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The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales

by Arthur Quiller-Couch · English · Gutenberg #14817 · 550,677 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales

Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch


        
Release date: January 27, 2005 [eBook #14817]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14817

Credits: Produced by Lionel Sear


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE WOLF AND OTHER FIRESIDE TALES ***

THE WHITE WOLF AND OTHER FIRESIDE TALES.

By Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch  ('Q').




CONTENTS.


MIRACLE OF THE WHITE WOLF.

SINDBAD ON BURRATOR.

VICTOR.

THE CAPTURE OF THE _BURGOMEISTER VAN DER WERF.

KING O' PRUSSIA.

THE MAN WHO COULD HAVE TOLD.

THE CELLARS OF RUEDA.

THE HAUNTED YACHT.

PARSON JACK'S FORTUNE.

THE BURGLARY CLUB.

CONCERNING ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM.

COX _VERSUS_ PRETYMAN.

THE BRIDALS OF YSSELMONDE.

ENGLAND!

JOHN AND THE GHOSTS.

THREE PHOTOGRAPHS.

THE TALKING SHIPS.

THE KEEPERS OF THE LAMP.

TWO BOYS.

THE SENIOR FELLOW.

BALLAST.



THE MIRACLE OF THE _WHITE WOLF_.


I.--THE TALE OF SNORRI GAMLASON

In the early summer of 1358, with the breaking up of the ice, there came
to Brattahlid, in Greenland, a merchant-ship from Norway, with
provisions for the Christian settlements on the coast.  The master's
name was Snorri Gamlason, and it happened that as he sailed into
Eric's Fiord and warped alongside the quay, word was brought to him that
the Bishop of Garda had arrived that day in Brattahlid, to hold a
confirmation.  Whereupon this Snorri went ashore at once, and, getting
audience of the Bishop, gave him a little book, with an account of how
he had come by it.

The book was written in Danish, and Snorri could not understand a word
of it, being indeed unable to read or to write; but he told this
tale:--

His ship, about three weeks before, had run into a calm, which lasted
for three days and two nights, and with a northerly drift she fell away,
little by little, towards a range of icebergs which stretched across and
ahead of them in a solid chain.  But about noon of the third day the
colour of the sky warned him of a worse peril, and soon there came up
from the westward a bank of fog, with snow in it, and a wind that
increased until they began to hear the ice grinding and breaking up--
as it seemed--all around them.  Snorri steered at first for the
southward, where had been open water; but by and by found that even here
were drifting bergs.  He therefore put his helm down and felt his way
through the weather by short boards, and so, with the most of his men
stationed forward to keep a look-out, fenced, as it were, with the
danger, steering and tacking, until by God's grace the fog lifted, and
the wind blew gently once more.

And now in the clear sunshine he saw that the storm had been more
violent than any had supposed; since the wall of ice, which before had
been solid, was now burst and riven in many places, and in particular to
the eastward, where a broad path of water lay before them almost like a
canal, but winding here and there.  Towards this Snorri steered, and
entered it with a fair breeze.

They had come, he said, but to the second bend of this waterway, when a
seaman, who had climbed the mast on the chance of spying an outlet,
called out in surprise that there was a ship ahead of them, but two
miles off, and running down the channel before the wind, even as they.
At first he found no credit for this tale, and even when those on deck
spied her mast and yard overtopping a gap between two bergs, they could
only set it down for a mirage or cheat of eyesight in the clear weather.

But by and by, said Snorri, they could not doubt they were in chase of a
ship, and, further, that they were fast overtaking her.  For she steered
with no method, and shook with every slant of wind, and anon went off
before it like a helpless thing, until in the end she was fetched up by
the jutting foot of a berg, and there shook her sail, flapping with such
noise that Snorri's men heard it, though yet a mile away.

They bore down upon her, and now took note that this sail of hers was
ragged and frozen, so that it flapped like a jointed board, and that her
rigging hung in all ways and untended, but stiff with rime; and drawing
yet nearer, they saw an ice-line about her hull, so deep that her
timbers seemed bitten through, and a great pile of frozen snow upon her
poop, banked even above her tiller; but no helmsman, and no living soul
upon her.

Then Snorri let lower his boat, and was rowed towards her; and, coming
alongside, gave a hail, which was unanswered.  But from the frozen pile
by the tiller there stuck out a man's arm, ghastly to see.
Snorri climbed on board by the waist, where her sides were low and a
well reached aft from the mast to the poop.  There was a cabin beneath
the poop, and another and larger room under the deck forward, between
the step of the mast and the bows.  Into each of these he broke with
axes and bars, and in the one found nothing but some cooking-pots and
bedding; but in the other--that is, the after-cabin--the door, as he
burst it in, almost fell against a young man seated by a bed.
So life-like was he that Snorri called aloud in the doorway, but anon,
peering into the gloomy place, perceived the body to be frozen upright
and stiff, and that on the bed lay another body, of a lady slight and
young, and very fair.  She, too, was dead and frozen; yet her cheeks,
albeit white as the pillow against which they rested, had not lost their
roundness.  Snorri took note also of her dress and of the coverlet
reaching from the bed's foot to her waist, that they were of silk for
the most part, and richly embroidered, and her shift and the bed-sheets
about her of fine linen.  The man's dress was poor and coarse by
comparison; yet he carried a sword, and was plainly of gentle nurture.
The sword Snorri drew from its sheath and brought away; also he took a
small box of jewels; but little else could he find on the ship, and no
food of any kind.

His design was to leave the ship as he found it, carrying away only
these tokens that his story, when he arrived at Brattahlid, might be
received with faith; and to direct where the ship might be sought for.
But as he quitted the cabin some of his men shouted from the deck, where
they had discovered yet another body frozen in a drift.  This was an old
man seated with crossed legs and leaning against the mast, having an
ink-horn slung about his neck, and almost hidden by his grey beard, and
on his knee a book, which he held with a thumb frozen between two pages.

This was the book which Snorri had brought to Brattahlid, and which the
Bishop of Garda read aloud to him that same afternoon, translating as he
went; the ink being fresh, the writing clerkly, and scarcely a page
damaged by the weather.  It bore no title; but the Bishop, who
afterwards caused his secretary to take a copy of the tale, gave it a
very long one, beginning: "God's mercy shown in a Miracle upon certain
castaways from Jutland, at the Feast of the Nativity of His Blessed Son,
our Lord, in the year MCCCLVII., whereby He made dead trees to put forth
in leaf, and comforted desperate men with summer in the midst of the
Frozen Sea" . . . with much beside.  But all this appears in the tale,
which I will head only with the name of the writer.



II.--PETER KURT'S MANUSCRIPT [1]

Now that our troubles are over, and I sit by the mast of our late
unhappy ship, not knowing if I am on earth or in paradise, but full-fed
and warm in all my limbs, yea pierced and glowing with the love of
Almighty God, I am resolved to take pen and use my unfrozen ink in
telling out of what misery His hand hath led us to this present Eden.

I who write this am Peter Kurt, and I was the steward of my master Ebbe
while he dwelt in his own castle of Nebbegaard.  Poor he was then, and
poor, I suppose, he is still in all but love and the favour of God; but
in those days the love was but an old servant's (to wit, my own), and
the favour of God not evident, but the poverty, on the other hand,
bitterly apparent in all our housekeeping.  We lived alone, with a
handful of servants--sometimes as few as three--in the castle which
stands between the sandhills and the woods, as you sail into Veile
Fiord.  All these woods, as far away as to Rosenvold, had been the good
knight his father's, but were lost to us before Ebbe's birth, and leased
on pledge to the Knight Borre, of Egeskov, of whom I am to tell; and
with them went all the crew of verderers, huntsmen, grooms, prickers,
and ostringers that had kept Nebbegaard cheerful the year round.
His mother had died at my master's birth, and the knight himself but two
years after, so that the lad grew up in his poverty with no heritage but
a few barren acres of sand, a tumbling house, and his father's sword,
and small prospect of winning the broad lands out of Borre's clutches.

Nevertheless, under my tutoring he grew into a tall lad and a bold, a
good swordsman, skilful at the tilt and in handling a boat; but not
talkative or free in his address of strangers.  The most of his days he
spent in fishing, or in the making and mending of gear; and his
evenings, after our lesson in sword-play, in the reading of books (of
which Nebbegaard had good store), and specially of the Icelanders,
skalds and sagamen; also at times in the study of Latin with me, who had
been bred to the priesthood, but left it for love of his father, my
foster-brother, and now had no ambition of my own but to serve this lad
and make him as good a man.

