THE NEXT DAY
JACK was awakened at the first dawn of day by the sea-gulls clamoring
above him. Their outcries mingled for a little while with his dreams
before he fairly awoke. He found himself standing up. The sun was
shining. There was the beach and the sandy distance. Dred came walking
toward him up from the boat, and a great and sudden rush of joy filled
his heart. “Why, Dred,” he cried out, “I thought you were dead!”
Dred burst out laughing. “I was only fooling you, lad,” he said; “I
weren’t hurt much after all.” Then that terrible tragedy had not really
happened. He must have dreamed it. Dred had not been shot, and he had
not died. The sea-gulls flew above their heads screaming, and his soul
was full of the joy of relief.
Then he opened his eyes. The sun had not yet arisen, but he was still
full of the echo of joy, believing that Dred was alive, after all. He
arose and stood up. The motionless figure was lying in the distance
just as he had left it the night before.
But, after all, Dred might not be dead, and there might be some truth
in his dream. He might have been mistaken last night. Perhaps Dred was
alive, after all, and maybe better this morning.
He went over to where the silent figure lay, and looked down into the
strange, still face—upon the stiff, motionless hands. Yes; Dred was
dead. As Jack stood looking he choked and choked, and one hot tear and
then another trickled down either cheek. They tasted very salt.
Then he began to think. What was he to do now? Something must be done,
and he must do it himself, for he must not ask the young lady to help
him. He went down to the boat. There was nothing there that he could
use, and so he walked off some distance along the beach. At last he
found a barrel, that had perhaps been cast up by a storm, and which
now lay high and dry upon the warm, powdered sand which had drifted
around it, nearly covering it. He kicked the barrel to pieces with his
heel, and pulled up two of the staves from the deeper layer of damp
sand beneath. He had walked some distance away, and now he turned and
went back to where the still figure lay motionless in the distance. The
young lady had not yet awakened, and he was glad of it.
* * * * *
He was trembling when he had ended his task. Suddenly, while he was
still kneeling, the sun arose, throwing its level beams of light
across the stretch of sand, now broken and trampled, where he had been
at work. He smoothed over the work he had made. The damper particles
stuck to his hands and clothes, and he brushed them off. Then he took
down the shelter that he and the young lady had built up over Dred’s
head the day before, carrying the oars and the young lady’s clothes
down to the boat. Then he came back and carried down the overcoats. By
that time she had arisen. Jack went straight up to her where she stood
looking around her. “Where is he?” she said.
Jack did not reply, but he turned his face in the direction. She saw
where the smooth surface of the sand had been broken and disturbed, and
she understood. She hid her face in her hands and stood for a moment,
and Jack stood silently beside her. “Oh,” she said, “I was dreaming it
was not so.”
“So was I,” said Jack, brokenly, and again he felt a tear start down
his cheek.
“It did not seem to me as if it could be so,” she said. “It don’t even
seem now as though it were so. It was all so dreadful. It doesn’t seem
as though it could have happened.”
“Well,” said Jack, heaving a convulsive sigh, “we’ll have to have
something to eat, and then we’ll start on again.” The thought of
eating in the very shadow of the tragedy that had happened seemed very
grotesque, and he felt somehow ashamed to speak of it.
“Eat!” she said. “I do not want to eat anything.”
“We’ll have to eat something,” said Jack; “we can’t do without that.”
* * * * *
The task of pushing the yawl off into the water was almost more than
Jack could accomplish. For a while he thought they would have to wait
there till high tide in the afternoon. But at last, by digging out the
sand from under the boat, he managed to get it off into the water.
“I’ll have to carry you aboard, mistress,” he said.
He stooped and picked her up, and walked with her, splashing through
the shallow sheet of water that ran up with each spent breaker upon the
shining sand. He placed her in the boat and then pushed it off. The
breakers were not high, but they gave the boat a splash as Jack pulled
it through them.
He rowed out some distance from the shore, and she sat silently
watching him. Then he unshipped the oars and went forward and raised
the sail. By this time the morning was well advanced. The breeze had
not yet arisen, but cat’s-paws began to ruffle the smooth surface of
the water. Then by and by came a gentle puff of breeze that filled out
the sail, and swung the boom out over the water. Jack drew in the
sheet, and the boat slid forward with a gurgle of water under the bows.
Then the breeze began blowing very lightly and gently.
This was Sunday morning.
They sailed on for a long, long distance without speaking. Both sat
in silence, he sunk in his thoughts, and she in hers. He was trying
to realize all that had happened the day before, but he could hardly
do so. It did not seem possible that such things could have actually
happened to him. He wondered what she was thinking about—Virginia,
perhaps. Yes; that must be it. And he was going back to Virginia, too.
