The Dark Frigate

  It gave him a queer feeling to be tramping through an unknown land with no destination in his mind, yet he vowed to himself that, come what might, he would never go back to the Rose of Devon. There is a time when patience and forbearance are enough to earn a man a hempen halter, and thinking thus, he faced the storm and renewed his determination.

  The wind rose to a furious gale; the clouds overswept the sky and thunder shook the earth and heavens. The rain, sweeping down in slanting lines, cut through the palm leaves like hundreds upon hundreds of thrusting swords; and lightning flamed and flashed, and leaped from horizon to horizon, and hung in a sort of continual cloud of deathly blue in the zenith, blazing and quivering with appalling reverberations that went booming off through the mountains and came rolling back in ponderous echoes. It was enough to make a brave man think the black angels were marshalling for the last great battle; it was such a storm as a boy born in England and taught his seamanship in northern waters knew only by sailors' tales. The rain beat through the poor shelter that he found and drenched him to the skin, and the roaring and thundering of the tempest filled him with awe. And when the storm had passed, for it lasted not above three quarters of an hour, the sun came out again and filled the air with a steamy warmth that was oppressive beyond description.

  Then the woods came to life and insects stirred and droned, and mosquitoes, issuing from among the leaves and grasses, plagued him to the verge of madness.

  One who has lived always in a land where mosquitoes return each year in summer is likely to have no conception of the venomous strength with which their poison can work upon one who has not, by much experience of their bites, built up a measure of resistance against it. Phil's hands swelled until he could not shut them, and the swelling of his face so nearly closed his eyes that he could hardly see. When two hours later, all but blinded, and thirsting and hungry, he came again to the shore and made out in the offing, by squinting between swollen eyelids, the same Rose of Devon from which he had run away and to which he had vowed he would never return, his misery was such that he would have been glad enough to be on board her and away from such torment, though they ended the day by hanging him. But the Rose of Devon sailed away over the blue sea on which the sun shone as calmly and steadily as if there had been no tempest, and Philip Marsham sat down on a rock and gave himself up as a man already dead.

  There two natives of the country found him, and by grace of God, who tempered their hearts with mercy, carried him to their poor hut and tended him with their simple remedies until he was in such measure recovered of the poison that he could see as well as ever. He then set out once more upon his way to he knew not where, having rubbed himself with an ointment of vile odour, which they gave him in goodly quantity to keep off all pestiferous insects, and on the day when he ate the last morsel of the food with which the natives had provided him he saw from the side of a high hill a strange ship at anchor in a cove beneath.

  Now a ship might mean one thing or she might mean another; and a man's life might depend on the difference.

  Drinking deeply from a stream that ran over the rocks and through the forest, and so at last into the cove, Philip Marsham returned into the wood and sat upon a fallen tree. He saw a boat put out from the ship and touch on the shore a long way off, where some men left her and went out of sight. After an hour or two they came back, and, entering the boat, returned to the ship. He saw men working on deck and in the rigging; he heard the piping of a whistle, and now and again, as the wind changed, he heard more faintly than the drone of insects the voices of the men.

  Being high above the shore, he found the mosquitoes fewer and the wind helped drive them away; yet they plagued him continually, despite his ointment, of which little was left, and made him miserable while he stayed. He would have hurried off had he dared; but the chance that the ship would be the means of saving his life withheld him from pursuing his journey, while doubt concerning the manner of craft she was withheld him from making known his presence.

  In mid-afternoon he saw far away a sail, which came slowly in across the blue plain of the sea; and having clear eyes, trained by long practice, he descried even at that great distance the motion of a heavily rolling ship. From his seat high on the hill he could see a long way farther than the men in the ship in the cove, and a point of land shut off from them an arc of the sea that was visible from the hill; so when night fell they were still unaware of the sail.

