The Dark Frigate

  After a while, he cocked his head upon one side; and quoth he, "I hear them calling and shouting! It seemeth they are singing huzza for me. I hear them coming down to do me honour. Truly, I am a most wonderful excellent cook and the fish hath pleased them well. Foolish ones that they are to eat it!"

  The silly fellow sat with his head on one side and smiled when they burst in upon him. "Hast come for more fish?" he cried. "Yonder stands the kettle. Nay, what's that? What's that thou sayest? Nay, fellow, th' art mad? Thou know'st not to whom thou speakest."

  "Fool! Knave! Scoundrel! Swine!" they yelled. "Oh, such a beating as thy fat carcase will get. Hear you not the uproar? Think you to cozzen us?"

  With that they seized him, two by the head and two by the feet, and dragged him to the ladder. They threw a rope about him and knotted it fast and tossed the ends to men at the hatch above, who hauled him, squealing and kicking like an old hog, up on deck. To the cabin they dragged him, with all the men shrieking curses at him and pelting him with chunks of fish, and in the cabin they stood him before the table where the Old One and Harry Malcolm sat, and very angry were they all.

  "Dog of a cook," said the Old One, "for a relish to conclude our meal, we shall see thee eat of this fish that the boy hath brought us." And he thrust before the cook a great dish. "Eat it, every shred, bones and all," said he, "or I'll have thee butchered and boiled in place of it."

  "Why, now," said the cook, somewhat sobered by rough handling and a trifle perplexed, but for all that still well pleased with himself, "as for the bones, they are liable to scrape a man's throat going down. I am reluctant to eat bones. But the meat is good. I rejoice to partake of it, for so diligently have I laboured to prepare it that I have denied myself, yea, though I hungered greatly."

  "Eat," said the Old One and widely he grinned.

  Looking suspiciously about him, for there was something in their manner that he failed to understand, the cook thrust his hand into the dish and took from it a great slice of fish, which he crammed into his mouth.

  "Eat," said the Old One, "eat, O thou jewel among cooks!"

  A curious look came over the cook's face and he raised his hand as if to take the fish out of his mouth.

  "Nay, swallow it down," said the Old One. "Be not sparing. There is abundance in the dish. Yea, thou shalt stand there eating for a long time to come." And though he smiled, his look made it plain that he was in no trifling mood.

  The cook turned pale and choked and gasped. "Water!" he cried thickly, for his mouth was too full for easy speech.

  "Nay, much drinking hath wrought havoc with thy wits. Eat on, eat on!"

  Prodigious were the gulps by which the cook succeeded at last in swallowing his huge mouthful, and great was his distress, for the salt in it nearly choked him. "Water, water!" he weakly cried. "Nay, temper thine heart with mercy, master! I beg for water—I beseech for water."

  "Eat on," said the Old One grimly.

  Then Harry Malcolm chuckled and the men in the door roared with laughter, but the cook plunked down on his fat knees and thrust out both his hands. "Nay, master, I cannot hold it down!"

  "Eat on, O jewel among cooks!"

  "Nay, master—"

  "Come, then, lads, and cram it down his hungry throat."

  Three of them seized him, and one, when he shut tight his mouth, thrust a knife between his teeth.

  "Blub-bub-blah!" he yelled. "I'll eat! I'll eat!"

  They let him go and he rose and ate. Time and again he gasped for water and they laughed; time and again he lagged and the Old One cried, "Eat on!" When at last he stood miserably in front of the empty dish, the Old One said, "For a day and a night shalt thou sit in bilboes with a dry throat, which will be a lesson to learn thee two things: first, before cooking a kettle of fish, do thou bear it well in mind to soak out the salt so that the fish be fit for food; and second, by way of common prudence, do thou sample for thyself the dishes that are cooked for the cabin."

  They haled him forward and locked the shackles on his feet and placed beside him a great dish of the fish, that whoever wished might pelt him with it; and there they left him to repent of his folly and forswear drunkenness and whimper for water.

