CHAPTER XXV
In which My Lord hath his Day
I and Black Lamoral were leading a forlorn hope. With all my old companybehind us, we were thundering upon an enemy as thick as ants, coveringthe face of the earth. Down came Black Lamoral, and the hoofs of everymad charger went over me. For a time I was dead; then I lived again, andwas walking with the forester's daughter in the green chase at home. Theoaks stretched broad sheltering arms above the young fern and the littlewild flowers, and the deer turned and looked at us. In the open spaces,starring the lush grass, were all the yellow primroses that everbloomed. I gathered them for her, but when I would have given them toher she was no longer the forester's daughter, but a proud lady, heiressto lands and gold, the ward of the King. She would not take theprimroses from a poor gentleman, but shook her head and laughed sweetly,and faded into a waterfall that leaped from a pink hill into a wavelesssea. Another darkness, and I was captive to the Chickahominies, tied tothe stake. My arm and shoulder were on fire, and Opechancanough came andlooked at me, with his dark, still face and his burning eyes. The fiercepain died, and I with it, and I lay in a grave and listened to the loudand deep murmur of the forest above. I lay there for ages on ages beforeI awoke to the fact that the darkness about me was the darkness of aship's hold, and the murmur of the forest the wash of the wateralongside. I put out an arm and touched, not the side of a grave, but aship's timbers. I stretched forth the other arm, then dropped it with agroan. Some one bent over me and held water to my lips. I drank, and mysenses came fully to me. "Diccon!" I said.
"It's not Diccon," replied the figure, setting down a pitcher. "It isJeremy Sparrow. Thank God, you are yourself again!"
"Where are we?" I asked, when I had lain and listened to the water alittle longer.
"In the hold of the _George_," he answered. "The ship sank by the bows,and well-nigh all were drowned. But when they upon the _George_ saw thatthere was a woman amongst us who clung to the poop deck, they sent theirlong-boat to take us off."
The light was too dim for me to read his face, so I touched his arm.
"She was saved," he said. "She is safe now. There are gentlewomenaboard, and she is in their care."
I put my unhurt arm across my eyes.
"You are weak yet," said the minister gently. "The Spaniard's ball, youknow, went through your shoulder, and in some way your arm was badlytorn from shoulder to wrist. You have been out of your head ever sincewe were brought here, three days ago. The chirurgeon came and dressedyour wound, and it is healing well. Don't try to speak,--I'll tell youall. Diccon has been pressed into service, as the ship is short ofhands, having lost some by fever and some overboard. Four of the pirateswere picked up, and hung at the yardarm next morning."
He moved as he spoke, and something clanked in the stillness. "You areironed!" I exclaimed.
"Only my ankles. My lord would have had me bound hand and foot; but youwere raving for water, and, taking you for a dying man, they were sohumane as to leave my hands free to attend you."
"My lord would have had you bound," I said slowly. "Then it's my lord'sday."
"High noon and blazing sunshine," he answered, with a rueful laugh. "Itseems that half the folk on board had gaped at him at court. Lord! whenhe put his foot over the side of the ship, how the women screeched andthe men stared! He's cock of the walk now, my Lord Carnal, the King'sfavourite!"
"And we are pirates."
"That's the case in a nutshell," he answered cheerfully.
"Do they know how the ship came to strike upon that reef?" I asked.
"Probably not, unless madam has enlightened them. I didn't take thetrouble,--they wouldn't have believed me,--and I can take my oath mylord hasn't. He was only our helpless prisoner, you know; and they wouldthink madam mistaken or bewitched."
"It's not a likely tale," I said grimly, "seeing that we had alreadyopened fire upon them."
"I trust in heaven the sharks got the men who fired the culverins!" hecried, and then laughed at his own savagery.
I lay still and tried to think. "Who are they on board?" I asked atlast.
"I don't know," he replied. "I was only on deck until my lord had hadhis say in the poop cabin with the master and a gentleman who appearedmost in authority. Then the pirates were strung up, and we were bundleddown here in quick order. But there seems to be more of quality thanusual aboard."
"You do not know where we are?"
"We lay at anchor for a day,--whilst they patched her up, Isuppose,--and since then there has been rough weather. We must be stilloff Florida, and that is all I know. Now go to sleep. You'll get yourstrength best so, and there's nothing to be gotten by waking."
