BLACK’ERCHIEF DICK
BLACK’ERCHIEF DICK
BY
MARGERY ALLINGHAM
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
WILLIAM McFEE
[Illustration]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1923
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
MARGERY ALLINGHAM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
_First Edition_
DEDICATED
TO
HAL GRAME
IN THE HOPE THAT HE WILL BE SATISFIED THAT I HAVE DONE MY BEST TO
FULFIL THE PROMISE I MADE TO HIM TO TELL THE STORY OF ANNY AND TO
“TELL TRUE”
INTRODUCTION
In the sense of requiring elucidation or apology, this novel needs no
introduction. The young lady who wrote it about two years ago, when she
was eighteen, has already abandoned this work to publishers and other
grown-ups, and with admirable professional good sense, is working upon
fresh enterprises.
In this, indeed, she is a genuine artist. Nothing is more clear from her
correspondence with the writer of this introduction, than that she is,
without ever becoming conscious of the fact, a genuine artist. Speaking
of the intellectuals who occasionally impinge upon the family circle she
says: “They have a horrid habit of---- oh, I can’t spell it, but it
means pulling their minds to pieces and finding out how they are made,
and they do that with their emotions, too.”
Nothing of the sort is to be found in this tale of eastern England
during the Restoration. And yet, while we may accept the unusual
spectacle of a modern schoolgirl writing a red-blooded adventure story
and privately poking fun at psychoanalysts and their dupes, we are
justified in a certain curiosity as to the genesis of such a book. That
curiosity the introduction is designed to assuage.
Margery Allingham, whom the writer first met at the early age of two,
comes of literary stock. Her grandparents were publishers in the days
before the big combinations made an independent weekly paper a hopeless
hazard. Her parents are journalists and writers of fiction. The business
aspects of literature, the philosophy of art, and the technical problems
of serial fiction have been commonplaces of the domestic atmosphere
which the future novelist breathed during her childhood. It was as
natural for Margery to sit down and “write a story” as for a
shopkeeper’s child to play at keeping a shop. It was inevitable also
that she should start a magazine. I remember it well. It was called _The
Wag-tail_, and the founder was about eight years old. I was foreign
correspondent, a rank imposed because of my being on a ship and so
bringing news of distant shores. Margery herself, however, was mainly
responsible for the publication. It was written in a penny exercise
book, and editorial, short-story, serial, answers to correspondents and
advertisements were entirely by the founder. Our collaboration on this
long-defunct organ laid the foundation of an enduring friendship. When
she was eleven, Margery was graciously pleased to accept the dedication
of one of my novels, in the spirit in which it was offered. It was a
gesture neither of condescension nor of derision, but rather a sincere
and, let us hope, successful attempt on the part of a man a good way up
the hill to give a friendly and affectionate signal to a child already
breasting the lower reaches.
And as the years followed one another in that peculiar progression which
is neither arithmetical nor geometrical, but rather telescopic, whereby
the young close up upon us and make us uneasily aware of our own
slothful deficiencies, it became increasingly evident that in spite of
the secret discouragement of wise parents, who did their best to hold
themselves up as Awful Warnings, Margery Allingham would sooner or later
express herself in one of the arts. Which art she would choose seemed
equally certain until the family circle learned that she proposed to “go
in” for elocution.
The present writer, hearing of this in foreign parts, was at first
nonplussed. With the lack of intelligence that seems to distinguish so
many grown-up males, he feared there would be “dirty work at the
cross-roads” when his lady friend discovered the real nature of a
theatrical career. He might have saved himself the trouble. The lady
friend, gleefully reporting progress, was evidently too preoccupied with
the spectacle of grown-ups in action to bother about the future at all.
She regarded elocution as a means rather than an end. It was perfectly
natural for her, when she failed to find pieces suitable for recitation,
to write them herself. It was a simple step, it appears, when the class
at the Polytechnic sought for a play in which to reveal their virtuosity
to friends and parents, for Margery Allingham to write that play, to
stage-manage it, to design the costumes, and to assume the principal
rôle herself. It was, in short, the little old _Wag-tail_ magazine upon
a somewhat larger scale. One might be pardoned for supposing that the
advice of a large and talented family circle would be invoked on behalf
of a favourite daughter. On the contrary, they are pictured in many
letters as standing around in helpless admiration while a
seventeen-year-old maiden carries through her plans with the precision
of an experienced and ruthless impresario. The play, a blank-verse
tragedy entitled “Dido, Queen of Carthage”, is rehearsed and ultimately
performed with such astonishing success that additional performances
have to be scheduled and the public permitted to pay for admission.
