And then louder:
“’Twas an expensive shot for us, gadzooks! Well, Martin, we must
fish the mast at our earliest opportunity, but we can make shift to
corner Flint without it. The _Walrus_ is foul and heavy in the
water. The _James_ can sail circles round her in this wind.”
There was a worried look in Martin’s weather-beaten face.
“Askin’ your pardon, sir, I don’t like this ---- ---- wind. We’re in
for a ---- of a storm or I’m a ---- ---- ---- lubber.”
My great-uncle shrugged his shoulders.
“Storm or no storm, Martin, the _Walrus_ carries nigh four hundred
thousand pounds.”
“Aye, sir; and by your favor, best sink her and be done wi’ it and
run for shelter.”
“Sink her! Man, we’d lose the treasure.”
“Better lose the _Walrus’_ treasure than go down ourselves,” insisted
Martin doggedly. “Have it your own way, sir, but I’m a ---- ----
---- if it ain’t fixin’ to blow up one o’ these here tarrible
Caribbee storms as pluck the hairs outn your head.”
Murray regarded the four quarters of the sky for several moments.
“With your prognostications I find no quarrel, Martin,” he said
finally; “but I believe we have ample time to head the _Walrus_.
Flint dares not run south because he knows the hornet’s nest we have
stirred up in those seas. My purpose is to box him in and force him
to beach. If this wind continues we should bring him to book on the
north coast of the island, and so soon as the _Walrus_ has taken
ground we will wear and beat in for the North Inlet. Doth that
satisfy you?”
The mate hesitated.
“You be cap’n, sir. But if ’twas my say we’d head back in to the
Anchorage, _Walrus_ or no _Walrus_.”
My great-uncle stiffened.
“’Tis impossible,” he replied haughtily. “However, we will bear up
for the _Walrus_, and you may bid Coupeau to see what harm he can
contrive against her with his chase-guns.”
Martin saluted and went for’ard. My great-uncle led us to the poop.
“Your old sailor is eke much of an old woman into the bargain,” he
remarked perfunctorily, climbing the sta’b’d ladder ahead of me.
“Let him but sniff the approach of a tempest, and he is all for the
nearest haven--aye, the hardiest buccaneer no less than the
law-abiding merchantman.”
“O’Donnell was right, it seems, when he advised you to finish the
task you had begun in the inlet,” I snapped, none too pleased,
myself, with the outlook.
“In that case, my dear nephew, a half of us must have perished,”
retorted my relative. “You have had some experience of these wolves
of ours when their lusts are roused. No, no; I am no milk-and-water
fighter, but I prefer to batter my enemy safely at long range rather
than give him an equal opportunity to tear my throat.”
Peter grunted.
“You said?” Murray inquired courteously.
“_Neen_, I saidt not’ings. But I t’ink--I t’ink it is all right if
you get der _Walrus_ and yourself come safe. If you don’t do bot’ it
don’t matter if you do der odder; _neen_.”
My great-uncle raised his prospect-glass.
“You have ably stated one of the primary rules of success in any
branch of warfare, friend Peter,” he said. “Captain Flint is making
better going of it than I had expected. Apparently by some
perversity of our continuing ill-luck he hath a more constant wind
close under the island than we out here. Ah! I hear Coupeau’s bark.”
A cloud of smoke rolled aft as the long eighteen on the la’b’d side
of the _James’_ fo’csle boomed. The shot dashed up a fountain of water
a few feet ahead of the _Walrus_, which was now running neck and neck
with us. Flint replied with one of his long twelves, but the shot
fell short, and he edged away as much as he dared, which was very
little, for Murray had seen to it that he had bare sailing-room. Our
chase-gun barked again, and this time the round shot ricocheted from
the water’s surface and slapped into the _Walrus’_ hull.
“Neat,” commented my great-uncle; “but what we require is a fair hit
on a spar.”
Coupeau realized as much, as was evidenced by his next two shots
going high and striking the water beyond the target. But I was
distracted from watching his efforts, for at the fifth discharge
Moira O’Donnell crept up the poop ladder, her eyes wide with
misgiving.
“Troth, yourself promised only a few minutes since you’d not leave me
by my lone was there more fighting, Bob,” she reproached me.
“’Tis no fight,” I answered.
“Aye, we do but seek to drive yonder knaves ashore,” Murray assured
her. “They can not reach us at this distance.”
