IV

Ere we had fairly boarded the brig they were in chase of us. We could

see lights flitting along the lagoon bank and hear the hallooing of

native runners--the Governor's, we knew. And for every voice we heard

and every light we saw, we knew that hidden back of the trees were a

dozen or a score whom we could not hear or see. And on the black surface

of the lagoon, paddling between us and the bank, as we worked the ship

out, were noiseless men in canoes. We could not see them, but every few

minutes a mysterious cry carried across the silent water, and the cry,

we knew, was the word of our progress from the Governor's canoe-men to

the messengers on the bank.

The lagoon emptied on the south into the Momba River, which twisted and

turned like so many S's to the sea; on the north was the passage by

which we had come, that which led to the sea by way of the bar. But

there was to be no crossing of the bar for us that night. Ten miles

inland we had smelled that sea-breeze and knew what it meant; but

Captain Blaise, nevertheless, held on with the _Bess_ toward the bar. We

could hear their crews paddling off and shouting their messages of our

progress until they were forced by the breakers to go ashore. Their

parting triumphant shouts was their word of our sure intent to attempt

the passage of the bar.

When all was quiet from their direction, we put back to the lagoon and

headed for the river passage. But one ship of any size had ventured this

river passage in a generation, and the planking of that one, the brig

_Orion_, for years lay on the bank by way of a warning. "But the _Orion_

was no _Dancing Bess_," commented Captain Blaise. Surely not, nor was

her master a Captain Blaise.

The top spars of the _Bess_ had been slung while we were ashore, and by

this time we had also knocked away the ugly and hindering false work on

bow and stern, so that with her lifting foreyards which would have done

for a sloop-of-war, and on her driving fore and aft sails which could

have served the mizzen of a two-thousand-ton bark, the _Bess_ was now

herself again. And she had need to be for the work before her.

Captain Blaise ordered her foresails brailed in to the mast to windward

and her foreyards braced flat, this that she might sail closer to the

wind.

Entering the narrow passage, she was held to the edge of the low but

steep bank to windward; so close that where the low-lying reeds grew

outward we could hear them swishing against her sides as we passed on.

Miss Cunningham, having seen her father comfortably established with

Ubbo in the cabin, had come on deck, and Captain Blaise, busy though he

was, took time to make her welcome. No need for him to boast of his

seamanship--the whole coast could tell her that; but how often had a

beautiful girl a chance to see the proof of it?

We followed the curve of the river's bank almost as the running stream

itself. When we came to a sharp-jutting point, Captain Blaise himself,

or me to the wheel, would let her fall away until her jib-boom lay over

the opposite bank; and then, her sails well filled, it was shoot her up

into the wind and past the point before us. Twenty times we had to

weather a point of land in that fashion. Fill and shoot, fill and shoot,

never a foot too soon, never a foot too late--it was a beautiful

exhibition, and only a pity it was not light for her to see it better.

We were clear of the river at last; that is, we were in the river's

V-shaped mouth, the delta. The south bank extended westerly, two miles

or so farther to the sea, and the other bank north-westerly toward Momba

Bar. Now we were able to get a view of the coast line, and northward to

beyond the bar it was an almost unbroken line, we could see, of lights

flaring from high points along the shore.

Captain Blaise hove her to until he should see a guiding rocket from the

men-of-war which he knew were waiting. And presently one came, a blue

and gold from due west, and another red and gold from the

west-nor'-west, then a red and blue from north-west by west. Presently

there was another, from abreast of and close in to the bar. And we knew

there were more in waiting than had signalled. It was already a solid

line across the mouth of the river.

If those ships guarding the river's mouth were only anchored, our

problem would have been simplified; but they were constantly shifting,

and as they showed no sailing lights, no telling where, after a signal

flashed, they would fetch next up; and always, showing no signal-light

whatever, would be the others guarding what they would like to have us

mistake for an open passage in the dark.

Their sending up so many signals indicated a bewilderment as to our

whereabouts. By this time they must have known ashore that we were not

anchored inside the bar; and out to sea they must have known we had not

foundered in the surf, and also by this time they had probably

discovered that we were not in the lagoon.

"They will puzzle it out soon. Get your floating mines ready," ordered

Captain Blaise. That was my work, and in anticipation of it I had

knocked together two small rafts loaded with explosives and a large one

with explosives and combustible stuff to burn brightly for half an hour

or so.

"What does this mean?" Miss Cunningham was at Captain Blaise's elbow.

She could not have asked a question more pleasing to him.