All this, even though it included illustrated interviews in the London
press, was regarded by the chief protagonist as the inept reaction of
grown-ups to a very ordinary achievement of modern youth. For it should
be borne in mind that modern youth, while it is not particularly
impressed with the performances or the philosophies of the preceding
generation, is perfectly willing to abide by the rules of the economic
game. The activities enumerated above were by no means the spectacular
antics of a pampered parasite. Money was being earned in a highly
diverting fashion. It appears that not only are films adapted from
books, but books and stories are redistilled back from the films. Should
money be necessary for scenery or costumes, it was Margery Allingham’s
habit to witness a few pictures, transmute them into fiction and send
them to the weekly journals that publish such stories. The picture
evoked by a series of engaging letters written over the past three years
is that of a shrewd and competent being from another world struggling
with the stupidities and prejudices of a crowd of tottering half-wits
upon the verge of dissolution. Youth seems to be having a tough time of
it in England, as well as in America. There is nothing new about this,
according to our novelist. “The modern girl is simply Miss 1840 without
her petticoats,” is her definition, based on an attentive study of Jane
Austen’s heroines. The trouble lies, not with youth, but with middle
age, whose intellect tends to ossify more rapidly than of yore. It is an
interesting theory, though evidently not designed to placate either
publishers or the writers of introductions.
To come to grips with the question of the origin of this particular
novel, however, is a delicate matter. We find ourselves on enchanted
ground. When a young lady of eighteen writes a novel in four months and
calmly asserts that the story came to her out of the air, as it were,
communicated by so-called automatic writing, the average grown-up
hesitates. He has a foolish predilection for sober realities, and is
reluctant to admit familiar spirits, as it were, to the family circle.
Modern youth, dragging her family after her, calls up the ghosts of
departed rapscallions, witches, and serving-wenches, and forthwith sits
down to fashion a stirring tale.
The novel, then, is a story within a story. The latter has for me a
peculiar fascination. Knowing the characters who sat round that table in
the house on Mersea Island, knowing the Island itself and the
surrounding fenland, I wanted to write a story about them. I have
repressed this desire, contenting myself with recounting to occasional
groups of friends the amazing facts. Now that the novel has been
written, and published in England and America by people who know little
and care nothing about its origins, judging it merely as a piece of
fiction commercially available, the opportunity arrives to reveal
briefly the unusual circumstances out of which the tale was born.
That part of England called East Anglia has preserved through many
centuries the salient features of the landscape. As Charles Dickens said
of the French-Flemish country, it is neither bold nor diversified, being
in fact a sort of continuation of that country on the other side of the
shallow and recent North Sea. And indeed what Dickens went on to say of
his Flemish-French country, that it was three parts Flemish and one part
French, might be paraphrased for East Anglia as three parts English and
one part Low Country, or three parts land and one part water. The shores
emerge imperceptibly from the gray waste of the North Sea, with
stretches of low-tide mud that shine with a metallic lustre beyond the
dunes. The sea is loth to retreat, winding in and out among the fields,
so that one is startled, driving along the road from Colchester towards
Mersea, to see a huge brown wherry aground behind the dikes, many miles
from the sea-lanes outside. And from Canvey Island, which is fairly in
the Thames Estuary below Tilbury, to Aldeburgh, on the Suffolk Coast,
the sea interpenetrates the land so deeply and with so many loops and
backwaters, that the whole coast, to high tide, is compacted of lonely
islands, with here and there a house and the square tower of an ancient
little Saxon church showing above some weather-worn trees on the
landward side. Bleak and perishing cold in the winter, there is a quiet
loveliness in the summers there appealing strongly to unfashionable folk
who seek the elemental sanctuaries of remote harbours and salt winds
driving the thick white clouds athwart a sky of palest azure.
