DISASTER
Another less self-assured than Andrew Murray must have been dismayed
by the series of misfortunes which had beset him. We were safe, but
no more. The _Royal James_ was taking in water so rapidly ’twas
necessary to beach her on the mud-flats at the south end of the
inlet. She leaked like a sieve where the mizzenmast had thumped her
side, and her upper works were in splinters. In the fight with the
_Walrus_ and the storm we had lost eighty-odd men, but more serious
than this were the deaths of the two mates. Martin’s body was found
near the stump of the mizzen; he had been struck down by the mast he
so distrusted. Nothing was ever seen of Saunders, and we could only
suppose that he had been swept overboard.
The crew were apathetic and sullen, inclined to be mutinous and
resentful of my great-uncle’s authority. For the first time they had
reason to question his omnipotence, and it required a full display of
his ruthless temper to reduce them to subjection--an accomplishment
to which he was aided considerably by Coupeau, and I am free to
admit, by Peter and me, who could not afford to risk the brutal
license which would certainly follow a successful revolt of the
gundeck’s polyglot horde. The former galley slave was a redoubtable
ally with the nine-tailed cat, and a bruiser whose fists were as
deadly sure as the long eighteens he handled so deftly.
The rain and wind ceased with the approach of darkness, and my
great-uncle had the men mustered under the poop, many of them still
bleeding from the punishment they had received. And of all his feats
I deem that the most remarkable: To face, practically unaided, upward
of a hundred and fifty men, who had just been curbed in the act of
mutiny, without even sufficient light to enable him to exploit the
compelling gleam of his tawny eyes. He beat them down--and held them
down--by sheer power of will and utter fearlessness.
“You stand upon the deck of a wrecked ship,” he said bleakly. “Under
hatches lies sufficient treasure to make every one of you comfortable
for life, to buy you dissipation or place or fortune, whichever you
prefer. One man can lead you to repair the ship and conduct you
where the treasure will be of use to you.
“I am that man. Without me you are doomed to spend your days chasing
the goats on those hills; and if there is any repetition of the
disorder exhibited today I shall maroon all of you save a number
required to handle the ship.
“Get to work. Before you rest I expect the maindeck to be cleared
and stagings rigged overside for resheathing and calking.”
He drove them until midnight, then sent them reeling to their
hammocks.
In the morning a systematic plan of occupation was arranged. By
Coupeau’s advice a handful of the more amenable of the crew--mostly
negroes, Portuguese, Italians and Frenchmen of the south--were
organized as an after-guard, and the remainder were divided into
squads headed by men selected for skill at some special trade. One
squad were to overhaul the sails and cut and sew from spare canvas a
suit for the new mizzen, which a second squad were to hew on the
slopes of Spyglass Mountain and transport to the ship. A third squad
were to repair all exterior damage to the hull; a fourth were to
recalk the started seams; a fifth were to attend to whatever internal
repairs were necessary.
Coupeau was placed in charge of the work aboardship, and the rest of
us carried Colonel O’Donnell’s body to the top of a small hill east
of the head of the inlet. There, in the midst of a grove of pines,
we laid him to rest. ’Twas a noble situation for a wanderer who had
never reached his goal, with the clashing boughs and the distant
thunder of the surf to sound a requiem until the end of time and a
view over green meadows and dwarf woodlands to the white rim of the
beach and the blue sea, shining in the sun.
Yesterday seemed years past. I blinked my eyes, looking from the
peaceful garb of nature to Moira’s slim body huddled in prayer beside
the mound of raw earth amongst the pine needles. On the edge of the
grove the men who had dug the grave were playing a gambling game with
the pine-cones. Peter leaned on a musket, gravely compassionate. My
great-uncle, his eyes puckered in thought, was staring out to sea.
As I watched, he twitched my coat sleeve and drew me to one side.
“I shall leave you to amuse yourself as you choose for the remainder
of the day,” he said. “’Tis for you and Peter to safeguard the maid.
I must ascertain, if possible, what hath become of Flint.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then?” His eyebrows arched in surprise. “Why, then, Robert, we
shall continue as we have done hitherto.”