  As the weary hours passed, the sun tormented him in his insufferable thirst; but nightfall in a measure brought relief and he nodded in the darkness and fell asleep.

  Waking, he would rub his head, which sadly throbbed and would seek by gulping to ease his parched throat; and sleeping again, he would dream of great buckets of clear water. The voices that he heard buzzed in his ears as if they were the droning of flies, and hunching himself down in his shackles at one end of the iron bar, he forgot the world and was forgotten, since his fat carcase lay inertly in a black shadow and there was nothing to make a man keep him in mind.

  He heard at last a voice saying, "But nevertheless it becomes you to walk lightly and carefully," and another replying, "I fear him not, for all his subtle ways. Much that goes on escapes him."

  He stirred uneasily, and opening his eyes, saw that there were two men leaning side by side against the forecastle.

  "In the matter of wit, you grant him less than his due," said the first speaker. "And in another matter you charge him with a heavier burden than he needs bear."

  The cook stirred and groaned and the first speaker chuckled, at which the cook's gorge rose from anger.

  "O jewel among cooks!" one of the two called softly, and the unhappy man knew by the voice that the speaker was Philip Marsham.

  Naming no names and talking in roundabout phrases as people do when they wish one to know their meaning and another not to, the two continued with no heed at all to the cook, whom they thought a mere drunken lout. And indeed, their undertones were scarcely audible; but anger sharpened the cook's ears and his wits, and he lay and ruminated over such chance sentences as he got.

  "It puzzled me from the first," said the other, "to see how easily you bore with your comrade of the road."

  "Why, he is a good soul in his way."

  The other gave a grunt of disgust.

  "Nay, it is a wonder to me that a lad with your nice notions ever found his way to sea," Phil retorted.

  "And I might never have gone, had not Captain Francis Candle been my godfather."

  "As for me, I have seen both sides of life; and, but for a certain thing that happened, I might be well enough contented where I am."

  "And that?"

  Phil hesitated, for though they had talked freely, as young men will, the question searched a side of Phil's life to which as yet he had given no clue. "Why," said he, lowering his voice, "for one thing, I saw for the first time my own grandfather; and for another, I saw a certain old knight who quite won my fancy from such a man as a certain one we know. Come, let us stroll together." And as they walked the deck that night, arm in arm, Phil told his companion what his life had been and what it might have been, and mentioned, in passing, the girl at the inn.

  Left to his miseries and his thoughts, of which the first were little better company than the second, the woeful cook turned over and over in his fat head such fragments of their talk as he had succeeded in overhearing, and to say truth, he made little more out of it all than the speakers had intended. But his parched throat teased his wits to greater effort, and being come to such a state that he would have bartered his immortal soul for water, had chance offered, he bethought him of a plan by which, if luck held good, he might escape from his shackles.

  The moment for which he waited was a long time coming and he suffered a great variety of increasing miseries before it arrived; but when the watches changed, he saw among the men newly arrived on deck his erstwhile dearest friend, and somewhat reluctantly forgiving his dear friend for belabouring him over the head with a whole salt fish, the cook softly called the man by name.

  The fellow came snickering, which made it none the easier to bespeak his aid; but the cook nevertheless swallowed his wrath as well as with his dry throat he could, and whisper
ed to the fellow that he must make haste and tell the master there was news to be imparted in secret.

  At this the fellow held up his hand with thumb thrust between first and second fingers.

  "Give me no fico," wailed the most excellent cook. "Nay, I have stumbled upon a black and hidden matter. Go thou, and in haste, and it will pay thee well."

  For a time they bickered in the dark, but there was in the cook's despair a sincerity that finally made the fellow believe the tale; and finding, upon stealing aft, that there was still a light in the great cabin, he mustered up his courage and knocked.

  "Enter," cried a hard voice.