In such surroundings and with a practicable house for sleep, you come
close to England. In such surroundings, on a fare of beef and cheese and
beer, an English family might conceivably become so homogeneously
identified with the spirit of the place that they could move at will up
and down the centuries, assuming the thoughts and memories of any
disembodied intelligences still anchored to their earthly haunts. So at
least it emerges, reading the sober evidence before us, as those four
set it down, signing it with their several names and styles, and
asserting their right as truthful subjects to be believed.
And what they say is this: In August, 1920, being in their cottage on
Mersea Island, on an evening that had turned to rain, the time hung
heavily and it was suggested they pass an hour with the glass. The
ordinary materials were soon provided, being no more than the alphabet
on paper slips, arranged in a circle on the table with a common tumbler,
from which ale is drunk in those parts, inverted in the middle. Nothing
remained save to select some feasible subject.
One lay to their hand. While none of the company had practised the
historical method in their fictions, since they lacked the special
knowledge of bygone ways and speech such work demands, they had often
discussed a legend persisting in the island, that a near-by tavern, long
since destroyed, had been the scene of a tragedy. Old people in the
village said they had seen the ghost, which haunted a house known as The
Myth. “Let us,” said someone, “call up the landlord of the Ship Inn.
Perhaps,” they added amidst some laughter, “he will reply.”
He did! Amid great yet repressed excitement, the mysterious glass slid
to and fro, spelling out a name. As far as can be ascertained, for once
the exact requirements of time and place and method came together, and
some sort of communication was established across the “gateless barrier”
that separates us from the souls who linger near the scenes of their
earthly existence, loth to wander far from their native air. Night after
night, for long hours, these inexperienced folk sat round their table
holding converse with the spirits that syllable men’s names, piecing
together the fragments, evoking new witnesses to check up obscure
allusions, puzzling over the illiterate and archaic words and phrases
which none of them, by any possible chance, could have heard before.
No provision, however, is made in modern publishing for works produced
by authors after they are dead. It is absolutely necessary, when it
comes to publishing, to have some representative this side of the grave,
and Margery Allingham, whose mortal hand wrote the following novel, is
compelled by the hidebound rules of a material and grown-up world to
assume the authorship. Publishers, it seems, from an inspection of our
correspondence, are grown-ups.
It cannot be said that they have, in this particular case, failed in
their obligations to the public. There is one notable feature about this
novel, which the present writer did not read until it had been accepted
for publication, and that is the clean and workmanlike characterization.
Here is no fine writing, no groping for “style.” With crisp hammer-blows
the tale is told. A realistic romance, if you please, in the sense that
no one stands between us and the characters of _Black’erchief Dick_. It
is the realism of Defoe’s _Captain Singleton_ and the _Plague Year_,
where the author achieves a magical invisibility. So far from leading
his characters forward and leaving them to speak, and so revealing
themselves as the children of his brain, the realistic romanticist never
appears at all. Unlike the romantic realist, who passes everything
through the spectrum of his own personality, his story must stand by its
own inherent quality. There are some who would deny him the rank of
artist, claiming that title exclusively for the introspective
specialists. The present writer cannot subscribe to that narrow creed.
He can even imagine a votary of introspection casting envious eyes upon
this stirring tale of love and piracy in seventeenth-century England,
and wondering whether something may not be said for the objective method
after all, where you begin at the beginning and end at the end, where
something is allowed for the picturesque, and the artist works within
the ancient and honourable conventions that are accepted, and loved, and
comprehended by the crowd.
WILLIAM MCFEE.
BLACK’ERCHIEF DICK
CHAPTER I
“Dangerous! Why, there’s no trade from here to the Indies more dangerous
than ours. I’ve been about a bit, and mind you I know.”
Mat Turnby shifted his large body to a position of greater ease, tilted
slightly the rum cask on which he was sitting, and leaned back against
the fully rigged mast, balancing himself carefully in accordance with
the gentle roll of the ship.
“Oh, I don’t know about that, Mat,” remarked a wiry, black-bearded man,
who squatted on a coil of rope some six feet away. “I’ve been on this
ship two years now, and how many fights have I had with the Preventative
folk? Three! How many hands did we lose in the lot? Eleven! That’s not
danger!”
“Ah!” said the other, wisely nodding his head, “maybe, maybe, Blueneck,
but it’s some nine months since we last went foul them coastguards and
since then we’ve been coming and going as though the damned old Channel
belonged to us. Such scatter-brained tricks don’t pay in the end.”