How strange that he should be really going back there—the very place
from which he had escaped two months before! Was there ever anybody
who had had so many adventures happen to him in six months as he? Then
something caused him suddenly to remember how he had reached out the
evening before, and had touched Dred’s senseless hand. There seemed
to him something singularly pathetic in the stillness and inertness
of that unfeeling hand. Then came the memory of the silent face, of
those cold lips that one day before had been full of life, and it was
profoundly dreadful. He shuddered darkly. Was this always the end
of everything?—of the rushing breeze, the dazzling sunlight, the
beautiful world in which men lived? Death is terrible, terrible to the
eyes of youth.
“Do you know,” said the young lady, suddenly, breaking upon the
silence, “it does not seem possible that I am really to see my father
again, and maybe so soon. I’m trying to feel that it is so, but I
can’t. I wonder what they will all say and do! Oh, it seems as though I
couldn’t wait! I wonder how much further ’tis to Virginia?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack; “but it can’t be much further. I’ve been
thinking that those sand-hills on ahead must be at Cape Henry. I only
saw it in the evening when I was on Blackbeard’s sloop, the time we
were bringing you down to Bath Town; but the hills look to me like Cape
Henry. And, do you see, the coast runs inward there. I can’t tell,
though, whether ’tis only a bend in the shore, or whether ’tis the bay.”
“My father will never forget what you’ve done,” she said, looking
straight at him.
“Will he not?” said Jack.
“He will never forget it.”
Her words brought a quick spasm of pleasure to Jack. He had not thought
before of the reward he should receive. Of course there would be some
reward—some great reward. It was perhaps then that he first realized
what a thing it was he had done—that he had brought Colonel Parker’s
daughter safe away from the pirates, through the very jaws of death!
Yes; it was a great thing to have done; and again there came that spasm
of delight. The future had suddenly become very bright. It seemed now
to throw back a different light upon all those dreadful things that
had passed, and they became transformed into something else. They were
no longer gloomy terrors—they were great events leading to a great
success.
* * * * *
It was late afternoon when they slid before the wind around the high
sand-hills of the cape. As the bay slowly opened before them they saw
that there were three sails in sight. One of them, far away, apparently
a schooner, was coming down the bay as though to run out around the
cape to the southward.
“See that boat!” cried out the young lady. “’Tis coming this way. Don’t
you believe we could stop it, and get the captain to take us back to
Virginia?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack; “’tis like she won’t stop for me, but I’ll
try it if you’d like me to.”
He put down the helm of the yawl so as to run up across the course
upon which the distant vessel seemed to be sailing. They watched her
in silence as slowly, little by little, she came nearer and nearer. “I
ought to have something to wave,” said Jack, “to make her see us. I
don’t believe she’ll stop for us unless we signal her in some such way.”
“Why not my red scarf!” said the young lady. “Stop, I’ll get it for
you.”
She handed the bright red scarf to Jack, who tied it to the end of an
oar. The schooner was now some three quarters of a mile away. Jack
stood up in the boat, and began waving the scarf at the end of the
blade, hallooing as he did so. As the course of the schooner was laid,
she would run past them about half a mile distant. “I don’t believe
she’s going to stop for us, after all,” said Jack. “Bear the tiller a
little to the left. That’s as it should be. Now hold it steady, and
I’ll wave again.” Then, even as he spoke, he saw that those aboard the
schooner were hauling in the foresail and mainsail, and that she was
coming about. “She is going to stop for us!” he cried.
The schooner had gone a little past them before her sails swung over;
then, sweeping around in a great semi-circle, she bore down upon them,
bow on. Jack laid down the oar, and, taking the tiller again, brought
the yawl up into the wind, and so lay waiting for the schooner to reach
them. She ran to within maybe thirty or forty yards of them, and then,
coming up into the wind, lay rising and falling, swinging slowly back
and forth with the regular heave of the ground-swell. She looked very
near. There was a group of faces clustered forward, looking out at them
across the restless water, and another little group of three men and a
woman stood at the open gangway. A large, rough man, with a red face
prickled over with a stubby beard, hailed them. He wore baggy breeches
tied at the knees, and a greasy red waistcoat. “Boat ahoy!” he called
out. “What boat is that?”
Jack was standing up in the yawl. “We’ve come up from North Carolina!”
he called back in answer. “We’ve just escaped from the pirates.”
“Is that Miss Eleanor Parker?” the other called out instantly.
“Ay!” said Jack.
There was an instant commotion aboard the schooner, and the captain
called out: “Bring your boat over here!”
Jack seated himself and set the oars into the rowlocks. He pulled the
bow of the boat around with a few quick strokes, and then rowed toward
the schooner. In a minute or so he was close alongside. The men and the
woman were standing on the deck just above, looking down at him. The
six or eight men of the crew were also standing at the rail, gazing at
them. Jack could see that the schooner carried as a cargo three or four
hogsheads of tobacco and a great load of lumber.
