FALK PROPOSES A TRUCE
As we faced each other in amazed silence, we could hear the men working on
deck and the sea rippling against the hull of the ship. I felt that strange
sensation of mingled reality and unreality which comes sometimes in dreams,
and I rather think that Roger felt it, too, for we turned simultaneously to
look again into the iron safe. But again only its painted walls met our
eyes.
The gold actually was gone.
Roger started up. "Now how did Falk manage that?" he cried. "I swear he
hadn't time to open the safe. We took them absolutely by surprise--I could
swear we did."
I suggested that he might have hidden it somewhere else.
"Not he," said Roger.
"Would Kipping steal from Captain Falk?"
"From Captain Falk!" Roger exclaimed. "If his mother were starving, he'd
steal her last crust. How about the bunk?"
We took the bunk apart and ripped open the mattress. We sounded the
woodwork above and below. With knives we slit the cushion of Captain
Whidden's great arm-chair, and pulled out the curled hair that stuffed it.
We ransacked box, bag, cuddy, and stove; we forced our way into every
corner of the cabin and the staterooms. But we found no trace of the lost
money.
It seemed like sacrilege to disturb little things that once had belonged
to that upright gentleman, Captain Joseph Whidden. His pipe, his
memorandum-book, and his pearl-handled penknife recalled him to my mind as
I had seen him so many times of old, sitting in my father's drawing-room,
with his hands folded on his knee and his firm mouth bent in a whimsical
smile. I thought of my parents, of my sister and Roger, of all the old
far-away life of Salem; I must have stood dreaming thus a long time when my
eyes fell on Nathan Falk's blue coat, which he had thrown carelessly on the
cabin table and had left there, and with a burst of anger I came back to
affairs of the moment.
"They've got it away, Benny," said Roger, soberly. "How or when I don't
know, but there's no question that it's gone from the cabin. Come, let's
clear away the disorder."
As well as we could we put back the numerous things we had thrown about,
and such litter as we could not replace we swept up. But wisps of hair
still lay on the tables and the chairs, and feathers floated in the air
like thistle-down. We had little time for housewifery.
We found the others gathered round the galley, eating a hearty meal of salt
beef, ship's bread, and coffee, at which we were right glad to join them.
Roger had a way with the men that kept them from taking liberties, yet that
enabled him to mingle with them on terms far more familiar than those of a
ship's officer. I watched him as he sat down by Davie Paine, and grinned at
the cook, and asked Neddie Benson how his courage was and laughed heartily
at Blodgett who had spilled a cup of coffee down his shirt-front--yet in
such a way that Blodgett was pleased by his friendliness rather than
offended by his amusement. I suppose it was what we call "personality."
Certainly Roger was a born leader. After our many difficulties we felt so
jolly and so much at home,--all, that is, except the man from Boston, who
sat apart from the rest and stared soberly across the long, slow seas,--
that our little party on deck was merrier by far than many a Salem
merrymaking before or since.
I knew that Roger was deeply troubled by the loss of the money and I
marveled at his self-control.
Presently I saw something moving off the eastern point of the island.
Thinking little of it, I watched it idly until suddenly it burst upon me
that it was a ship's boat. With a start I woke from my dream and shouted,
"Sail ho! Off the starboard bow!"
In an instant our men were on their feet, staring at the newcomer. In all
the monotonous expanse of shining, silent ocean only the boat and the
island and the tiny sails of a junk which lay hull down miles away, were to
be seen. But the boat, which now had rounded the point, was approaching
steadily.
"Ben, lay below to the cabin and fetch up muskets, powder, and balls,"
Roger cried sharply. "Lend a hand, Davie, and bring back all the pikes and
cutlasses you can carry. You, cook, clear away the stern-chasers and stand
by to load them the minute the powder's up the companionway. Blodgett, you
do the same by the long gun. You, Neddie, bear a hand with me to trice up
the netting!"
Spilling food, cups, pans, and kids in confusion on the deck, we sprang to
do as we were bid. In the sternsheets of the approaching boat we could make
out at a distance the slim form of Captain Nathan Falk.
The rain had stopped long since, and the hot sun shining from a cloudless
sky was rapidly burning off the last vestige of the night mist as Captain
Falk's boat came slowly toward us under a white flag. A ground-swell gave
it a leisurely motion and the men approached so cautiously that their oars
seemed scarcely more than to dip in and out of the water.
With double-charged cannon, with loaded muskets ready at hand, and with
pikes and cutlasses laid out on deck, one for each man, where we could
snatch them up as soon as we had spent our first fire, we grinned from
behind the nettings at our erstwhile shipmates. Tables had turned with a
vengeance since we had rowed away from the ship so short a time before.
