In which we Write upon the Sand
Day after day the wind filled our sails and sang in the rigging, and day
after day we sailed through blue seas toward the magic of the south. Day
after day a listless and voluptuous world seemed too idle for any dream
of wrong, and day after day we whom a strange turn of Fortune's wheel
had placed upon a pirate ship held our lives in our hands, and walked so
close with Death that at length that very intimacy did breed contempt.
It was not a time to think; it was a time to act, to laugh and make
others laugh, to bluster and brag, to estrange sword and scabbard, to
play one's hand with a fine unconcern, but all the time to watch, watch,
watch, day in and day out, every minute of every hour. That ship became
a stage, and we, the actors, should have been applauded to the echo. How
well we played let witness the fact that the ship came to the Indies,
with me for captain and the minister for mate, and with the woman that
was on board unharmed; nay, reverenced like a queen. The great cabin was
hers, and the poop deck; we made for her a fantastic state with doffing
of hats and bowings and backward steps. We were her guard,--_the
gentlemen of the Queen_,--I and my Lord Carnal, the minister and Diccon,
and we kept between her and the rest of the ship.
We did our best, and our best was very much. When I think of the songs
the minister sang; of the roars of laughter that went up from the
lounging pirates when, sitting astride one of the main-deck guns, he
made his voice call to them, now from the hold, now from the stern
gallery, now from the masthead, now from the gilt sea maid upon the
prow, I laugh too. Sometimes a space was cleared for him, and he played
to them as to the pit at Blackfriars. They laughed and wept and swore
with delight,--all save the Spaniard, who was ever like a thundercloud,
and Paradise, who only smiled like some languid, side-box lord. There
was wine on board, and during the long, idle days, when the wind droned
in the rigging like a bagpipe, and there was never a cloud in the sky,
and the galleons were still far away, the pirates gambled and drank.
Diccon diced with them, and taught them all the oaths of a free company.
So much wine, and no more, should they have; when they frowned, I let
them see that their frowning and their half-drawn knives mattered no
doit to me. It was their whim--a huge jest of which they could never
have enough--still to make believe that they sailed under Kirby. Lest it
should spoil the jest, and while the jest outranked all other
entertainment, they obeyed as though I had been indeed that fierce
sea-wolf.
Time passed, though it passed like a tortoise, and we came to the
Lucayas, to the outposts of the vast hunting-ground of Spaniard and
pirate and buccaneer, the fringe of that zone of beauty and villainy and
fear, and sailed slowly past the islands, looking for our prey.
The sea was blue as blue could be. Only in the morning and the evening
it glowed blood red, or spread upon its still bosom all the gold of all
the Indies, or became an endless mead of palest green shot with
amethyst. When night fell, it mirrored the stars, great and small, or
was caught in a net of gold flung across it from horizon to horizon. The
ship rent the net with a wake of white fire. The air was balm; the
islands were enchanted places, abandoned by Spaniard and Indian,
overgrown, serpent-haunted. The reef, the still water, pink or gold, the
gleaming beach, the green plume of the palm, the scarlet birds, the
cataracts of bloom,--the senses swooned with the colour, the steaming
incense, the warmth, the wonder of that fantastic world. Sometimes, in
the crystal waters near the land, we sailed over the gardens of the sea
gods, and, looking down, saw red and purple blooms and shadowy, waving
forests, with rainbow fish for humming-birds. Once we saw below us a
sunken ship. With how much gold she had endowed the wealthy sea, how
many long-drowned would rise from her rotted decks when the waves gave
up their dead, no man could tell. Away from the ship darted many-hued
fish, gold-disked, or barred and spotted with crimson, or silver and
purple. The dolphin and the tunny and the flying-fish swam with us.