  Though he had watched for hours the ship in the cove, the runaway boatswain of the Rose of Devon had discovered no sign of what nation had sent her out or what trade her men followed; but there came a time when his patience could endure suspense no longer. He picked his way down to the shore, following the stream from which he had been drinking during his long watch, and cautiously moved along the edge of the water till he came to the point of land nearest the anchored ship, whence he could very plainly hear voices on board her. There were lights on the stern and on deck, and through an open port he got sight of hammocks swinging above the guns on the main deck.

  At last he took off the greater part of his clothes and piled them on a rock; then, strapping his dirk to his waist, he waded silently into the water. Reaching his depth, he momentarily hesitated, but fortifying his resolution with such philosophy as he could muster, he began deliberately and silently to swim. Letting himself lie deep in the water and moving so slowly that he raised no wake, he came into the shadow of the ship. It was good to feel her rough planking. He swam aft under the quarter, and coming to the rudder laid hands on it and rested. Above him he could see, upon looking up, a lighted cabin-window.

  His own body seemed ponderous as he slowly lifted himself out of water. He raised one hand from the tip of the rudder just above the tiller to the carving overhead and got grip on a scroll wrought in tough oak. He put his foot on the rudder, and feeling above him with his other hand seized fast the leg of a carved dragon. Very thankful for the brave ornaments with which the builder had bedecked the ship, he next got hold of the dragon's snout, and clinging like a fly, unseen and unsuspected, above the black water that gurgled about the rudder and the hull, he crawled silently up the stern.

  Coming thus to the lighted cabin window, he peeked in and found the place deserted. On the table a cloth was laid, and on the cloth such a dinner service as he could scarce have dreamed of. There were glasses of rare tints, with a few drops of wine left in them, which glowed like garnets under the bright candles. There were goblets of silver, and even, he believed, of gold. There were wonderfully delicate plates crusted with gold about the edges. There was an abundance of silver to eat with and a great decanter, wrought about with gold and precious stones, such as simple folk might not expect to see this side of Heaven.

  At the sound of steps, Phil drew back and hung over the water on the great stern of the ship.

  A boy came into the cabin and stepped briskly about clearing the table. Voices came down from above—and they were speaking in English! What a prize she would have made for the Rose of Devon, Phil thought, and grimly smiled.

  "Boy!" a voice bellowed from somewhere in the bowels of the ship.

  "Yea, yea, master," cried the boy, and with that he scurried from the cabin like a startled chick.

  Phil raised his head and renewed his hold, for he could not cling there forever; yet how to introduce himself on board the ship was a question that sorely puzzled him. He threw a bare leg over the sill, the more easily to rest, and revolved the problem in his mind. They were plainly honest Englishmen, and right glad would he have been to get himself in among them. Yet if he came like a thief in the night, they must suspect him of evil intentions without end. While he thus attacked the problem from one side and from the other, it occurred to him that the best way was to crawl down again into the water and swim back to the shore from whence he had come. There, having donned his clothes, he would call for help. Surely there was no one so hard of heart as to refuse a lad help in escaping from the pirates.

  He rais
ed his leg to swing it out of the window again and put his scheme into practice, when he felt—and it startled him nearly out of his skin—a hand lay hold on his ankle.

  If you will balance yourself on the outside of any window with one foot over the sill, you will find it exceedingly difficult to pull your foot away from some one inside the window without throwing yourself off the wall, and Phil for the moment was reluctant to make the plunge. Slowly at first he twisted and pulled, but to no purpose. With waxing vigour he struggled and yanked and kicked and jerked, but completely failed to get his ankle out of the hand that held it.

  It seemed that a gentleman who had been sitting at a little desk, so placed that Phil could not have seen it without thrusting his head all the way into the cabin, had looked up, and, perceiving to his mild surprise a naked foot thrust in through the window, had nimbly arisen, and stepping lightly toward the foot, had seized the ankle firmly at the moment when Phil was about to withdraw it.