But there were days when he would have naught to do with fishing or with
books; dark days when I forbore and left him to mope by the dunes, or in
the great garden which had been his mother's, but was now a wilderness
untended.  And it was then that he first met with the lady Mette.

For as he walked there one morning, a little before noon, a swift shadow
passed overhead between him and the sun, and almost before he could
glance upward a body came dropping out of the sky and fell with a thud
among the rose-bushes by the eastern wall.  It was a heron, and after it
swooped the bird which had murdered it; a white ger-falcon of the kind
which breeds in Greenland, but a trained bird, as he knew by the sound
of the bells on her legs as she plunged through the bushes.  Ebbe ran at
once to the corner where the birds struggled; but as he picked up the
pelt he happened to glance towards the western wall, and in the gateway
there stood a maiden with her hand on the bridle of a white palfrey.
Her dog came running towards Ebbe as he stood.  He beat it off, and
carrying the pelt across to its mistress, waited a moment silently, cap
in hand, while she called the great falcon back to its lure and leashed
it to her wrist, which seemed all too slight for the weight.

Then, as Ebbe held out the dead heron, she shook her head and laughed.
"I am not sure, sir, that I have any right to it.  We flushed it yonder
between the wood and the sandhills, and, though I did not stay to
consider, I think it must belong to the owner of the shore-land."

"It is true," said Ebbe, "that I own the shore-land, and the forest,
too, if law could enforce right.  But for the bird you are welcome to
it, and to as many more as you care to kill."

Upon this she knit her brows.  "The forest?  But I thought that the
forest was my father's?  My name," said she, "is Mette, and my father is
the Knight Borre, of Egeskov."

"I am Ebbe of Nebbegaard, and," said he, perceiving the mirth in her
eyes, "you have heard the rhyme upon me--

    "'Ebbe from Nebbe, with all his men good,
     Has neither food nor firing-wood.'"

"I had not meant to be discourteous," said she contritely; "but tell me
more of these forest-lands."

"Nay," answered Ebbe, "hither comes riding your father with his men.
Ask him for the story, and when he has told it you may know why I cannot
make him or his daughter welcome at Nebbegaard."

To this she made no reply, but with her hand on the palfrey's bridle
went slowly back to meet her father, who reined up at a little distance
and waited, offering Ebbe no salutation.  Then a groom helped her to the
saddle, and the company rode away towards Egeskov, leaving the lad with
the dead bird in his hand.

For weeks after this meeting he moped more than usual.  He had known
before that Sir Borre would leave no son, and that the lands of
Nebbegaard, if ever to be won back, must be wrested from a woman--and
this had ever troubled him.  It troubled me the less because I hoped
there might be another way than force; and even if it should come to
that, Sir Borre's past treachery had killed in me all kindness towards
his house, male or female.

He and my old master and five other knights of the eastern coast had
been heavily oppressed by the Lord of Trelde, Lars Trolle, who owned
many ships, and, though no better than a pirate, claimed a right of
levying tribute along the shore that faces Funen, upon pretence of
protecting it.  After enduring many raids and paying toll under threat
for years, these seven knights banded together to rid themselves of this
robber; but word of their meetings being carried to Trolle, he came
secretly one night to Nebbegaard with three ships' crews, broke down the
doors, and finding the seven assembled in debate, made them prisoners
and held them at ransom.  My master, a poor man, could only purchase
release by the help of his comrade, Borre, who found the ransom, but
took in exchange the lands of Nebbegaard, to hold them until repaid out
of their revenues; but of these he could never after be brought to give
an account.  We on our side had lost the power to enforce it, and behind
his own strength he could now threaten us with Lars Trolle's, to whom he
had been reconciled.

Therefore I felt no tenderness for Sir Borre's house, if by any means
our estates could be recovered.  But after this meeting with Sir Borre's
daughter, I could see that my young lord went heavily troubled; and I
began to think of other means than force.

It may have been six months later that word fame to us of great stir and
bustle at Egeskov.  Sir Borre, being aged, and anxious to see his
daughter married before he died, had proclaimed a Bride-show.  Now the
custom is, and the rule, that any suitor (so he be of gentle birth) may
offer himself in these contests; nor will the parents begin to bargain
until he has approved himself,--a wise plan, since it lessens the
disputing, which else might be endless.  So when this news reached us I
looked at my master, and he, perceiving what I would say, answered it.

"If Holgar will carry me," said he, "we will ride to Egeskov."

This Holgar was a stout roan horse, foaled at Nebbegaard, but now well
advanced in years, and the last of that red stock for which our stables
had been famous.

"He will carry you thither," said I; "and by God's grace, bring you home
with a bride behind you."

Upon this my master hung his head.  "Peter," he said, "do not think I
attempt this because it is the easier way."

"It comes easier than fighting with a woman," I answered.  "But you will
find it hard enow when the old man begins to haggle."

I did not know then that the lad's heart was honestly given to this
maid; but so it was, and had been from the moment when she stood before
him in the gateway.

So to Egeskov we rode, and there found no less than forty suitors
assembled, and some with a hundred servants in retinue.  Sir Borre
received us with no care to hide his scorn, though the hour had not come
for putting it into words; and truly my master's arms were
old-fashioned, and with the dents they had honourably taken when they
cased his father, made a poor battered show, for all my scouring.

Nevertheless, I had no fear when his turn came to ride the ring.
Three rides had each wooer under the lady Mette's eyes, and three rings
Ebbe carried off and laid on the cushion before her.  She stooped and
passed about his neck the gold chain which she held for the prize; but I
think they exchanged no looks.  Only one other rider brought two rings,
and this was a son of Lars Trolle, Olaf by name, a tall young knight,
and well-favoured, but disdainful; whom I knew Sir Borre must favour if
he could.

I could not see that the maiden favoured him above the rest, yet I kept
a close eye upon this youth, and must own that in the jousting which
followed he carried himself well.  For this the most of the wooers had
fresh horses, and I drew a long breath when, at the close of the third
course, my master, with two others, remained in the lists.  For it had
been announced to us that the last courses should be ridden on the
morrow.  But now Sir Borre behaved very treacherously, for perceiving
(as I am sure) that the horse Holgar was overwearied and panting, he
gave word that the sport should not be stayed.  More by grace of Heaven
it was than by force of riding that Ebbe unhorsed his next man, a
knight's son from Smalling; but in the last course, which he rode
against Olaf of Trolle, who had stood a bye, his good honest beast came
to the tilt-cloth with knees trembling, and at a touch rolled over,
though between the two lances (I will swear) there was nothing to
choose.  I was quick to pick up my dear lad; but he would have none of
my comfort, and limped away from the lists as one who had borne himself
shamefully.  Yea, and my own heart was hot as I led Holgar back to
stable, without waiting to see the prize claimed by one who, though a
fair fighter, had not won it without foul aid.

Having stalled Holgar I had much ado to find his master again, and
endless work to persuade him to quit his sulks and join the other
suitors in the hall that night, when each presented his bride-gift.
Even when I had won him over, he refused to take the coffer I placed in
his hands, though it held his mother's jewels, few but precious.
But entering with the last, as became his humble rank of esquire, he
laid nothing at the lady's feet save his sword and the chain that she
herself had given him.

"You bring little, Squire Ebbe," said the Knight Borre, from his seat
beside his daughter.

"I bring what is most precious in the world to me," said Ebbe.

"Your lance is broken, I believe?" said the old knight scornfully.

"My lance is not broken," he answered; "else you should have it to match
your word."  And rising, without a look at Mette, whose eyes were
downcast, he strode back to the door.

I had now given up hope, for the maid showed no sign of kindness, and
the old man and the youth were like two dogs--the very sight of the one
set the other growling.  Yet--since to leave in a huff would have been
discourteous--I prevailed on my master to bide over the morrow, and even
to mount Holgar and ride forth to the hunt which was to close the
Bride-show.  He mounted, indeed, but kept apart and well behind Mette
and her brisk group of wooers.  For, apart from his lack of inclination,
his horse was not yet recovered; and by and by, as the prickers started
a deer, the hunt swept ahead of him and left him riding alone.

He had a mind to turn aside and ride straight back to Nebbegaard,
whither he had sent me on to announce him (and dismally enough I
obeyed), when at the end of a green glade he spied Mette returning alone
on her white palfrey.

"For I am tired of this hunting," she told him, as she came near.
"And you?  Does it weary you also, that you lag so far behind?"

"It would never weary me," he answered; "but I have a weary horse."