"It means that we are like a rat in a hole with half a dozen big cats

guarding the exit. It is an acutely angled corner we are in, Miss

Shiela, and a string of corvettes and sloops-of-war stretched, no

knowing just where, across the narrow way out. So far they do not know

we are here, but before long it is bound to occur to some of them that

this is the _Dancing Bess_ and that she has made the Momba River

passage--and then they will crowd in and pounce on us. That is, if we

don't get out before that."

"I see. I must go down and tell father. He's not worrying, but he wants

to know what's going on."

He let the brigantine now run offshore, parallel with the southern bank,

almost to the entrance. Then we doubled back on our course. As we came

about he called, "Ready with your mines, Guy?"

"Ready, sir!"

"Let go!"

At the word over went the big raft. We sailed on for a quarter mile or

so. "Let go!" Over went the second. A quarter mile farther and the third

one went. Each mine had its time-fuse. In a very few minutes--the _Bess_

was in by the corner of the delta again--the inshore mine exploded.

Following the noise and flame there was a quiet and a great darkness,

and then from the southerly guard-ship a rocket, while from the shore

burst forth new lights. If the surf had not been roaring, we knew that

we could have heard those joyful yells from the watchers up that way.

Everybody on the coast knew that the _Bess_ carried two long-toms and no

lack of ammunition for them. We could imagine their chuckling over our

explosion.

Then came the second explosion, and five minutes later the third, and

from her a great flame which continued to burn.

"Captain Blaise, I don't understand. Why that fire-raft?" Miss Shiela

had reappeared on deck.

"Why? We are hoping that they will think that we are sailing out to sea

in line of the explosions, just the opposite from what we are doing. If

they will but think that that burning raft is our burning hold and that

we are in distress, why--Look, Miss Shiela!"

Two war-ships were now signalling to each other recklessly, and their

signals gave us a chance to reckon pretty nearly the course that they

were steering. Both ships were headed straight for the burning raft. As

they came on they uncovered their sailing lights, to prevent collision

with each other, and watching these two ships' lights we might have

picked a way directly between them. But if they happened to have another

ship under cover in that apparently open water, we would be lost; and

also, in passing between, we would have blocked off the lights of each

in turn to the other and then they would have us.

Between the bar and the sailing lights of the inshore ship of the pair

now bearing down, we knew there was another ship. We had seen her signal

early, and that ship, we knew, would be held as close to the line of

surf as her draught and the nerve of her commander would allow. Captain

Blaise, reckoning where she should be, laid the _Bess's_ course for her.

"She's used to having a little loose water on her deck--let her have it

again," he said, and at this time we had everything on her, and if I

have not made any talk of it before, I'll say it now--the _Bess_ could

sail.

We were now heading about a point off the edge of the outer line of

heavy breakers, and as the _Bess_ had the least free-board of any ship

of her size sailing the trades, she was soon carrying on her deck her

full allowance of loose water. Amidships, when she lay quietly to

anchor, a long-armed man could lean over her rail and all but touch his

fingers in the sea. Now, with the wind beam, over her lee rail amidships

the heavy seas mounted. On the high quarter-deck we had only to hang

onto the weather-rail, but the men stationed amidships had to watch

sharp to keep from being swept overboard.

She was long and lean. It was her depth, and not her beam, which had

held the _Bess_ from capsizing in many a blow. Ten years Captain Blaise

had had her, and in those ten years, whether in sport or need, he had

not spared her. She was long and lean, and as loose forward as an old

market basket.

Loose and lean and low, she was wiggling like a black snake through the

white-topped seas. We had men in our foretop looking for the guard-ship,

and because they knew almost exactly where to look for her, we saw her

in time and swung the _Bess_ inside her, yet closer to the breakers. Her

big bulk piled toward us, her great sails reached up in clouds--shadows

of clouds. Past our bow, past our waist, past our quarter. We could pick

the painted ports and the protruding black muzzles of her port battery

as she passed, a huge shapeless shadow racing one way, and we going the

other way like some long, sinuous, black devil of a creature streaking

through a white-bedded darkness.

We were by before they were alive to it. A voice, another voice, a

hundred voices, and then we saw her green sidelight swing in a great

arc; but long before then we were away on the other tack, and so when

her broadside belched (and there was metal sufficient to blow us out of

water), we were half a mile away and leaping like a black hound to the

westward.

A score of rockets followed the broadside. Captain Blaise glanced

astern, then ahead, aloft, and from there to the swinging hull beneath

him. He started to hum a tune, but broke it off, to recite:

"O the woe of wily Hassan

When they break the tragic news!"