“You must pursue this insane scheme?”
He was as patient with me as if I were a fractious child.
“’Tis no ‘insane scheme,’ but a coup of high politics of fascinating
import, my boy. I own to disappointment it doth not appeal to you
more readily. What? Shall we cry quits, simply because of
shipwreck? And after every move hath turned as we plotted it should!”
I shook my head hopelessly, but decided to try again.
“Bethink you,” I argued, “the longboat can speedily be made weather
tight. In her we might reach----”
“Put it from your mind,” he interrupted with a hint of iron in his
voice. “You little know me, Robert, if you reckon me one to turn
back from what I have begun--in especial, this matter which
consummates the ambition of my life.”
“But we----”
This time the iron was uppermost.
“Boy, you are essential to my plans. Much as I love you, I-- But
we’ll not talk on that plane. I am none for threats. Let it suffice
that you are not to mention the subject again.”
He wheeled around and left me, and with his escort of tarry-breeks
strung out behind him was soon buried in the undergrowth on the lower
flanks of the hill.
The sun was past meridian when Peter and I induced Moira to abandon
the unmarked mound, and to divert her mind we led her on a tramp to
the shoulders of the Spyglass, where a score of the _James’_ men
already had felled a giant fir and were lopping the branches from the
trunk preparatory to removing the bark. In the forest near by we
killed a mess of birds, and Peter skilfully broiled them over an open
fire, and after that, since she professed to enjoy the silence of the
mountainside, we pressed on, beyond hearing of the ringing ax-blades,
and finally came to the foot of the steep pinnacle of rock which was
the lens of the Spyglass.
Here we would have halted, but Moira had heard the story of the watch
the pirates maintained from the summit, and she insisted on
completing the ascent, despite the lateness of the hour. And we,
because we were for doing anything that would please her that day and
relieve her grief, consented.
It was more difficult than it looked, and the sun was low in the west
when we reached the platform at the top, stained and blackened by the
beacon fires that had burned there. But the view was glorious. The
island was spread out beneath us like a map on a table, from the
Foremast Hill on our left all the way southward along the rocky spine
of the west coast to Mizzenmast Hill and a cape to the west of that
which old Martin had called Haulbowline Head. Eastward the irregular
shore ran north and south to the indentation of Captain Kidd’s
Anchorage, the tree growth matted and thick except for several
savannas midway of the island and the silvery loops of two or three
small rivers.
We identified the masts of the _James_, rising above the headwaters
of the North Inlet, and the opening in the trees north and east of
Captain Kidd’s Anchorage that was the site of the fort Flint had
built. And then Moira cried out:
“Oh, blessed saints, will that be a ship? Do but see, Bob! Peter!”
She pointed eastward; and there, sure enough, was a ship, or rather,
the tops’ls of a ship barely lifting over the horizon’s rim. If it
had not been for the fact that the sun’s rays were striking level
across the ocean floor, and so were reflected from the sheen of the
canvas, we should never have seen it, not even with a glass.
“Aye, ’tis a ship,” I said.
“_Ja_,” nodded Peter. “It is Flint.”
Moira shivered.
“Troth, and who would it be else?” she demanded. “There’ll be no
friends of us come a-calling, I’m thinking.”
“It might be a King’s ship--” I began.
“No, then,” she denied, “if this island is gone all these years
without the King’s ships finding track of it, ’tis not like they will
come upon it sudden in this moment.”
“’Tis a ship indeed,” I agreed unwillingly. “Aye, a full-rigged
ship.”
“_Ja_, a ship like Flint’s,” said Peter.
We were silent for an instant, the three of us, dazed by the
suddenness with which our whole outlook on the future had been
changed by this unexpected loom of tops’ls leagues away.
“He must have weathered the storm,” I said foolishly.
“And now the red fighting will begin all over again,” cried Moira.
“My soul, will there not have been deaths enough for this treasure?
Every piece of it must be specked with men’s blood.”
“We better tell Murray,” said Peter, moving toward the lip of the
rock platform.