"Then let us exchange," said she.  "Though mine is but a palfrey, it
would carry you better.  Your roan betrayed you yesterday, and it is
better to borrow than to miss excelling."

"My house," answered Ebbe, still sulkily, "has had enough borrowing of
Egeskov; and my horse may be valueless, but he is one of the few things
dear to me, and I must keep him."

"Truly then," said she, "your words were nought, last night, when you
professed to offer me the gifts most precious to you in the world."

And before he could reply to this, she had pricked on and was lost in
the woodland.

Ebbe sat for a while as she left him, considering, at the crossing of
two glades.  Then he twitched Holgar's rein and turned back towards
Nebbegaard.  But at the edge of the wood, spying a shepherd seated below
in the plain by his flock, he rode down to the man, and called to him
and said--

"Go this evening to Egeskov and greet the lady Mette, and say to her
that Ebbe of Nebbegaard could not barter his good horse, the last of his
father's stable.  But that she may know he was honest in offering her
the thing most precious to him, tell her further what thou hast seen."

So saying, he alighted off Holgar, and, smoothing his neck, whispered a
word in his ear.  And the old horse turned his muzzle and rubbed it
against his master's left palm, whose right gripped a dagger and drove
it straight for the heart.  This was the end of the roan stock of
Nebbegaard.

My master Ebbe reached home that night with the mire thick on his boots.
Having fed him, I went to the stables, and finding no Holgar made sure
that he had killed the poor beast in wrath for his discomforture at the
tilt.  The true reason he gave me many days after.  I misjudged him,
judging him by his father's temper.

On the morrow of the Bride-show the suitors took their leave of Egeskov,
under promise to return again at the month's end and hear how the lady
Mette had chosen.  So they went their ways, none doubting that the
fortunate one would be Olaf of Trelde; and, for me, I blamed myself that
we had ever gone to Egeskov.

But on the third morning after the Bride-show I changed this advice very
suddenly; for going at six of the morning to unlock our postern gate, as
my custom was, I found a tall black stallion tethered there and left
without a keeper.  His harness was of red leather, and each broad
crimson rein bore certain words embroidered: on the one "A Straight
Quarrel is Soonest Mended "; on the other, "Who Will Dare Learns
Swiftness."

Little time I lost in calling my master to admire, and having read what
was written, he looked in my eyes and said, "I go back to Egeskov."

"That is well done," said I; "may the Almighty God prosper it!"

"But," said he doubtfully, "if I determine on a strange thing, will you
help me, Peter?  I may need a dozen men; men without wives to miss
them."

"I can yet find a dozen such along the fiord," I answered.

"And we go on a long journey, perhaps never to return to Nebbegaard."

"Dear master," said I, "what matter where my old bones lie after they
have done serving you?"  He kissed me and rode away to Egeskov.

"I thought that the Squire of Nebbe had done with us," Sir Borre began
to sneer, when Ebbe found audience.  "But the Bride-show is over, my
man, and I give not my answer for a month yet."

"Your word is long to pledge, and longer to redeem," said Ebbe.
"I know that, were I to wait a twelvemonth, you would not of free will
give me Mette."

"Ah, you know that, do you?  Well, then, you are right, Master Lackland,
and the greater your impudence in hoping to wile from me through my
daughter what you could not take by force."

Ebbe replied, "I was prepared to find it difficult, but let that pass.
As touching my lack of land, I have Nebbegaard left; a poor estate and
barren, yet I think you would be glad of it, to add to the lands of
which you robbed us."

"Well," said Borre, "I would give a certain price for it, but not my
daughter, nor anything near so precious to me."

"Give me one long ship," said Ebbe; "the swiftest of your seven which
ride in the strait between Egeskov and Stryb.  You shall take
Nebbegaard for her, since I am weary of living at home and care little
to live at all without Mette."

Borre's eyes shone with greed.  "I commend you," said he; "for a stout
lad there is nothing like risking his life to win a fortune.
Give me the deeds belonging to Nebbegaard, and you shall have my ship
_Gold Mary_."

"By your leave," said Ebbe, "I have spent some time in watching your
ships upon the fiord; and the ship in my mind was the _White Wolf_."

Sir Borre laughed to find himself outwitted, for the _White Wolf_ could
outsail all his fleet.  But in any case he had the better of the bargain
and could afford to show some good-humour.  Moreover, though he knew not
that Mette had any tenderness for this youth, his spirits rose at the
prospect of getting him out of the way.

So the bargain was struck, and as Nebbe rode homewards to his castle for
the last time, he met the shepherd who had taken his former message.
The man was waiting for him, and (as you guess) by Mette's orders.

"Tell the lady Mette," said Ebbe, "that I have sold Nebbegaard for the
_White Wolf_, and that two nights from now my men will be aboard of her;
also that I sup with her father that evening before the boat takes me
off from the Bent Ness."

So it was that two nights later Ebbe supped at Egeskov, and was kept
drinking by the old knight for an hour maybe after the lady Mette had
risen and left the hall for her own room.

And at the end, after the last speeding-cup, needs must Sir Borre (who
had grown friendly beyond all belief) see him to the gate and stand
there bare-headed among his torch-bearers while my master mounted the
black stallion that was to bear him to Bent Ness, three miles away,
where I waited with the boat.

But as Ebbe shook his rein, and moved out of the torchlight, came the
damsel Mette stealing out of the shadow upon the far side of the horse.
He reached down a hand, and she took it, and sprang up behind him.

"For this bout, Sir Borre, I came with a fresh horse!" called my master
blithely; and so, striking spur, galloped off into the dark.

Little chance had Sir Borre to overtake them.  The stallion was swift,
our boat waiting in the lee of the Ness, the wind southerly and fresh,
the _White Wolf_ ready for sea, with sail hoisted and but one small
anchor to get on board or cut away if need were.  But there was no need.
Before the men of Egeskov reached the Ness and found there the black
stallion roaming, its riders were sailing out of the Strait with a merry
breeze.  So began our voyage.

My master was minded to sail for Norway and take service under the king.
But first, coming to the island of Laeso, he must put ashore and seek a
priest, by whom he and the lady Mette were safely made man and wife.
Two days he spent at the island, and then, with fresh store of
provisions, we headed northward again.

It was past Skagen that our troubles began, with a furious wind from the
north-east against which there was no contending, so that we ran from it
and were driven for two days and a night into the wide sea.  Even when
it lessened, the wind held in the east; and we, who could handle the
ship, but knew little of reckoning, crept northward again in the hope to
sight the coast of Norway.  For two days we held on at this, lying close
by the wind, and in good spirits, although our progress was not much;
but on the third blew another gale--this time from the south-east--and
for a week gale followed gale, and we went in deadly peril, yet never
losing hope.  The worst was the darkness, for the year was now drawing
towards Yule, and as we pressed farther north we lost almost all sight
of the sun.

At length, with the darkness and the bitter cold and our stores running
low, we resolved to let the wind take us with what swiftness it might to
whatsoever land it listed; and so ran westward, with darkness closing
upon us, and famine and a great despair.

But the lady Mette did not lose heart, and the worst of all (our failing
cupboard) we kept from her, so that she never lacked for plenty.
Truly her cheerfulness paid us back, and her love for my master, the
like of which I had not seen in this world; no, nor dreamed of.
Hand in hand this pair would sit, watching the ice which was our prison
and the great North Lights, she close against Ebbe's side for warmth,
and (I believe) as happy us a bird; he trembling for the end.
The worst was to see her at table, pressing food to his mouth and
wondering at his little hunger; while his whole body cried out for the
meat, only it could not be spared.

Though she must know soon, none of us had the heart to tell her; and not
out of pity alone, but because with her must die out the last spark by
which we warmed ourselves.

But there came a morning--I write it as of a time long ago, and yet it
was but yesterday, praise be unto God!--there came a morning when I
awoke and found that two of our men had died in the plight, of frost and
famine.  They must be hidden before my mistress discovered aught; and so
before her hour of waking we weighted and dropped the bodies overside
into deep water; for the ice had not yet wholly closed about us.  Now as
I stooped, I suppose that my legs gave way beneath me.  At any rate, I
fell; and in falling struck my head against the bulwarks, and opened my
eyes in that unending dusk to find the lady Mette stooping over me.

Then somehow I was aware that she had called for wine to force down my
throat, and had been told that there was no wine; and also that with
this answer had come to her the knowledge, full and sudden, of our case.
Better had we done to trust her than to hide it all this while, for she
turned to Ebbe, who stood at her shoulder, and "Is not this the feast of
Yule?" she asked.  My master bent his head, but without answering.

