“THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL”
“The Beautiful White Devil,” a woman pirate whom I at first regarded
as a purely fanciful being, born of the unreal atmosphere of the East,
came into my life, in which she was destined to play a most important
part, at Hong Kong in the early days of 1876. I had gone there in
search of authentic information concerning the attitude and plans of
old Moy Sen, overlord of all the Chinese pirates, who was reported
to have declared an intention to bury my harassing ships and all on
board of them, in return for our vigorous operations against him. This
threat had given a new interest to a game of which I was beginning to
tire, for I had then been waging war on the pirates for more than a
year, and it was getting monotonous. I landed quietly at night from
the “Surprise,” which remained far out in the roadstead, and went to
the old Queen’s Hotel, where I clung to my role of a rich English
physician, travelling for his health, but assumed a new name, which I
cannot recall. My “Chinkie” interpreter, Ah Fen, I sent on up to Canton
to secretly gain such information as he could pick up from a relative
in the camp of the boss buccaneer of the China Sea.
While waiting for his report I lounged around the hotel and steered
my casual conversation with the _habitués_ toward the subject in
which I was most interested. Soon I began to hear weird stories of a
woman pirate who, while never molesting honest merchantmen, preyed
mercilessly and successfully on the Chinese and Malay pirates, just as
Norton and I were doing. It was said that she was exquisitely beautiful
of face and diabolically black of heart; that she led her band of
cut-throats in person and gloried in the shedding of black and yellow
blood by the barrel. Her recreation from wholesale butchery was found
in the companionship of occasional white men whom she ran across and
who gladly accompanied her to her retreat, located no one knew where,
only to be killed when she wearied of them. According to these tales,
which I at first regarded as purely imaginative, she travelled in a
steam yacht of phenomenal speed and had never failed in her desperate
exploits. Though she had been in the business for years no one in
Hong Kong had ever seen her and she was known only as the “Beautiful
White Devil,” which name, from all accounts, was well suited to her.
It occurred to me at once that if such a woman really did exist it
might have been her ship that came to our assistance on the night of
our battle with the Malays on the deck of the British bark, and whose
captain I had attended under strange circumstances, and I saw visions
of a meeting and perhaps closer acquaintance with her; but they were
only fleeting fancies, for I could not make myself believe the tales
that were told me. Not but what I wanted to believe them, and tried
to, for next to adventure I loved a beautiful woman; if the two could
be combined, the result would be an absolutely ideal condition, even
though the feminine fancy did run to murder; but my reason told me I
was dreaming of the impossible.
However, after I had heard the report of Ah Fen, who returned in about
two weeks, bubbling over with information and gossip, I put more
confidence in what I had been told, for he repeated the same wild
story, with elaborations and variations. It was a well established fact
in the minds of Moy Sen and his followers, he said, that there actually
was a woman pirate who preyed on and destroyed the regular pirates, and
she was as much hated as we were, or more, for she had been following
that calling, with much energy, for years. It was said she had
inherited an avenging oath against the pirates from some male member
of her family, who had been a terror to them before her, and she was
carrying it out with fanatical fervor. This was the story brought in by
pirates who had escaped from junks and proas she had attacked, and who
gave thrilling accounts of her demoniacal fury in leading her men. Moy
Sen, my interpreter reported, was swearing renewed vengeance on both of
us but, inasmuch as the lady seemed to bear a charmed life, he proposed
to go after me first. He attributed to me the destruction of some
of his junks that I had never seen, while, to balance accounts, the
robbery of some of his ships which I had looted was laid at the door of
my woman contemporary. This convinced me that there was a woman pirate,
or, which I still believed to be more likely, a man masquerading as
a woman, and that the pirate chief had confused our exploits. He was
setting some sort of a trap for me, according to the inside gossip
picked up by Ah Fen, and was determined to sweep the sea clear of my
ships, at least.
I had sent the “Surprise” away as soon as she landed me, with orders to
return in a month, ostensibly in search of cargo, and pick me up. She
was about due when a man called at my hotel one evening and asked if an
English physician was stopping there. I was pointed out to him in the
billiard room and as he came toward me I recognized Captain Deverell,
but he was as formal as a stranger and I took my cue from that and did
not indicate that I knew him. He asked if he could consult with me and
I took him to my room, where he assumed a much more cordial air.