  The fellow opened the door and peeped in and found the Old One sitting alone at the table. Glancing hastily about, and the more alarmed to meet the cold eye of Harry Malcolm who lay on the great bed in the corner of the cabin, he closed the door at his back and whispered, "He swears it's true—that there's foul work afoot. 'Tis the cook who hath told me—yea, and hath bade me tell you. He would say no more—the cook, I mean."

  "Oh, my good friend, our most excellent cook!" Meditating, the Old One looked the fellow up and down. "Here," said he, "strike off his shackles and send him in with the key." And he threw the fellow the key to the locks.

  After a while the cook came weakly in and shut the door behind him and, throwing the key on the table, fell into a chair.

  "Ah," said the Old One, "what is this tale I have heard news of?"

  "Water!" gasped the cook. For though he had managed, by pausing at the butt on his way, to drink nearly a quart, he had no mind the Old One should know of it.

  The Old One smiled. "Go, drink, if thy tale be worth it; but mind, if I deem thy tale not worth it, thou shalt pay with a drop of blood for every drop of water."

  The cook shot a doubting glance at the Old One, but went none the less, and came back wiping his lips.

  "Have at thy tale," said the Old One.

  There was a quaver in the cook's voice, for he was by no means sure of how great a tale he could make, and the master's face gave him small encouragement, for from the beginning of the tale to the end the Old One never altered his cold, cruel smile.

  "It was the boatswain and young Canty," he said.

  "Ah!"

  "They was leaning on the forecastle and walking the deck arm in arm and talking of one thing and another."

  "And what did they say?"

  "They talked about some one's slow wit—I could not make sure whose, for they scoffed at me bitterly—and Canty was bepuzzled by the boatswain's ways, and he wanted him to do something or other."

  "Go on." The Old One, grinning coldly, leaned back and watched the labouring cook, who wracked his few brains to make a worthier story.

  "Nay, but I heard little else. Yet, said I, the master must know at all costs."

  "What a thick head is thine and how easily seen through and through!" The Old One laughed. "Think you all this is worth a second thought? I am of the mind to have you skinned and salted. But I forgive you, since I have a milkish heart that is easy moved to pity. Get you down to your berth and sleep."

  The cook departed in haste, but with a fleeting glance at Harry Malcolm whom he feared less only than the master. He was aware that for some reason he did not understand, his broken tale had served his purpose.

  When he had gone the Old One turned about. "You heard him. What think you?" said he.

  From the great bed in the corner, Harry Malcolm raised his head and laughed silently. "Our able cook was hard pressed for an excuse to get out of his ankle rings. Did you hear him slopping at the butt the first time passing? As for his tale, we know what we knew, and no more."

  "'Slow wits'! I wonder."

  "At Baracao we shall see," said Harry Malcolm. "Neither one nor a dozen can harm us before we raise land."

  "And after raising land, which by God's mercy will be soon now, we shall see whose wits will nick first when the edges crack together."

  The Old One stretched and yawned and Harry Malcolm softly laughed.

  CHAPTER XV

  A LONESOME LITTLE TOWN

  A light seen in the middle watch gave warning of an unexpected landfall, and calling up the Old One, who had a store of knowledge gained by much cruising in those seas, they lay off and on until dawn, when they made out an island of the Bahamas. It seemed, since by their reckoning they were still a day's sail from land, that there was some small fault in their instruments; but to this they gave little heed, and which island it was and what occasioned the light they never knew, though some ventured one guess and some another as they bore past it and lifted isle beyond isle. For two days, with the Old One conning the ship, they worked their way among the islands, and thus at last they came to a deep bay set among hills, which offered a commodious and safe anchorage, notwithstanding that on the point that guarded the bay there was the wreck of a tall ship.

  In the shallop they had taken from the fishing pink, the Old One and Jacob, with four men to row them, went out to the wreck and returned well pleased with what they had found.

  "God is good to us," cried the Old One, perceiving that Harry Malcolm waited at the waist for their coming. "Though her foremast and mainmast be sprung, yet her mizzen is sound as a nut."

