“There, there, Master Dick, don’t fluster yourself so; ’twill only smart
your arm the more.”
Anny spoke timidly and shrank behind one of the high-backed seats in the
old Ship’s kitchen as Black’erchief Dick, his eyes dark with anger,
raved up and down the room. It was some three weeks after the affair
with the Preventative folk and the Island had once more regained its
usual serenity.
“You are bewitched, girl; what are you to refuse the love of a man like
me?” Dick said angrily, and then as she did not answer, he continued
more softly, “Why not come with me, beautiful Ann of the Island? We will
leave this God-forsaken mud heap and sail away to Spain, cross the great
river to the beautiful country beyond, where all the grass is green and
all the plants have bright flowers. What is there about this rum-sodden
drinking hut that you will not leave it for Utopia?”
“I never heard of Utopia and Mersea is good enough for me,” said Anny
stolidly. “Besides, if you want to marry me, why not tell everybody and
have a proper wedding by the parson from the West, but even then I
wouldn’t marry you; I don’t love you, sir!”
The Spaniard paused suddenly in his walk up and down and looked at her.
“Never has a woman said so much to me before,” he said slowly, his voice
soft and smooth as ever.
Anny shrugged her shoulders.
“‘Tis time then one should,” she laughed. “Rest your arm, sir, and leave
worrying a poor girl that has work and enough to do, now that Mistress
Sue be for ever out along the beach with Big French.” She turned away.
The Spaniard was beside her in a second and his slim white fingers
fastened round her wrist.
“Oh, you silly little wench,” he said with a laugh in his voice, “do you
think you can turn off Dick Delfazio easily like that? Mistress, I am of
some account on the Island. Is a man who kills six Preventative folk
single-handed to be stayed in his heart’s desire by a little
serving-maid, think you?”
“What would you do?” Anny, her big green eyes wide with apprehension,
and her back against the wall, jerked out the question fearfully.
Black’erchief Dick looked at her in admiration, and, swinging her toward
him, he put his arm round her waist, and Hal, passing the window at that
moment, suddenly changed his mind about entering the kitchen and marched
off down the garden coughing and swearing to himself.
Anny freed herself in a moment and stood with her arms akimbo.
“An you were not wounded and a customer, I should smack you across the
mouth,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
Dick laughed.
“Come, we should not quarrel, sweetheart,” he said. “When you are aboard
the _Anny_----”
“I pray God I shall be dead before,” the girl interrupted angrily, her
tears overflowing and rolling down her cheeks.
Dick caught her hand again and looked at her fiercely.
“I have played enough, lass,” he said. “You must come off secretly with
me or----”
Anny laughed.
“Must?” she said. “Must, indeed! And whyfore? I tell you, sir, I hate
you, and if you pursue me more I’ll have the landlord at you.”
“The landlord!” Dick sneered.
Anny was desperate.
“Or Hal Grame,” she said.
Dick threw back his head and laughed aloud.
“A tapster! Oh, pretty, pretty little wench, you are very amusing!”
The girl wrenched her hand away.
“Master Black’erchief Dick,” she said slowly, her little face very white
and grave, “will you understand please that I do not love you, I do not
even like you, and I will never go anywhere with you of my own will?”
The Spaniard stepped back a pace or two. He seemed to have realized at
last that she was speaking the truth, for he looked at the earnest
little face in front of him with a mixture of amazement and anger.
“You do not like me?” he said, his voice losing all its music and
becoming almost childish in its extreme surprise.
Anny nodded.
“No, I don’t like you. Will you please go away and leave me to my work,
sir?”
Dick’s anger rose up and boiled over in a moment.
“I tell you, you shall come, you pretty little fool,” he swore. “Or----”
he paused suddenly. “Is there some other man you love? Tell me, tell
me!”
Anny cowered before his angry, distorted face.
“No, sir, of course not, no, sir!” she lied vehemently. “Let go my
wrist, sir. Marry, how you hurt me!”
“This great hulking French, now, have you set your heart on him? Speak
out, girl!”
“No, sir, of course not!” Anny’s amazement was too genuine to be
mistaken.
“Yet you will not marry me?” Dick spoke sharply.
“No--no--no, sir! Go away!”
Dick turned on his heel and went to the door.
“By this knife,” he said, turning on the threshold, “you shall come with
me. I wish it, and never yet have I been prevented from my desires.”
“Lord! you’re mad!” Anny flung after him.
“Ay, mad for you, mistress.”