“Was it you brought the young lady away?” said the captain to Jack.
“You’re a mightily young fellow to do that, if you did do it.”
“I didn’t bring her off my own self,” said Jack. “One of the pirates
helped us get away. But Blackbeard came up with us at Currituck Inlet,
and before we could get away the man who helped us was shot. He died
last night.”
“So, then!” said the captain. “Then it was Blackbeard, arter all, who
carried off the young lady, was it?” Then he added, “Colonel Parker’s
at Norfolk now. I’ll run back with you, and tow the yawl into the
bargain, if the young lady’ll guarantee me that her father’ll pay me
five pounds for doing it.”
“Five pounds!” cried Jack. “Why, that is a deal of money, master, for
such a little thing.”
“Well, ’tis the best I’ll do. It may lose me three days or more, and I
won’t do it for less.”
“Oh, it does not matter,” said the young lady to Jack, in a low voice.
“I’ll promise him that papa will pay him five pounds.”
Jack felt that the captain was taking advantage of her probable
eagerness to return, but he also saw that she would not allow him to
bargain at such a time. “She says her father will pay it, master,” he
said; “but ’tis a great deal of money to make her promise.”
The captain of the schooner did not reply to this latter part of Jack’s
speech. “Here, Kitchen,” he said to the mate, “help her ladyship
aboard. Look alive, now!”
The mate jumped down into the boat (he was in his bare feet), and
he and Jack helped the young lady to the deck above. Jack followed
immediately after her, and the mate remained, busying himself in making
the yawl-boat fast.
“Here, Molly,” said the captain to the woman, who was his wife, “take
her young ladyship into my cabin and make her comfortable.”
Jack was standing, looking around him like one in a dream. The crew
and the man whom the captain afterward called Mr. Jackson (whom Jack
took to be a passenger) stood staring at him. The schooner was a common
coaster. The decks were littered and dirty; the captain and the crew
rough and ordinary.
“This way, master,” said the captain; and then he, too, went down into
the cabin. It was close and hot, and smelled musty and stuffy. The
young lady was sitting at the table, while the woman, the captain’s
wife, was busy in the inner cabin beyond. She had left the door open,
and Jack, from where he sat, could see her making up a tumbled bed
in the berth. He could also see a sea-chest, some hanging clothes, a
map, and a clock through the open door. The schooner was getting under
way again, and he could hear the pat of bare footsteps passing across
the deck overhead, the creaking of the yards, and then the ripple and
gurgle of the water alongside.
“When did you leave Bath Town?” said the captain.
“On Wednesday morning early,” said Jack. Now that all was over, he
was feeling very dull and heavily oppressed in the reaction from the
excitement that had kept him keyed up to endure. His hands, from which
the skin had been rubbed by rowing, had begun again to throb and burn
painfully; he had not noticed before how great was the smart. He looked
at them, picking at the loose skin. Nobody cared how much his hands
hurt him, now that Dred was gone, and his throat began choking at the
foolish thought.
“Wednesday! Why, ’tis only Sunday now. D’ ye mean to say that ye’ve
sailed all the way from Bath Town in five days in that there yawl-boat?”
“Is this Sunday?” said Jack. “Why, so ’tis.”
“How long will it take to get to Norfolk?” asked the young lady.
“Well, we ought to get there by midnight if this wind holds,” said the
captain.
“The berth’s made up now if your ladyship’d like to lie down,” said the
captain’s wife, appearing at the door of the inner cabin.
After the young lady had gone, the captain and the man named Jackson
plied Jack with questions as to all that had happened. He answered
dully and inertly; he wished they would let him alone and not tease him
with questions. “I’m tired,” he said, at last; “I’d like to lie down
for a while.”
“I suppose you be feeling kind of used up, ben’t you?” asked the man
Jackson.
Jack nodded his head.
“Won’t you have a bite to eat first?” asked the captain.
“I’m not hungry,” said Jack; “I want to rest—that’s all.”
“I’m going to let you have the mate’s cabin,” said the captain. “You
said I made the young lady promise too much for carrying ye back to
Norfolk. Well, I’m doing all I can to make you comfortable. I give my
cabin to her, and I give the mate’s cabin to you; and if you’ll only
wait I’ll have a good hot supper cooked.”
“Just where did the bullet hit him?” asked Jackson.
“I don’t know just where,” said Jack. “Somewhere about here (indicating
the spot with his finger). Can I go to the mate’s cabin now?”
“Well, I think ‘twas mortal strange,” said Jackson, “that he didn’t
fall down straight away, or at least drop the tiller, or something of
the sort. He just sat there, did he?”
The mate came in, still in his bare feet. He sat down without saying
anything, and stared at Jack.
“I’m going to let him have your berth for to-night, Kitchen,” said the
captain.