"Ah!" she cried to him.  "Now I know what I have longed to know, that
your love is less than mine, for you can love yet be doubtful of
miracles; while to me, now that I have loved, no miracle can be aught
but small."  She bowed herself over me.  "Art dying, old friend?
Look up and learn that God, being Love, deserts not lovers."

Then she stooped and gathered, as I thought, a handful of snow from the
deck; but lo! when she pressed it to my lips, and I tasted, it was
heavenly manna.

And looking up past her face I saw the ribbons of the North Lights fade
in a great and wide sunlight, bathing the deck and my frozen limbs.
Nor did they feel it only, but on the wind came the noise of bergs
rending, springs breaking, birds singing, many and curious.  And with
that, as I am a sinful man, I gazed up into green leaves; for either we
had sailed into Paradise or the timbers of the _White Wolf_ were
swelling with sap and pushing forth bough upon bough.  Yea, and there
were roses at the mast's foot, and my fingers, as I stretched them,
dabbled in mosses.  While I lay there, breathing softly, as one who
dreams and fears to awake, I heard her voice talking among the noises of
birds and brooks, and by the scent it seemed to be in a garden; but
whether it spake to me or to Ebbe I knew not, nor cared.  "The Lord is
my Shepherd, and guides me," it said, "wherefore I lack nothing.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me by comfortable
streams: He reviveth my soul.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I will fear no harm: Thy rod and Thy staff they
comfort me."  But, a little after, I knew that the voice spake to my
master, for it said: "Let us go forth into the field, O beloved: let us
lodge in the villages: let us get up betimes to the vineyard and see if
the vine have budded, if its blossom be open, the pomegranates in
flower.  Even there will I give thee my love."  Then looking again I saw
that the two had gone from me and left me alone.

But, blessed be God, they took not away the vision, and now I know
certainly that it is no cheat.  For here sit I, dipping my pen into the
unfrozen ink, and, when a word will not come, looking up into the broad
branches and listening to the birds till I forget my story.  It is long
since they left me; but I am full fed, and the ship floats pleasantly.
After so much misery I am as one rocked on the bosom of God; and the
pine resin has a pleasant smell.


[1]  The courtship of Ebbe, the poor esquire of Nebbegaard, and the
maiden Mette is a traditional tale of West Jutland.  A version of it was
Englished by Thorpe from Carit Etlar's "_Eventyr og Folkesagen fra
Jylland_": but this, while it tells of Ebbe's adventures at the
"Bride-show," and afterwards at the hunting-party, contains no account
of the lovers' escape and voyage, or of the miracle which brought them
comfort at the last.  Indeed, Master Kurt contradicts the common tale in
many ways, but above all in his ending, wherein (although he narrates a
miracle) I find him worthy of belief.



SINDBAD ON BURRATOR.


I heard this story in a farmhouse upon Dartmoor, and I give it in the
words of the local doctor who told it.  We were a reading-party of
three undergraduates and a Christ Church don.  The don had slipped on a
boulder, two days before, while fishing the river Meavy, and sprained
his ankle; hence Dr. Miles's visit.  The two had made friends over the
don's fly-book and the discovery that what the doctor did not know about
Dartmoor trout was not worth knowing; hence an invitation to extend his
visit over dinner.  At dinner the talk diverged from sport to the
ancient tin-works, stone circles, camps and cromlechs on the tors about
us, and from there to touch speculatively on the darker side of the old
religions: hence at length the doctor's story, which he told over the
pipes and whisky, leaning his arms upon the table and gazing at it
rather than at us, as though drawing his memories out of depths below
its polished surface.


It must be thirty--yes, thirty--years ago (he said) since I met the man,
on a bright November morning, when the Dartmoor hounds were drawing
Burrator Wood.  Burrator House in those days belonged to the Rajah
Brooke--Brooke of Sarawak--who had bought it from Harry Terrell; or
rather it had been bought for him by the Baroness Burdett Coutts and
other admirers in England.  Harry Terrell--a great sportsman in his
day--had been loth enough to part with it, and when the bargain was
first proposed, had named at random a price which was about double what
he had given for the place.  The Rajah closed with the sum at once,
asked him to make a list of everything in the house, and put a price on
whatever he cared to sell.  Terrell made a full list, putting what
seemed to him fair prices on most of the furniture, and high ones--
prohibitive he thought--on the sticks he had a fancy to keep.  The Rajah
glanced over the paper in his grand manner, and says he, "I'll take it
all."  "Stop! stop!" cried Terrell, "I bain't going to let you have the
bed I was married in!"  "As you please; we'll strike out the bed,
then," the Rajah answered.  That is how he took possession.

Burrator House, as I daresay you know, faces across the Meavy upon
Burrator Wood; and the wood, thanks to Terrell, had always been a sure
draw for a fox.  I had tramped over from Tavistock on this particular
morning,--for I was new to the country, a young man looking around me
for a practice, and did not yet possess a horse,--and I sat on the slope
above the house, at the foot of the tor, watching the scene on the
opposite bank.  The fixture, always a favourite one, and the Rajah's
hospitality--which was noble, like everything about him--had brought out
a large and brightly-dressed field; and among them, in his black coat,
moved Terrell on a horse twice as good as it looked.  He had ridden over
from his new home, and I daresay in the rush of old associations had
forgotten for the while that the familiar place was no longer his.

The Rajah, a statue of a man, sat on a tall grey at the covert's edge,
directly below me; and from time to time I watched him through my
field-glass.  He had lately recovered from a stroke of paralysis, and
was (I am told) the wreck of his old self; but the old fire lived in the
ashes.  He sat there, tall, lean, upright as a ramrod, with his eyes
turned from the covert and gazing straight in front, over his horse's
ears, on the rushing Meavy.  He had forgotten the hounds; his care for
his guests was at an end; and I wondered what thoughts, what memories of
the East, possessed him.  There is always a loneliness about a great
man, don't you think?  But I have never felt one to be so terribly--yes,
terribly--alone as the Rajah was that morning among his guests and the
Devonshire tors.

"Every inch a king," said a voice at my elbow, and a little man settled
himself down on the turf beside me.  I set down my glasses with a start.
He was a spare dry fellow of about fifty, dressed in what I took for the
working suit of a mechanic.  Certainly he did not belong to the moor.
He wore no collar, but a dingy yellow handkerchief knotted about his
throat, and both throat and face were seamed with wrinkles--so thickly
seamed that at first glance you might take them for tattoo-marks; but I
had time for a second, for without troubling to meet my eyes he nodded
towards the Rajah.

"I've cut a day's work and travelled out from Plymouth to get a sight of
him; and I've a wife will pull my hair out when I get home and she finds
I haven't been to the docks to-day; and I've had no breakfast but thirty
grains of opium; but he's worth it."

"Thirty grains of opium!"  I stared at him, incredulous.  He did not
turn, but, still with his eyes on the valley below us, stretched out a
hand.  It's fingers were gnarled, and hooked like a bird's claw, and on
the little finger a ruby flashed in the morning sunlight--not a large
ruby, but of the purest pigeon's-blood shade, and in any case a stone of
price.

"You see this?  My wife thinks it a sham one, but it's not.  And some
day, when I'm drunk or in low water, I shall part with it--but not yet.
You've an eye for it, I see,"--and yet he was not looking towards me,--
"but the Rajah, yonder, and I are the only two within a hundred miles
that can read what's in the heart of it."

He gazed for a second or two at the stone, lifted it to his ear as if
listening, and lowering his hand to the turf, bent over it and gazed
again.  "Ay, _he_ could understand and see into you, my beauty!
_He_ could hear the little drums tum-a-rumbling, and the ox-bells and
bangles tinkling, and the shuffle of the elephants going by; _he_ could
read the lust in you, and the blood and the sun flickering and licking
round the _kris_ that spilt it--for it's the devil you have in you, my
dear.  But we know you--he and I--he and I.  Ah! there you go," he
muttered as the hounds broke into cry, and the riders swept round the
edge of the copse towards the sound of a view-halloo.  "There you go,"
he nodded after the Rajah; "but ride as you will, the East is in you,
great man--its gold in your blood, its dust in your eyelids, its own
stink in your nostril; and, ride as you will, you can never escape it."

He clasped his knees and leaned back against the slope, following the
grey horse and its rider with idolatrous gaze; and I noted that one of
the clasped hands lacked the two middle fingers.

"You know him?" I asked.  "You have seen him out there, at Sarawak?"