She surveyed the scene with a doubting eye and was constrained to
credit us.
“But why is the light so strange?” she demanded. “’Tis as if the
door of a cookstove was ajar.”
“We are in for bad weather, sweet,” replied my great-uncle. “You
must go below.”
But she shrank away from him and clutched firmly an arm of Peter and
me, each.
“No, no, I’ll not be going down there again,” she cried. “On the
inside of a door I can think of naught but the sorrow that is come
upon me. I’ll stay up here in the open.”
“Certes, this will be no safe place in a storm,” I urged.
But she clung the tighter to us.
“I’ll not go down. I’d sooner be taken by the pirates than go down.
Down there the noises of the water and the ship will be like the
crying of the banshee in the Green Room where grandfather died. No,
no! In the cabin there is only death, and the light is dim, and the
noises will be whispering at my elbow the livelong time. I’ll have
none of it! Sure, I care not what danger there is, if I can stay up
here and meet it in the open.”
“We let you stay,” said Peter soothingly. “_Ja_, we better let der
little gal stay, Murray. Bob andt I, we take care of her.”
“That will we,” I endorsed him.
My great-uncle eyed me a thought quizzically.
“You are, it seems, subject to change of opinion, Robert,” he
remarked. “By all means let Moira remain with us. I daresay she’ll
be none the worse for a wetting.”
But the storm held off throughout our morning-long chase down the
east coast of the island and then out to sea to herd the _Walrus_ in
from the north. Coupeau hulled the miserable craft again and again,
and shot away her foretopmast; but she steadily clawed offshore and
made desperate attempts to steal ahead of us and win a clear path
before the wind, and when, toward noon, the breeze died completely
the positions of the two vessels were practically the same as they
had been from the beginning of the cat-and-mouse game that Murray
played.
The _Royal James_, by nimbler handling, had gained in the last hour,
and was more than a cannon-shot to the north-west of the _Walrus_,
with the northernmost of the island’s chain of hills--the one the
pirates called the Foremast Hill--almost due southeast of us. If the
wind sprang up again in anything like the same quarter the _Walrus_
was fast in Murray’s trap. She would have the choice of two
alternatives: She could stand on and fight, with the practical
certainty of destruction for all hands, or she could drive ashore, in
which case the crew might take to the woods, with every prospect of
eluding pursuit, unless Murray made a determined effort to comb the
island’s craggy recesses. After the long-range battering they had
received all morning, on top of the hammering in the action in the
dark, there was not much doubt that the _Walrus’_ disorderly crew
would take the decision into their own hands and choose the latter as
offering a fair chance of life, no matter how circumscribed.
The helmsman had just turned the hour-glass, which lay beside the
compass in the hooded box in front of the steering-wheel, when a
shout came from Martin, who was half-way up the main-rigging,
sweeping the horizon with a glass. My great-uncle had been pondering
the desirability of getting out the boats and undertaking to tow the
_James_ within range of the long eighteens, and he called back--
“Is it wind?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” roared Martin--and there was no mildness now in the
old fellow’s tones. “There’s the ---- ----est blow o’ wind as ever
came out o’ the ---- ---- bowels o’ the sky or I’m a ---- ---- swab
as ever was.”
He tumbled from the ratlines and ran aft to the break of the poop,
his face lifted earnestly in appeal.
“Best let me lay an ax to the mizzen, sir,” he called.
My great-uncle took snuff, calmly deliberate.
“Curb your fears, Martin,” he answered. “I have weathered a lifetime
of gales in the _Royal James_. Take in sail, of course; but if we
sacrificed a mast needlessly ’twould cripple us for weeks. Where
away is this wind?”
Martin waved an arm across the northwestern arc of the horizon.
“Look for yourself, cap’n. I be an old man, and I never seed the
like.”
Murray’s reply was to swarm up the mizzen rigging with the uncanny
agility of which he was capable, and I climbed after him. We were
some fifty feet above the deck when we saw clearly with the naked eye
a vast purple canopy arching forward across the northern sky, a thing
of splendidly colorful intensity, savagely beautiful. Jagged streaks
of lightning flashed forth from its mirky depths. A tattered fringe
of storm-clouds whipped out ahead of it like the tentacles of some
monstrous sea-creature. And it advanced at an incredible speed,
covering miles of sea and sky in the few moments that we watched it.
