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A chorus of yelping certified to the invasion of the main cabin, but
its note of triumph was changed to consternation as Silver’s
bloodhounds discovered that their bird had flown.
“Gone!”
“The ---- knave’s scooped us!”
“Boats, lads; boats!”
And presently the dick-dock of oars behind us caused Darby and me to
redouble our labors. We drove ashore several rods down-stream from
the town on the shallow bluff, and we dared not wait to seek shelter
within its log walls. Truth to tell, we doubted now that the town
itself spelled safety for us. The _Walrus’_ carronades would make
short work of such defenses as Savannah had to boast.
So we pelted up the bluff by a sandy path that debouched upon the
cleared fields outside the stockade, urged on by that persistent
oar-rattle and the shouts the pirates exchanged betwixt their several
boats. Whether they were following us we could not discover, for the
night was black as a cellar-vault; but we left nothing to chance, and
ran hot-foot through the plantations of the citizens, overhearing, as
we passed, the excited comments of the men on the firing-platforms of
the stockade, who evidently anticipated an attack from their ugly
visitor in the river. We never tarried for breath until we had
gained the verge of the forest.
Peter was now in his element. He could find his way about a strange
countryside by day or night as easily as a sailor could navigate the
trackless wastes of the sea, and he led us in a beeline north and
east in the general direction of the outlying settlements which
intervened betwixt Savannah and the Carolinas. An hour or so after
dawn we emerged upon a village in a clearing, whose inhabitants eyed
us dubiously until Darby produced one of the golden doubloons from
the store he had acquired during his reign as Flint’s favorite.
These people had never before seen gold, and for a doubloon and an
onza they sold us an old but serviceable musket with bullet-pouch,
powder-horn and store of ammunition, and deerskin garments for all of
us save Ben Gunn, who stoutly refused to don what he regarded as only
another kind of a “livery-shuit.” They also sold us a small quantity
of salt and flour, and put us on the trail to Charleston in the
Carolinas.
Of our journey thither I can say only that it was such an Odyssey as
the frontier-dwellers of our provinces have long been accustomed to.
To Peter and me its perils of forest and stream, red savages, and
wild beasts, were far less formidable than those of the sea, and
Moira and Darby thrived upon the experience--so much so that when at
last, brier-torn and footsore, we entered Charleston’s sedate streets
and found awaiting us an ample choice of packet-ships to the north we
four were unanimous for continuing our journey by land.
“_Neen_,” said Peter. “I don’t ever go to der sea again, Bob.”
“Ah, who would be fool enough in his ignorance to be wandherin’ wet
and bedraggled on the salt waves of the sea when he might venture the
forests and be shootin’ at the red deer and the bears and the
catamounts and it may be an Injun, if he was in the full tide o’ his
luck?” snorted Darby.
“I seem to remember one was all for the sea, and would wave the skull
and crossbones in anybody’s face,” I jeered.
“Troth, and I knew less then than I do now,” he replied unblushingly.
“Them pirates was enough to break the heart of Pontius Pilate.
Barrin’ Flint, there wasn’t a one of them would be able to hold his
own against such as us.”
“Silver might----”
“He was a clever one, Long John; but he’ll be in throuble, you see if
he’s not,” insisted Darby. “Too graspin’ he is by half.”
“I care not how much trouble he is in,” I said. “I want never to see
him or any of his crew again.”
Moira, sitting beside me on the settle of the tavern-porch, twined
her arm in mine with a slight shudder.
“Never again!” she cried. “And if it will be the same to you, Bob,
we’ll stay off of the sea. I like fine the clutch of the earth on my
feet and the whispering of the trees. Men may be cruel on the land,
but faith, they’re never so cruel as the cruelest of the seafarers.
And all my days when I hear the rumble of the surf and the suck of
the tide running out I’ll be thinking of himself that lies so far and
lone under the Spyglass--and of Master Murray, God rest his poor
bones, and many another. The sea had them all! Ah, Holy Virgin,
what a hunger it has for men!”
But Peter shook his head solemnly.
“_Neen_,” he said. “Der sea did not take them all. They died from
der greed dot cankered in their hearts. I do not like der sea, but
der sea is der same as der landt. It works Gott’s will.”
We were silent for a space, looking out upon the busy life about us,
the negroes in their bright bandanna headdresses, the planters
passing on half-thoroughbreds, the decent townsfolk in hodden-gray.
“And you, Ben Gunn?” I said to the steward who sat across the porch
from us. “Will you come north with us? My father----”
He jumped up, writhing and twisting in an excess of embarrassment,
aye, and with something of fear in his face.
“’Twas yourself was promisin’ me I’d not ha’ to wear a livery-shuit,”
he protested. “And before that ye said as how ye’d find me a berth
as a real, tarry sailor-man, a-pullin’ on ropes and standin’ tricks
at the wheel. Yes, ye did, Master Ormerod; and I believed ye, I
did--though there’s a many think naught o’ foolin’ poor Ben Gunn.”
“I’ll not fool you, Ben,” I answered. “If you would go to sea, to
sea shall you go.”