"I never saw him; but I heard of him."  He smiled to himself.  "It's not
easy to pass certain gates in the East without hearing tell of the Rajah
Brooke."

For a while he sat nursing his knee while I filled and lit a pipe.
Then he turned abruptly, and over the flame of the match I saw his eyes,
the pupils clouded around the iris and, as it were, withdrawn inward and
away from the world.  "Ever heard of Cagayan Sulu?" he asked.

"Never," said I.  "Who or what is it?"

"It's an island," said he.  "It lies a matter of eighty miles off the
north-east corner of Borneo--facing Sandakan, as you might say."

"Who owns it?"

He seemed to be considering the question.  "Well," he answered slowly,
"if you asked the Spanish Government I suppose they'd tell you the King
of Spain; but that's a lie.  If you asked the natives--the Hadji Hamid,
for instance--you'd be told it belonged to them; and that's half a lie.
And if you asked the Father of Lies he might tell you the truth and call
me for witness.  I lost two fingers there--the only English flesh ever
buried in those parts--so I've bought my knowledge."

"How did you come there?" I asked,--"if it's a fair question."

He chuckled without mirth.  "As it happens, that's _not_ a fair
question.  But I'll tell you this much, I came there with a brass band."

I began to think the man out of his mind.

"With the instruments, that is.  I'd dropped the bandmaster on the way.
Look here," he went on sharply, "the beginning is funny enough, but I'm
telling you no lies.  We'll suppose there was a ship, a British
man-of-war--name not necessary just now."

"I think I understand," I nodded.

"Oh no, you don't," said he.  "I'm not a deserter--at least not
exactly--or I shouldn't be telling this to you.  Well, we'll suppose
this ship bound from Labuan to Hong-Kong with orders to keep along the
north side of Borneo, to start with, and do a bit of exploring by the
way.  This would be in 'forty-nine, when the British Government had just
taken over Labuan.  _Very_ good.  Next we'll suppose the captain puts in
at Kudat, in Marudu Bay, to pay a polite call on the Rajah there or some
understrapper of the Sultan's, and takes his ship's band ashore by way
of compliment, and that the band gets too drunk to play 'Annie Laurie.'"
He chuckled again.  "I never saw such a band as we were, down by the
water's edge; and O'Hara, the bandmaster, took on and played the fool to
such a tune, while we waited for the boat to take us aboard, that for
the very love I bore him I had to knock him down and sit on him in a
quiet corner.

"While I sat keeping guard on him I must have dropped asleep myself; for
the next I remember was waking up to find the beach deserted and the
boat gone.  This put me in a sweat, of course; but after groping some
while about the foreshore (which was as dark as the inside of your hat),
I tripped over a rope and so found a native boat.  O'Hara wouldn't wake,
so I just lifted him on board like a sack, tossed in his cornet and my
bombardon, tumbled in on top of them, and started to row for dear life
towards the ship's light in the offing.

"But the Rajah, or rather his servants, had filled us up with a kind of
sticky drink that only begins to work when you think it about time to
leave off.  I must have pulled miles towards that ship, and every time I
cast an eye over my shoulder her light was shining just as far away as
ever.  At last I remember feeling sure I was bewitched, and with that I
must have tumbled off the thwart in a sound sleep.

"When I awoke I had both arms round the bombardon; there wasn't a sight
of land, or of the ship, anywhere; and, if you please, the sun was near
sinking!  This time I managed to wake up O'Hara.  We had splitting
headaches, the pair of us; but we snatched up our instruments and
started to blow on them like mad.  Not a soul heard, though we blew till
the sweat poured down us, and kept up the concert pretty well all
through the night.  You may think it funny, and I suppose we did amount
to something like a joke--we two bandsmen booming away at the Popular
Airs of Old England and the Huntsmen's Chorus under those everlasting
stars.  You wouldn't say so, if you had been the audience when O'Hara
broke down and began to confess his sins.

"Luckily the sea kept smooth, and next morning I took the oars in
earnest.  We had no compass, and I was famished; but I stuck to it,
steering by the sun and pulling in the direction where I supposed land
to lie.  O'Hara kept a look-out.  We saw nothing, however, and down came
the night again.

"Though the hunger had been gnawing and griping me for hours, yet--
dog-tired as I was--I curled myself at the bottom of the boat and slept,
and dreamed I was on board ship again and in my hammock.  A sort of
booming in my ears awoke me.  Looking up I saw daylight around--clear
morning light and blue sky--and right overhead, as it were, a great
cliff standing against the blue.  And there in the face of day O'Hara
sat on the thwart, tugging like mad, now cricking his neck almost to
stare up at the cliff, and now grinning down at me in silly triumph.

"With that I caught at the meaning of the sound in my ears.
'You infernal fool!' I shouted, staggering up and making to snatch the
paddle from him.  'Get her nose round to it and back her!'  For it was
the noise of breaking water.

"But I was too late.  Our boat, I must tell you, was a sort of Dutch
pram, about twelve feet long and narrowing at the bows, which stood well
out of water; handy enough for beaching, but not to be taken through
breakers, by reason of its sitting low in the stern.  O'Hara, as I
yelled at him, pulled his starboard paddle and brought her (for these
prams spin round easily) almost broadside on to a tall comber.  As we
slid up the side of it and hung there, I had a glimpse of a steep clean
fissure straight through the wall of rock ahead; and in that instant
O'Hara sprawled his arms and toppled overboard.  The boat and I went by
him with a rush.  I saw a hand and wrist lifted above the foam, but when
I looked back for them they were gone--gone as I shot over the bar and
through the cleft into smooth water.  I shouted and pulled back to the
edge of the breakers; but he was gone, and I never saw him again.

"I suppose it was ten minutes before I took heart to look about me.
I was floating on a lake of the bluest water I ever set eyes on, and as
calm as a pond except by the entrance where the spent waves, after
tumbling over the bar, spread themselves in long ripples, widening and
widening until the edge of them melted and they were gone.  The banks of
the lake rose sheer from its edge, or so steeply that I saw no way of
climbing them--walls you might call them, a good hundred feet high, and
widening gradually towards the top, but in a circle as regular as ever
you could draw with a pair of compasses.  Any fool could see what had
happened--that here was the crater of a dead volcano, one side of which
had been broken into by the sea; but the beauty of it, sir, coming on
top of my weakness, fairly made me cry.  For the walls at the top were
fringed with palms and jungle trees, and hung with creepers like
curtains that trailed over the face of the cliff and down among the
ferns by the shore.  I leaned over the boat and stared into the water.
It was clear, clear--you've no notion how clear; but no bottom could I
see.  It seemed to sink right through and into the sea on the other side
of the world!

"Well, all this was mighty pretty, but it didn't tell me where to find a
meal; so I baled out the boat and paddled along the eastern edge of the
lake searching the cliffs for a path, and after an hour or so I hit on
what looked to me like a foot-track, zig-zagging up through the creepers
and across the face of the rock.  I determined to try it, made the boat
fast to a clump of fern, slung O'Hara's cornet on to my side-belt and
began to climb.

"I saw no marks of footsteps; but the track was a path all right, though
a teazer.  A dozen times I had to crawl on hands and knees under the
creepers--creepers with stems as thick as my two wrists--and once, about
two-thirds of the way up, I was forced to push sideways through a
crevice dripping with water, and so steep under foot that I slid twice
and caked myself with mud.  I very nearly gave out here; but it was do
or die, and after ten minutes more of scratching, pushing, and
scrambling, I reached the top and sat down to mop my face and recover.

"I daresay it was another ten minutes before I fetched breath enough and
looked about me; and as I turned my head, there, close behind me, lay
another crater with another lake smiling below, all blue and peaceful as
the one I had left!  I gazed from one to the other.  This new crater had
no opening on the sea; its sides were steeper, though not quite so tall;
and either my eyes played me a trick or its water stood at a higher
level.  I stood there, comparing the two, when suddenly against the
skyline, and not two hundred yards away, I caught sight of a man.

"He was walking towards me around the edge of the crater, and halting
every now and then to stare down at my boat.  He might be a friend, or
he might be a foe; but anyway it was not for me, in my condition, to
choose which, so I waited for him to come up.  And first I saw that he
carried a spear, and wore a pair of wide dirty-white trousers and a
short coat embroidered with gold; and next that he was a true Malay,
pretty well on in years, with a greyish beard falling over his chest.
He had no shirt, but a scarlet sash wrapped about his waist and holding
a _kris_ and two long pistols handsomely inlaid with gold.  In spite of
his weapons he seemed a benevolent old boy.