“But how could Flint be back so soon?” I protested. “’Tis
impossible, Peter. He could not----”
“He could, _ja_,” returned the Dutchman imperturbably. “Der storm
was by in two glasses--andt der ship is yet maybe ten leagues off,
_neen_?”
We descended the Spyglass in silence. Twilight overtook us in the
forest at its base, and we were obliged to retrace our course with
extreme caution, so that eight bells rang from the _Royal James_--so
exact was the restored discipline on that stranded hulk--as we
stepped from the trees on to the shore of the North Inlet and hailed
for a boat.
My great-uncle met us at the gangway, immaculate in plum satin coat
and blue plush breeches, white silk stockings and black pumps,
silver-buckled, his hair neatly tied with a black silk ribbon.
“Well, well,” he greeted us, “you have made a long day of it. I
trust you are not overtired, sweet?”
This to Moira.
“I have delayed sitting to dinner in hopes that you would be here.
You can see--” he waved an all-inclusive hand--“that we have not been
idle aboard the _James_. We begin to look like a ship again, eh?
Did you by chance see the new mizzen?”
“You better come to der cabin,” said Peter abruptly.
“I beg your pardon?” answered Murray.
“We have something to tell you,” I said. “It can not wait.”
His eyes plumbed mine, and I think he knew in that instant what our
news was. He clicked open his snuff-box and dusted a pinch
delicately into his nostrils.
“So?” he murmured. “Sets the wind in that quarter!”
And he offered Moira his arm with the fine, stately dignity he
achieved to perfection, and led the way aft to the main cabin.
“You may place the viands upon the table, Gunn,” he said to the
steward when we were seated. “We will serve ourselves.”
He turned to Moira.
“I recommend this fish. ’Tis fresh-caught, and Scipio--” the
remaining blackamoor--“is a master at such dishes; he hath stuffed
it, you see, with greens he procured from the woods.”
“We have scant time to eat, let alone to admire our food,” I
interposed roughly. “From the peak of the Spyglass at sunset we
sighted the tops’ls of a ship in the east.”
“I presume that you believe her to be the _Walrus_?” he returned.
“_Ja_,” said Peter. “It is Flint.”
“My faith, and who else would it?” asked Moira.
“Doubtless you are right,” he assented. “Indeed, I do not question
it. Our examination of the northern and eastern beaches today failed
to disclose a trace of evidence to indicate what had become of the
_Walrus_, and had she sunk some wreckage must have washed ashore.
Yes, yes, my friends, our ill-luck is still with us. Flint rode out
the storm. But that, Robert, is no reason why we should not secure
the maximum of satisfaction from this tasty meal--all the more
particularly so when we consider ’tis like to be the last for some
days we shall eat in such comfortable surroundings.”
“You take it coolly!” I exclaimed.
“And why not? ’Tis a disaster, I grant you, yet irritation will not
aid me to redress it.”
“You don’t stay here, _neen_?” said Peter.
“Quite right, friend Peter. The _Royal James_ in her present plight
would be a death-trap. I shall abandon her tonight and shift to the
fort Flint was so obliging as to construct for us by the anchorage.”
“And the treasure?” I asked.
He held up his wineglass to the light and studied it reflectively.
“Obviously, we must be where the treasure is,” he returned at length.
“Or, if you please, put it the other way round: The treasure must be
where we are. I foresee a busy night for our people.”
Moira thrust out appealing hands toward him.
“Oh, sir, why won’t ye just be after calling out to this ship when
she comes and bid them take what they will and go? Sure, that would
be better than----”
“Tut, tut,” he rebuked her. “A part of this treasure is to
supplement the eight hundred thousand pounds intended for your
father’s friends--and they, my lass, are King James’ friends. You
are a good Jacobite, I trust, and would not see our Cause deprived of
a single doubloon that might buy muskets in Lyons or swordblades in
Breda?”
“Ah, ’tis little enough I feel for King James or any of them that
will have sent the _padre_ to his doom!” she cried. “And what is a
Jacobite or a Hanoverian, or what worth King George or King James,
that you must be murdering and slaying and he that was a good man and
kind--when he wasn’t in liquor--should lie in heathen ground?”
