Captain Caution

by Kenneth Roberts

  The blue-clad Britishers, hitherto silent, burst into uproarious talk and laughter. "Easy as pickin' gripes!" one of them shouted. A sourvisaged officer, old enough to be an admiral, went to the Olive Branch's larboard rail and hailed the schooner's quarter-deck. "All

  CAPTAIN CAUTION 369

  clear, sir," he called to an elegantly uniformed youth who stood by the schooner's wheel. "Shall we run for the Nore?"

  "What about the female?" the youth demanded pettishly. "Bring her up where we can see herl"

  The officer turned on Marvin and Argandeau. "Where's the female that's supposed to be captain of this barqueP"

  Argandeau raised his eyebrows. "Female?" he asked. "How does it happen you think we are supposed to have a female captainP"

  The sour-faced officer took a quick step forward and swung the flat of his cutlass against Argandeau's upper arm. "Where is she, you swab?" he demanded.

  "She's ashore," Marvin said quickly. "Is Captain Slade aboard your schooner?"

  "Sladel" Argandeau cried. "Ah, my friendl You've hit ill How else could these British have known we lay here worth the taking, and could be taken? How else would they have heard we have a female captain? Sladel Yes; Sladel But we shall not find him on their schooner! He would not risk that Argandeau, in chains, should yet find means to bite him to deathl"

  The sour-faced man turned to the rail to hail his youthful commander. "Ashore, sir! They say the female captain's ashore!"

  The younger man laughed. "Ah, that's where the admiral said she was to be pull Nice of her to save us a bit of troublel Sorry to miss her, in a way, what? First American that ever did anything right, to my knowledge! Sorry to miss a freak like thatl" His voice became crisper. "Get right along," he called. "Take the barque to Sheerness, but not a foot farther, Cropsey. We'll go up to Chatham together."

  The Olive Branch, manned by her British captors, sheered away from the schooner, which ran rapidly down the estuary ahead of them.

  "Nah, then," said the sour-faced officer to Argandeau and Marvin, "we'll just clap you and your questions abaht Captain Slade into the cable tierl Captain Slade, eh? Well, if he's one of you hole-andcorner Americans, you'll probably meet up with him in the hulks, where all of you belong!"

  xv

  FHOM the courtyard of the Queen of Scotland tavern in the town of Morlaix there emanated at all times a powerful odor of badly cleaned stables, venerable wine casks and cheese; and when the sun appeared as it infrequently did above the chimney pots and jumbled tile roofs that surrounded the court, a singular penetrating fragrance of pickled herring rose in waves from the seemingly immaculate stone pavement of the court, and passed through the closed windows in the tavern as readily as though every window had been thrown open.

  Since the sun shone brightly on this clear October day, and since, as a result, the fragrance of pickled herring was strong in every room in the Queen of Scotland, but particularly strong because of an opened window in the small fourth-floor room numbered "44," it seemed strange indeed that Corunna Dorman should sit huddled in a corner of that dim and cheerless chamber, staring fixedly at a knot in the floor a knot around which the soft wood had been worn away by the restless feet of countless vanished guests.

  From the roundness of her eyes, there seemed to be little doubt that she had seen all of the knot there was to see, but long minutes passed, and never once did she look up not even when her black cloak, which hung in the center of a wall, moved jerkily and swayed from side to side, as if the evil spirit of the room, maddened by the smell of herring, had taken violent possession of it.

  The cloak fell at last, revealing a small hole in the wall over which it had hung; and at its fall Corunna rose to pick it up and hang it over the hole once more. Having done so, she stood silent beside it, holding to the cloak's hem and staring with round eyes at nothing whatever.

  She seemed, almost, to have lost her hearing as well as her vision, for when a light knock sounded upon her door, she still held to the cloak and stared fixedly into space. When, however, the knock was repeated and a woman's shrill voice called, "Open, please, ladyl" she turned quickly to the door, dragged a chest of drawers from before it and snapped back the bolt.

  The woman who entered was short and fat. Her fatness spread

  CAPTAIN CAUTION 37

  outward from her bust, so that her shoulders had the look of being pressed upward by it, her eyes squeezed half closed by the surge of her enormous bosom, and her vast hips and thighs spread outward by the weight they carried. She breathed heavily and peered past Corunna into the room.

