In which I am Brought to Trial
My lord came not again into the hold, and the untied cords and the
broken chain were not replaced. Morning and evening we were brought a
niggard allowance of bread and water; but the man who carried it bore no
light, and may not even have observed their absence. We saw no one in
authority. Hour by hour my wounds healed, and my strength returned. If
it was a dark and noisome prison, if there were hunger and thirst and
inaction to be endured, if we knew not how near to us might be a death
of ignominy, yet the minister and I found the jewel in the head of the
toad; for in that time of pain and heaviness we became as David and
Jonathan.
At last some one came beside the brute who brought us food. A quiet
gentleman, with whitening hair and bright dark eyes, stood before us. He
had ordered the two men with him to leave open the hatch, and he held in
his hand a sponge soaked with vinegar. "Which of you is--or rather
was--Captain Ralph Percy?" he asked, in a grave but pleasant voice.
"I am Captain Percy," I answered.
He looked at me with attention. "I have heard of you before," he said.
"I read the letter you wrote to Sir Edwyn Sandys, and thought it an
excellently conceived and manly epistle. What magic transformed a
gentleman and a soldier into a pirate?"
As he waited for me to speak, I gave him for answer, "Necessity."
"A sad metamorphosis," he said. "I had rather read of nymphs changed
into laurel and gushing springs. I am come to take you, sir, before the
officers of the Company aboard this ship, when, if you have aught to say
for yourself, you may say it. I need not tell you, who saw so clearly
some time ago the danger in which you then stood, that your plight is
now a thousandfold worse."
"I am perfectly aware of it," I said. "Am I to go in fetters?"
"No," he replied, with a smile. "I have no instructions on the subject,
but I will take it upon myself to free you from them,--even for the sake
of that excellently writ letter."
"Is not this gentleman to go too?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I have no orders to that effect."
While the men who were with him removed the irons from my wrists and
ankles he stood in silence, regarding me with a scrutiny so close that
it would have been offensive had I been in a position to take offence.
When they had finished I turned and held Jeremy's hand in mine for an
instant, then followed the new-comer to the ladder and out of the hold;
the two men coming after us, and resolving themselves above into a
guard. As we traversed the main deck we came upon Diccon, busy with two
or three others about the ports. He saw me, and, dropping the bar that
he held, started forward, to be plucked back by an angry arm. The men
who guarded me pushed in between us, and there was no word spoken by
either. I walked on, the gentleman at my side, and presently came to an
open port, and saw, with an intake of my breath, the sunshine, a dark
blue heaven flecked with white, and a quiet ocean. My companion glanced
at me keenly.
"Doubtless it seems fair enough, after that Cimmerian darkness below,"
he remarked. "Would you like to rest here a moment?"
"Yes," I said, and, leaning against the side of the port, looked out at
the beauty of the light.
"We are off Hatteras," he informed me, "but we have not met with the
stormy seas that vex poor mariners hereabouts. Those sails you see on
our quarter belong to our consort. We were separated by the hurricane
that nigh sunk us, and finally drove us, helpless as we were, toward the
Florida coast and across your path. For us that was a fortunate reef
upon which you dashed. The gods must have made your helmsman blind, for
he ran you into a destruction that gaped not for you. Why did every
wretch that we hung next morning curse you before he died?"
"If I told you, you would not believe me," I replied.
I was dizzy with the bliss of the air and the light, and it seemed a
small thing that he would not believe me. The wind sounded in my ears
like a harp, and the sea beckoned. A white bird flashed down into the
crystal hollow between two waves, hung there a second, then rose, a
silver radiance against the blue. Suddenly I saw a river, dark and
ridged beneath thunderclouds, a boat, and in it, her head pillowed upon
her arm, a woman, who pretended that she slept. With a shock my senses
steadied, and I became myself again. The sea was but the sea, the wind
the wind; in the hold below me lay my friend; somewhere in that ship was
my wife; and awaiting me in the state cabin were men who perhaps had the
will, as they had the right and the might, to hang me at the yardarm
that same hour.
"I have had my fill of rest," I said. "Whom am I to stand before?"
"The newly appointed officers of the Company, bound in this ship for
Virginia," he answered. "The ship carries Sir Francis Wyatt, the new
Governor; Master Davison, the Secretary; young Clayborne, the surveyor
general; the knight marshal, the physician general, and the Treasurer,
with other gentlemen, and with fair ladies, their wives and sisters. I
am George Sandys, the Treasurer."
The blood rushed to my face, for it hurt me that the brother of Sir
Edwyn Sandys should believe that the firing of those guns had been my
act. His was the trained observation of the traveller and writer, and he
probably read the colour aright. "I pity you, if I can no longer esteem
you," he said, after a pause. "I know no sorrier sight than a brave
man's shield reversed."
