All hands stood watch till dawn as a tribute to the war of one pirate upon another, and not until the sun had risen and shown no sail in sight did the Old One himself go into the great cabin.
CHAPTER XIII
A BIRD TO BE LIMED
A lad being called into council by such a man as Tom Jordan might well think himself a fine fellow, and rare enough were lads whom Tom Jordan would thus have summoned. But although Philip Marsham, it seemed, had taken the Old One's eye and won his heart long before on the little hill beside the road, when Phil had drawn the wind from Martin's sails, and although it had not escaped Tom Jordan that Phil's hand moved easily toward his weapon, the old proverb has it "a man that flattereth his neighbor, spreadeth a net for his steps"; and "he that whistleth merrily, spreadeth his nets cunningly and hunteth after his prey greedily."
So, "Come, boatswain, and lend us thy wits," cried Tom. "Four heads shall provide more wisdom than three." And with that, he clapped Phil on the back and drew him into the cabin where Jacob and the mate sat deep in talk of the night's adventures.
"A hawk, when she is first dressed and ready to fly," said Jacob, "is sharp set and hath a great will upon her. If the falconer do not then follow it, she will be dulled for ever after. So, master, a man! Yea, and a ship."
"A great will, sayest thou?" quoth the Old One, and his voice revealed his sullen anger. "Why then, in God's name, did ye not rake them with a broadside or twain?" With which he turned on Harry Malcolm, thus to include him in the charge.
"For one thing," replied Malcolm, and testily, for ill temper prevailed both aft and forward, "we gave the gunners no firing to learn them their guns. For another thing, the powder failed us. For yet another, since you say what you say, and be cursed for it, 'twere a mad, foolish notion to run afoul a strange ship, for we have but a half the company we need to work a ship and fight. And finally, to cap our woeful proverbs, we know what we know—yea," and he shot a dark glance from under bent brows, "we know what we know; there be those who come toward us with their feet, but go from us with their hearts." His voice, as always, was light and quick, but there was a rumble in it, such as one may sometimes hear in a dog's throat.
As the three men looked first at one and then at another, there came to Boatswain Marsham, sitting as it were outside their circle, the uneasy throbbing of their suspicion.
"Of the powder," said Jacob coolly, "I have taken a little from each barrel." He laid on the table seven packages wrapped in leaves from an old book. Regarding closely the notes he had written on each package, he opened them one by one and placed them in a row.
"This," said he, "is from the barrel that good Harry Malcolm served out to the men and that doubtless this man Candle hath used from in old days. It hath lost its strength by long lying. Press it with thy fingers and thou shalt feel it soft to the touch. Here upon this white sheet of paper I lay four corns of this powder. This other powder"—and he chose a second package—"is from a barrel new opened. Press it and thou shalt see how firm and hard is each corn. And this, too, is firm and of a fair azure. And so, also, this. But this—" and he first put his eyes close to the notes on each remaining packet, then held them far off, for his sight, although good at a great distance, made out with difficulty things near at hand, "this is from a barrel that hath lost its strength by moisture; and this hath a fault I shall tell you of."
Taking a pinch of each, as he spoke, he had laid the corns, each some three fingers distant from the next, in a circle on the paper. He then struck tinder, and lighting a match made of twisted cords of tow boiled in strong lye-ashes and saltpetre, he held it over a corn of the good powder. There was a flash and puff, and the ring of powder was gone. The corns of good powder had fired speedily and left only a chalky whiteness in their place, nor had they burned the paper or given off smoke; but the corns of poor powder had burned slowly, and some had scorched the paper and some had given forth smoke.
The Old One softly swore. "And have we, then," asked he, "but three barrels of good powder?"
"Nay, there are more than three. This last is weak because they have neglected to turn the barrels upside down, so the petre has settled from top to bottom, as is its way. We shall find the bottom as strong as the top is weak, and by turning the barrel we shall renew its strength evenly."
"As for the powder that hath spoiled by long lying," cried Philip Marsham, "I will undertake to make it as good as new."