And on the morrow I found him a berth upon a Barbados packet,
cautioning him to employ discretion in discussing his past life, lest
he be handed over to the Admiralty officials as a former pirate. He
was our last link with the infamous company that had owned the joint
rule of my great-uncle and John Flint, and what became of him or of
the remnants of Flint’s crew aboard the _Walrus_ I do not know to
this day. But from the fact that the _Walrus_ was never reported
again I have suspected that she must either have been wrecked or
voluntarily abandoned by her people. She left Savannah within
twenty-four hours of our landing there--so much I discovered by
correspondence with a merchant of that town.
Did she put back to the Rendezvous and ransack the island’s surface
for the treasure Flint had buried? Or did she try for the gold we
concealed on the Dead Man’s Chest? Hopeless ventures, either of the
two! As well search for a certain grain of corn in a heaping bin.
And what happened to Bill Bones? Did he elude the pursuit of his
deserted comrades and seek an opportunity to lift Flint’s treasure
for himself? I’ll swear that was his intent from the
first--precisely as I’ll take oath that had Silver been first to get
his hands upon Flint’s map he would have plotted so that only he and
a small circle of his immediate familiars should have shared in the
prize. Ruthless scoundrels, one and all! But perhaps Bones never
won clear. Perhaps Silver fastened upon his trail and pursued him
with that fantastic vengeance they called the Black Spot. I have
often wondered what it might be.
As to the treasure, they are welcome to it or any part of it if they
can find it. Moira and I talked over the desirability of notifying
her Jacobite friends of the hoard that was buried on the Dead Man’s
Chest, and for a time she leaned toward this course; but after she
had dwelt a while in the Hanoverian prosperity of New York she
revolted against the idea of taking any step which would embroil the
peace of the realm, and any lingering doubts in her mind were
dissipated by the titanic conflict of the Seven Years’ War, with its
world-wide convulsion of nations that set armies marching to battle
all the way from the parched plains of India to the forests of our
wilderness country.
“Here is no time to think of Hanoverian or Jacobite,” said she. “We
will all be English together.”
“Der Irish, too?” asked Peter gravely.
“Troth, the Irish will be the best English!” she cried. “Unless it
be the Dutch.”
But I am galloping ahead of my story. Drop back across the
years--’tis no more of an effort than it was for us to slide down the
cable over the bow of the _Walrus_ that night off Savannah--to the
settle on the porch of the tavern in Charleston. Ben Gunn was
disposed of; our plans were made for the northward journey along the
seaboard. All that remained to be done was to come by a priest to
wed Moira and me; and that, it seemed, was impossible short of
Baltimore, in Maryland. Yet at the last our luck held, for the day
we were to start turned stormy and we delayed our departure; and that
afternoon a French West Indiaman put into the harbor under stress of
the weather. Among her company was a kindly Franciscan, and he
readily agreed to perform the ceremony.
For the rest, we rode into New York about four of the clock on the
afternoon of April the 24th, in the year 1755. My father was in the
counting-room of our house in Pearl Street, and he came to the door
at the sound of the horses’ hoofs on the cobbles. The sun was
sloping out of the west full into his eyes; and for the time that it
took me to dismount and swing Moira down from her saddle he stood
dazed, fearful lest the dazzling light was playing tricks with him.
“Is it truly you, Robert?” he cried. “But it must be, for there are
Peter and Darby.”
“Yes, father,” I answered. “And I have brought home another.”
He opened his arms with an eager smile.
“There’s room here for two of you, boy. Certes, you have but
followed in my footsteps and fetched home a wife from your
adventures.”
“She is the little Irish maid I----”
“Whoever she is, she’s more than welcome. But come in, come in, the
pair of you. Safe and well--and with a wife! Robert, I can scarce
credit it. After a whole year! Peter, God bless you! I knew with
you he’d come to no harm. Ah, Darby, you have more sense in that red
noddle of yours than when you left here; and if you stuck by Master
Robert y’are forgiven. What a tale you’ll all have to tell!”
That night as I lay in the upper room I had occupied since childhood
I was aroused by a distant clatter and jangling which became louder
and louder. At the corner it broke off with a heavy clang, and a
pompous voice proclaimed:
“Past twelve o’clock of a fine, bright night, and Master Robert
Ormerod is home from his captivity amongst the West Injin pirates.
God save the King and the worshipful magistrates of New York!”
’Twas Diggory the watchman; and, listening to him, I recalled how
Silver had cozened him the night I was kidnaped, and thereat I fell
a-chuckling until Moira stirred sleepily and complained--
“’Tis an ill thing if ye’ll not sleep the first night we will be in
your own home, Bob.”
“No, no, sweetheart,” I said. “I was but thinking what an odd bundle
of accident is this life we live. For if that fellow braying upon
the corner had not been a stupid fool I should never have seen you
after I took you to the Whale’s Head.”
“Do you think so!” she retorted. “Then ’tis you will be the fool,
for if Captain Murray had not carried you after me I should have
contrived to return to New York though it kept me treading the
highways and byways of the world come fifty years. Now get you to
sleep! I am none of your wives to encourage a husband in loose
fancies and romantical longings. Your wandering days are by and done
with, and the sooner you square your back on them the better will I
be pleased. I’ll not let you forth again, and of that you may be
prime confident!”
So I turned over and went to sleep.