"He pointed towards my boat and tried me with a few questions, first in
his own language, then in Spanish, of which I knew very little beyond
the sound.  But I spread out my hands towards the sea, by way of
explaining our voyage, and then pointed to my mouth.  If he understood
he seemed in no hurry.  He tapped O'Hara's cornet gingerly with two
fingers.  I unstrung it and made shift to play 'Home, Sweet Home.'
This delighted him; he nodded, rubbed his hands, and stepped a few paces
from me, then turned and began fingering his spear in a way I did not
like at all.  'It's a matter of taste, sir,' said I, or words to that
effect, dropping the cornet like a hot potato; but he pointed towards
it, and then over a ridge inland, and I gathered I must pick it up and
follow him--which I did, and pretty quick.

"From the top of this ridge we faced across a small plain bounded on the
north with a tier of hills, most of which seemed by their shape to be
volcanoes, and out of action--for the sky lay quite blue and clear above
them.  The way down into this plain led through jungle; but the plain
itself had been cleared of all but small clumps dotted here and there,
which gave it, you might say, the look of an English park; and about
half-way across, in a clear stretch of lalang grass, stood a village of
white huts huddling round a larger and much taller house.

"The old man led me straight towards this, and, coming closer, I saw
that the large house had a rough glacis about it and a round wall
pierced with loopholes.  A number of goats were feeding here and a few
small cattle; also the ground about the village had been cleared and
planted with fruit-trees,--mangoes, bananas, limes, and oranges,--but as
yet I saw no inhabitants.  The old Malay, who had kept ahead of me all
the way, walking at a fair pace, here halted and once more signed to me
to blow on the cornet.  I obeyed, of course, this time with 'The British
Grenadiers.'  I declare to you it was like starting a swarm of bees.
You wouldn't believe the troops that came pouring out of those few
huts--the women in loose trousers pretty much like the men's, but with
arms bare and loose _sarongs_ flung over their right shoulders, the
children with no more clothes than a pocket-handkerchief apiece.
I can't tell you what first informed me of my guide's rank among them--
whether the salaams they offered him, or the richness of his dress--
he was the only one with gold lace and the only one who carried
pistols--or the air with which he paraded me through the crowd, waving
the people back to right and left, and clearing a way to a narrow door
in the wall around the great house.  A man armed with a long
fowling-piece saluted him at the entry; and once inside he pointed from
the house to his own breast, as much as to say, 'I am the Chief, and
this is mine.'  I saluted him humbly.

"A verandah ran around the four sides of the house, with a trench
between it and the fortified wall.  A plank bridge led across the trench
to the verandah steps, where my master--or, to call him by his right
name, Hadji Hamid--halted again and clapped his hands.  A couple of
young Malay women, dressed like those I had passed in the street, ran
out in answer, and were ordered to bring me food.  While it was
preparing I rested on a low chair, blinking at the sunlight on the
fortified wall.  It had been pierced, on the side of the house, for
eleven guns, but six of the embrasures were empty, and of the five
pieces standing no two were alike in size, age, or manufacture, and the
best seemed to be a nine-pounder, strapped to its carriage with rope.
Hadji Hamid saw what I was looking at, and chuckled to himself solemnly.
All through the meal--which began with a mess of rice and chopped fowl
and ended with bananas--he sat beside me, chewing betel, touching this
thing and that, naming it in his language and making me repeat the words
after him.  He smiled at every mistake, but never lost his patience;
indeed it was clear that my quickness delighted him, and I did my best,
wondering all the while what he meant to do with me.

"Well, to be short, sir, he intended to keep me.  I believe he would
have done it for the sake of the cornet; but before I had finished
eating, up stepped a sentry escorting a man with my bombardon under his
arm.  I had left it, as you know, in the boat, and had heard no order
given; but the boat I never saw again, and here was my bombardon.
Hadji Hamid took it in both hands, felt it all over, patted it, and
ended by turning it over to me and calling in dumb show for a tune.
I tell you, my performance was a success.  At the first blast he leaned
back suddenly in his chair; at the second he turned a kind of purple
under his yellow skin; but at the third he caught hold of his stomach
and began to roll in his seat and laugh.  You never saw a man laugh like
it.  He made scarcely any sound; he was too near apoplexy to speak; but
the tears ran down his face, and one minute his hand would be up waving
feebly to me to stop, the next he'd be signalling to go on again.
I wanted poor O'Hara; he used to give himself airs and swear at my
playing, but among these people he and his cornet would have had to
stand down.

"They gave me a bed that night in a corner of the verandah, and next
morning my master came himself to wake me, and took me down to the
village bathing-pool, just below the fortifications.  It hurt my modesty
to find the whole mob of inhabitants gathered there and waiting, and it
didn't set me at ease, exactly, to notice that each man carried his
spear.  For one nasty moment I pictured a duck-hunt, with me playing
duck.  But there was no cause for alarm.  At a signal from Hamid, who
stripped and led the way, in we tumbled together--men, women, and
children--the men first laying their spears on the bank beside their
clothes.  Six remained on shore to keep guard, and were relieved after
five minutes by another six from the pool.  There was a good deal of
splashing and horse-play, but nothing you could call immodest, though my
fair skin came in for an amount of attention I had to get used to.

"My breakfast was served to me alone, and soon after I was summoned to
attend my master in one of the state rooms of the house.  I found him on
a shaded platform, seated opposite an old native as well-dressed and
venerable-looking as himself, but stouter.  The pair lolled on cushions
at either end of the platform, smoking and smoothing their grey beards.
I understood that the visitor was a personage and (somehow) that he had
been sent for expressly to hear and be astonished by my performance.

"The two instruments were brought in upon cushions, and I began to play.
The visitor--who had less sense of humour than Hamid--did not laugh at
all.  Instead, he took the mouthpiece of his _tchibouk_ slowly from his
lips and held it at a little distance, while his mouth and eyes opened
wider and wider.  Hamid eyed him keenly, with a kind of triumph under
his lids; and the triumph grew as the old man's stare lit up with a
jealousy there was no mistaking.

"This, too, passed as I wound up with a flourish and stood at attention,
waiting for orders.  The visitor put out his hand, but as I offered him
the bombardon he waved it aside impatiently and pointed to the cornet.
I passed it up to him; he patted and examined it for a while, laid it on
his knee, and the two men began talking in low voices.

"I could see that compliments were passing; but you'll guess I wasn't
prepared for what followed.  Hamid stood up suddenly and whispered to
one of his six guards stationed below the platform.  The man went out,
and returned in five minutes followed by a girl.  Now that the island
girls were beautiful I had already discovered that morning, and this one
was no exception--a small thing about five feet, with glossy black hair
and the tiniest feet and hands.  She seemed to me to walk nervously, as
if brought up for punishment; and a thought took me--and I shall be glad
of it when I come to die--that if they meant to ill-use her I might do
worse than assault that venerable pair with my bombardon and end my
adventures with credit.

"My eyes were so taken up with the girl that for a full minute I paid no
attention to my master.  She had come to a halt under the platform, a
couple of paces from me, with her eyes cast down upon the floor; and he
on the platform was speaking.  By and by he stopped, and glancing up I
saw that he was motioning me to leave the room.  Well, they had made no
show as yet of ill-treating her; so I flung her one more look and
obeyed, feeling pretty mean.  I went out into the verandah, walked the
length of it and turned--and there stood the girl right before me!
Her little feet had followed me so softly that I had heard nothing; and
now, as I stared at her, she crept close with a sort of sidelong motion,
and knelt at my feet, at the same moment drawing her _sarong_ over her
head to hide it.  Then the truth came upon me--I was married!

"Aoodya was her name.  What else can I tell you about her, to describe
her?  She was a child, and all life came as play to her, yet she
understood love to the tips of her little madder-brown fingers.
She was my teacher, too, and I sat at her feet day after day and learned
while she drilled the island-language into me; learned by the hour while
she untwisted her hair and rubbed it with grated cocoanut, and broke off
her toilet to point to this thing and that and tell me its name,
laughing at my mistakes or flipping bits of betel at me by way of
reward.  I had no wife at home to vex my conscience at all.  All day we
played about Hamid's verandah like two children, and Hamid watched us
with a sort of twinkle in his eye, seemingly well content.  It was plain
he had taken a fancy to me, and I thought, as time passed, he grew
friendlier.

"I blessed the old fellow, too.  Had he not given me Aoodya?  I puzzled
my head over this favour, until Aoodya explained.  'You see,' she said,
'it was done to oblige the Hadji Hassan.'  This was the old man who had
listened to my performance on the bombardon.  He lived in a stockaded
house on the far side of the island, the chieftancy of which he and
Hamid shared between them and without dispute.