Dick’s voice had grown soft again and he laughed unpleasantly as he
strolled off down the yard. Anny watched him go and then turned back to
her work.
“Now I wonder will I ever be married at all?” she said to herself, as
she picked up a broom from the chimney-corner and began to sweep away
the dirty sand which lay all over the floor.
Blueneck was sitting on the sea-wall, thinking regretfully of Habakkuk
Coot, when Black’erchief Dick strode up and without speaking dropped
down beside him.
Blueneck looked at his captain slily and without turning his head.
Dick was smiling sardonically and his knife slid in and out the slim
white fingers of his right hand.
Blueneck considered it prudent to sit still and say nothing.
Dick did not speak for some time, and Blueneck began to get uneasy.
Finally he rose to his feet as nonchalantly as he was able and started
to stroll off down the beach.
Dick raised his eyes.
“Sit where you are, dog!” he said sharply.
Blueneck slid back to his place without a murmur.
The silence continued. At last, however, Dick put the knife back in his
belt and turned his sharp eyes on his mate.
“The lass refuses me,” he said.
Blueneck shrugged his shoulders.
“These country wenches be mighty particular about marrying their
husbands and so forth,” he observed.
Dick raised his eyebrows.
“I have said I will wed her,” he said stiffly.
Blueneck’s jaw dropped.
“Wed her?” he ejaculated. “Why, Cap’n, you must----” He broke off
lamely.
Dick snapped out the question, “Must what?”
Blueneck did not vouchsafe an answer, and they sat in silence for a
minute or two.
Dick began to speak, slowly and carefully, as though he was thinking out
each word separately.
“There is a thing on this earth, my friend, called love. And a very vile
and evil thing it is. It descends upon a man unawares like a shower of
rain, and soaks through to his very marrow. It takes away his energy,
his pride in his work and person,” he looked down at the lace ruffles at
his cuff and stroked them lovingly, and then added, “and I have reason
to think that great men feel it more sharply than others.”
Blueneck glanced quickly at the dapper little figure by his side, and
shrugged his shoulders.
The Captain was showing signs of strain, he thought.
“Must the wench be willing?” he asked. “Why not carry her off?”
Dick shrugged his shoulders.
“I would rather she were willing,” he said.
Blueneck looked at him, exasperated.
“Well, if you can’t persuade her I don’t know who can,” he muttered, but
Dick did not hear him. He was smiling, his eyes half shut.
Blueneck spat.
“Bewitched!” he commented silently to himself. Then an idea struck him
and he turned to the Captain.
“There’s Pet Salt,” he said. “She might do much.”
“Pet Salt?” Dick turned to him quickly. “Who’s she?”
Blueneck told the story of his night on Ben Farran’s boat with as much
credit to himself as was possible.
Dick listened in silence until he had finished; then he rose to his
feet.
“I will go to see this crone,” he said grandiloquently. “Lead me, dog!”
Pet Salt sat on the deck of her boat mending a net. She was mumbling to
herself, and her old knotted finger-joints cracked as she fumbled about
with the rough twine she was using. Beneath the hatches she could hear
old Ben swearing loudly as he hunted among the empty rum kegs for one
that still contained a little of the precious stuff. To judge from his
language he had been so far unsuccessful and the woman shifted uneasily
as she sat thinking of the beating he would give her if he found
nothing.
It was then that she heard a voice calling her from the beach.
“Pet Salt! Pet Salt!”
Noisily she scrambled to her feet and hobbled over to the side of the
hull, and looked down.
Dick and his mate stood together staring up at her.
“Good morning, mistress,” Dick began in his best manner.
Pet stared at him open-mouthed, her yellow teeth looking like fangs. She
had never seen such finery.
Dick, although himself rather taken aback at Pet’s appearance, could not
but feel flattered at her evident approval of his own.
Pet’s bleared eyes now fell on Blueneck and a shade of recognition
passed over her wrinkled, spirit-sodden face.
“Oh! it’s you again, ronyon, hey?” she cried in her cracked crooning
voice into which an eager note had crept. “You have no rum kegs slung
about you, eh?”
Blueneck waved his hand impatiently.
“Throw down the ladder, that we may come up and talk with thee, hag,” he
ordered peremptorily.
Pet hobbled off to obey him without a word, and Dick turned to his mate
in something like admiration.
“You have been well schooled, friend,” he said approvingly. “Yours is an
excellent way of dealing with crones.”