  "You eat nothing! Why not you come down? I give bread and chocolat, and you need not think of monnaie not yet."

  "Yes," Corunna said. "Thank you. I think I think I - " She stopped, swallowed hard, and contented herself with saying "Yes" once more.

  The fat woman pushed past her into the room, jangling a cluster of keys attached to a brass ring, and stared at the large and elaborate bed. Her half-opened mouth had the look, in that enormous face, of a sort of buttonhole. She darted a quick, suspicious look at Corunna. "Don't you sleep sometime? You don't like this bed?"

  Corunna reached out to her cloak and drew it to one side, revealing the hole beneath. "I slept in the chair."

  By a movement of her eyes and upper lip, the fat woman gave the impression of raising her shoulders. She went to the hole, stooped a little and squinted through it; then, applying her lips to the aperture, she violently shrieked a veritable explosion of syllables. When she turned back to Corunna, she wagged her head solemnly. "Nothing! Think nothing about this! All rooms have these holes, and all men look through! What you expect?"

  As broad and solid as a hogshead on two boulders, she stood and examined Corunna with scrupulous attention; but Corunna, again staring wide-eyed at the protruding knot, seemed oblivious of her presence.

  "You don't know no way to get monnaieP" she asked at length. "You don't have no hilon no ring, maybe?"

  Corunna shook her head.

  "You don't know some friend in Paris, no? In Boulogne? In Lorient? Maybe in Brest or Nantes, eh? In Brest and Lorient come many Americans in letters of marque. Maybe you go there, and you find a friend who take you in America, when you kiss him nice."

  Corunna looked up quickly at the fat woman, opened her lips; then closed them again and fell to staring at her clenched hands.

  The fat woman jingled the keys on the brass ring and dropped her voice to a confidential whisper. "Is here an avocat who is think you can get monnaie from the government in Paris because you bring wounded men here on that poor ship the dirty British had the audacity to seize from you. Eh! What a terrible thing for our beautiful

  372 CAPTAIN CAUTION

  city of Morlaix that those English should be so sly and so bold as to come into our very harborin such a mannerl Now perhaps the Emperor will give us some fortification worth something! Herbal But it will not do you much good, poor little onel What you need, my child, is a protector. Come, you let me speak to our avocatl I will arrange it. You permit me to hint to him that you can be persuaded to go with him to Paris, and he will become eager. Oh, yesl When they are old, they are easily inflamed" She placed a pudgy finger beside her nose and smiled craftily at Corunna. "It will be a good affair for both of usl He is good man old and kind. I think he would be gentle, and you like his protection very much."

  Far below them there was the sound of a slamming door, and of a stir a throbbing pulse that somehow seemed to bring new life into the stale and tainted air of this ancient tavern.

  The fat woman surged past Corunna and stood listening at the threshold. A burst of speech came up the darkness of the stairway, together with the noise of quick footsteps footsteps that drew rapidly nearer.

  The black bulk of the listening mistress of the Queen of Scotland shot through the doorway, plucked from her place by a violent hand, and where she had been stood Lurman Slade, slender and neat in his fine blue coat, his head thrown far back so that he might see clea
rly into the room, and a look of deep concern on his thin brown face.

  "Corunnal" he cried hoarsely. "My poor Corunnal" He went to her quickly and took her by the shoulders. "My dearl I've been in a torment to reach youl If ever I'd known - "

  He looked into her brimming eyes; then drew her suddenly against his breast, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly.

  She drew a deep and quivering breath, like a child who has borne a heavy weight of suffering; then clung eagerly to him.

  "You're herel You're herel" she said. "I didn't know I was afraid I thought you might never come! It was terrible! It was terrible! They were here, and then in a second they were goner" She shook her head wearily.

  Slade kissed her eyes and held her tight. "Never comer" he whispered. "You thought I might never come! I'd have come to you across the whole world, my sweet my little sweetl"

  She leaned backward in his arms to stare at the walls about her. "Why," she said, "it's been like an awful dreamt Everything gone everything swallowed up, and not a word from anyonel Not a wordl" She shivered.