  The gentleman marvelled much at what he had discovered and purposed to get at the reason for it. Not only did he succeed with ease in holding the ankle fast against his captive's somewhat cautious first kicks; he anticipated a more desperate effort by getting firm hold with both hands, so that when his captive decided to risk all, so to speak, and tried with might and main to fling himself free and into the water by a great leap, the gentleman kept fast his hold and held the lad by his one leg, who dangled below like a trapped monkey.

  Very likely it was foolish of Philip Marsham to attempt escaping, but as I have said he was of no mind to be caught thus like a thief entering in the night, and he was so completely surprised that he had no time at all to collect his wits before he acted. Yet caught he was, and, for a bad bargain, hung by the heels to boot.

  "Boy," the gentleman said, and his voice indicated that he had a droll humour, "call Captain Winterton."

  The boy, further sounds revealed, who had come silently and in leisure, departed noisily and in haste.

  Heavy steps then approached, and a gruff voice cried, "What devilish sort of game is this?"

  "Take his other leg, Charles, and we shall soon have him safe on board. I am not yet prepared to say what sort of game it is, beyond saying that it is a rare and curious game."

  Thereupon a second pair of hands closed on Philip Marsham's other ankle, and, would he or would he not, he was hauled speedily through the cabin window.

  "Young man," said the gentleman who had first seized him, "who and what are you, and from whence have you come?"

  "I am Philip Marsham, late boatswain of the Rose of Devon frigate. I came to learn from what country this ship had sailed and to ask for help. I myself sailed from Bideford long since in the Rose of Devon, but, falling into the hands of certain sailors of fortune who killed our master and took our ship, I have served them for weary months as a forced man. Having at last succeeded in running away from them, I have come hither by land, as you can see, suffering much on the way, and I ask you now to have compassion on me, in God's name, and take me home to England."

  "Truly," said the gentleman, "those devilish flies have wrought their worst upon him. His face is swelled till it is as thick-lipped as a Guinea slave's." He spoke lightly and with little thought of Phil's words, for his humour was uppermost in him. He was in every way the fine gentleman with an eye for the comical, accustomed to having all things done for him and as little likely to feel pity for this nearly naked youth as to think it wrong that the little cabin boy should stand till morning behind his chair, lest by chance, desiring one thing or another, he must compromise his dignity by fetching it for himself.

  But now the other, Captain Winterton, a tall, grave man, with cold face and hard cold eyes, stepped forward, and speaking for the first time said: "Do you remember me?"

  Phil looked him in the eye and felt his heart sink, but he was no coward. "I do," he replied.

  Captain Winterton smiled. He was the first of the three men who had come on board the Rose of Devon by way of her gallery, and had entered the great cabin the night when Phil Marsham sat there at supper.

  It then burst upon Phil that in the whole plain truth lay his only hope.

  "I ran away from them—they had forced me into their service!—a week since. Nay, it is true! I am no liar! And it will pay you well to keep a sharp watch this night, for a vessel like enough to the Rose of Devon to be her twin is this minute lying behind yonder point."

  "Ah! And you sailed, I believe you said, from Bideford. Doubtless you have kept the day in mind?"

  "Why, 'twas in early May. Or—stay! 'Twas—"

  "Enough! Enough! The master of—"

  "But though I marked neither the day of the week nor the day of the month, I remember the sailing well."

  "Doubtless," quoth the captain dryly, "but it will save time and serve thy cause to speak only when I bid thee. Interrupt me not, but tell me next the name of the lawful master in whose charge thy most excellent ship sailed from Bideford."

  This keen and quiet captain in the King's service was of no mind that his prisoner should tell with impunity such a story as he might make up on the moment. Accordingly he proceeded to draw forth by question after question such particular parts of the story as he himself desired to hear, now attacking the matter from one angle and now from another, watching his prisoner closely the while and all the time standing in such a place that the lad had no chance at all of escaping through the open window.