“You be careful what you’re saying, Mat Turnby,” piped a shivering,
miserable, little man, who was trying to protect himself from the
cutting February wind with a ragged, parti-coloured blanket which he
continually wrapped and unwrapped about his skeleton-like shoulders,
“you be careful what you’re saying. All kinds o’ things on this ship
have ears,” and he nodded once or twice significantly.
The big man moved uneasily on his unstable seat, but he answered boldly
enough:
“I saying? Here, you mind what you’re saying, you snivelling rat!
Saying? I’m not saying aught as I am ashamed of--I say these daring
tricks don’t pay in the end--and--and--they don’t,” he finished
abruptly.
“Oh! it’s not for the likes o’ us to talk about what the Captain does,”
said the little man whiningly. He snuffled noisily and unwrapped and
wrapped his blanket again. “Not for the likes o’ us,” he repeated.
“Who’s saying aught of the Cap’n?” roared Mat, bringing the cask to the
deck with a thud. “Who’s saying aught of the Cap’n?”
“Oh! no one, no one at all,” said the shiverer, considerably startled.
Then he added, as the big man slid back against the mast once more: “But
if no one did--that’s all right, ain’t it? If no one did, I say.”
Mat swore a round of obscene oaths under his breath and there was
silence for a minute or two.
They were nearly at the end of the trip. Indeed, another two hours or so
would see them safely at anchor in the safest of all smugglers’
havens--the mouth of the River Blackwater, and their cargo easily and
openly landed on Mersea Marsh Island.
The shivering little man smiled to himself at the thought of it. The
warm kitchen at the Victory Inn, the smoking rum-cup, and the pleasant
sallies of the fair Eliza appealed to his present mood, and he sniffled
again and rearranged his blanket.
The green, white-splashed water lapped against the boat and a big
saddle-backed gull flew over, screaming plaintively.
Mat began to talk again.
“I wonder why we do it,” he said slowly. “There ain’t anything in him--a
weak, ugly little Spaniard, no----”
Blueneck interrupted sharply.
“Hush,” he said. “No good ever comes of talking about Black’erchief
Dick, whatever is said.”
“Who said I was talking of the Cap’n?” said Mat quickly.
Blueneck looked uncomfortable, but he replied steadily: “Ah! Mat Turnby,
you be careful!”
Mat laughed.
“I reckon you’ve got enough to do lookin’ after yerself--wi’out worrying
about me, master Spaniard,” he said good-naturedly.
Blueneck shifted his position slightly.
“I reckon we git paid more than most sea-faring folk,” he said.
Mat snorted.
“Oh, yes!” he growled, “paid! We’re paid, all right, but how are we
treated?”
Blueneck grinned.
“Like princes of the blood on the island,” he laughed.
“Oh! yes, on the island,” Mat’s voice rose, “but I say--on the brig? How
then? Like dogs, men--like dirty, heathen, black-skinned dogs! And what
I ask is, why do we do it? Are we men to be afraid of a brown-skinned,
drunken little pirate of a Spaniard? Just because he owns a brig or two
and smuggles as much rum in a year as any other man in the trade? What
has he got about him that we should turn wenches and follow him, like
the scum he thinks us? Save that he has a mighty plaguey way of turning
fine words and----”
“The knife!”
The little man who had spoken huddled his blanket closer and shuddered
again. The wind dropped for a moment and a tremor ran through the full
sails, as though they also had shivered.
Mat Turnby laughed, albeit somewhat uneasily.
“The knife?” he said. “Lord, what’s a knife to a man who holds one of
these?” He pulled a heavy flintlock pistol out of a pocket in the
voluminous skirts of the sleeveless and brightly coloured coat which he
wore over a rough homespun guernsey and held it on the palm of his open
hand.
Blueneck smiled grimly.
“A precious great deal when the hand that holds the knife is
Black’erchief Dick’s,” he said.
Mat Turnby laughed again contemptuously.
“Are you flesh and good red blood, or mud and pond slime, that you fear
the foolish word of a Spanish sot? I tell you no knife held in a mortal
hand can stand against a bullet from this.”
“Ay, in a mortal hand,” said he of the blanket, fearfully looking behind
him.
The big sailor swore.