“I called,” he said, “to invite you to take a cruise with me so that we
may get better acquainted and I can show you my appreciation of your
kindness of a few weeks ago.”
“How long will you be out?” I asked.
“A week or a month; whatever time suits your pleasure.”
I did some quick thinking. If there was a woman pirate it was her ship
that Deverell commanded, I was sure. If I accepted his invitation I
might go the way of other men whom, if the reports I had heard were to
be trusted, she had picked up, and who never returned. Whether she was
a “Devil” or whether it was her ship from which the invitation came I
could not ask without showing some apprehension that would be impolite.
Besides, I had previously been requested by Deverell to ask him no
questions about himself or his ship and I inferred that this inhibition
was still in force; if he had wanted me to know more than he had
indicated he would have volunteered the information. It was an uncanny
proceeding, yet the very mystery of it attracted me as a magnet does
steel. Furthermore, here was a brand new adventure, right within my
grasp, and if it was to end my career then it was because my time had
come, and that was all there was to it.
With my thoughts running in that channel a decision was quickly reached
and I told Deverell I would be glad to go with him. I packed my bag and
turned it over to a man whom Deverell summoned from the street. Ah Fen
was instructed to watch for the “Surprise,” rejoin the “Leckwith,” and
report to Norton what he had told me, and tell him to have me picked up
at Hong Kong in a month or six weeks. Late in the evening we went to
the Bund where a boat that was waiting at an out-of-the-way landing up
near the native quarter took us out to the ship, which was lying fully
six miles offshore, well beyond the usual anchorage. It was the same
ship I had seen several times before but her rig had been so altered,
by taking the rake out of her stack and shortening her spars, and by
changing her upper works, that I could not have recognized her if I
had seen her under any other conditions. Her sides were discolored and
dirty, due to the skilful use of paint, and she looked like an old
tramp. But on board of her were all the comforts and conveniences of a
yacht, with the discipline of a warship. She was about the size of the
“Leckwith,” registering probably five hundred tons net, and with the
removal of her dummy superstructure which concealed six carronades, her
deck was clear, except for the wheelhouse and the captain’s room behind
it. The gun deck below was devoted entirely to living quarters arranged
with an eye to comfort. Those for the crew ran back to amidships, for
she carried all of a hundred men. Abaft of them were the officers’
quarters and in the stern, cut off from the rest of the ship, were the
rooms of the real commander, which were large and sumptuously furnished.
As soon as we were on board it was “Up anchor and full speed to sea.”
Appropriately enough, I was given the cabin of the surgeon, who had
died recently, to which fact I owed my presence on the ship. Deverell
took me into his room and we talked until midnight. Soon after we got
under way he satisfied my silent impatience by throwing open a panel
and exposing a life-size painting of the most beautiful woman I had
ever seen.
“Is that the Beautiful White Devil?” I asked, unable longer to restrain
the questions that were choking me.
“That is our Queen,” he replied gravely, “and it is by that name alone
that she is known to us and spoken of on this ship.”
“She certainly is entitled to the first part of the name by which she
is known ashore, whether or not she deserves the last section of it,” I
said, with open admiration.
His answer left no doubt as to whose ship I was on. “That picture may
do partial justice to her face but it is impossible that it could
portray the beauty of her heart. Instead of being cold-blooded and
bloodthirsty, as you seem to have heard, she is tender and sympathetic
and she has devoted a great part of her money to the relief of
suffering humanity. She deprecates killing even villainous Malays and
Chinks, but she will not be defeated, cost what it will. Never since I
joined the ship have I seen a wanton act of cruelty.”
“What is her life, and what is the motive of it?” I asked.
“She will have to tell you that herself, but before you see her I want
to warn you. Every man who sees the Queen falls in love with her, and
if you think you are going to be like the rest you had better go over
the side right now.”