"'How should it oblige Hassan?' I asked.

"'Because Hassan could not see or hear my lord and lover without longing
to possess such a man for his very own.  As who could?'  And here she
blew me a kiss.

"'Thank you, jewel of my heart,' said I; 'but yet I don't see.
Was it me he wanted, or the  bombardon?'

"'I fancy he thought of you together; but of course he did not ask for
the big thing--that would have been greedy.  He would be content with
the little one, the what-you-call cornet; and--don't you see?'

"'No doubt it's stupid of me, my dear,' said I, 'but I'll be shot if I
do.'

"She was sitting with a lapful of pandanus leaves, blue and green,
weaving a mat of them while we talked, and had just picked out a beater
from the tools scattered round her--a flat piece of board with a
bevilled edge, and shaped away to a handle.  'Stupid!' she says to me,
just like so, and at the same time raps me over the hand smartly.
'He thought--if peradventure there came to us a little one--'

"'_With_ a what-you-call cornet?'--I clapped my hand to my mouth over a
guffaw; and, with that, She--who had started laughing too--came to a
stop, with her eyes fastened on the back of it.  I saw them stiffen, and
the pretty round pupils draw in and shrink to narrow slits like a cat's,
and her arm went back slowly behind her, and her bosom leaned nearer and
nearer.  I thought she was going to spring at me, and as my silly laugh
died out I turned my hand and held it palm outward, to fend her off.
On the back of it was a drop of blood where the bevelled edge of the
beater had by accident broken the skin.

"Somehow this movement of mine seemed to fetch her to bearings.
Her hand came slowly forward again, hesitated, seemed to hover for a
moment at her throat, then went swiftly down to her bosom between bodice
and flesh, and came up again tugging after it what looked to me a piece
of coarse thread.  She tossed it into my lap as I still sat there
cross-legged, and with that sprang up and raced away from me, down to
the verandah.  There was no chance of catching her, and I was (to tell
the truth) a bit too much taken aback to try.  I picked up the string.
On it was threaded a silk purse no bigger than a shilling; and from this
I shook into my palm a small stone like an opal.  I turned it over once
or twice, put it back in the purse, and stowed string, purse, and all in
my breeches' pocket.

"I strolled down the verandah to our quarters in search of Aoodya, but
the room was empty; and after that I'm afraid I smoked and sulked for
the rest of the day, until nightfall.  After playing the Hadji Hamid
through his meal I went out to our favourite seat on the edge of the dry
ditch, when she came to me out of nowhere across the withered grass of
the compound.

"'Have you the charm, O beloved?' she whispered.

"'Oh, it's a charm, is it?' said I, partly sulky yet.

"'Yes, and you must never lose it--never part with it--never, above all,
give it back to me.  Promise me that, beloved; and I, who have wept
much, am happy again.'

"So I promised, and she snuggled close to me, and all was as before.
No more was said between us, and by next morning she seemed to have
clean forgotten the affair.  But I thought of it at times, and it
puzzled me.

"Now, as I said, my master had taken a fancy to me quite apart from the
bombardon, and a token of it was his constantly taking me out as
companion on his walks.  You may think it odd that he never troubled
about my being an unbeliever--for of course he held by the Prophet, and
so did all the islanders, Aoodya included.  But in fact, though his
people called themselves Mahommedans, each man treated his religion much
as he chose, and Hamid talked to me as freely as if I had been his son.

"In this way I learned a deal of the island and its customs, and of the
terms by which Hamid and Hassan between them shared its rule.  But that
any others laid claim to it I had no idea, until one day as we were
walking on the coast, and not far from the crater where he had found me
first, my master asked suddenly, 'Was I happy?'

"'Quite happy,' I answered.

"'You would not leave us if you could?' he went on, and began to laugh
quiet-like, behind his beard.  'Oho! Love, love!  I that am old have
been merry in my day.'  We walked for another mile, maybe, without
speaking, and came to the edge of a valley.  'Look down yonder,' said
he.

"Below us, and in the mouth of the valley, which grew broad and shallow
as it neared the sea, I saw a hill topped by a round wall and compound.
There might have been half a dozen houses within the compound, all
thatched, and above them stood up a flag painted in red and yellow
stripes, and so stiff in the breeze that with half an eye you could tell
it was no bunting but a sheet of tin.

"Hullo!' said I.  'Spaniards?'

"'Puf!'  Hamid grinned at the flag and spat.  'A Captain Marquinez
inhabits there, with four Manila men and their wives.  He is a sensible
fellow, and does no harm, and if it pleases him to hoist that toy on a
bamboo, he is welcome.'

"'They claim the island, then?'

"'What matters it if they claim?  There was a letter once came to us
from the Spanish Governor in Tolo.  That man was a fool.  He gave us
warning that by order of the Government at Manila he would send a
hundred men to build a fort inland and set up a garrison.  Hassan and I
took counsel together.  'He is a fool,' said Hassan; 'but we must answer
him.'  So we answered him thus.  'Send your men.  To-day they come;
to-morrow they die--yet trouble not; _we_ will bury them.'

"'Were they sent?' I asked.

"'They were not sent.  He was a fool, yet within bounds.  Nevertheless
a time may come for us--not for Hassan and me, we shall die in our
beds--but for our sons.  Even for this we are prepared.'  He would have
said more, but checked himself.  (I learned later on that the islanders
kept one of the craters fortified for emergency, to make a last stand
there; but they never allowed me to see the place.)  'We have gods of
our own,' said Hamid slily, 'who will be helpful--the more so that we do
not bother them over trifles.  Also there are--other things; and the
lake Sinquan, and another which you have not seen, are full of
crocodiles.'  He stamped his foot.  'My son, beneath this spot there
has been fire, and still the men of Cagayan walk warily and go not
without their spears.  For you it is different; yet when you come upon
aught that puzzles you, it were well to put no questions even to
yourself.'

"'Not even about this?' I asked, and showed him the purse and stone
which Aoodya had tossed to me.

"'You are in luck's way,' said he, 'whoever gave you that.'  He pulled a
small pouch from his breast, opened it, and showed me a stone exactly
like mine.  'It is a cocoanut pearl.  Keep it near to your hand, and
forget not to touch it if you hear noises in the air or a man meet you
with eyes like razors.'

"I wanted to ask him more, but he started to walk back hastily, and when
I caught him up would talk of nothing but the sugar and sweet-potato
crops, and the yield of cocoanut oil to be carried to Kudat at the next
north-east monsoon.  I noticed that the fruit-trees planted along the
shore were old, and that scores of them had ceased bearing.  'They will
last my day,' said he.  'Let my sons plant others if they so will.'  He
always spoke in this careless way of his children, and I believe he had
many, for an islander keeps as many wives as he can afford; but they
lived about the villages, and could not be told from the other
inhabitants by any sign of rank or mark of favour he showed them.

"For a long while I believed that Aoodya must be a daughter of his.
She always denied it, but owned that she had never known her mother and
had lived in Hamid's house ever since she could remember.  Anyhow, he
took the greatest care of me, and never allowed me to join the
expeditions which sailed twice a year from the island--to Palawan for
paddy, and to the north of Borneo with oil and nuts and pandanus mats.
He may have mistrusted me; but more likely he forbade it out of care for
me and the music I played; for the _prahus_ regularly came back with
three or four of their number missing--either capsized on the voyage or
blown away towards Tawi-Tawi, where the pirates accounted for them.

"Though I might not sail abroad he allowed me to join the tuburing
parties off the shore.  We would work along the reefs there in rafts of
bamboo, towing with us two or three dug-outs filled with mashed
_tubur_-roots.  At the right spot the dug-outs would be upset, and after
a while the fish came floating up on their sides, or belly uppermost, to
be speared by us; for the root puddles the water like milk, and
stupefies them somehow without hurting the flesh, which in an hour or so
is fit to eat.

"We had been tuburing one afternoon, and put back with our baskets
filled to a spit of the shore where we had left an old islander, Kotali
by name, alone and tending a fire for our meal.  Coming near we saw him
stretched on the sand by his cooking-pots, and shouted to wake him, for
his fire was low.  Kotali did not stir.  I was one of the first to jump
ashore and run to him.  He lay with his legs drawn up, his hands
clenched, his eyes wide open and staring at us horribly.  The man was as
dead as a nail.