I bit my lip and kept back the angry word. The next minute saw us at the
door of the state cabin. It opened, and my companion entered, and I
after him, with my two guards at my back. Around a large table were
gathered a number of gentlemen, some seated, some standing. There were
but two among them whom I had seen before,--the physician who had
dressed my wound and my Lord Carnal. The latter was seated in a great
chair, beside a gentleman with a pleasant active face and light brown
curling hair,--the new Governor, as I guessed. The Treasurer, nodding to
the two men to fall back to the window, glided to a seat upon my lord's
other hand, and I went and stood before the Governor of Virginia.
For some moments there was silence in the cabin, every man being engaged
in staring at me with all his eyes; then the Governor spoke: "It should
be upon your knees, sir."
"I am neither petitioner nor penitent," I said. "I know no reason why I
should kneel, your Honour."
"There's reason, God wot, why you should be both!" he exclaimed. "Did
you not, now some months agone, defy the writ of the King and Company,
refusing to stand when called upon to do so in the King's name?"
"Yes."
"Did you not, when he would have stayed your lawless flight, lay violent
hands upon a nobleman high in the King's favour, and, over--powering him
with numbers, carry him out of the King's realm?"
"Yes."
"Did you not seduce from her duty to the King, and force to fly with
you, his Majesty's ward, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh?"
"No," I said. "There was with me only my wife, who chose to follow the
fortunes of her husband."
He frowned, and my lord swore beneath his breath. "Did you not, falling
in with a pirate ship, cast in your lot with the scoundrels upon it, and
yourself turn pirate?"
"In some sort."
"And become their chief?"
"Since there was no other situation open,--yes."
"Taking with you as captives upon the pirate ship that lady and that
nobleman?"
"Yes."
"You proceeded to ravage the dominions of the King of Spain, with whom
his Majesty is at peace----"
"Like Drake and Raleigh,--yes," I said.
He smiled, then frowned. "_Tempora mutantur_," he said dryly. "And I
have never heard that Drake or Raleigh attacked an English ship."
"Nor have I attacked one," I said.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at me. "We saw the flame and
heard the thunder of your guns, and our rigging was cut by the shot. Did
you expect me to believe that last assertion?"
"No."
"Then you might have spared yourself--and us--that lie," he said coldly.
The Treasurer moved restlessly in his seat, and began to whisper to his
neighbour the Secretary. A young man, with the eyes of a hawk and an
iron jaw,--Clayborne, the surveyor general,--who sat at the end of the
table beside the window, turned and gazed out upon the clouds and the
sea, as if, contempt having taken the place of curiosity, he had no
further interest in the proceedings. As for me, I set my face like a
flint, and looked past the man who might have saved me that last speech
of the Governor's as if he had never been.
There was a closed door in the cabin, opposite the one by which I had
entered. Suddenly from behind it came the sound of a short struggle,
followed by the quick turn of a key in the lock. The door was flung
open, and two women entered the cabin. One, a fair young gentlewoman,
with tears in her brown eyes, came forward hurriedly with outspread
hands.
"I did what I could, Frank!" she cried. "When she would not listen to
reason, I e'en locked the door; but she is strong, for all that she has
been ill, and she forced the key out of my hand!" She looked at the red
mark upon the white hand, and two tears fell from her long lashes upon
her wild-rose cheeks.
With a smile the Governor put out an arm and drew her down upon a stool
beside him, then rose and bowed low to the King's ward. "You are not yet
well enough to leave your cabin, as our worthy physician general will
assure you, lady," he said courteously, but firmly. "Permit me to lead
you back to it."
Still smiling, he made as if to advance, when she stayed him with a
gesture of her raised hand, at once so majestic and so pleading that it
was as though a strain of music had passed through the stillness of the
cabin.
"Sir Francis Wyatt, as you are a gentleman, let me speak," she said. It
was the voice of that first night at Weyanoke, all pathos, all
sweetness, all entreating.
The Governor stopped short, the smile still upon his lips, his hand
still outstretched,--stood thus for a moment, then sat down. Around the
half-circle of gentlemen went a little rustling sound, like wind in dead
leaves. My lord half rose from his seat. "She is bewitched," he said,
with dry lips. "She will say what she has been told to say. Lest she
speak to her shame, we should refuse to hear her."
She had been standing in the centre of the floor, her hands clasped, her
body bowed toward the Governor, but at my lord's words she straightened
like a bow unbent. "I may speak, your Honour?" she asked clearly.
The Governor, who had looked askance at the working face of the man
beside him, slightly bent his head and leaned back in his great
armchair. The King's favourite started to his feet. The King's ward
turned her eyes upon him. "Sit down, my lord," she said. "Surely these
gentlemen will think that you are afraid of what I, a poor erring woman,
rebellious to the King, traitress to mine own honour, late the plaything
of a pirate ship, may say or do. Truth, my lord, should be more
courageous." Her voice was gentle, even plaintive, but it had in it the
quality that lurks in the eyes of the crouching panther.
My lord sat down, one hand hiding his working mouth, the other clenched
on the arm of his chair as if it had been an arm of flesh.