Sometimes flights of small birds came to us from the land. Sometimes the
sea was thickly set with full-blown pale red bloom--the jelly-fish, that
was a flower to the sight and a nettle to the touch. If a storm arose, a
fury that raged and threatened, it presently swept away, and the blue
laughed again. When the sun sank, there arose in the east such a moon as
might have been sole light to all the realms of faery. A beauty
languorous and seductive was most absolute empress of the wonderful land
and the wonderful sea.
We were in the hunting-grounds, and men went not there to gather
flowers. Day after day we watched for Spanish sails; for the plate
fleets went that way, and some galleass or caravel or galleon might
stray aside. At last, in the clear green bay of a nameless island at
which we stopped for water, we found two carracks come upon the same
errand, took them, and with them some slight treasure in rich cloths and
gems. A week later, in a strait between two islands like tinted clouds,
we fought a very great galleon from sunrise to noon, pierced her hull
through and through and silenced her ordnance, then boarded her and
found a king's ransom in gold and silver. When the fighting had ceased
and the treasure was ours, then we four stood side by side on the deck
of the slowly sinking galleon, in front of our prisoners--of the men who
had fought well, of the ashen priests and the trembling women. Those
whom we faced were in high good humour: they had gold with which to
gamble, and wine to drink, and rich clothing with which to prank their
villainous bodies, and prisoners with whom to make merry. When I ordered
the Spaniards to lower their boats, and, taking with them their priests
and women, row off to one of those two islands, the weather changed.
We outlived that storm, but how I scarcely know. As Kirby would have
done, so did I; rating my crew like hounds, turning my point this way
and that, daring them to come taste the red death upon it, braving it
out like some devil who knows he is invulnerable. My lord, swinging the
cutlass with which he was armed, stood beside me, knee to knee, and
Diccon cursed after me, making quarterstaff play with his long pike. But
it was the minister that won us through. At length they laughed, and
Paradise, standing forward, swore that such a captain and such a mate
were worth the lives of a thousand Spaniards. To pleasure Kirby, they
would depart this once from their ancient usage and let the prisoners
go, though it was passing strange,--it being Kirby's wont to clap
prisoners under hatches and fire their ship above them. At the end of
which speech the Spaniard began to rave, and sprang at me like a
catamount. Paradise put forth a foot and tripped him up, whereat the
pirates laughed again, and held him back when he would have come at me a
second time.
From the deck of the shattered galleon I watched her boats, with their
heavy freight of cowering humanity, pull off toward the island. Back
upon my own poop, the grappling-irons cast loose, and a swiftly widening
ribbon of blue between us and the sinking ship, I looked at the pirates
thronging the waist below me, and knew that the play was nearly over.
How many days, weeks, hours, before the lights would go out, I could not
tell; they might burn until we took or lost another ship; the next hour
might see that brief tragedy consummated.
I turned, and going below met Sparrow at the foot of the poop ladder.
"I have sworn at these pirates until my hair stood on end," he said
ruefully. "God forgive me! And I have bent into circles three half-pikes
in demonstration of the thing that would occur to them if they tempted
me overmuch. And I have sung them all the bloody and lascivious songs
that ever I knew in my unregenerate days. I have played the bravo and
buffoon until they gaped for wonder. I have damned myself to all
eternity, I fear, but there'll be no mutiny this fair day. It may arrive
by to-morrow, though."
"Likely enough," I said. "Come within. I have eaten nothing since
yesterday."
"I'll speak to Diccon first," he answered, and went on toward the
forecastle, while I entered the state cabin. Here I found Mistress Percy
kneeling beside the bench beneath the stern windows, her face buried in
her outstretched arms, her dark hair shadowing her like a mantle. When I
spoke to her she did not answer. With a sudden fear I stooped and
touched her clasped hands. A shudder ran through her frame, and she
slowly raised a colourless face.
"Are you come back?" she whispered. "I thought you would never come
back. I thought they had killed you. I was only praying before I killed
myself."
I took her hands and wrung them apart to rouse her, she was so white and
cold, and spoke so strangely. "God forbid that I should die yet awhile,
madam!" I said. "When I can no longer serve you, then I shall not care
how soon I die."
