by Howard Fast
Then the sun burst free. It had drawn itself up with a web of cloud across its face, but now, even as it stood clear of the water, it released itself and netted the air with daylight, burnishing the waters. The sea glowed; the wake of the Angel was a lacy shredding of amber froth. The moisture in the air shook itself and disappeared.
Leaning far over the rail, John Preswick stared through his glass at the other vessel, and as he stared a standard fluttered up and gave itself to the breeze. A while he studied it, picking the rippling colors one from another, until at last he was sure of its identity. To Mr. Brooker, who stood upon the main-deck, he cried: “British!”
Mr. Brooker woke to action, and his calls echoed through the ship; then he ran aft, pounded up to the poop and placed himself at Mr. Ridge’s side. Together they stared at the pursuing ship, which was, obviously, a frigate of war, probably one of forty-four guns or so. Mr. Brooker made rapid calculations. He muttered: “If only the wind will hold.”
John Preswick shrugged his shoulders. “If it does, they will drop water or lighten in some other manner. Sooner or later, unless by the goodness of God it rains—we will be taken.” He was thinking of the girl, as was Mr. Brooker, and what a pretty noose she would spin for their necks when the English ordered their cargo searched. Only the way out did not appear to him, as to Mr. Brooker, ridiculously simple. Somehow, he could not entertain the thought that was coursing through the active mind of Mr. Brooker, that of cutting her throat and slipping her overboard with two twelve-pound shot at her feet. “Perhaps,” John Preswick mused, almost to himself, “we can run before her until night, and then slide away on the tack.”
Mr. Cortlandt joined them, venturing a remark that was both philosophical and optimistic. At the time they were flying no colors at all, and Mr. Cortlandt suggested that the frigate might indeed be one of the Americans riding beneath British colors, which was by no means unusual, now that war was upon the very horizon. He gave the order to run up the Stars and Stripes; but no sooner had the American pennant unfolded itself from the masthead than the frigate opened with a range shot from one of her long bow-chasers. Though it fell far short, Mr. Cortlandt ground his teeth in rage.
“Pirates!” he cried. “Damned pirates! There is no war to justify that! They did not even ask for our colors! They are going to run us down and sack us!”
“Perhaps,” John Preswick considered, “war has been declared in England.”
“No! If any one declares, it will be America, and if it had the news would have been in New York before we sailed! This is the rankest piracy!”
As Mr. Cortlandt ordered the decks cleared for action—their armament had increased to nine guns—John Preswick shrugged. It was a hopeless bit of bravado. As soon as the bow-chasers of the frigate came into range-long eighteens they would be in all probability—it would be over—all over. There was the girl.
Why could he not see the reason of the matter—see that where the girl was concerned there was only one course to follow, that it was her life for the dozens aboard the ship, that she was as clear a death warrant, especially for the four officers, as could be found upon these waters? So apparent was the entire business that the officers did not even discuss it among themselves. When the time came they would kill her and drop her over the bow rail.
What did it mean to him? Who was the girl?—and what if her name was Preswick? In America, surely, there were many Preswicks. He said to himself:
“Why, John Preswick, did you murder Lennox?” And he said:
“Why, John Preswick, did, you lie so brazenly and so cheerfully to your three senior officers?”
Now he had time to think. Standing upon the poop-deck, watching the progress of the ship on their tail, he had much time to think. And yet he thought of only one thing, the girl—whom, it seemed, he had always known, and whose voice was wonderfully and strangely familiar. He could picture her as she had been the day before, crouching taut in the shadow of the poop, holding himself and Lennox at bay, chanting out with childish pride the valor of her name. He wondered what her reaction would be were she to know that the name was also his. He said to himself that she would never know. In her worship of that name there was something strangely beautiful—something he could not quite understand.