"Do you, boatswain, mind your sails and cordage," said old Jacob, with a wry smile. "An you wish to grind it in the mortar, that you may; but it is I who will measure the petre. Nay, I will make you, if you wish it for a wonder to show friends, a powder of any colour you please—white, red, blue, or green."
Of the three who leaned over the packets of powder, old Jacob was the only one who bore with even temper the sad reverse of the night before; for master and mate glared at each other in such wrath as had thrown a shadow over every soul in the ship.
Some had waked with aching heads, for which they had their own folly to thank; some were like men who dream they have got a great treasure but wake to find pebblestones or worse under the pillow: since the Porcupine ketch had yielded them no gold and had stung them instead with her quills. In all truth the ship was by the ears, for in extremities your sea sharks are uncertain friends, as a touch of foul weather will manifest to any man's satisfaction.
"Enough of this," said the Old One, and he pushed aside the packets and folded his arms. "We lose time. There is a thief amongst us."
"A thief, you say?" And the hot red of anger burned its way across the boatswain's face, for the three had turned and looked hard at him.
The Old One and Harry Malcolm then exchanged quick glances, and Jacob shut his small mouth tight and knotted his brows.
"Well," cried Phil, "would you charge me with theft?"
"Some one," said the Old One, lingering over each word, "hath wrought a clever plot against us."
"Say on, say on!"
"He is a man, I make no doubt, whose buttons are breaking with venom."
There was heavy silence in the cabin. Jacob, pursing his lips and knotting his brows, looked from one of them to another, and Phil, vaguely on the defensive, drew back and gave them a gaze as steady as they sent.
"He is doubtless a very cunning rascal," Harry Malcolm put in, "who hath cut his cloth by his wits; but he is making a suit that will throttle him by its narrowness about the neck."
The master and mate once more exchanged glances and the Old One then smiled lightly, as if again there were sunlight rippling over dark water.
"Nay, Philip, we think no ill of thee. But do thou have care to thy company. A foul trick hath been done with a mind to render us helpless at sea, so that we must crawl to the nearest land, where some base dunghill spirit is doubtless of a mind to leave our company. But we have resources; yea, and of thee, Philip, we think no ill."
Despite their fair words, though, they were watching Philip Marsham like three old tomcats watching a sparrow, and he, being no fool, knew the reason why.
Three hard faces they showed: the one, handsome in a devilish way and keen; the second, unassuming, yet deeply astute and marked by a deeper rooted, if less frank, selfishness; the third, older, wiser, more self-centred.
The eyes of master and mate were coldly cruel; but old Jacob was too intent on his own thoughts to be cruel save by indifference.
All that day Jacob squatted on the deck and toiled with tools and wood. From the wood he chose certain long pieces, fine-grained and straight and dry and free from knots, and certain shorter and broader pieces that were suited to his purpose, and bade the carpenter plane them smooth. He laid out scales, working with a small square and a pair of compasses, and engraved them with utmost care. He wrought brass into curious shapes by a plan he made, and from morning till night he kept at the task, frowning and ciphering and sitting deep in thought. He called for charcoal and a mortar, and beat the charcoal to a fine powder and tempered it with linsee
d oil. This he rubbed into the wood he had shaped to his liking, and watched it a long while, now and again touching it to try it; then with oil from a phial he had found in a chest in the great cabin he rubbed the wood clean, and there were left in the wood, set off neatly in black, the gradations and figures he had so exactly etched.
Taking his work into the great cabin, he toiled on by lanthorn light until a late hour, and there through the open door men as they passed might see him hunched over the table with his medley of tools about him. But when at last he leaned back and drew a long breath of relief, very serious and very wise, his work was done, and curiously and deftly contrived it was.
On the table before him there lay a cross-staff, a nocturnal and a Gunter's scale, "with which," said he, to the Old One, who sat opposite him quietly taking tobacco and sipping wine, "and with what instruments the thief hath left us, a man can navigate a ship where he will."
Examining closely the nocturnal, which was intricately carved and engraved, the Old One muttered, as if ignoring Jacob's words, "I will yet lime that bird."