My great-uncle’s jaw squared grimly.
“’Tis too late to sacrifice the mizzen,” he said. “We’d not have
time to clear the wreckage.”
His commands rang through the ship.
“Aloft, topmen! Strip her to a storm-jib! Hola, Coupeau!
Double-lash your chase-guns and be certain the broadside batteries
are secured and the ports closed. Batten all hatches, Saunders!”
’Twas as much as I could do to keep pace with him as he descended to
the poop.
“Fetch a coil of light rope, Robert,” he ordered briefly. “We shall
all require to be lashed fast.”
“Shall I carry Moira below?” I asked.
He hesitated.
“No, she will have a better chance----”
He checked himself.
“Let her bide on deck. Here we can aid her at need. Haste, boy! We
must have the rope before the wind strikes us.”
I slid down a stay to the maindeck and dug the rope out of a chest of
spare gear which was bolted to the cabin bulkhead. My great-uncle’s
last words had impressed me even more than the spectacle of that
baleful curtain across the northern sky; and I was thrilled, too, by
the tense celerity with which the entire crew leaped to the task of
preparing the ship to meet the tempest. There was almost no noise--a
few shouts of command and hails of acknowledgment; but every man
worked as if his life depended upon it. When the jib-sheet fouled
Martin slashed it free with his knife, and the sail came down with a
run. By the time I had regained the poop the upper spars already
were bare.
Murray was standing with Moira and Peter beside the helmsman, and
while they stared, fascinated, at the oncoming storm, his eyes were
upon the _Walrus_.
“Flint must be sober,” he said bitterly. “He is taking in sail.
Stap me, what a fit end to a luckless day! In the hollow of my hand,
and now-- Aye, ’twould be all ways fitting did he escape, whilst
we----”
A snarling moan, as of great winds tortured and confused, came to us
from the belly of the storm. The sky darkened. A gust of air,
sulfurous and warm, ruffled my hair. The moan became a howl, a
clamor.
My great-uncle snatched the clasp-knife from the belt of the
helmsman, a splay-footed Easterling, whose flat, gap-toothed face had
remained impassive during all the excitement since Martin’s warning
shout had announced the storm’s approach.
“Give me that rope, Robert,” he exclaimed. “I am a fool to stand
talking. Here, Peter!”
He flung the Dutchman a length of it.
“Bind Mistress Moira to those ringbolts--and best knot her to
yourself as well. She’ll not be able to stand alone. Aid me with
this fellow here, Robert. We must tie him to the wheel.”
One of the clouds in advance of the storm curtain reached out over us
with a crackle of lightning-bolts and spatter of rain, and our
fingers flew as we secured first the helmsman and then ourselves.
The voice of the tempest was become a sullen, animal roar, riven at
intervals by the crash of the thunder. And the immense curtain of
its front overhung the _James_, impenetrably sooty at the base,
opaquely purple as it toppled forward. The _Walrus_ was a specter
ship to leeward, and disappeared in the gloom as I watched.
“Oh, holy Mother!” gasped Moira. “’Twill be the end of all things.”
And so it seemed. The _Walrus_ was gone. The northern coast of the
island dimmed and vanished. For an instant the peak of Foremast Hill
hung in the upper air. Then that, too, was blotted out. The purple
twilight deepened. Rain sheeted down from clouds scarce higher than
our mast-heads. A lurid glare of lightning flickered and was
quenched in the sea. And the wind smote us with a mad howl of
exultation, sucking up into its embrace everything that was not
fastened to the deck.
The _James_ shuddered under the blow, bearing down by the head and
heeling to starboard. My great-uncle and I were pushed forward on
our faces. The helmsman was doubled over the wheel. Peter bent to
cover Moira, crouching above her on hands and knees.
Presently the ship righted herself; but as she neared an even keel
there was a prolonged _craa-aa-ack!_ of breaking wood, and the
wounded mizzenmast went by the board, crushing a score of men in its
fall and brushing as many more through the hole it stove in the
starboard bulwarks.
A wail of agony pierced thinly the tumult of the storm, and the
_James_ was jarred from end to end as the big spar, with all its
litter of yards and top-hamper, lunged at the hull like a
trip-hammer, its dead weight dragging us broadside on into the path
of the waves which followed the wind’s first irresistible rush.