“Lord,” he said, “I knew not that I had come aboard a ship manned with a
crew of beldames. I tell you this great captain of yours would be laid
as flat as Mersea mud with one little lead ball from this.”
He stroked the pistol lovingly.
“Maybe,” said Blueneck stubbornly. “But whoever fired that shot would
die by--the knife.”
“Ah! that’s tremendous likely,” sneered the other; “him on his back with
a good ounce of lead in that wicked head of his.”
Blueneck shrugged his shoulders.
“You can laugh now, Mat Turnby,” he said, “but you won’t always laugh at
what I tell you. No, not by a long way, that you won’t.”
He hugged his knees to his chin, and let the heavy lids fall over his
eyes.
This apparent indifference seemed to irritate Mat more than words for,
bringing his hand down on his knee with a mighty slap, he swore loudly
for several seconds. Then suddenly breaking off short he burst into a
short, sharp laugh.
“Well!” he said. “It’s time the Spanish swine knew that there’s someone
aboard who ain’t afraid of him, no, neither him nor his knife. S’truth!
am I to cower down to a Spaniard?”
He stretched his huge limbs and showed his large yellow teeth as he
smiled rather sourly.
“No, by the Lord, not I,” he went on. “Let him cross me if he dare, and
he’ll see good _Suffolk_ blood is a match for thin Spanish sap any day.
Ho! ho! ho! let him cross me if he dare. Ho! ho!”
The laugh died away on his lips as from just behind his ear came
another. It was soft, rich, musical, and wholly unpleasant.
At the first sound of it the three men sat rigid, and when it had ceased
there was no sound for several seconds save for the water lapping
against the side and the scream of the gulls overhead.
Blueneck was the first of the sailors to recover. He lifted his eyes
cautiously to the direction from which the laugh had come.
He saw what he feared and expected. Up against the other side of the
mast, directly behind Mat Turnby, stood a slight figure dressed
extravagantly in the French style of the day, a dandy from the Brussels
frill at his throat to the great silver buckles of rich workmanship
which adorned his tanned shoes. But it was not these things which
stopped the three sailors so suddenly in their talk and caused them to
sit aghast.
The most remarkable thing about the newcomer was his face--long, lean,
brown, and unhandsome, it yet had a character at once interesting and
repulsive. The finely marked eyebrows met across the low, well-tanned
brow in an almost straight line, and the hair--oiled and curled--showed
as black as the silk kerchief which covered the greater part of head and
neck. The eyes beneath the lids, fringed with heavy lashes, smiled and
glittered disconcertingly. The whole face was smiling now, viciously,
almost fiendishly, but yet smiling and with some enjoyment.
Blueneck’s eyes dropped before that terrible smile and, as they
travelled slowly downward, suddenly dilated, and he shivered as though a
snake had touched him.
The figure by the mast had moved a little more round and his hand was
visible. It was at this that Blueneck stared.
Among the small, white, much-beringed fingers, and round the slender
wrist from which the lace ruffle had been pushed back a little, slid the
thin blue blade of a Spanish stiletto. Through the thumb and first
finger it slipped, over the blue vein of the white forearm, mingled its
brightness with the flashing jewels on the third and fourth fingers--and
so round again, all without any apparent effort or even movement of the
hand. It was an exhibition to be admired and praised, yet Blueneck and
the shivering little man at his side shuddered and looked away.
Mat Turnby, on the other hand, had not seen anything. He sat quite
still, the pistol lying idly in the palm of his great hand, staring
fixedly in front of him.
A hand, white and slender, slid over his left shoulder and away
again--the pistol vanished. Still Mat did not move.
“A very pretty toy, and a useful, my friend,” said the same soft voice,
just behind Mat’s ear.
The big sailor pulled himself together with an effort, stood up, then
turned toward his captain.
Blueneck and the little man in the blanket also rose.
Black’erchief Dick had not changed his position. The big pistol and the
slender knife lay side by side on his small white palm, and he still
smiled as he spoke again:
“Now my noble son of an ox,” he began pleasantly, his white teeth
shining, “if it so happened that this day you had to die----” A hasty
flush spread over the giant’s face, but otherwise he made no sign.
Black’erchief Dick continued, “If, I say,” he repeated, “that this day
you had to die, which of these beautiful toys would you choose as a
means to death?”