"Though he be never so mad a callant, I misdoubt he will put his head into a noose," said Jacob in his thick, serious voice.
"Be he the one we think or not the one we think, I will set him such a trap," said the Old One, "as will take the cunningest fox that ever doubled on the hounds." And the thin face smiled in a way that was not pleasant to see.
CHAPTER XIV
A WONDERFUL EXCELLENT COOK
If an astrologer or an Arabian enchanter could say to a man, "Beware of this or that, for it is a thing conceived of the Devil to work thy ruin," there would be reason for studying the stars or smiting the sand. And this, indeed, they do, according to the old tales. But if a sailor seek out an astrologer to learn things that shall profit him, he is more likely to find a man grown foolish by much study, who will stroke his chin sagely and say, "Come, let us look into this matter. Under Capricorn are all diseases in the knees and hams, leprosies, itch and scales and schirrous tumors, fallow grounds and barren fields, ox-houses and cow-houses, low dark places near the ground, and places where sails and materials for ships be laid." And while he talks of fixed angles and of the Lord of the Ascendant being in the fourth week, some small unsuspected thing may be the very egg on which the Devil is sitting like an old black hen to hatch forth a general calamity.
Thus certain incidents that shortly thereafter happened are to the point, for although they appeared of little moment at the time, they turned the tide of men's lives and made a stir that has to do with the current of my tale.
Now the men of the Rose of Devon sighted a sail at high noon when they were a week on their way south, and though she showed her heels and ran, and though the Rose of Devon lacked her mizzenmast, the strange vessel was but a small pink and so slow that they laid her aboard two hours before dark. In her crew she had only a dozen men, and sorely frightened they were, as they tossed in the lee of the dark frigate. So to save themselves from a more cruel fate there was scarcely one of them but leaped at the chance to join the Rose of Devon's crew. They tumbled up their small cargo of salt fish for Bilbao and hoisted it on board the ship, together with their shallop, and casting their pink adrift, they forbore from complaining when their new master and his men stole whatever pleased them, from the new men's rings and knives to the very clothes on their backs. So, with her plunder and her recruits, the Rose of Devon again squared her yards and continued on her course.
There was, to be sure, one fellow of mean spirit who whined dolefully, upon conceiving his present extremity to be distasteful. But another got comfort by knocking him on the head when no one was looking; and finding him dead, the Old One hove him over-board and there was no further trouble from the fishermen.
Yet it was no secret that there was grumbling and complaining forward among the gentlemen of the Rose of Devon, so the Old One sent the boatswain to summon them aft when the watches were changing.
He leaned against the swivel gun on the quarter-deck, and looking down into their faces, smiled disagreeably. "It hath come to my ears," said he, "that one hath a sad tale to tell because we failed to take the Porcupine, which, though a mere ketch, outnumbered us in guns and men. And another hath a sad tale to tell because this pink that late became our prize is small and of little worth, though we got from her eleven brave fellows who shall be worth a store of fine gold." He looked from one of his men to another, for they were all there,—Martin and the cook, and Philip Marsham and Will Canty, and Paul Craig and Joe Kirk, the one-eyed carpenter and the rest,—and his thin face settled into the many wrinkles that had got him his name. There was none of them, unless it might be Harry Malcolm or Old Jacob, who could say surely at one time or another what thoughts were uppermost in Tom Jordan's shrewd head.
"Come, now, my hearts of gold," he cried, "let us have an end of such folly. Said I not that these northern fisheries were meat for crows? And that we must go south to find prey for eagles? We will choose a fine harbour by some green island where there's rich fruit for the picking and fat fish for the catching, and we will build there a town of our own. We will take toll from the King of Spain's ships; we will take us wives and women and gold and wine from the dons of the islands and the main. Yea, we will lay up a great store of riches and live in fullness of bread and abundance of idleness."
Some were pleased, but some doubted still, which the Old One perceiving, for he read their faces, cried, "Nay, speak up, speak up! Let us have no fair-protesting friends with hollow and undermining hearts."
"Yea, it is a fair tale," cried one, in a surly voice, "but thus far we have blows to show for our pains—blows and a kettle of fish."