She leaped up, quivering with passion lashed aflame.
“Jacobite! The toe of my boot to the word and them that use it!
Little enough hath it meant to me but poverty and exile and the death
of her that bore me and now--and now--the _padre_--and now----”
She fled from the cabin in tears, and her stateroom door slammed
after her.
“Poor lass! Poor lass!” sighed my great-uncle. “It hath been a
trying day for her. We must be lenient.”
“You should be down on your knees, beseeching her forgiveness, you
who wantonly dragged her into this danger!” I snarled at him.
“‘Wantonly,’ Robert?” he objected mildly. “Certes, you should know
better by now. My reasons were of the best, my motives of the
highest.”
He rang the silver bell in front of him, and when Gunn appeared
said----
“Send Coupeau to me.”
Then he turned to me again----
“You, of all persons, Robert, have least cause to censure me for
Mistress O’Donnell’s presence.”
“I have most!” I retorted hotly. “I am so unfortunate as to be
related to you, and therefor must be in some measure a sharer of the
obloquy attached to your deeds.”
He wagged his head sadly.
“Words! What rash, unreasoning words will not youth sponsor in its
blind prejudices! Peter, I appeal to you: Doth not my grandnephew
lie in my debt for my conduct in arranging for him the opportunity to
squire our little Irish maid?”
Peter drained a glass of brandy.
“You better not say any more, Murray,” he grunted. “_Neen_! Maybe
you say too much.”
“I had supposed myself the model of diplomacy,” protested my
great-uncle.
Peter’s little eyes twinkled behind their protective rolls of fat.
“_Ja_, you been pretty smart, Murray. But der smart feller, he has
to look oudt or he gets too smart. _Ja_! Andt when he gets too
smart he is in trouble.”
Coupeau’s hideous mask of a face showed in the companionway entrance.
“_Oui, m’sieu_?” he growled.
“Ah, Coupeau,” answered Murray. “A strange sail approaches the
island, perhaps Flint, perhaps another. To us it matters not. We
must entrench ourselves ashore. The treasure and sufficient stores
for two weeks’ sojourn will be shifted to the stockaded fort on the
hill north of Captain Kidd’s anchorage. The men must work all night
again if necessary. Do you understand?”
“_Oui, m’sieu_,” replied the gunner.
“That is well. You will rout them out at once.”
“_Oui, m’sieu_.”
And Coupeau clumped off down the companionway. A moment later his
hoarse voice split the quiet of the ship as he commenced to bark his
orders.
“A stout fellow, Coupeau,” commented my great-uncle. “I have never
regretted the salvaging of him. But perhaps it would be as well if
we went on deck and lent him moral support.”
As a matter of fact, there was less disposition than we anticipated
on the part of the crew to object to this new labor. And the reason
was not far to seek. The transfer of the treasure to the fort by the
Anchorage furnished them an opportunity to establish an intimacy of
contact with it they had not known previously, an intimacy alluring,
stimulating, discomposing. True, they already had transferred the
entire cargo of the _Santissima Trinidad_ once, had removed the half
of it from the _Royal James_ to the Dead Man’s Chest, and only two
days since had broken out the remainder for division with the
_Walrus_.
But that was very different from shifting the squat, weighty, little
chests and kegs and the canvas-jacketed bars overland in the
darkness, along brush-paths dimly illuminated by occasional lanthorns
and torches, into a corner of the log block-house which was the
citadel of Flint’s ramshackle fort--very different, too, from the
realization that the treasure’s well-nigh fabulous wealth was outside
the charmed hull of the _Royal James_, where Murray’s personality and
the arbitrary divisions of rank and intellect had reared an
insuperable barrier betwixt it and themselves, lying instead in a
promiscuous heap without a door to guard it, where any one of them
could gloat over its bright mysteries.