He began to croon a many-versed psalm. I slept and waked, and sleptagain, and was waked by the light of a torch against my eyes. The torchwas held by a much-betarred seaman, and by its light a gentleman of avery meagre aspect, with a weazen face and small black eyes, was busilyexamining my wounded shoulder and arm.
"It passeth belief," he said in a sing-song voice, "how often wounds,with naught in the world done for them outside of fair water and a cleanrag, do turn to and heal out of sheer perversity. Now, if I had beenallowed to treat this one properly with scalding oil and melted lead,and to have bled the patient as he should have been bled, it is ten toone that by this time there would have been a pirate the less in theworld." He rose to his feet with a highly injured countenance.
"Then he's doing well?" asked Sparrow.
"So well that he couldn't do better," replied the other. "The arm was atrifling matter, though no doubt exquisitely painful. The wound in theshoulder is miraculously healing, without either blood-letting orcauteries. You'll have to hang after all, my friend." He looked at mewith his little beady eyes. "It must have been a grand life," he saidregretfully. "I never expected to see a pirate chief in the flesh. WhenI was a boy, I used to dream of the black ships and the gold and thefighting. By the serpent of Esculapius, in my heart of hearts I wouldrather be such a world's thief, uncaught, than Governor of Virginia!" Hegathered up the tools of his trade, and motioned to his torchbearer togo before. "I'll have to report you rapidly recovering," he saidwarningly, as he turned to follow the light.
"Very well," I made answer. "To whom am I indebted for so muchkindness?"
"I am Dr. John Pott, newly appointed physician general to the colony ofVirginia. It is little of my skill I could give you, but that little Igladly bestow upon a real pirate. What a life it must have been! And tohave to part with it when you are yet young! And the good red gold andthe rich gems all at the bottom of the sea!"
He sighed heavily and went his way. The hatches were closed after him,and the minister and I were left in darkness while the slow hoursdragged themselves past us. Through the chinks of the hatches a veryfaint light streamed down, and made the darkness gray instead of black.The minister and I saw each other dimly, as spectres. Some one broughtus mouldy biscuit that I wanted not, and water for which I thirsted.Sparrow put the small pitcher to his lips, kept it there a moment, thenheld it to mine. I drank, and with that generous draught tasted purebliss. It was not until five minutes later that I raised myself upon myelbow and turned on him.
"The pitcher felt full to my lips!" I exclaimed. "Did you drink when yousaid you did?"
He put out his great hand and pushed me gently down. "I have no wound,"he said, "and there was not enough for two."
The light that trembled through the cracks above died away, and thedarkness became gross. The air in the hold was stifling; our soulspanted for the wind and the stars outside. At the worst, when the fetidblackness lay upon our chests like a nightmare, the hatch was suddenlylifted, a rush of pure air came to us, and with it the sound of men'svoices speaking on the deck above. Said one, "True, the doctorpronounces him out of all danger, yet he is a wounded man."
"He is a desperate and dangerous man," broke in another harshly. "I knownot how you will answer to your Company for leaving him unironed solong."
"I and the Company u
nderstand each other, my lord," rejoined the firstspeaker, with some haughtiness. "I can keep my prisoner without advice.If I now order irons to be put upon him and his accomplice, it isbecause I see fit to do so, and not because of your suggestion, mylord. You wish to take this opportunity to have speech with him,--tothat I can have no objection."
The speaker moved away. As his footsteps died in the distance my lordlaughed, and his merriment was echoed by three or four harsh voices.Some one struck flint against steel, and there was a sudden flare oftorches and the steadier light of a lantern. A man with a brutal,weather-beaten face--the master of the ship, we guessed--came down theladder, lantern in hand, turned when he had reached the foot, and heldup the lantern to light my lord down. I lay and watched the King'sfavourite as he descended. The torches held slantingly above cast afiery light over his stately figure and the face which had raised himfrom the low estate of a doubtful birth and a most lean purse to apinnacle too near the sun for men to gaze at with undazzled eyes. In hisrich dress and the splendour of his beauty, with the red glow envelopinghim, he lit the darkness like a baleful star.
The two torchbearers and a third man descended, closing the hatch afterthem. When all were down, my lord, the master at his heels, came andstood over me. I raised myself, though with difficulty, for the feverhad left me weak as a babe, and met his gaze. His was a cruel look; if Ihad expected, as assuredly I did not expect, mercy or generosity fromthis my dearest foe, his look would have struck such a hope dead.Presently he beckoned to the men behind him. "Put the manacles upon himfirst," he said, with a jerk of his thumb toward Sparrow.