  CAPTAIN CAUTION 373

  Sladetook her hands in his and kissed them; then led her to the one poor chair and knelt beside her. "My heart was like lead in me when I left you," he told her softly. "Like a stone, it wasl I could hardly eat for thinking of youl I came to you on the instant the news reached me. With all my heart in the search, I was seeking for the ship that would be your privateer, happy that I was working for you. Then, at a tavern in a little town I heard by chance of the cutting out of the Olive Branch, and thank God I did heart And so I am come to your"

  "Yes," she said. "I'm glad you've come. I need somebody."

  "Aye," he assented gravely, "you've needed somebody a long time, Corunna somebody that could protect you from your own simple trust in people. I don't think you yet know," he added, "how the barque was taken."

  "Why, by the British!" she said, wondering. "They came in - "

  "Aye, so they did," he agreed, looking at her pityingly. "In Roscoff it's known how the British did it, Corunna. Aye, they know who helped to do it! I blame myselfl What a fool I wasl I'm like you; I'm not suspicious either, dear. I never dreamed he was anything but a coward a sulky country coward! He's a cumbersome lout, half giant to the eye; and I was simple enough to think him an honest one, all brawn and no cunning."

  Corunna stared at him. "What do you say?"

  "You ask me what I say, Corunna? I say what's incredible; much harder for you to believe than for me, though I thought I knew him. My dear, I sha'n't blame you if you can't believe it. I think there was a time, before you knew me, when you liked him very well."

  "Marvin?" she whispered. "Why, yes, I did!"

  Slade touched her shoulder gently; he looked kind and wise and good. "I knew. I understood, because from the first I understood you. I knew you'd been very close to giving your heart to him, my dear, and that but for some vital flaw, some ugly defect in his character he'd betrayed to you, you would have given it; and so you'd have been lost to me. Isn't that so?"

  "Why, yes."

  "I knew," he said in a low voice, full of pain; then smiled, as in a lover's noble forgiveness. "Thank God that's past, and you did see that defect. It's your having seen it for yourself that makes it easier for me now to tell you how that base metal in him runs through the whole fabric of his character, so that he could do what every man in Roscoff knows he has done."

  374 CAPTAIN CAUTION

  "Knows he has done - " she repeated uncertainly. "Lurman, you're telling me - "

  "See here," he said. "I don't want to tell you. Do you think me a man not too proud to put a defeated rival in a false positionY'

  "No." She swallowed. "But Marvin Dan Marvinl Marvinl"

  "Marvin," Slade burst out bitterly, as if the truth leapt from his lips despite him. "Good God! Why, he handed over the Olive Branch to the British without a blow, either for you or for his shipl Without a blowl When he lay in the black hole with us, didn't he try to slip out to traffic with 'em? I never told you this before, Corunna, but he dial Why, you must have seen him currying favor with the commander of the Beetle, on the pretext of obtaining medicines for a common seamanl Medicines! Good Godl I don't know what scheme he has, but you saw he was forever against anything that meant fighting the British. Oh, ayel The dog would ever keep his record clean with them! Forgive me if I'm bitter, but when I think what he's done to you, I forget you once held him for a friend."

  "To me?" she said. "You think Dan Marvin would - "

  "Corunnal Corunnal How did the English know just where to come and what to do? Why, my dear, there's not a man in Morlaix, aye, or Roscoff either, who doesn't know the Olive Branch was delivered to the British by her officers and for a consideration. Do you think that Marvin couldn't have run the barque safe on shore if he'd had a mind to? Pahl You know better yourself You're too good a seaman not to know. I wish to God I'd struck him dead at your feet, before he should have done this to you."

  She rose suddenly and went to the window, where, square-shouldered and Hat-backed against the pale October sunlight, she stared down into the noisome courtyard below.

  "How could they know?" she asked faintly. "How could all these people know that Dan sold his soul to the English?"

  Slade sighed, and his sigh seemed freighted with compassion. "Such things are always known, Corunna." He shook his head sadly. "Always, my dear."

  "But he didn't want to come here in the beginning! He said the way to go home was to go home."

  "Yes," Slade assented, "and when you overruled him, he was sour and sore, and now he's paid you for that overruling. You asked me how these people knew. Corunna dear, it's life and death to every smuggler on the coast to know what goes on in the British Navy to the last detail; and they do know, believe mel They know Marvin

  CAPTAIN CAUTION 375

  sold the Olice Branch to the English, and they know he'll not only get money in return but a British commission to boot."