Steep walls of water dropped on us from as high as the mainyard,
thudding hollow on poop and fo’csle. Giant combers crowded so fast
that we choked beneath their deluge. The waist was a lather of
creamy seas that wrenched and battered at hatchcoamings and bulwarks.
Murray staggered to his feet and set his lips to my ear.
“Must--cut--free--mizzen--breach--hull----”
So much I understood, and assisted him to slash the rope which bound
us to the deck. Peter saw what we were up to and loosed himself,
taking care in his deliberate fashion to strengthen Moira’s lashings.
Then the three of us fought our way down into the hell-reek of the
waist, where small boats and water-butts and dead men swirled fore
and aft in a torrent of pounding seas.
There were axes in the box from which I had procured the rope, and we
equipped ourselves with them, waded thigh deep through the tangle of
water and wreckage and attacked the maze of stays and rigging that
united the dangling mizzenmast to the ship. Not a man helped us.
There was not a living man in sight aft of the mainmast, and it was
as much as a man’s life was worth to try to work aft of that point,
for on the one side there was a wide breach in the bulwarks through
which the waves poured, and opposite was the gap the mizzenmast had
crushed. Whoever crossed the deck there must have been carried
overboard, one way or the other.
Where we were we had some slight shelter from the poop, but ’twas
sufficiently hazardous in all conscience. I can see my great-uncle
still, in his black silk coat and breeches, all adrip with the salt
water as he labored with the energy of a man of half his age, always
swift to perceive the strategic center of the tangle, always first to
wade into the tricky web of cordage where a misstep meant a plunge
overside.
Twice Peter rescued him from certain death, and once the Dutchman
saved me when a mountainous sea curled down upon us over the _James’_
bulwarks and was like to have carried me off in its passing. And it
was Peter whose brute strength and cool-headedness made the most of
my great-uncle’s agility of wit, and hewed and hacked the mizzenmast
from its moorings. Aye, and none too soon; for when we clambered
back on the poop Moira met us with hands clasped in terror and
pointed to leeward where a rocky headland loomed through the gray
rain.
Murray gave it one look and leaped for the wheel. The Easterling was
bent over in the odd, huddled posture he had assumed from the moment
the storm hit us, and he lolled sidewise as my great-uncle grasped
his shoulder, his body all askew from the small of his back upward.
He made no response, and slipped lower in the coils of rope that
bound him to his post; his gnarled fingers slid off the spokes; his
feet went out from under him.
“His back is broken,” shouted my great-uncle.
The _James_ had begun to gather headway; but as the wheel was
released from the dead helmsman’s grip her head fell off, and she
dropped sluggishly into the trough of the seas which surged over the
shattered waist, and one green hill of water burst squarely on the
poop, hurling us to the deck. Peter recovered his footing before
either Murray or I, shoved the Easterling’s body aside and gripped
the wheel in his own hands. Slowly, the buoyancy all out of her, the
_Royal James_ swung around in response to the rudder’s thrust and
lumbered off before the wind.
The headland Moira had sighted faded into the mist; but my
great-uncle shook his head sadly.
“We are making water,” he shouted to me; “and the island is to
leeward. We scarce can weather it, and if we do----”
A faint hail reached us from the fo’csle.
“Land----”
And a rent in the storm-clouds showed a second and lower headland
fair over our larboard bow.
Peter started to put the helm down to enable us to bear off as much
as possible and have whatever chance there was of clearing it; but
Murray caught his arm.
“No, no, Peter!” cried my great-uncle. “Head up! Head up! ’Tis the
North Inlet! If we can pass in to sta’b’d of that spit we are safe.”
“_Ja_,” squeaked Peter, and his iron muscles forced the rudder over
until it neutralized the drive of the wind and sea; and foot by foot
the _Royal James_ made her southing, passed the east spit with half a
cable’s length to spare and opened a narrow, bottle-shaped roadstead,
with tree-clad shores that offered protection from any storm that
blew.
The rain was still pelting down. The surf was foaming on the outer
beaches; the wind whistled shrilly in the rigging. But to us that
prospect was the fairest ever seen. Moira sank to her knees in
prayer beside the dead pirate. My great-uncle stepped to the rail
and bade the survivors of the crew get sufficient sail on the ship to
give us steerage way. And I--I tried to shake Peter. He blinked at
me solemnly.
“I t’ink _Gott_ spoke out loudt to der tdefil today, Bob,” he said.
“_Ja_!”