“How is one to keep from falling in love with her?” I inquired, with
some anxiety, still lost in admiration of the lovely face on the canvas.
“If one philosophizes and keeps his love to himself it is all right,
but this lady is not to be won by any man. She has devoted her life to
a particular purpose and we have devoted our lives to her.”
“That sounds very romantic and interesting,” I observed, already half
suspicious that Deverell himself was in love with her. “What is the
special purpose to which you are all pledged?”
A shrug of the shoulders and a smile made up the only answer.
Deverell then closed the panel and made me the subject of conversation.
He asked all manner of questions about my life, and when I brought the
story down to the China Sea he showed a familiarity with my movements
which indicated a system of spies that aroused my admiration, and I
was free in expressing it. It was through their elaborate system, he
admitted, that they had learned I was in Hong Kong and where I was
stopping. He admitted, too, that they had been in touch with me from
the day I entered their waters and had come to regard me as a kindred
soul, to which fact I owed my invitation from their Queen.
It was considerably after eight bells before I retired but my sleep
was not long or heavy, for the strangeness of the situation and its
possibilities impressed me, not with fear but with exultant expectancy.
At breakfast time Deverell, wearing a smart uniform, escorted me aft
to the private quarters of the Queen, which reminded me of those
of an officer of flag rank in the American Navy. They had the same
private galley and air of exclusiveness of a flagship, but they were
much more spacious and were fitted out with a daintiness that bespoke
generations of culture. The dining-room was a reproduction in miniature
of those one finds in the best homes of England, with nothing about it
to suggest the sea. Back of it and separated from it by odd Chinese
curtains, was a luxurious lounging room, with large ports cut through
the over-hang. On one side of it was the Queen’s sitting-room and
library, and on the other her boudoir.
I was ushered into the dining-room and in a moment the Queen appeared.
As she parted the curtains and paused for just an instant in the
doorway with an air of diffidence, I was transfixed by her marvellous
beauty, to which, as Deverell had said, the painted picture had done
only partial justice. Tall, and with the figure and the manner of
a goddess, I was fascinated by her eyes, deep blue and filled with
sentiment and sympathy; eyes that could never be brutal but which must
yearn for love and tenderness; not the eyes of a woman born to command,
for there was a softness about them that was almost pleading, but of
one created with a desire to be herself commanded and dominated by a
stronger nature. Through them she looked at me as a child might look,
but with more of understanding, yet as much of curiosity. Unconfined,
her hair, when I saw it, would have swept the floor, but it was twisted
into a great black, glistening crown; a little detail that made her
appear more than ever the Queen.
Deverell started to introduce me but she interrupted him. “I already
know Dr. Burnet,” she said, as she swept toward me with superb grace
and infinite charm of manner and extended her hand, small and soft.
“And I feel that I already know you” was a blunder into which her eyes
led me.
Instantly the look of animation which had come into her wonderful eyes
gave way to one of sadness. “But I fear,” she said, “that the reports
you have heard regarding me are very different from those I have had
concerning you, and which caused me to want to meet you, that I might
thank you for your kindness to Captain Deverell.”
I stumbled into another tactless reply: “I have only one fault to find
with what I have been told. You should be known as ‘The Beautiful White
Angel.’” It was not a polite thing to say but I was hopelessly, almost
heedlessly, in love, and it always has been my way to go straight at
things.
Her answer, only through her eyes, that if I was not, in fact, a very
ordinary individual I had made a very commonplace remark, so added
to my embarrassment that we had talked about the weather and the sea
for some time before I got back to my mooring and felt reasonably
secure. Before breakfast was over we were getting along better, though
I could not have concealed the admiration I did not express. At the
end of the meal the Queen and I retired to the lounging room, Deverell
going forward to look after the ship. His attitude toward her was one
of devotion that amounted almost to homage, which she accepted as
her right, and he spoke of and to her only as “Queen.” Naturally, I
addressed her in the same way, as that was the only name Deverell had
used when he started to introduce me, and I then knew her by no other.
“We are headed for my retreat,” she explained. “I want you to see
it, and your visit there will give us an opportunity to get better
acquainted. I should like to have you stay with us as long as you can.