The eyes with which she gazed upon me were still wide and unseeing. "The
guns!" she cried, wresting her hands from mine and putting them to her
ears. "Oh, the guns! they shake the air. And the screams and the
trampling--the guns again!"
I brought her wine and made her drink it; then sat beside her, and told
her gently, over and over again, that there was no longer thunder of the
guns or screams or trampling. At last the long, tearless sobs ceased,
and she rose from her knees, and let me lead her to the door of her
cabin. There she thanked me softly, with downcast eyes and lips that yet
trembled; then vanished from my sight, leaving me first to wonder at
that terror and emotion in her who seldom showed the thing she felt, and
finally to conclude that it was not so wonderful, after all.
We sailed on,--southwards to Cuba, then north again to the Lucayas and
the Florida straits, looking for Spanish ships and their gold. The
lights yet burned,--now brightly, now so sunken that it seemed as though
the next hour they must flicker out. We, the players, flagged not in
that desperate masque; but we knew that, in spite of all endeavour, the
darkness was coming fast upon us.
Had it been possible, we would have escaped from the ship, hazarding new
fortunes on the Spanish Main, in an open boat, _sans_ food or water. But
the pirates watched us very closely. They called me "captain" and
"Kirby," and for the jest's sake gave an exaggerated obedience, with
laughter and flourishes; but none the less I was their prisoner,--I and
those I had brought with me to that ship.
An islet, shaped like the crescent moon, rose from out the sea before
us. We needed water, and so we felt our way between the horns of the
crescent into the blue crystal of a fairy harbour. One low hill,
rose-coloured from base to summit, with scarce a hint of the green world
below that canopy of giant bloom, a little silver beach with wonderful
shells upon it, the sound of a waterfall and a lazy surf,--we smelt the
fruits and the flowers, and a longing for the land came upon us. Six men
were left on the ship, and all besides went ashore. Some rolled the
water casks toward the sound of the cascade; others plunged into the
forest, to return laden with strange and luscious fruits, birds, guanas,
conies,--whatever eatable thing they could lay hands upon; others
scattered along the beach to find turtle eggs, or, if fortune favoured
them, the turtle itself. They laughed, they sang, they swore, until the
isle rang to their merriment. Like wanton children, they called to each
other, to the screaming birds, to the echoing bloom-draped hill.
I spread a square of cloth upon the sand, in the shadow of a mighty tree
that stood at the edge of the forest, and the King's ward took her seat
upon it, and looked, in the golden light of the sinking sun, the very
spirit of the isle. By this we two were alone on the beach. The hunters
for eggs, led by Diccon, were out upon the farthest gleaming horn; from
the wood came the loud laughter of the fruit-gatherers, and a most
rollicking song issuing from the mighty chest of Master Jeremy Sparrow.
With the woodsmen had gone my lord.
I walked a little way into the forest, and shouted a warning to Sparrow
against venturing too far. When I returned to the giant tree and the
cloth in the shadow of its outer branches, my wife was writing on the
sand with a pointed shell. She had not seen or heard me, and I stood
behind her and read what she wrote. It was my name. She wrote it three
times, slowly and carefully; then she felt my presence, glanced swiftly
up, smiled, rubbed out my name, and wrote Sparrow's, Diccon's, and the
King's in succession. "Lest I should forget to make my letters," she
explained.
I sat down at her feet, and for some time we said no word. The light,
falling between the heavy blooms, cast bright sequins upon her dress and
dark hair. The blooms were not more pink than her cheeks, the recesses
of the forest behind us not deeper or darker than her eyes. The laughter
and the song came faintly to us now. The sun was low in the west, and a
wonderful light slept upon the sea.