It would hurt her, and he did not want her to be hurt. The night in the dining-hall, if she had screamed, he would have shot her through the heart, or in a place far more painful. He would have shot her mother with as little feeling. To him death was a very matter-of-fact thing, always a means to an end. While he rarely went out of his way to kill, he never went out of his way not to. As cheaply as he valued other lives, he valued his own. They played a game of doomed men. That they had played it for so long, was a gift from Goddess Luck.; now the game was over, for with sails bloated a British man-of-war stood behind them. He insisted to himself that the murder of the girl would not, could not, be a way out.
He glanced behind him. The frigate was no nearer; perhaps they had even gained a little; perhaps they were not so surely doomed as he had thought. Mr. Cortlandt was dropping water and cargo over the bow. If they continued to gain, even slowly, by nightfall they might be able to slip away; and then the girl would live. Never before in the years he had sailed with the Angel had he been so nervous and apprehensive; never before had he hung so longingly upon the outcome of a chase. Again and again he went over his mental calculations. Certainly they were holding their distance; certainly they were gaining….
The British ship tried another shot from a bow-chaser. As it fell short—short by a greater distance than before—the face of John Preswick broke into a smile. Leaning over the rail, he shook his fist at the frigate. Beneath him the stern ports were open and the blue muzzles of long guns peered impertinently forth…. If only the wind would hold!
The sun rose higher; the two ships flew on, one after the other, foam curling away in two white fountains from the bow of each. Little clumps of cloud scudded across the sky.
For a time John Preswick took the wheel. It gave him a feeling of purposeful effort to give his body to the pull of the spokes, to know that even a quiver of his arms would turn the ship from the wind. With his legs widespread, he stood, his head thrown back, his straw-colored hair free to the breeze. Like a giant vulture the spanker flapped above him, crossing his face with a long, oblique shadow; the song of the rigging—the hum of the wind as it tore through the shrouds—whined pleadingly in his ears. He had forgotten, for a moment, the girl. He laughed with the heat of the chase, with the obedience of the ship under his fingers.
He laughed, and his great form swayed. His shirt and his pantaloons were wrapped forward about his limbs. He seemed a very part of the straining vessel.
Then he felt her. He neither saw nor heard her, for she was behind him, and she was silent, but he felt her presence as surely as he felt the wind in his hair. His laugh died on his lips, and he crouched tense at the wheel. Why it was so he did not know, but he lacked the power to turn. For all of an hour he knew she was there, staring at his back, but he could not turn about, could not face to her, dared not. Like a whipped terrier he hung to the steering-gear.
The seaman came to relieve him. Giving up the tiller, he faced slowly about. Leaning against the stern rail, she was looking at him, a curious, thin smile fixed upon her lips. She said—Inez Preswick—as he came towards her:
“I am afraid you spend too much of your time upon the poop. If you had been forward this morning, you would have seen a burial at sea. But then, I do not suppose the gruesomeness of even so tragic a thing as that would affect you—Mr. Ridge.”
He could say nothing. Finding himself drawn, he continued to approach her, coming almost to her side, staring always into her face, noticing how large were her eyes and how tight her lips. He was almost frightened, seeing her in the full blast of the wind, for it wrapped her frock to the back of her form, showing her like a slim and frail reed. Why she should have given him an impression of strength he did not kno
w, for she was, in reality, small and thin. But it might have been her hair, cast forward, parted by her neck, and blowing out in a manner that gave its strands to the sun, making them bright with red-brown fire. She went on:
“What you are, I do not know. I have read of such men as you, but I thought them to be drugged fancies of romanticists. That any human could be so cruel, so heartless, so calloused, is—” She broke off her words, catching her lips in her teeth. Then she said:
“You shot down Mr. Lennox. A man would not shoot down even an animal in that fashion.”
“Do you know that Lennox is responsible for—this?” he flung at her.
“Is that why you murdered him, or because—?”
“I love you,” he answered, his voice a harsh whisper.
He had never thought to see in the face of a woman such disgust, such dread. It came to him that she feared him now, say what she might; but he derived no satisfaction from the thought. She had turned away, and her back was to him. Puzzled, he stared at her, for he knew, now, why he had killed Lennox.