The man who had come down last, and who carried irons enough to fettersix pirates, started forward to do my lord's bidding. The master glancedat Sparrow's great frame, and pulled out a pistol. The minister laughed."You'll not need it, friend. I know when the odds are too great." Heheld out his arms, and the men fettered them wrist to wrist. When theyhad finished, he said calmly: "'I have seen the wicked in great power,and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and,lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.'"
My lord turned from him, and pointed to me. He kept his eyes upon myface while they shackled me hand and foot; then said abruptly, "You havecords there: bind his arms to his sides." The men wound the cords aroundme many times. "Draw them tight," commanded my lord.
There came a wrathful clank of the minister's chains. "The arm is tornand inflamed from shoulder to wrist, as I make no doubt you have beentold!" he cried. "For very shame, man!"
"Draw them tighter," said my lord, between his teeth.
The men knotted the cords, and rose to their feet, to be dismissed by mylord with a curt "You may go." They drew back to the foot of the ladder,while the master of the ship went and perched himself upon one of therungs. "The air is fresher here beneath the hatch," he remarked.
As for me, though I lay at my enemy's feet, I could yet set my teethand look him in the eyes. The cup was bitter, but I could drink it withan unmoved face.
"Art paid?" he demanded. "Art paid for the tree in the red forestwithout the haunted wood? Art paid, thou bridegroom?"
"No," I answered. "Bring her here to laugh at me as she laughed in thetwilight beneath the guest-house window."
I thought he would murder me with the poniard he drew, but presently heput it up.
"She is come to her senses," he said. "Up in the state cabin are brightlights, and wine and laughter. There are gentlewomen aboard, and I havebeen singing to the lute, to them--and to her. She is saved from theperil into which you plunged her; she knows that the Kings Court of HighCommission, to say nothing of the hangman, will soon snap the fetterswhich she now shudders to think of; that the King and one besides willcondone her past short madness. Her cheeks are roses, her eyes arestars. But now, when I pressed her hand between the verses of my song,she smiled and sighed and blushed. She is again the dutiful ward of theKing, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh--she hath asked to be so called----"
"You lie," I said. "She is my true and noble wife. She may sit in thestate cabin, in the air and warmth and light, she may even laugh withher lips, but her heart is here with me in the hold."
As I spoke, I knew, and knew not how I knew, that the thing which I hadsaid was true. With that knowledge came a happiness so deep and strongthat it swept aside like straw the torment of those cords, and thedeeper hurt that I lay at his feet. I suppose my face altered, andmirrored that blessed glow about my heart, for into his own came a whitefury, changing its beauty into something inhuman and terrifying. Helooked a devil baffled. For a minute he stood there rigid, with handsclenched. "Embrace her heart, if thou canst," he said, in a voice so lowthat it came like a whisper from the realm he might have left. "I shallpress my face against her bosom."
Another minute of a silence that I disdained to break; then he turnedand went up the ladder. The seamen and the master followed. The hatchwas clapped to and fastened, and we were left to the darkness and theheavy air, and to a grim endurance of what could not be cured.
During those hours of thirst and torment I came indeed to know the manwho sat beside me. His hands were so fastened that he could not loosenthe cords, and there was no water for him to give me; but he could anddid bestow a higher alms,--the tenderness of a brother, the manlysympathy of a soldier, the balm of the priest of God. I lay in silence,and he spoke not often; but when he did so, there was that in the toneof his voice---- Another cycle of pain, and I awoke from a half-swoon,in which there was water to drink and no anguish, to hear him prayingbeside me. He ceased to speak, and in the darkness I heard him draw hisbreath hard and his great muscles crack. Suddenly there came a sharpsound of breaking iron, and a low "Thank Thee, Lord!" Another moment,and I felt his hands busy at the knotted cords. "I will have them offthee in a twinkling, Ralph," he said, "thanks to Him who taught my handsto war, and my arms to break in two a bow of steel." As he spoke, thecords loosened beneath his fingers.
I raised my head and laid it on his knee, and he put his great arm, withthe broken chain dangling from it, around me, and, like a mother with ababe, crooned me to sleep with the twenty-third Psalm.
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