  "Ah, he wouldn't," she whispered.

  "He'll have a commission from them if he wants it," Slade insisted, "and most of them here think he'll be a wise man to take it. Ayel They say he knows that America, with only fifteen cruisers, can make no stand against England with her thousand ships of war, so that England must win, and America be a colony of England's once more. That being so, Marvin will not only have money but hell keep his lands in America, and be high in favor with the British as well." He shook his head and cocked his eye at Corunna. "Yes, he's a cautious man," he reminded her. "I think I've heard you speak of that, my dear; but now we both know, to our cost, it was something more than caution in him."

  Corunna seemed to choke, looking down into the courtyard. "Nor" she exclaimed. "Nor"

  Slade came close beside her. "My dear," he said softly, "we none of us know what's in a man's mind, and I could almost forgive him for turning against his country, if so be those are his principles. IYs what he's done to you that I shall never forgive. To turn from a woman more beautiful than any Queen on her throne, and with the brain of a Decatur or a Nelson thaPs what shows him in his true colorsl" He touched her hand gently. "To think he left you here as destitute as any beggar in the streets! Left you here without a cent, without a ship, and, so far as he knows, without a friend!"

  He turned her about, so that she faced him, and took both her hands. "Well, let him gol It's nothing to lose a vessell It's nothing to lose moneyl If I had you, there'd be nothing in the world, no matter how poor I was, that would keep me from whatever it was you wanted and needed." He kissed her fingers.

  "All my life I've paid no attention to women," he went on. "Now that I've seen you and felt the touch of your hands and the softness of your lips, Ill hate all women but you for the rest of my days."

  She smiled faintly and shook her head.

  "It's sol" he insisted. "Why, tomorrow we could set off for Paris; and before you can have bought yourself a dozen gowns, I'll find a way to get you a vessel, and have
half of Paris at the feet of the fairest bride in all France."

  His voice was that of a loving friend who brings a brave gaiety to battle the despondency of his beloved. Tears seemed about to rise in his eyes tears of love and pity yet he smiled upon her in a

  376 CAPTAIN CAUTION

  valiant encouragement, and his hand came upon her shoulder with the touch of a hearty comrade.

  "Eh, Corunna? We'll up and at 'em! Here's a pair of us that can look misfortune in the face. Now we're together, not all the bad luck in the world no, and not all the sneaking treachery of those we'd love to believe in, neither! ah, my dear, not all the evil in the world can keep us dowel"

  Thus he swept her away.

  XVI

  IT WAS not discomfort that weighed heaviest on Marvin, as the violent Channel seas racked and rasped him against the harsh coils of the cable in the airless, wedge-shaped den of the cable tier, nor yet the lack of humanity in the British who had him in charge, but the almost certain knowledge that it must have been Slade who had sent His Majesty's schooner Sparrow to cut out the Olive Branch from the harbor of Morlaix, and the even greater certainty that Corunna, by this sudden and overwhelming disaster, had been left penniless and friendless in France, with no person to whom to turn save Slade himself.

  He groaned, ill at ease mentally and bodily, and prevented by the deck above from rising even to a sitting position. "You could have stayed there," he reproached Argandeau. "You should have stayed therel"

  "You think too much about this, dear Marvin," Argandeau told him gently. "When those smugglers come running to me in the Prefers office, doing me a kindness by saying that this schooner is a Griffon a Griffon who had already cut out one other vessel from Morlaix and two from under the batteries of Dunkirk, and must therefore intend wickedness to the Olive Branch, what can I do, eh? You know who I am in Morlaix? I am the brave Lucien Argandeaul Can I say to them 'Pool for your Englishman! I stay here and do nothing about himl' Can I say that? Not if I wish to remain the cele- brated Lucienl No, I must say, 'Hahl The perfidious Englishl Lucien Argandeau will show them something that will make them laugh out of the wrong mouthl He will go out alone and dispose of theml Thank you very welll' Another thing, dear Marvin: There was a chance, eh? a chance that if we were quick and fortunate, we could have got her ashore, so that this Griffon could have done no cutting out. Then your rabbit would have had money, and we could have shown the British some cutting out of our ownl"