I will put you down in Hong Kong or Singapore on three or four days’
notice.”
I assured her the prospect was delightful. With a bow and a smile
that encouraged veritable loquacity she asked me to tell her all
about myself, and she displayed so much interest in my different
filibustering expeditions, and the adventures that grew out of them,
that I gradually told her the whole story. When my recital brought me
to the China Sea her interest became even more lively, as to details,
but she displayed the same intimate knowledge of my movements, in a
general way, that Deverell had shown.
In the course of the numerous long talks which followed, I felt that
I was regaining some of the ground I had lost by my blunders in my
first bewilderment, and though my infatuation grew stronger every time
I was in her magnetic presence, which charged my whole being with the
electrical energy of life at its best, I said not another word to her
about it, on the ship. As we came to understand each other better she
asked me to tell her all I had heard about her. I was surprised, but
I knew she meant me to be perfectly frank with her, so I repeated, in
a general way, the vague and vapory whisperings as to her wonderful
beauty, on the one hand, and her alleged bloodthirstiness and
wantonness on the other, which latter stories, I told her, could not be
tolerated for an instant by any one who had ever seen her. She smiled
bitterly.
“I never have cared what people said or thought of me,” she said
very slowly, “until recently. Far from enjoying the life I have been
compelled to lead, I have suffered from it. It has been hard, and I
have had to face and solve its problems alone. Craving friendship as
flowers do the sun, and needing it as much, I have had to cut myself
off from the world and try to make myself believe that I have neither
heart nor conscience. When we get home I will tell you the story of my
life, as you have told me yours.”
On the afternoon of the third day out from Hong Kong we ran into
a group of islands, off to the eastward of the regular course to
Singapore. Just as dinner was announced a flag was waved from the
bridge and, following Deverell’s eyes, I made out an answering signal
on the steep side of a small island just ahead of us. We were close
inshore and I scanned the bank closely but could see no sign of either
a landing or an opening. I was anxious to see what was to follow but
a messenger brought word that the Queen was waiting dinner for me.
Deverell did not dine with us but joined us as we were having coffee.
The ship slowed down while we were at dinner and finally the screw
stopped. Immediately the Queen led the way to the deck, where she had
ordered coffee served.
“This,” she said at the head of the stairway, “is my kingdom--without a
king. Isn’t it beautiful?”
I was a little in doubt as to whether her inquiry related to the
scenery or the absence of a male ruler, but, without being able to
distinguish clearly in the gathering tropic darkness, I assured her
that it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, wherein, when
day dawned, I found I had not exaggerated. We were at the head of an
oval lake, perhaps a mile and a half long, with mountains, whose ascent
began close to the shore, rising crescent-shaped around it. There was
a small village, composed of English cottages and native huts, at the
end of the lake nearest to us. On three sides of the lake was a narrow
beach, which widened at the village; the fourth side, toward the sea,
was a perpendicular bluff, sixty feet or more high. I searched it for
the passage through which we had entered the lake but nothing could I
see but a bare wall of dark rock. The Queen watched me as I studied
the situation and smiled at my perplexity. “Wait until to-morrow,” she
laughed. “It would never do to let you into all of our secrets at
once. You had best retire early, for we will go ashore at sunrise,” and
she disappeared.
While we had been talking the topmasts were lowered, which I did not
quite understand, and the fires drawn, and soon I was alone on deck,
with a solitary watchman forward. There was no moon but under the soft
light of the stars, low-hung and with a brilliancy seen only at or
near the equator, I sat in silent wonder and admiration for hours. I
was up again before it was full daylight and watched the lowering of
the Queen’s launch. She appeared with the sun, accompanied by a Dyak
woman whom I had not seen before, and we landed at a little stone dock
in front of the village. All of the inhabitants, consisting of about
fifty English and Scotch men and women, some with silvered locks and
bent backs, and some of them crippled by the pirates, and nearly as
many natives, crowded the pier to meet her, their manner one of the
greatest affection and deference. We walked through the village, which
was a model of neatness, and on up a winding path for nearly a mile,
when a sharp turn around a flank of the mountain brought us to a large
bungalow--the palace of the Queen. It was so situated that it could
not be seen from the sea, at any point, but just around the turn and
not fifty yards from the house was a deep shadowed bower from which
there was a clear view of the ocean for two-thirds of the way around
the compass. This was the outside sitting-room of the Queen and here
breakfast was served. While it was being prepared she made herself
more beautiful by changing her dress of European style for a native
costume of flowing silk so becoming that I wondered at her ever wearing
anything else.