Coming to himself, he saw that the wind was dropping. From the main-deck, Mr. Cortlandt was beckoning him. As he went forward, Mr. Mitchell, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, joined them. “I don’t like it,” Mr. Mitchell spluttered. “If it calms, we are through.”
The captain shrugged, and Mr. Mitchell threw a finger toward the girl, who could be seen at one side of the poop. “What about her?” he demanded.
“My hands are clean of women’s blood.”
“Do you fancy hanging from a yardarm?”
“There is still time,” John Preswick put in.
10
LEAVING them, John Preswick went to his cabin. While John Preswick was not a man given to a great deal of thought or reflection, his execution of those ideas he conceived was quick and decisive. In one way or another, he disposed of what lay between himself and his end.
Now he went to his cabin and opened the chest that he kept his arms in. There were the two double-barreled pistols, one of which he had used the preceding night. They were both loaded, but he saw again to the charges. Carefully he examined them; then he opened his coat and thrust them into his belt, one on either side of him. He also took out of the chest a powder horn, emptying a handful of the gray stuff into a little oilskin tobacco-pouch, which he laced tight and thrust into a side pocket. Then he lifted out a box of lead pellets, chose a dozen, and dropped them into the pocket that held the powder. Before he left the cabin he looked about him, thinking that perhaps he had overlooked something.
Outside, he walked quietly along the passageway to the door of Mr. Cortlandt’s cabin. But it was locked, and he could not chance the noise that would ensue in ripping off the bolt. Shrugging his shoulders, he turned up the companionway. On deck, what he had anticipated had occurred. The breeze was quite gone.
All four officers were now on deck; arms were being distributed to the crew; men were buckling cutlasses to them and hefting pikes, others were dumping overboard cargo, water, shot, kindling, everything that could be spared, in a mad effort to raise the vessel in the water.
John Preswick approached Mr. Cortlandt, who was eying the carronades with a speculative eye.
“I would not,” said John Preswick, “throw over the guns. I would tow while there is still a chance, and, perhaps, kedge. They are not yet in range, even of long eighteens. They have no twenty-fours in their bow or they would have used them.”
“I was going to tow—in just a moment. They have not yet lowered their boats.”
“Do it now.”
“Yes. But first the girl. We cannot chance her any longer.”
“Now listen to me,” said John Preswick. “Beside the gold, that girl is the only thing of any value left on this ship. It is still entirely possible that we will slip them when the night falls. But you are right. We should take no chances. Put me in one of the towing boats with the girl. I will hold her until all hope is gone; then I will cut her throat.”
There was a lurking suspicion in Mr. Cortlandt’s eyes as he replied: “We need you here—if it should come to a fight.”
John Preswick laughed scornfully, speaking with the knowledge that here was no time for mincing words: “Are you mad that you speak of fight with a frigate of half-a-hundred guns! It is enough that we have given them a pretty chase—would you have them blow us from the water in splinters! I tell you this, that if there is no war between England and America, they can do no more than impress a dozen of our men—unless they find the girl. Then there will be a noose about all our necks!”
“And if there is war—even now?”
“We are none the worse in either case. If we strike, they cannot but treat us honorably.”
“And our cannon?”
“Must a ship in the Mediterranean trade explain her defense? Has England made the seas that secure? I tell you this is the only way!”
But Mr. Mitchell said: “It is a new thing for Mr. Ridge to be anxious for a distance between himself and the fight—if there should be one.”
A thin smile upon his lips, John Preswick faced the three officers. “Tell me,” he said: “is there a man among you with courage to kill a woman?”
“Take the girl and the boat and be damned!” cried Captain Cortlandt. “I have eyes, and I have ears, and I am by no means a fool. Murder is murder, and now if you would have your jest, go. But Mr. Mitchell will go with you—to see that you do this thing, which you are so anxious for.”
“You mistrust me! Do years mean nothing?”
“I trust no man—now!”