And from that he turned to Miss Cunningham with a joyous, "And what d'y'

think of it all?"

She looked her answer, with her head held high and breathing deeply.

"And the _Dancing Bess_, isn't she a little jewel of a ship? Something

to love? Aye, she is. And you had no fear?"

"Fear!" Her laughter rang out. "When father went below, he said, 'Fear

nothing. If Captain Blaise gets caught, there's no help for it--it's

fate.'"

And I knew he was satisfied. She had seen him on the quarter of his own

ship and he playing the game at which, the _Bess_ under his _feet_, no

living man could beat him; and in playing it he had brought her father

and herself to freedom. It was for such moments he lived.

The night was fading. We could now see things close by. He took her hand

and patted it. "Go below, child, and sleep in peace. You're headed for

home. Look at her slipping through the white-topped seas, and when she

lays down to her work--there's nothing ever saw the African coast can

overhaul us. No, nothing that ever leaped the belted trades can hold her

now, not the _Bess_--while her gear's sound and she's all the wind she

craves for."

"I believe you, Captain." She looked over the roaring side. Long and

loose and lean, she was lengthening out like a quarter-horse, and he

was singing, but with a puzzling savageness of tone:

"Roll, you hunted slaver

Roll your battened hatches down--"

"Good-night, Captain." She turned to me. She was pale, but 'twas the

pallor of enduring bravery. There was no paling of her dark eyes. Even

darker were they now. "Good-night--" She hesitated. "Good-night, Guy."

"Good-night, Miss Shiela," and I handed her down the companion-way. At

the foot of the stairs she looked up and whispered, "You must take care

of that wound, Guy." And I answered, "No fear," and then her face seemed

to melt away in a mist under the cabin lamp.

Astern of us the dawn leaped up. It had been black night; in a moment,

almost, it was light again. I remembered what Captain Blaise had said of

a sunset in Jamaica; but here it was the other way about--a purple,

round-rimmed dish, and from a segment of it the blood-red salad of a sun

upleaping. And pictured clouds rolling up above the blood-red. And

against the splashes of the sun the tall palm-trees. And in the new

light the signal flambeaux paling. And the white spray of the bar

tossing high, and across the spray the white-belted squadron tacking and

filling futilely.

I grew cold and wondered what was wrong. I dimly saw Captain Blaise come

running to me. "Guy! Guy!" he called. I remember also myself saying,

"Nothing wrong with me, sir--and no harm if there is. It's sunrise on

the Slave Coast and the _Dancing Bess_ she's homeward bound!"

V

The blue-belted Trades! Day and day, week and week, the little curly,

white-headed seas, the unspecked blue sky, and the ceaseless caress of

the pursuing wind. No yard nor sail, never a bowline, sheet, or halyard

to be handled, and the _Bess_ bounding ever ahead. Beauty, peace, and a

leaping log--could the sea bring greater joy?

Captain Blaise had located the bullet--the second shot it must have

been--which had lodged under my right shoulder and cut it out. We were

nearing home, and the fever was now gone from me, but I was not yet able

to take my part on deck. "Perhaps to-morrow," she had said. And

to-morrow was come, and I lay there thinking, and at times trying to

write.

She had left me alone for a while. Her father had called her to hear

another of the Captain's stories. Through the cabin skylight I could see

her, or at least the curve of her chin, and her tanned throat and one

shoulder pressing inward under the skylight shutters. Her face was

turned toward Captain Blaise, whose head and shoulders, he pacing and

turning on the quarter, came regularly within range. But she was not

forgetting me; every few minutes she thrust her head beneath the raised

skylight hatches and looked down to see that I wanted for nothing, and

always she smiled.

I was propped up in an easy chair. Up to two days back I had been on a

cot. Mr. Cunningham had improved so rapidly that for more than a week

now he had been allowed on deck, and there he was now, as I said,

listening with his daughter to the tales of Captain Blaise. His laughter

and her breaths of suspense, I could hear the one and feel the other.

I took up my pad of paper and resumed my writing. And reviewing my

writing, I had to smile at myself, even as I used to smile at Captain

Blaise when he would submit his couplets or quatrains for my judgment.

He might marshal off-hand a stanza or two of his vagabond thoughts, but

here was I carefully composing with pencil and paper, and had been for a

week now.

I had never been ill before, never for five minutes. And this illness

had driven me to a strange introspection. There had been time to think.

