AN ILL TALE
It was an ill tale which he had to tell, and he told it awkwardly, for
he was not a little confused and put about, both by his wound and by his
treatment at the hands of those people. We gave him somewhat to eat and
drink, and he munched and sipped between sentences, for he had not fared
well with the pirates. We would have given him a change of raiment, too,
after his ducking, but this he refused stiffly, saying that he was well
enough as he was, and that a wetting would not hurt him. And he was
indeed a strong, tough man.
Much of what he had to tell us we knew, of course, already--of the
appearance of Jensen on the island, of the attack upon the colonists and
the massacre of the most part of them. He himself had got his cut over
the head in the fight, a cut that knocked him senseless, so that by the
time he came to again the business was over and the pirates were masters
of the island.
But he was able to tell us the thing we most wanted to know, the thing
which the fugitives could give us no inkling of, and that was how it
came to pass that Jensen, whom we all deemed dead and drowned, should
have come so calamitously to life again.
It was, it seemed, in this wise. Jensen, who united a madman's cunning
to a bad man's daring, saw that my suspicions of him might prove fatal
to his plans. Those plans had indeed been, as I had guessed, to seize
the Royal Christopher and make a pirate ship of her, with himself for
her captain; and to that end he had manned the ship with men upon whom
he could rely, many of whom had been pirates before, all of whom were
willing to go to any lengths for the sake of plunder and pleasure. But
so long as our party were suspicious of him, and had arms in readiness
to shoot him and his down at the first show of treachery, it was plain
to a simpler man that his precious scheme stood every chance of coming
to smoke.
He guessed, therefore, that if we could be led to believe that he was
dead and done with our suspicions would be lulled, and he would be left
with a fair field to carry out his plan. To that end he devised a scheme
to befool us, and, having primed his party as to his purpose, he
carried it out with all success.
It was no man's body that went overboard on that night, but merely a
mighty beam of wood that one of Jensen's confederates cast over the
vessel's side just before he raised the cry of 'Man overboard!' Jensen
himself was snugly concealed in the innermost parts of the ship, where
he lay close, laughing in his sleeve at us and our credulity. After we
left he came out of his hole and made his way to Early Island, as agreed
upon with his companions, who, on his arrival, butchered the most of the
colonists.
One mystery was disposed of. So was the other mystery--how Jensen and
his men came to be so well-armed and so gaily attired. When our
expedition was preparing, Captain Marmaduke commissioned Jensen to buy a
store of all manner of agricultural and household implements and
utensils for the use of the young colony. Now, as such gear was not
likely to be of service to Jensen in his piracies, he was at pains to
serve his own ends while he pretended to obey the Captain's commands.
He had therefore made up and committed to the hold a quantity of cases
which professed to contain what the Captain had commanded. But never a
spade or pick, never a roasting-jack or flat-iron, never a string of
beads or a mirror for barter with natives was to be found in all those
boxes. If our colony had ever by any chance arrived at their goal they
would have found themselves in sore straits for the means of tilling the
earth and of cooking their food.
The boxes contained instead a great quantity of arms, such as muskets
and pistols and cutlasses, together with abundance of ammunition in the
shape of powder, bullets and shot. Others of those boxes contained
goodlier gear, for Jensen was a vain rogue as well as a clever rogue,
and dearly loved brave colours about him and to make a gaudy show. I
believe that it was a passion for power and the pomp that accompanies
power more than anything else which drove him to be a pirate, and that
if he could have been, say, a great Minister of State, who is, after
all, often only another kind of pirate, he might have carried himself
very well and been looked upon by the world at large as a very decent,
public-spirited sort of fellow. I have known men in high office with
just such passion for display and dominion as Jensen, and I do not think
that there is much to choose between him and them in that regard.
So sundry of those lying boxes were loaded with gay clothing, such as
those scarlet coats with which we had now made acquaintance, and which
were fashioned on the pattern of those of the bodyguard of His Majesty,
only much more flauntingly tricked out with gold lace and gilded
buttons. It added a shade of darkness to the treachery of this scoundrel
that he should thus presume to parade himself in a parody of such a
uniform.
But besides all this there was yet another secret which those same false
coffers concealed. He had dealings with shipbuilders at Haarlem, who
were noted for their ingenuity and address, and this firm had built for
him two large skiffs, which were made in such a fashion that the major
part of them could be taken to pieces and the whole packed away in a
small space with safety and convenience for his purpose. These vessels
were as easily put together as taken to pieces, and were as serviceable
a kind of boat as ever vessel carried. And so there was the rascal well
prepared to make sure of our ship.
