Things had grown too hot for Shard, captain of pirates, on all the
seas that he knew. The ports of Spain were closed to him; they knew
him in San Domingo; men winked in Syracuse when he went by; the two
Kings of the Sicilies never smiled within an hour of speaking of him;
there were huge rewards for his head in every capital city, with
pictures of it for identification--_and all the pictures were
unflattering_. Therefore Captain Shard decided that the time had come
to tell his men the secret.
Riding off Teneriffe one night, he called them all together. He
generously admitted that there were things in the past that might
require explanation: the crowns that the Princes of Aragon had sent to
their nephews the Kings of the two Americas had certainly never
reached their Most Sacred Majesties. Where, men might ask, were the
eyes of Captain Stobbud? Who had been burning towns on the Patagonian
seaboard? Why should such a ship as theirs choose pearls for cargo?
Why so much blood on the decks and so many guns? And where was the
_Nancy_, the _Lark_, or the _Margaret Belle_? Such questions as these,
he urged, might be asked by the inquisitive, and if counsel for the
defence should happen to be a fool, and unacquainted with the ways of
the sea, they might become involved in troublesome legal formulae. And
Bloody Bill, as they rudely called Mr. Gagg, a member of the crew,
looked up at the sky, and said that it was a windy night and looked
like hanging. And some of those present thoughtfully stroked their
necks while Captain Shard unfolded to them his plan. He said the time
was come to quit the _Desperate Lark_, for she was too well known to
the navies of four kingdoms, and a fifth was getting to know her, and
others had suspicions. (More cutters than even Captain Shard suspected
were already looking for her jolly black flag with its neat
skull-and-crossbones in yellow.) There was a little archipelago that
he knew of on the wrong side of the Sargasso Sea; there were about
thirty islands there, bare, ordinary islands, but one of them floated.
He had noticed it years ago, and had gone ashore and never told a
soul, but had quietly anchored it with the anchor of his ship to the
bottom of the sea, which just there was profoundly deep, and had made
the thing the secret of his life, determining to marry and settle down
there if it ever became impossible to earn his livelihood in the usual
way at sea. When first he saw it, it was drifting slowly, with the
wind in the tops of the trees; but if the cable had not rusted away,
it should be still where he left it, and they would make a rudder and
hollow out cabins below, and at night they would hoist sails to the
trunks of the trees and sail wherever they liked.
And all the pirates cheered, for they wanted to set their feet on land
again somewhere where the hangman would not come and jerk them off it
at once; and bold men though they were, it was a strain seeing so many
lights coming their way at night. Even then...! But it swerved away
again and was lost in the mist.
And Captain Shard said that they would need to get provisions first,
and he, for one, intended to marry before he settled down; and so they
should have one more fight before they left the ship, and sack the
sea-coast city of Bombasharna and take from it provisions for several
years, while he himself would marry the Queen of the South. And again
the pirates cheered, for often they had seen seacoast Bombasharna, and
had always envied its opulence from the sea.
So they set all sail, and often altered their course, and dodged and
fled from strange lights till dawn appeared, and all day long fled
southwards. And by evening they saw the silver spires of slender
Bombasharna, a city that was the glory of the coast. And in the midst
of it, far away though they were, they saw the palace of the Queen of
the South; and it was so full of windows all looking toward the sea,
and they were so full of light, both from the sunset that was fading
upon the water and from candles that maids were lighting one by one,
that it looked far off like a pearl, shimmering still in its haliotis
shell, still wet from the sea.
So Captain Shard and his pirates saw it, at evening over the water,
and thought of rumours that said that Bombasharna was the loveliest
city of the coasts of the world, and that its palace was lovelier even
than Bombasharna; but for the Queen of the South rumour had no
comparison. Then night came down and hid the silver spires, and Shard
slipped on through the gathering darkness until by midnight the
piratic ship lay under the seaward battlements.