I smiled at Captain Blaise's amateurish rhymings on the veranda of the

manor-house. I had condemned him in my own mind for this death or that

death of his irregular career; on that last night on the veranda I had

even allowed him to read my thoughts of such matters. And now I could

not recollect of his having ever killed or maimed except in defence of

his life or property; and yet that night in Momba I had shot, caring not

whether I killed or no. Self-defence? At the instant of shooting I had

thought, had almost spoken it aloud: "There! There's for a channel to

let the starlight into your unclean brain." Self-defence? Tish! The

Governor's son desired, possibly loved in his way, a girl that I had

known no longer than I knew him, and there it was--I loved her, too!

Captain Blaise himself had probably never killed on less provocation;

and meditating on his emotional side, on his many provocations, his

life-long environment, I had to concede that the Captain Blaise I

condemned was a less guilty man than I.

This, as I was beginning to see, was but an argument with myself for a

final dismissal of my old life. Surely I should be ashamed to admit that

in such fashion was my brain trying to fool my soul; but so it was.

Remorse? I should have been worn with remorse, I know; but I was not. I

tried to grieve for my hasty judgment of Captain Blaise: and I did. But

for the Governor's son, not a qualm. I, too, like Captain Blaise, had

become the creature of hereditary instincts and overpowering emotion.

Never in all my life before had I thought that any sin or shortcoming of

mine was ever to be anybody's business but my own. My salvation lay in

the future, which, now that my conscience was awakened, I would have

only myself to censure if it did not become what I wished.

But these serious thoughts were of previous days. This morning I was to

have some little composition ready for her when she came down. I turned

to my paper and pencil and began to write. But thoughts, such thoughts

as I conceived would please her, came slowly. My new conscience or it

may have been the voices of the quarter-deck,--her father's questions,

Captain Blaise's muffled answers, her exclamations of delight and

wonder,--all these diverted me. In despair I tried to catch, as I

usually could, what Captain Blaise was saying, but to-day he spoke in so

low a tone that I could not quite.

Ubbo came down for a chart, a particular chart which Captain Blaise has

always kept apart from the others. I pointed out to him where he would

find it. And my eye followed his figure up the cabin steps. In a

sailor's costume Ubbo was proud but perspiring, though devotion shone

out in every drop of perspiration.

[Illustration: After a long look I saw that he did not resume his

narrative. By that I knew that the stranger was troubling him]

Through the skylight I saw Captain Blaise take the chart from Ubbo,

unroll and scan it. "I was right. Yes, here's the spot." He was

addressing Shiela. "In red ink, see, and here's about where we are

now--not ten miles from here, north by east."

Shiela was bending over the chart when "Sail-ho!" rang out from the

lookout in the foretop. He had a grand voice, that man on watch.

With one hand Captain Blaise held the chart so Shiela still could read

it; with the other he reached through the skylight opening for his long

glass. After a long look I saw that he did not resume his narrative. By

that I knew that the stranger was troubling him.

Shiela came below to see me. The traces of tears were in her eyes.

"It's a large ship to the northward," she said. "From something Captain

Blaise whispered to father it may be a man-o'-war, though I hope not.

But what have you done since I've been gone? You mustn't feel put out

when I have to go on deck. It's an ungrateful girl, you know, who is not

courteous to her host, especially when that host is Captain Blaise.

Think what father and I owe him! And what a wonderfully interesting man

he is! And what adventures he has had!"

"But what made you cry?"

"Captain Blaise was telling of a happening on this very spot almost. It

was a ship from Cadiz for Savannah. She had taken fire. He picked up

among others three people lashed to some pieces of wreckage--a man, a

woman, and their baby. She was dead and he dying. He did die later

aboard his ship, the predecessor of the _Bess_. The baby lived. Do you

recall the story?"

"No, he never told me that one. And the baby?"

"The father had practically supported the baby in the water for four

days--the baby was less than a year old--and the mother had nursed him

till she died. For two days, the man said, with nothing to eat herself.

She and he, they had practically killed themselves for the baby boy. She

was a Spanish woman--a lady. The father died aboard Captain Blaise's

ship. He was an American who had married abroad without consulting his

father, and the old gentleman made such a fuss about it that the young

man had stayed away--intended to remain away and renounce his heritage;

but at last the father had sent for him, and he was then on his way

home. But you should have heard Captain Blaise tell it. He made us feel

that mother's love for her baby, that mother who was dead before he

picked her up, and made us feel, too, what a man the father was. What an

actor he is! I tried not to cry, but I did. But let me see--what have

you there?"