After breakfast she looked down at the little town and far out to
sea in silence for a long time, and then told me the story of her
life. Her name, she said, was Katherine Crofton. Her father was one
of the younger branches of a family which was headed by a Baron.
The family crest was a sheaf of wheat and the motto “God grants the
increase.” Her branch of the family had lived in the south of Ireland
for several generations. Another branch had long lived at Derry Willow
in the County Leitrim. Her father was a lieutenant commander in the
British Navy and to prevent an accident he disobeyed the order of an
incompetent and arrogant superior officer. In a quarrel that followed
her father knocked his superior down and otherwise abused him, for
which he was court-martialled and dismissed.
“My father was a high-spirited man,” she continued, “and his disgrace
embittered him against England and everything English. He soon left
home, without saying where he was going, and when we next heard from
him he was in Hong Kong. He corresponded with us regularly after
that and in three or four years, when I was about fifteen, he wrote
mother and me to take a P & O ship for Singapore, where we would find
further instructions. When we got there father was waiting for us on a
handsome yacht, the ‘Queen,’ which is the ship that you have heard so
much about. I am still using her. He brought us to this island, which
he had fitted out as a retreat. He had established a small settlement
down on the lake and built a warehouse in which to store his goods, and
a machine shop to facilitate repairs to his ship. He had taken great
pains and put himself to a large expense to make his rendezvous secure
from intrusion or discovery.
“Evidently this lake is in the crater of an old volcano which, when it
subsided, left a high, narrow barrier between it and its old enemy, the
sea. Down there,” pointing to the end of the lake opposite the village,
“was a narrow opening into the lake, with a deep channel leading
straight out to sea, though on both sides of it are rocks and shoals.
Probably it was a fissure created by the volcano; anyway it served my
father’s purpose perfectly. He had the opening closed up with rocks
until it was just wide enough to admit the ‘Queen.’ The ridge there,
you can see, is not more than thirty-five or forty feet high, so the
partial closing of the gap was really not such a difficult task. Then
he fitted into the opening that was left, a great double gate, which
rolls back and forth, instead of opening outward, and though it weighs
many tons its mechanism is so arranged that four men can operate it.
The gate is strong enough to stand any storm but to avoid straining it
we keep it open in heavy weather, unless ships are hovering about. From
a watch tower on top of the mountain behind us we get a clear view of
the sea in all directions, and a man is always on duty there. The ridge
that cuts off the ocean rises toward the upper end of the lake and
the village is entirely hidden behind it, as is the ‘Queen’ when her
topmasts are housed. The island, as you can see, is very small and from
the sea there is not a sign to indicate that it is inhabited. When the
gate at the opening into the lake is closed it cannot be distinguished
at a distance of an eighth of a mile, for it exactly resembles the
rocks on both sides of it, but the channel which leads to it is known
to no one save us and no other ship would dare to venture within a mile
and a half of the shore on account of the rocks.
“I did not understand at first the meaning of all of these precautions,
or some other things. Father went out on frequent voyages and returned
with more or less cargo, which was placed in the warehouse, until it
was full. Then father would change the appearance of his ship so that
no one would know her and take cargoes out and sell them, until the
warehouse was empty again. He always took mother and me along on these
trips, though never on the others, and young as I was I learned much
about navigation, for I had his love for the sea. On these trips we
brought back books and magazines and so were able to keep a little in
touch with the outside world.