“Have a care!” called Pet from above as she threw the rope ladder over
the side. The end passed within an inch of Blueneck’s shoulders and he
looked up angrily.
Pet was leering at him from the deck.
“Come up, ronyon,” she said coaxingly.
Blueneck scaled the ladder in a minute and clambered on to the rolling
deck beside her.
Dick followed, more dignified but not a whit less agile.
Once on deck he looked about him in disgust. The worm-eaten boards, the
empty kegs and other lumber, and the general filthiness of the place
disgusted the little Spaniard. His own brig was always kept neat and
fastidiously clean.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“A very vile place in truth,” he observed, and then, turning to Pet, he
raised his hat as gallantly as if she had been a duenna.
“I would descend and talk with thee on the shore, if you please,
mistress,” he said. “This ship distresses me.”
He went again to the ladder, picking his way daintily across the dirty
deck; slowly he climbed down again. Pet and Blueneck followed him
without a word on to the sand again.
“Prithee, mistress, be seated,” said Dick, indicating a bank of seaweed
and seating himself on a breakwater some four feet away.
Pet sat down heavily and looked from Dick to Blueneck in a half-witted,
puzzled way, her big loose mouth sagging open, on one side showing the
large yellow teeth, which so irritated Blueneck.
Suddenly she stretched out a bony hand toward Black’erchief Dick and
began in a droning whine:
“May the Lord bless ye, fine gentleman; could ye spare a drop o’ rum for
a poor woman to take to her man who is dying of cold? Old Pet Salt knows
you, pretty sir. Old Pet don’t forget a generous face when she sees one.
Pet remembers when she came to the Ship and you gave her a keg. Could
you spare a little, fine gentleman?”
Dick stared at her; he remembered her now, and instinctively drew a
little farther away.
“Hold thy peace, hag, and hark to me,” he said sharply, “and much rum
may come of it--nay,” he continued as the old woman struggled to get to
her feet and come toward him, “keep thy distance and let thy dull wit
take in as much of this as it can. You have a granddaughter?”
A cunning light crept into the old bleared eyes.
“Ah!” she said, putting on a pathetic whine. “I have, God bless her pure
heart and body. One my man loves dearly! What would you have with her,
fine gentleman?”
Dick waved his hand.
“Woman,” he said softly, his voice taking on that musical quality which
his enemies knew so well. “It would be well if thou and I knew each
other’s mind a little more clearly--rum is a precious thing to you,
eh?”
Pet’s eyes glistened and her lips moved without sound.
“I have much rum,” Dick went on, looking at the old woman steadily, “and
I would wed your granddaughter.”
“Wed?” The exclamation escaped her before she could stop it.
Dick went on as though he had not heard her.
“At your boat and by a priest that I shall bring with me, I would wed
her.”
“Oh!” Pet said, and smiled knowingly.
“But so far the lass will have none of me,” Dick continued, noting Pet’s
amazement, “and so, mistress, I would wish you to persuade her to wed me
here secretly.”
“Ay, and if I do?” Pet broke in.
“If you do, you earn enough rum to keep you and your husband in liquor
for the rest of your life.”
Dick put his hands on his belt and looked at the old wretch quizzically.
Pet began to laugh. It was a terrible sound, half a wheeze and half a
choke.
“I’ll persuade her,” she muttered.
Dick quickly put up one white beringed hand.
“Nay, mistress, you must use no violence on her,” he said, “neither must
you harm her with spirit charms or other bedevilments; I would not have
her hurt.”
Pet Salt looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
“I’ll not hurt your love, master,” she laughed. “She shall marry
thee--and by a priest you bring--ha--ha!”
Blueneck had never seen his captain blush before and he now regarded the
little Spaniard with great interest. The usually sallow skin was stained
with a vermilion as he turned on the woman in anger.
“Keep to your promise then and be silent,” he said softly, “or by Heaven
I’ll blow your pig-sty of a rat-ridden hulk off the Island.”
The woman looked at him, frightened for a moment, but soon she began to
laugh.
“She shall wed thee, my pretty, fine gentleman, she shall wed thee--I’ll
see to that,” she said, scrambling to her feet--“and the rum shall be
paid, you promise, master?”
Dick nodded.
“I swear it,” he said. Then he got up and beckoned to Blueneck to follow
him.
“Good-morrow, mistress,” he said, taking off his hat.
Pet stood looking after them.
“I’ll coax her,” the woman called. “I’ll coax her,” and all the way as
they went down the beach they could hear her cracked, horrible
laughter.