  "And is it to be fetched out of her unharmed?"

  "Yea, that it is! Come, Master Carpenter, haul out our broken old stump of a mizzen. By this time on the morrow our good Rose of Devon will carry in its place as stout a stick as man can wish. Faith, the ill fortune of them whose ship lies yonder shall serve us well."

  There was a great bustle in the old frigate, for work was to be done that needed many hands. Some went to the wreck to save masts and spars, and others, led by the one-eyed carpenter, toiled to haul out the stump. Boatswain Marsham and his mate laid ready ropes and canvas; and the most of the company being thus busied with one task or another, Martin and the cook caught a store of fresh fish, which the cook—who had now become a chastened, careful man—boiled for supper, while Martin went onshore for fruit that grew wild in abundance and for fresh water from a sandy spring. It was three days instead of one before the work was finished; but meanwhile there was fresh food and water aft and forward, and having spent at sea many weary weeks, the men rejoiced to pass time so pleasantly in a snug haven.

  Indeed, a man might have passed a long life in comfort on such an island, and there were many who cried yea, when Joseph Kirk declared himself for building a town there, to which they might return with a store of wives and wines, and from which they could sally forth when their supplies of either got low, and get for themselves others out of the King of Spain's ships and plantations. But the Old One laughed and cried nay. "I shall show you a town," said he, "in a land as fair as this, but with houses built and ready for us, and with gold piled up and waiting, and with great cellars of wine and warehouses filled with food."

  So they sailed from the island one morning at dawn and for a week they picked their way down the windward passages. At times they lay hidden in deep harbours of which the Old One knew the secret; and again they stood boldly out to sea and put behind them many leagues of their journey. And thus progressing, one night, as they worked south against a warm breeze scented with the odour of flowers, they sighted on the horizon a dark low land above which rose dimly the shape of a distant mountain.

  The men gathered about master and mate and Jacob, then Harry Malcolm went swarming up the rigging and from the maintopsail yard studied the dim bulk of the mountain. After a time he cried down to them, "Douse all lights and hold her on her course!"

  For an hour they stood toward the land, then Malcolm came down from aloft smiling, and there ran through the ship a great wave of talk. Though a man had never sailed those seas before, he would not have found the reason for their talk hard to guess, since there were few secrets on board. Time and distance had made less the grumbling occasioned by the disastrous brush with the Porcupine and by the littleness of the profit got from the pink, and they had warmed their hearts
with the Old One's tales.

  Bearing to the west, the Rose of Devon skirted the dark shore for miles; but the master and mate were growing anxious lest dawn overtake them before they should reach the hiding-place they sought; and when they rounded a certain wooded point and sailed into a deep, secluded bay where a ship might lie for a year unseen,—which put an end to their fears,—they let go their anchors with all good will and furled their sails; and at break of day they kedged the ship into a cove that might have been a dock, so straight were the shores and so deep the water.

  "Mind you, Ned," or "Mind you, Hal, the night we landed on Hispaniola?" the men from the Blue Friggat were saying. And "'Twas thou at my side when we stole down through the palms and bottled the garrison in the little fort." And "Ah, what wine we got that night!"

  "Yea, and how drunk we got! So that Martin Barwick was of a mind to go fight a duel with the captain of the soldiers. And then they burst out and drove us all away, and there was an end of our taking towns for a long, long while."

  "I will have you know that I was no drunker than any man else," Martin snarled, and they laughed uproariously.

  "Come," cried another, "since we have laid our ship in her chosen berth, let us sleep while the idlers watch. We shall be off in the cool of the afternoon."

  "Nay, in the morning!"

  "Afternoon or morning matters little," said old Jacob thickly, in the corner where he sat watching all the men. "The hour is near when we shall lay in the hold a goodly cargo. I know well this town. We need only find two more such towns to get the money to keep us the rest of our lives like so many dukes, each of us in a great house in England, with a park full of deer, and the prettiest tavern wenches from all the country round to serve us in the kitchen."