So it came about that both the first and the third officers of the brig Angel quitted the ship for places in the same towing boat, Mr. Cortlandt consenting, in the heat of the chase, to an arrangement he could not, in a saner or less suspicious moment, have fostered. The boats were lowered; the lines were cast off and made fast; and they tightened and groaned beneath the pull of the oars. In John Preswick’s boat, there were six men, drawing upon three sets of oars. He crouched in the prow, facing them, and calling the time, while, with the girl by his side, Mr. Mitchell sat in the stern seat. The breeze had died away altogether, and the sea rose and fell broadly in the smooth calm. The sails hung limp; the song of the rigging had wavered into nothingness.
The frigate had, by this time, thrown out all of her boats and was kedging in addition with a light anchor. She had more than twice the number of boats of the brig, which could not spare a craft to carry a kedging line, if Mr. Cortlandt had approved of it; which he emphatically did not. He considered it a waste of a good towing boat, no more.
Seeing that the British vessel had added another anchor line and was walking in with her kedging ropes alternately, John Preswick made quick calculations, assured that the distance was slowly but surely closing up. It was only a matter of minutes before the frigate slid into range and opened with its long bow guns. Two well-placed shots would bring the Angel about, while half a dozen more in the rigging would cause it to draw in the towing boats and strike. If ever he was to act, it must be now; but he stared ahead of him, as blankly as ever, steadily calling time to the oarsmen, marking it with short, calculated movements of his hand.
There was the girl, sitting at the side of the first mate, who was impotent in a place where he did not belong, who cursed the captain, not only for trusting, but for mistrusting, John Preswick. She, Inez Preswick, sat there, gazing ahead of her, while Mr. Mitchell twisted himself entirely about that he might mark the progress of the pursuing vessel and call orders to the other towing boats. Among them all, the tense John Preswick, the straining, gasping men at the oars, the excited, shouting Mr. Mitchell, she alone was calm, mercilessly calm, scorning to look about or to shield herself from the sheets of spray that showered over the boat as they bit, with the full force of half a dozen oars, into each new swell. Her frock was wet and plastered to her, her dark hair crusted with salt foam; but she took no notice of it, as she took no notice of John Preswick, into whose face
she was staring.
He thought to himself, John Preswick, that she was very beautiful there; he thought to himself that she was worth having over the lives of seven people. But to John Preswick death was a means to an end, and he had come to where he was by achieving his ends.
The frigate lashed out with one of its bow-chasers, sending up a fountain of foam under the stern of the Angel, striking so close that the ball danced from the water against the planks of the vessel, from which it rebounded without apparent harm. There was a puff of smoke as the other bow gun loosed its charge.
A blue bit of bunting flickered out on the jib boom, and Mr. Mitchell, recognizing the signal decided upon, turned to John Preswick. In that curiously gentle voice of his, he said: “You wondered whether I had the courage to kill a woman—whom you loved.” As he unsheathed his knife, the girl glanced at it, smiled, and shrugged slightly.
John Preswick thought to himself: “If I die, I shall not begrudge dying for you. You are quite a wonderful creature.”
And then, from beneath his coat, he drew two double-barreled pistols; and, aiming with the one in his left hand, for he was left-handed, he shot Mr. Mitchell through the heart, crinkling his lips into a wry smile as he did so, thinking of a time when Mr. Mitchell had beaten him in the hold of this same brig Angel.
The shot sped true; Mr. Mitchell looked bewildered; a questioning, hurt expression came into his face, and the knife clattered from his nerveless fingers to the bottom of the boat. All of his limbs twitching, he tottered to his feet, paused upright for a moment, his mouth open, and then toppled over into the sea, almost causing the boat to ship water with his awkward fall. The girl sat as she was, her face all horror; the rowers continued to pull to the rising and falling cadence of John Preswick’s voice. It had happened too quickly for them to grasp. Forms crowded the bow rail of the Angel, and Mr. Cortlandt screamed something that could not be heard above the thunder of the brig’s stern longs, replying futilely to the now continuous pounding of the frigate’s bow-chasers.