He held his open hand a little nearer to the sailor.
Blueneck stared at him, fascinated, and the little man with the blanket
sniffed audibly.
Black’erchief Dick’s eyes left Mat Turnby for a moment and rested on the
shivering little creature. “Sniff thy way aft, Habakkuk Coot,” he said
quietly. The little man stared at him, shivered, sniffed again, and
seemed unable to move.
Slowly the Spaniard’s arm lifted the pistol in his hand.
Habakkuk sniffed again and his eyes dilated with terror; a white finger
raised crooked round the trigger, and pressed. There was an explosion.
Habakkuk remained standing for a second, then fled down the hatchway, a
jagged hole through his blanket.
Black’erchief Dick smiled and, turning to Mat, continued: “As I said,
Matthew Turnby, if this day thou hadst to die, which of these weapons
wouldst thou choose? Thou seest I know the manner of either,” he added,
and, suddenly darting out his hand, he plunged the knife between the big
sailor’s arm and body, so that the sleeve of the man’s guernsey was
skewered to the body of his coat. Still Mat Turnby neither moved nor
spoke. Laughing slightly, the Spaniard drew out the knife and resumed
the one-sided conversation.
“Nay, Matthew Turnby, you do but jest in keeping the thin Spanish sap in
my veins so long waiting for an answer,” he said with a sneer and a
smile. The sailor swallowed noisily, but said nothing.
“The drunken sot of a pirate must be taught not to cross thee, Matthew,”
went on the Captain, and his smile had vanished, leaving only a weary
expression on the lean features. “Lord! man, if thou wilt not choose,
faith, I must for thee.”
“Surely, Capt’n--you jest--surely.”
The words came like a flood from the big man’s open mouth.
An expression of surprise spread over the Spaniard’s face. “I jest?” he
said. “Nay, faith, good Matthew, I jest?” he repeated. “Lord, man, when
didst thou get that into thy ass’s pate--nay, nay, of a certainty I do
not jest--which wilt thou have?”
Mat Turnby’s face grew purple, but he did not speak; his tongue
protruded slightly from his lips.
Black’erchief Dick looked at the weapons critically as they lay side by
side in his hand.
“Ah,” he said at last, holding the pistol in his left hand. “This we
see, Matthew, is discharged. I beg thy pardon, señor, for pressing a
choice I could not give thee. As it is, you see, but the knife remains,”
and he dropped the pistol into a capacious pocket.
Mat Turnby’s hand clutched at his throat and he stepped back a pace or
two.
Black’erchief Dick followed him, the knife swinging lightly between his
thumb and forefinger. Blueneck stood watching, his eyes fixed on the
Spaniard in unholy fascination. Farther and farther back stepped the big
sailor, Dick keeping always the same distance from him, until he reached
the side of the boat. There he stayed, breathless with fear. Slowly the
Spaniard came nearer and nearer to him, and the thin blue blade ceased
to swing.
“So thou wouldst teach that ‘drunken pirate’ that all men are not afraid
of him? Eh? Is that so? The voice seemed to grow more caressing at
every word and the big sailor’s eyes shut. Suddenly they opened again
and looked down.
“Look!” Dick was saying. “Look, Matthew, son of _Suffolk_ clay, see how
fair my blade looks against thy fur-grown hide.” He tore at the guernsey
and pulled it open, showing the great hairy chest beneath. The terrified
sailor made one lunge forward, as though to grasp the lean brown throat,
but he was too late. Swift as lightning the small white hand shot back
and then forward, and the thin blue blade vanished in the wretched man’s
body just over the collar-bone, cutting the jugular vein. The great body
stiffened and then, gradually relaxing, dropped at the Spaniard’s feet.
Blueneck stifled a cry and stepped forward.
Slowly the Spaniard pulled out the steel, wiped it carefully on the
brightly coloured sleeveless coat, then slipped it into his belt.
“Over with the dog,” he said shortly to Blueneck, as he walked off
quietly up the deck.
Blueneck hailed one of the frightened crew who had watched the scene
from the deck-house roof, and in silence the two lifted up all that was
left of the great sailor and pushed it over the side. The body splashed
in the green water and somewhere near a cormorant shrieked to his kind
the news of fresh prey, and the ship, her sails bellying out to the
wind, sped on toward the island.