“When I was not much older than nineteen father and mother were taken
desperately ill and, believing that he would not recover, he called me
into his room and made a confession. He said that in his hatred of the
British he had turned pirate and had been for all those years preying
on ships flying the flag he despised. He had also, occasionally,
waged war on the native pirates and taken their loot from them, which
explained why he had frequently come in with wounded men on board. He
told me of how he had suffered from the act of injustice which expelled
him from the navy and in the end he made me swear that if he died I
would continue the work he had begun. He told me I could rely on Frank
Deverell, his chief officer, whom he said he hoped I would some day
marry,”--this last with just a trace of sarcasm. “My father died the
next week and my mother three months later.
“That was four years ago. I have kept the oath which my love for my
father prompted me to take, but the fulfilment of it has brought me
increasing misery. My attacks on the British flag have been few--in
fact I have given timely assistance to many more English ships than I
have robbed, and hundreds of their passengers and sailors owe their
lives to me, but I have preyed on the natural pirates of these waters
as ardently, perhaps, as did my father. Yet I have no greater moral
right to take from them what they have stolen than I have to rob a
British or an American ship, nor can I excuse myself for the loss of
life that goes with my attacks on them. I am much better armed than
they are and it is nothing but cowardice, as well as thievery, for me
to make war on them. I am, in fact, no better than they are, for I
am in the same class with them--a pirate. My conscience has troubled
me more and more until it has sickened me with the whole wretched
business. A bad promise is better broken than kept; an oath is no more
than a promise; and I am about ready to quit all of this robbery and
butchery and try to return to decency and civilization. As to the other
stories you have heard about me--they are simply lies.”
Toward the end she spoke rapidly and passionately and when she finished
she was all a-quiver, and her eyes filled with tears. After a long
pause, during which she regained control of herself, she said:
“Now, Captain, I have told you all. I am partly justified, if such a
vow as mine can be pleaded as justification, but why are you in this
business?”
Her sudden inquiry, following her bitter denunciation of pirates and
those who preyed on them, surprised and embarrassed me. I told her
that I was in it only because of the adventure of it; that I had been
attracted to the China Sea by Norton’s stories, and that once there I
had naturally fallen in with the exciting life and become a part of it;
and that all of my fighting blood was aroused and my soul glorified by
the fact that the great pirate chief had sworn to crush me.
“That is not a sufficient excuse,” she replied, promptly and
decisively. “I had some reason for my actions, but you have none.” A
moment later she added, gently: “I did not mean to pass judgment on
you, for I have no right to do that. We must all be governed by our own
consciences.”
Neither one of us cared to continue the conversation and I was glad
when she suggested that she would have a servant show me to a smaller
bungalow, a short distance away, where I was to stay, though taking
my meals at the “palace.” She advised a walk through the village and
around the lake during the forenoon, and said we would walk toward the
top of the mountain after lunch. I looked over my comfortable quarters
and then walked back to the lake and went in a boat, with Deverell and
Fennell, the “Queen’s” second officer, to the entrance, in which I was
much interested. I found it to be just as it had been described. There
were two gates, one on each side, about twenty-five feet high, above
low water, and fifteen feet wide. They ran on small wheels in grooves
cut in the solid rock and had been put in place, evidently, by building
a cofferdam around the entrance. Below the water line they were built
of heavy iron lattice work, so as to give the tides free ingress and
egress. Above the water they were constructed of thick timbers, covered
on the seaward side with iron plates. When they were open they ran
back into nests cut into granite rock. When they were closed they came
together diagonally, in the shape of a wide V, with the apex facing
outward, so that the action of the waves only locked them more firmly.
It was possible for two men to operate each gate, though six made
quicker work of it. Their construction was as fine a piece of elusive
engineering as I have ever seen. Their height was so arranged that
there was no break in the coast line and they were, as the Queen had
said, indistinguishable at a very short distance. There was just room
enough over the sill to admit the “Queen” at low tide, and a larger
ship could not have gotten through the gates or over the bar.
I told Deverell enough to make him understand, without my saying so,
that the Queen had told me her life story, and, knowing this, he talked
quite freely. From what he said I satisfied myself that not only
had the elder Crofton been an out-and-out pirate but his bewitching
daughter had done honor to his name, for two or three years at least.