"Last year we had a masque at court," she said at length, breaking the
long silence. "We had Calypso's island, and I was Calypso. The island
was built of boards covered with green velvet, and there was a mound
upon it of pink silk roses. There was a deep-blue painted sea below, and
a deep-blue painted sky above. My nymphs danced around the mound of
roses, while I sat upon a real rock beside the painted sea and talked
with Ulysses--to wit, my Lord of Buckingham--in gold armour. That was a
strange, bright, unreal, and wearisome day, but not so strange and
unreal as this."
She ceased to speak, and began again to write upon the sand. I watched
her white hand moving to and fro. She wrote, "How long will it last?"
"I do not know. Not long."
She wrote again: "If there is time at the last, when you see that it is
best, will you kill me?"
I took the shell from her hand, and wrote my answer beneath her
question.
The forest behind us sank into that pause and breathless hush between
the noises of the day and the noises of the night. The sun dropped
lower, and the water became as pink as the blooms above us.
"An you could, would you change?" I asked. "Would you return to England
and safety?"
She took a handful of the sand and let it slowly drift through her white
fingers. "You know that I would not," she said; "not if the end were to
come to-night. Only--only----" She turned from me and looked far out to
sea. I could not see her face, only the dusk of her hair and her heaving
bosom. "My blood may be upon your hands," she said in a whisper, "but
yours will be upon my soul."
She turned yet further away, and covered her eyes with her hand. I
arose, and bent over her until I could have touched with my lips that
bowed head. "Jocelyn," I said.
A branch of yellow fruit fell beside us, and my Lord Carnal, a mass of
gaudy bloom in his hand, stepped from the wood. "I returned to lay our
first-fruits at madam's feet," he explained, his darkly watchful eyes
upon us both. "A gift from one poor prisoner to another, madam." He
dropped the flowers in her lap. "Will you wear them, lady? They are as
fair almost as I could wish."
She touched the blossoms with listless fingers, said they were fair;
then, rising, let them drop upon the sand. "I wear no flowers save of my
husband's gathering, my lord," she said.
There was a pathos and weariness in her voice, and a mist of unshed
tears in her eyes. She hated him; she loved me not, yet was forced to
turn to me for help at every point, and she had stood for weeks upon the
brink of death and looked unfalteringly into the gulf beneath her.
"My lord," I said, "you know in what direction Master Sparrow led the
men. Will you re-enter the wood and call them to return? The sun is fast
sinking, and darkness will be upon us."
He looked from her to me, with his brows drawn downwards and his lips
pressed together. Stooping, he took up the fallen flowers and
deliberately tore them to pieces, until the pink petals were all
scattered upon the sand.
"I am weary of requests that are but sugared commands," he said thickly.
"Go seek your own men, an you will. Here we are but man to man, and I
budge not. I stay, as the King would have me stay, beside the
unfortunate lady whom you have made the prisoner and the plaything of a
pirate ship."
"You wear no sword, my Lord Carnal," I said at last, "and so may lie
with impunity."
"But you can get me one!" he cried, with ill-concealed eagerness.
I laughed. "I am not zealous in mine enemy's cause, my lord. I shall not
deprive Master Sparrow of your lordship's sword."
Before I knew what he was about, he crossed the yard of sand between us
and struck me in the face. "Will that quicken your zeal?" he demanded
between his teeth.
I seized him by the arm, and we stood so, both white with passion, both
breathing heavily. At length I flung his arm from me and stepped back.
"I fight not my prisoner," I said, "nor, while the lady you have named
abides upon that ship with the nobleman who, more than myself, is
answerable for her being there, do I put my life in unnecessary hazard.
I will endure the smart as best I may, my lord, until a more convenient
season, when I will salve it well."
I turned to Mistress Percy, and giving her my hand led her down to the
boats; for I heard the fruit-gatherers breaking through the wood, and
the hunters for eggs, black figures against the crimson sky, were
hurrying down the beach. Before the night had quite fallen we were out
of the fairy harbour, and when the moon rose the islet looked only a
silver sail against the jewelled heavens.