And at the hour when sick men mostly die, and sentries on lonely
ramparts stand to arms, exactly half-an-hour before dawn, Shard, with
two rowing boats and half his crew, with craftily muffled oars, landed
below the battlements. They were through the gateway of the palace
itself before the alarm was sounded, and as soon as they heard the
alarm Shard's gunners at sea opened upon the town, and before the
sleepy soldiery of Bombasharna knew whether the danger was from the
land or the sea, Shard had successfully captured the Queen of the
South. They would have looted all day that silver sea-coast city, but
there appeared with dawn suspicious topsails just along the horizon.
Therefore the captain with his Queen went down to the shore at once
and hastily re-embarked and sailed away with what loot they had
hurriedly got, and with fewer men, for they had to fight a good deal to
get back to the boat. They cursed all day the interference of those
ominous ships which steadily grew nearer. There were six ships at
first, and that night they slipped away from all but two; but all the
next day those two were still in sight, and each of them had more guns
than the _Desperate Lark_. All the next night Shard dodged about the
sea, but the two ships separated and one kept him in sight, and the
next morning it was alone with Shard on the sea, and his archipelago
was just in sight, the secret of his life.
And Shard saw he must fight, and a bad fight it was, and yet it suited
Shard's purpose, for he had more merry men when the fight began than
he needed for his island. And they got it over before any other ship
came up; and Shard put all adverse evidence out of the way, and came
that night to the islands near the Sargasso Sea.
Long before it was light the survivors of the crew were peering at the
sea, and when dawn came there was the island, no bigger than two
ships, straining hard at its anchor, with the wind in the tops of the
trees.
And then they landed and dug cabins below and raised the anchor out of
the deep sea, and soon they made the island what they called
shipshape. But the _Desperate Lark_ they sent away empty under full
sail to sea, where more nations than Shard suspected were watching for
her, and where she was presently captured by an admiral of Spain, who,
when he found none of that famous crew on board to hang by the neck
from the yard-arm, grew ill through disappointment.
And Shard on his island offered the Queen of the South the choicest of
the old wines of Provence, and for adornment gave her Indian jewels
looted from galleons with treasure for Madrid, and spread a table
where she dined in the sun, while in some cabin below he bade the
least coarse of his mariners sing; yet always she was morose and moody
towards him, and often at evening he was heard to say that he wished
he knew more about the ways of Queens. So they lived for years, the
pirates mostly gambling and drinking below, Captain Shard trying to
please the Queen of the South, and she never wholly forgetting
Bombasharna. When they needed new provisions they hoisted sails on the
trees, and as long as no ship came in sight they scudded before the
wind, with the water rippling over the beach of the island; but as
soon as they sighted a ship the sails came down, and they became an
ordinary uncharted rock.
They mostly moved by night; sometimes they hovered off sea-coast towns
as of old, sometimes they boldly entered river-mouths, and even
attached themselves for a while to the mainland, whence they would
plunder the neighbourhood and escape again to sea. And if a ship was
wrecked on their island of a night they said it was all to the good.
They grew very crafty in seamanship, and cunning in what they did, for
they knew that any news of the _Desperate Lark_'s old crew would bring
hangmen from the interior running down to every port.
And no one is known to have found them out or to have annexed their
island; but a rumour arose and passed from port to port and every
place where sailors meet together, and even survives to this day, of a
dangerous uncharted rock anywhere between Plymouth and the Horn, which
would suddenly rise in the safest track of ships, and upon which
vessels were supposed to have been wrecked, leaving, strangely enough,
no evidence of their doom. There was a little speculation about it at
first, till it was silenced by the chance remark of a man old with
wandering: "It is one of the mysteries that haunt the sea."
And almost Captain Shard and the Queen of the South lived happily ever
after, though still at evening those on watch in the trees would see
their captain sit with a puzzled air or hear him muttering now and again
in a discontented way: "I wish I knew more about the ways of Queens."