We visited the machine shop, which was quite elaborately fitted up for
the repair of ship and guns, and walked through the village, where he
pointed out men who had lost arms or legs in the service of the Queen
and her father, and others who had been retired for age and were now
pensioners. Deverell was a true pirate and told me with delight of some
of their exploits. His reverence for the Queen amounted to idolatry.
If his love for her had been returned I would not have been surprised
for, though lacking some of the finer instincts of a gentleman, as
could well be imagined from his surroundings for years, he was an
unusually likable chap and of a type that ordinarily appeals strongly
to women. He was about forty years old, two inches less than six feet
tall, and had the figure of an Apollo. His steel gray eyes sparkled
with friendship or shot sparks, and his brown hair fairly bristled when
he was angry. He impressed one as being altogether a man, the soul of
loyalty, a perfect friend, and brave to the last drop of his blood.
After luncheon the Queen and I set off toward the mountain top, nearly
one thousand feet above us, but we did not reach it, for the heat was
intense.
“Well, what do you think of us now?” she asked, on our way down, after
I had told her how I had spent the forenoon.
“I think enough of you to devote my whole life to your service,” I
quickly replied.
She gave me a long, searching look, that seemed to go right through me
and lay my whole soul open before her, then took the lead and, without
a word, walked rapidly on to her bungalow, and I walked on to mine.
When I came back to dinner she was waiting for me in her bower. As
she came to meet me and extended her hand she said, earnestly and
almost sadly, “I believe you were honest and sincere in what you said
this afternoon, but I can only say ‘Thank you.’ What you suggested is
impossible.”
In the three weeks that followed I urged my love upon her with all of
my determination but she refused to change her decision and apparently
was as firm in it as at first. It was agreed that we should both
give up piracy, in any form, but all of our arguments ended there
until finally, one afternoon as we sat looking out over the sea and
talking, for once, of the ordinary affairs of life, she said, slowly
and emphatically, “Deverell was my father’s right-hand-man. I am going
to give this place to him, just as it stands, take the next ship for
England, lay my case before the Home Secretary and ask him for a full
pardon. I will confess to him that I have taken from the pirates what
they had stolen from others. To offset the offence I have hundreds
of written statements from people whose lives I have saved from the
pirates by coming up in the nick of time, for which service I never
accepted payment of any kind. I believe I can secure a pardon and if I
do, I will meet you, with a clear conscience, and become your wife.”
In a tumult of joy, which came over me with the force of an electric
shock, I sprang to her side and started to take her in my arms, but
she stretched out her hand and held me off. I had never seen such a
serious look on her exquisite face and there were tears in her eyes.
“Not yet,” she said, tenderly but firmly. “I have said I would marry
you only when my name had been cleared of its dishonor, and until that
condition has been complied with you cannot regard me as your promised
wife. After that you may do with me as you please, but not until then.”
Her accession of conscience had been so great that she considered
herself disgraced, and that nothing short of a pardon from the British
Government, so bitterly hated by her father, could restore her
respectability. With my most persuasive arguments I tried to dissuade
her from going to England, but without effect. I urged her to marry me
at once and go with me to America or some other country, where we would
not be reminded of the past and have nothing to fear from it, but she
would not listen. She feared she would be found and arrested later on
and bring dishonor on me; she seemed to have no thought of herself in
that respect, and, seeing that, I better understood the depth of her
great love.
No argument of mine could change her and there was nothing to do
but fall in with her plan. She packed up the most treasured of her
personal effects, paid a last visit to the graves of her father and
mother, and two days later we sailed away. Just before going on board
she summoned the villagers to the empty warehouse and told them she
had given all of her property to Deverell and was going away, never to
return. They wept and showed great distress, but Kate was quietly happy
and her glorious eyes were firm and undimmed as they looked for the
last time on her beauteous isle.
I knew about where to find the “Florence.” We picked her up in a few
days and I boarded her and made sail to meet the “Leckwith” at the
rendezvous. Kate went on to Singapore, where she took the next ship for
England. Six months later I received word that she had died suddenly
there, before she had applied for a pardon, and the course of my life
was changed again.