Peter and I, with Moira and Ben Gunn and Scipio, followed the main
column of the evacuation about midnight. Coupeau had led the first
contingent, some of whom we met returning to the ship, to fetch a
second load of stores. My great-uncle was to come after us with
these and the remainder of the crew, leaving behind on the _Royal
James_ only some twenty-odd men who had not yet recovered
sufficiently from wounds received in the two actions with the
_Santissima Trinidad_ and the _Walrus_ to permit of their removal,
and who were made as comfortable as possible on the gundeck.
I noted uneasily that the groups who passed us were talking eagerly
amongst themselves, with no appearance of the surliness to be
expected normally from any sailors put to extra work, although they
fell silent as soon as they saw who we were.
“They have never been drinking,” I muttered to Peter.
“_Neen_,” he answered. “But they get drunk on der treasure.”
“Do but see how it is a fell curse upon all who touch it,” said
Moira. “Ah, blessed Virgin, that it were all in the depths of the
ground where God first planted it!”
Our misgivings were justified when we toiled up the sandy slopes of
the hill upon which the stockade was built. The glare of an immense
bonfire showed through the trees, and rude voices were chanting that
sinister sea-song which had been my introduction to the pirate
brotherhood:
“Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
I had never heard it sung by the _James’_ crew before.
As we approached the palisades we descried through the openings a
score or two of them, comical in their broad pantaloons, their belts
bristling with cutlasses and pistols, prancing around the fire like
Mohicans dancing a scalp.
They paid no attention to us, and we crossed the cleared area inside
to the door of the blockhouse, where Coupeau lounged against the log
wall.
“_M’sieu le capitaine_ ees com’?” he inquired.
I told him yes.
“Ees com’ queeck?” he insisted.
I shrugged my shoulders to this, and he grunted.
“Maybe so we mak’---- com’ at those rrrrascal,” he suggested.
“Have they had any rum?” I asked suspiciously.
“Non. They have zee fire--and they see much trrreasure.”
He paused.
“Maybe so you com’,” he said, and without waiting for us to answer,
strode alone toward the fire.
I shoved Moira inside the blockhouse, and Peter and I started after
him. I made to draw a pistol, but Peter caught my arm.
“_Neen_,” he said. “We do this wit’ our fists andt our voice,
Bob--or we don’t do it at all.”
Such were Coupeau’s tactics--but he relied mostly upon his fists. He
waded into the dancers, smiting right and left, and Peter and I came
behind him. Several men reached for their cutlasses, but these we
got to before they had time to draw steel. In the middle of the row
Murray’s voice flashed out from the shadows like a sword, and our
opponents cowered away.
“’Sdeath,” he drawled. “Will you fellows think to take advantage of
me because I turn my back upon you for an hour or two?”
He came forward into the circle of light.
“I warned you no longer ago than last night,” he went on icily. “It
should have been sufficient. Coupeau!”
“_Oui, m’sieu_.”
“Who began the trouble this time?”
The gunner fastened his awful visage upon the whitening faces of the
group of trouble-makers.
“That man.”
He pointed.
“Heem. Heem. Heem. Heem.”
“Very good,” said my great-uncle. “Most of us prefer to sleep,
seeing that we confront the certainty of a busy morrow; but I have no
wish to disappoint those who would amuse themselves tonight. Nay, I
will provide entertainment for them. Take those five, Coupeau, and
the fellows who broiled with them, and stand by whilst their
followers lay on an hundred and fifty lashes with the cat for each.”
There was an instant’s silence, then a gasp of terror, and one man
commenced to sob.
“Oh, Gawd, cap’n, sir, we’m can’t stand no hun’erd’n’ fufty lashes!
No mortal man could. Doan’t ’ee say it, sir! We’m’ll crawl to ’ee,
cap’n, sir, ’deed we will.”
“You should have thought of that beforehand,” replied Murray, unmoved.
“Not a hun’erd an’ fifty, cap’n,” pleaded a second man. “’Twill kill
us, sure.”
“I should not be surprized if it would,” agreed my great-uncle,
taking snuff. “In fact, were I in your shoes I should hope that it
would. Take them away, Coupeau--out of earshot, if you please.”