"And methinks," another growled, "we shall see more of salt fish and buccaned meat, than of fine wines and gold and handsome women."
"'Tis a swinish thought," the Old One retorted; but he smiled when he said it, so that they took no offense, for of such grumbling he had no fear. He was set to catch a bird of quite another feather.
Then old Jacob rose and they were silent to hear him. "Let us make an end of talk," said he slowly. "We are on our way south and to stop or turn aside would be nothing but foolishness." And with that, although they had expected him to say more, he turned away.
Then, of a sudden, "Come, Will," the Old One cried, singling out his man from all the rest, "what say you?"
If Will Canty's face changed at all, it was a whit the paler as he met the Old One's eyes. "I say," he replied, "that since we have fish on board, we are sure of fish and would do well to eat fish ere we lose it."
"There is sooth in thy words," quoth the Old One, and he smiled in friendly wise. (But despite his smile, he liked the words little, as any shrewd man might have known by his eyes, and Will Canty was no fool.) "Come, cook, and boil us a great kettle of fish."
The rumble of low voices changed to laughter and the cook boldly cried, "Yea, yea, master!"
"For our much voyaging and many pains," cried the men, as they went about their work, "we have got a kettle of fish." And they laughed mightily, for though it was the very thing that before had made them grumble, now they saw it as a droll affair and made of it many jests, of which a few were good and more bad, after the manner of jests.
As for the cook, he called his mate and bade him break out a drum of fish and set a kettle to boil, and cuffed him this way and that, till the poor fellow's ears were swollen.
And the Old One said to Harry Malcolm, "Saw you not how deftly the fellow twisted out of the corner, and with a sly remark that no one can take amiss? Oh, he is a slippery dog and I am minded to cut his throat out of hand!"
"Now, that would be very foolish, for where there's one of them, there's always two, and the one will toll the other on until there are two dogs by the heels instead of one."
At that the Old One laughed harshly, and the two, who were after a left-handed fashion uncommonly congenial, went off well pleased with their conceit.
Down in the hold the kettle boiled rig
ht merrily, and the cook swelled with pride that he had a mate to carry and fetch. He cuffed the poor fellow this way, and he cuffed him that. He threw a pan at him when the fire smoked worse than common, and he thrust a fistful of flour into his face and down his neck when he let the fire lag. He flung him his length on the floor for spilling a pint of water; and when in despair the lad fled for his life, the cook seized him by the hair and haled him back and put a long knife at his breast and swore to have his heart's blood. Oh, the cook was in a rare and merry mood, for he had drunk more sack than was good for him from the cask he had marked as his own; but as he had waxed exceeding gay and haughty, the sack had dulled his wits and he was drunker than he knew.
"Come, thou pig! Thou son of a swine!" he yelled. "Ladle out the fish and choose of the best for the cabin. Yea, choose in abundance and summon the master's boy and bid him haste. And do thou bestir thyself and carry to the men." And with that, he fetched the poor fellow a blow on his head, which knocked him off his feet.
The fellow ran to do the work and the cook, in vast satisfaction at having so well acquitted himself, sat down with a goblet of sack and tippled and nodded, and kept an ill-tempered eye on the master's boy and his own, as with shrewd fear of broken heads they scurried back and forth.
"It is most wonderful excellent sack," quoth the cook, and with his sleeve he mopped his fiery bald head. "It was by a happy stroke I marked it for my own. Truly, I had rather be cook than master, for here I sit with mine eye upon the cabin stores, from which I can choose and eat at will, and the captain, nay, the Lord High Admiral of England, is himself none the wiser. Fish, sayest thou? Nay, fish is at best a poor man's food. I will have none of it." And thus he ran on foolishly, forgetting as he drank sack, that there was no one to hear him, not even his mate. "Truly, I am a wonderful excellent cook. I may in time become a captain. I may even become the governor of a plantation and take for a wife some handsome Spanish woman with a wonderful rich dowry. She must have an exceeding rich dowry if she will marry me, though. Yea, I am a wonderful excellent cook." And the more he drank the more foolish he became.
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