It makes my heart bleed now, after all these years, to think how the
fellow deceived my dear patron, and how the Royal Christopher went
sailing the seas with that secret in her womb, and that we all walked
those decks night after night and day after day, and never suspected
the treason that lay beneath our feet.
But we never did suspect it, and when the time came for us to leave the
ship in a hurry we had little thought in our minds of taking
agricultural implements or household gear or articles of barter with us.
So they lay there snugly in the hold, and Jensen with them, and Jensen
was busy and happy in his wicked way in getting at them, and in laughing
as he did so over our folly in being deceived by him.
It seems that after the departure of Lancelot and our little party
certain of the sailors, as agreed upon beforehand, made their way back
to the ship, and in the dead of night transported the greater quantity
of the weapons and ammunition. They put the skiffs together, too, and
lowered them over the side. The camp had gone to rest when Jensen,
shrieking like a fiend, leaped from his concealment among the trees and
gave the signal for attack. The butchery was brief. The few men who were
armed found that their weapons had been rendered useless, but even if
their murderers had not taken that precaution their victims could have
made no sort of a stand. They were taken by surprise. The horrible cries
that the pirates made as they rushed from their ambush helped to
dishearten the colonists, for they took those noises for the war-cries
of savages, and they yielded to the panic. A very few escaped from the
slaughter, and hid themselves in the woods in the centre of the island.
The manner of their escape I have already related. It seemed from what
the parson now told us that Jensen made little effort to pursue them,
feeling confident that they must perish miserably from hunger and
thirst, if not from wild beasts, in the jungle.
The first use Jensen made of his triumph was to bring over to the island
from the wreck everything that he believed to be needful for the comfort
and adornment of his person and the persons of his following. All the
arms and ammunition that his malign thoughtfulness had provided, all the
fine clothes that he had hidden away, all the store of wines and strong
waters that still remained upon the ship were carefully disembarked and
brought to Early Island. He dressed himself and his followers up in the
smart clothes that we had seen, called himself king of the island, made
his companions take a solemn oath of allegiance to him and sign it with
their blood, and then they all gave themselves up to an orgie.
For, bad as all this was to tell and to listen to, there was still worse
to be told and heard. To treachery and bloodshed were added treachery
and lust. The cup of Jensen's iniquity was more than full. It ran over
and was spilt upon the ground, crying out to Heaven for vengeance.
There were, as you know, women among our colonists--not many, but still
some, the wives of some of the settlers, the daughters and sisters of
others. None of these were hurt when Jensen and his fellow-fiends made
their attack--none of them, unhappily for themselves, were killed. My
cheeks blazed with shame and wrath as I listened to what the parson had
to say, and if Jensen had been before me I would have been rejoiced to
pistol him with my own hand.
The women were parcelled out among the men as the best part of their
booty. There was not a wickeder place on God's earth at that hour than
the island, and its sins, as I thought, should be blotted out by a
thunderbolt from Heaven.
Yet there is something still worse to come, as I take it. In all this
infamy Jensen reserved for himself the privilege of a deeper degree of
infamy. For he told Hatchett, it seems, that he must give up Barbara,
and when Hatchett laughed in his face Jensen shot him dead where he
stood and took her by force. Such was the terror the man inspired that
no one of all his fellows presumed to avenge Hatchett, or even to
protest against the manner of his death. As for the woman, as for
Barbara, she was a strong woman, and she loved Hatchett with all her
heart, and she fought, I believe, hard. But if she was strong, Jensen
was stronger, and merciless. He had everything his own way at the
island; he had his arts of taming people, and the parson told me that he
had tamed Barbara.
I have had to set these wrongs down here for the sake of truth, and to
justify our final deeds against Jensen and his gang. I have set them
down as barely and as briefly as possible, for there are some things so
terrible that they scarcely bear the telling. I cannot be more
particular; the whole bad business was hideous in the extreme, with all
the hideousness that could come from a mind like Jensen's--a mind
begotten of the Bottomless Pit.
But in all my sorrow I was grateful to Heaven that Marjorie had not been
left upon that other island. Better for her to die here by the hand of
the man who loved her than to have been on that island at the mercy of
such men. Thank God, thank God, thank God! I said to myself again and
again. I could say nothing more, I could think nothing more, only thank
God, thank God!