They now were a sad-looking lot of men, some of them with bandages on their
limbs or round their heads, all of them disheveled, weary, and unkempt. But
they approached with an air of dignity, which Falk tried to keep up by
calling with a grand fling of his hand and his head, "Mr. Hamlin, we come
to parley under a flag of truce."
I think we really were impressed for a moment. His face was pale, and he
had a blood-stained rag tied round his forehead, so that he looked very
much as if he were a wounded hero returning after a brave fight to arrange
terms of an honorable peace. But the cook, who heartily disapproved of
admitting the boat within gunshot, shattered any such illusion that we may
have entertained.
"Mah golly!" he exclaimed in a voice audible to every man in both parties,
"ef dey ain't done h'ist up cap'n's unde'-clothes foh a flag of truce!"
The remark came upon us so suddenly and we were all so keyed up that,
although it seems flat enough to tell about it now, then it struck us as
irresistibly funny and we laughed until tears started from our eyes. I
heard Blodgett's cat-yowl of glee, Davie Paine's deep guffaw, Neddie
Benson's shrill cackle of delight. But when, to clear my eyes, I wiped away
my tears, the men in the other boat were glaring at us in glum and angry
silence.
"Ah, it's funny is it?" said Falk, and his voice me think of the times when
he had abused Bill Hayden. "Laugh, curse you, laugh! Well, that's all
right. There's no law against laughing. I've got a proposition to put up to
you. You've had your little fling and a costly one it's like to be. You've
mutinied and unlawfully confined the master of the ship, and for that
you're liable for a fine of one thousand dollars and five years in prison.
You've usurped the command of a vessel on the high seas unlawfully and by
force, and for that you're liable to a fine of two thousand dollars and ten
years in prison. Think about that, some o' you men that haven't a hundred
dollars in the world. The law'll strip and break you. But if that ain't
enough, we've got evidence to convict you in every court of the United
States of America of being pirates, felons, and robbers, and the punishment
for that is death. Think of that, you men."
Falk lowered his head until his red scarf, which he had knotted about his
throat, made the ghastly pallor of his face seem even more chalky than it
was, and thrust his chin forward and leveled at us the index finger of his
right hand. The slowly rolling boat was so near us now that as we waited to
see what he would say next we could see his hand tremble.
"Now, men," he continued, "you've had your little fling, and that's the
price you'll have to pay the piper. I'll get you, never you fear. Ah, by
the good Lord's help, I'll see you swinging from a frigate's yard-arm yet,
unless"--he stopped and glared at us significantly--"unless you do like I'm
going to tell you.
"You've had your fling and there's a bad day of reckoning coming to you,
don't you forget it. But if you drop all this nonsense now, and go forward
where you belong and work the ship like good seamen and swear on the Book
to have no more mutinous talk, I'll forgive you everything and see that no
one prosecutes you for all you've done so far. How about it? Nothing could
be handsomer than that."
"Oh, you always was a smooth-tongued scoundrel" Blodgett, just behind me,
murmured under his breath.
The men in the two parties looked at each other in silence for a moment,
and if ever I had distrusted Captain Falk, I distrusted him four times more
when I saw the mild, sleek smile on Kipping's face. It was reassuring to
see the gleam in black Frank's eyes as he fingered the edge of his cleaver.
I turned eagerly to Roger, upon whom we waited unanimously for a reply.
"Yes, that's very handsome of you," he said reflectively. "But how do we
know you'll do all that you promise?"
Falk's white face momentarily lighted. I thought that for an instant his
eyes shone like a tiger's. But he answered quietly, "Ain't my word good?"
"Why, a _gentleman's_ word is always good security."
There was just enough accent on the word "gentleman" to puzzle me. The
remark sounded innocent enough, certainly, and yet the stress--if stress
was intended--made it biting sarcasm. Obviously the men in the boat were
equally in doubt whether to take offense or to accept the statement in good
faith.
"Well, you have my word," said Falk at last.
"Yes, we have your word. But there's one other thing to be settled. How
about the owners' money?"
For a moment Falk seemed disconcerted, and I, thinking now that Roger was
merely badgering him, smiled with satisfaction. But Falk answered the
question after only brief hesitation, and Roger's next words plunged me
deep in a sea of doubt.
"Why, I shall guard the owners' money with all possible care, Mr. Hamlin,
and expend it in their best interests," said Falk.
"If that's the case," said Roger, "come alongside."