  CHAPTER XX

  A PRIZE FOR THE TAKING

  "We shall see," said Captain Winterton, when he had listened to all of the tale that he would hear. He turned about. "Boy," he cried, "go speedily and send Mr. Rance in to me."

  The boy departed in haste and in a moment there entered a junior officer, who stared in frank curiosity at the three in the cabin.

  "Mr. Rance," said the captain, "go aloft in person to the main truck and look about you sharply. Come back and report what you see."

  "Yea, yea, sir," the young man replied, and with that he was gone.

  The captain stood by the cabin window and frowned. Plainly he had small confidence in the good faith of the prisoner and regarded his story as at best an attempt to save himself at the expense of his friends. The gentleman of the humours, somewhat sobered by the captain's manner of grave concern, returned to his desk, but sat tapping his fingers and watching Philip Marsham.

  It had instantly, of course, dawned upon the runaway boatswain that his peril was more serious than he had had reason earlier to believe. For supposing the unknown sail should in all truth be the Rose of Devon,—and since she was cruising idly thereabouts nothing was more probable,—he stood between the Devil, or at all events the Devil's own emissary, Thomas Jordan, and a deeper sea than any ship has ever sailed: the sea upon which many a man with less plain evidence of piracy against him has embarked from a yardarm with a hempen collar about his neck and a black cap over his eyes.

  Who, pray, would accept for sober truth such a tale as any scoundrel would make out of whole cloth to save himself from hanging? Despite all he could do or say, he now saw plainly, he must stand convicted, in their minds, of being at the very least a spy sent to learn the state of affairs on board this tall ship in which he was now a prisoner.

  Then back to the cabin came young Mr. Rance and very much excited did he appear.

  "Sir," he exclaimed, and stood in the door.

  "Tell your tale."

  "A ship lieth two cable's lengths from land on the farther side of the point, and a boat hath set out from her and is following the shore as if to reconnoitre."

  "Ah," said the captain, "it is quite as I thought. No drums, mind you, nor trumpets, Mr. Rance. Call the men to quarters by word of mouth. Make haste and put springs on the cables if there be time before the boat rounds the point. Bid the gunner make all preparations for action and order a sharp watch kept; but order also that there be no sound or appearance of unusual activity. Send me a corporal and a file of men, and the master."

 
The gentleman at the desk chuckled.

  "Come, boy, clear the table," said the captain.

  The boy jumped and returned to his work.

  The master came first, but the corporal and his men were close at the master's heels.

  "Take this fellow to the gun room, clap him into irons, and set a man to watch him."

  "Yea, yea. Come, fellow, march along."

  And thus sending before them Boatswain Marsham, erstwhile of the Rose of Devon frigate, the corporal and his men departed from the cabin.

  There were guns on the right hand and the left—ordnance of a size to sink the Rose of Devon with a broadside. There were sailormen thronging between-decks in numbers to appall the young prisoner who came down among them nearly naked from his swim. Though no greater of burthen than the Rose of Devon, the ship was better armed and better manned, and all signs told of the stern discipline of a man-of-war.

  The alternatives that Phil Marsham faced, as he sat in shackles with no spirit to reply to the jibes of the sailors and watched men stripped to the waist and moving deftly among the guns, were not those a man would choose. If his old shipmates took this tall and handsome ship, a blow on the head and a burial over the side was the kindest treatment he could expect of them. And if not—the gallows loomed beyond a Court of Admiralty. For hours the hum of voices went up and down the main deck and for hours Boatswain Marsham sat with the bolts upon his legs and wrists and saw the life of the ship go on around him. The men leaped here and there at a word, or lolled by their guns waiting for orders. The night wore on, and nodding, Phil thought of the two ships lying one on each side of the point of land and by all appearances two quiet merchantmen. Yet one, he knew to his sorrow, smelled devilishly of brimstone; and the other, in which he now sat a prisoner, though her ports were closed and her claws sheathed, was like some great tiger watching through half-shut eyes a bold, adventurous goat.