"I never saw people worse frightened.  'The Berbalangs!' said someone in
a dreadful sort of whisper, and we started to run back to the raft for
our lives--I with the rest, for the panic had taken hold of me, though I
could see no sign of an enemy.  I supposed these Berbalangs, named with
such awe, to be pirates or marauders from Tawi-Tawi or some neighbouring
island, and the first hint that reached me of anything worse was a
wailing sound which grew as we ran, and overhauled us, until the air was
filled with roaring, so that I swung round to defend myself, yet could
see nothing.  To my surprise a man who had been running beside me
dropped on the sand, pulled a sigh of relief, and began to mop his
face--and this in the very worst of the racket.  'They are gone by,' he
shouted; 'the worse the noise the farther off they are.  They have taken
their fill to-day on poor old Kotali.'

"Suddenly the noise ceased altogether, and we picked up courage to
return and bury the body.  We had a basket of limes on the raft, and
these were fetched and the juice squeezed over the grave; but no one
seemed inclined to answer the questions I put about these Berbalangs.
It seemed that unless they were close at hand there was ill-luck even in
mentioning them, and I walked back to the village in a good deal of
perplexity.

"I should tell you, sir, that by this time I was the father of a fine
boy; and that Aoodya doted on him.  When she was not feeding him or
calling on me to admire his perfections, from the cleverness of his
smile to the beautiful shape of his toes, he lay and slept, or kicked in
a basket slung on a long bamboo fastened across the rafters, Aoodya
would give the basket a pull, and this set it bobbing up and down on the
spring of the bamboo for minutes at a time.

"Now when I reached home with my string of fish, I walked round to the
back of the house to clean them before going in.  This took me past the
window of our room, and glancing inside--the window was unglazed, you
understand--I saw Aoodya standing before the cradle and talking, quick
and angry, with a man posted in the doorway opening on the verandah.

"I was not jealous.  The thought never entered my head.  But I dropped
my fish and whipped round to the doorway in time to catch him as he
turned to go, having heard my footstep belike.

"'Who the something-or-other are you?' I asked.  'And what's your
business in my private house?'

"The man--a yellow-faced fellow, but young in figure--muttered something
in a gibberish new to me, and made as if excusing himself.  It gave me
an ugly start to see that his eyes were yellow too, with long slits for
pupils; but I saw too that he was afraid of me, and being in a towering
rage myself, I out with my _kris_.

"'Now look here,' I said; 'I don't understand what you say, but maybe
you understand this.  Walk!  And if I catch you here again, you'll need
someone to sew you up.'

"I watched him as he went across the compound.  The guard at the gate
scarcely looked up, and if the thing hadn't been impossible, there, in
the broad daylight, I could have fancied he saw no one.  I turned to
Aoodya and took her hands, for she was trembling from head to foot.
At my touch she burst out sobbing, clung to my shoulder and begged me to
protect her.

"'Why, of course I will,' said I, more cheerfully than I felt by a long
sight.  'If I'd known you were frightened like this, I'd have slit his
body to match his eyes.  But who is he, at all?'

"'He--he said he was my brother!' she wailed, and clung to me again.
'I cannot--I cannot!'

"'I'll brother him!' cried I.  'But what is it he wants?'

"'I cannot--I cannot!' was all she would say; and now her sobs were so
loud that the child woke up screaming and had to be soothed.  And this
seemed to do her good.

"Well, I got her to bed and asleep early that night; but before morning
I had a worse fright than ever.  Somehow in my dream I had a feeling
come to me that the bed was empty, and sat up suddenly, half awake and
scared.  Aoodya had risen and was standing by the cradle, with one hand
on its edge; in the other was the lamp--a clam-shell fastened in a split
handle of bamboo, and holding a pith wick and a little oil.  The flame
wavered against her eyes as she held it up and peered into the baby's
face--and her eyes were like as I had seen them once before, and
devilish like the eyes I had seen in another face that afternoon.

"A man never knows what he can do till the call comes.  There, betwixt
sleep and waking, I knew that happiness had come to an end for us.
Yet I slipped out of bed very softly, took the lamp from her as gentle
as you please, set it on a stool and, turning, reached out for her two
wrists and held them--for how long I can't tell you.  She didn't try to
fend me away, or struggle at all, and not a word did I utter, but stood
holding her--the babe asleep beside us--and listened to her breathing
until it grew easier, and she leaned to me, weak as water.

"Then I let go, and lifting the child's head from the pillow pulled
Aoodya's charm, the cocoanut pearl, from my neck and hung it about his.
'That's for you, sonny,' said I, 'and if the Berbalangs come along you
can pass them on to your father.'  I faced round on Aoodya with a smile
which no doubt was thin enough, though honestly meant to hearten her.
'It's all right, old girl.  Come back to bed,' said I, and held her in
my arms until I fell asleep in the dawn.

"But of course it was not all right; and after two days spent with this
dismal secret between us, and Aoodya all the while play-acting at her
old tricks of love for me and the babe--as if, God knows, I doubted
they, and not the horror, were her real self--I could stand it no
longer, but did what I ought to have done before; sought out my master
and made a clean breast of it.

"I could see that it took the old man between wind and water.  When I
had done he sat for some time pulling his beard and eyeing me once or
twice rather queerly, as I thought.

"'My friend,' said he at last, 'I suppose you will be suspecting me; yet
I give you my word--and the Hadji Hamid is no liar--that if Aoodya is a
Berbalang, or a daughter of Berbalangs, the same was unknown to me when
I married you.'

"'I'll believe that,' I answered; 'the more by token that I never
suspected you.'

"'She had no known father, which (as you know) is held a disgrace among
us; so much a disgrace that she grew up without suitors in spite of her
looks and my favour.  Therefore I seized my chance of giving her a
husband, and in that I am not guiltless towards you; but of anything
worse I was ignorant, and for proof I am going to help you if I can.'
He frowned to himself, still tugging at his beard.  'Her mother was of
good family, on this side of the island.  Therefore she cannot be pure
Berbalang, and most likely the Berbalangs have no more than a fetch upon
her'--he used a word new to me, but 'fetch' I took to be the meaning of
it.  'If so, we must go to them and persuade them to take it off.
They owe me something; for though, as we value peace and quiet, Hassan
and I leave them alone in their own dirty village and ask no tax nor
homage, we could make things uncomfortable if we chose.  Yes, yes,' said
he, 'I think it can be done; but it will be dangerous.  You are wearing
your cocoanut pearl, of course?'

"I told him that I had given it up to the baby.

"He nodded.  'Yes, that was well done; but you must borrow it for the
day.  Run and fetch it at once; we have a long walk before us.'

"So I ran back, and without telling Aoodya, who was washing her linen
behind the house, slipped the pearl off the child's neck and returned to
Hamid.  I found him, with two spears in his hand, waiting for me.
He gave me one, and forth we set.

"The Berbalangs' village stands on a sort of table-land in the hills
which rise all the way to Mount Tebulian, near the centre of the island.
After the first two miles I found myself in strange country, and Hamid
kept silence and signed to me to do the same.  In this way we sweated up
the slopes until, a little after noon, we reached a pass, and saw the
roofs of the village over the edge of a broad step, as it were, half a
mile above us.  Here we sat down, and Hamid, drawing a couple of limes
from his pocket, explained that I must on no account taste any food the
Berbalangs set before us unless I first sprinkled it with lime juice.
It might look like curried fish, but would, as likely as not, be human
flesh disguised, the taste of which would destroy my soul and convert me
into a Berbalang; a touch of the lime juice would turn such food back to
its proper shape and show me what I was being asked to eat.

"We now moved forward again, very cautiously, and soon came to the
village.  The houses, perhaps a dozen in all, were scandalously dirty,
otherwise pretty much like those in Hamid's own village.  But not a
living creature could be seen.  Hamid, I could tell, was puzzled, and
even a bit frightened.  He put a good face on it, all the same, and
began to walk from house to house, keeping his spear handy as he peered
in at the doors.  Still not a soul could we find, barring an old goat
tethered and a few roaming fowls.  The stink of the place sickened us,
and I wanted to run, though we came across no actual horrors.  In one
room we found a pan of rice lately boiled and still smoking, and
sprinkled it with lime juice.  It remained good rice.  Out into the
street we went, and Hamid, growing bolder, raised a loud halloo.
The noise of it sent the fowls scudding, and the hills around took it up
and echoed it.

"He looked at me.  'They must be out on the hunt,' said he.

"'Good Lord!' I gasped.  'And the child at home--without the pearl!'
I turned and plunged for it down the slope like a madman.

"What to do I had no idea; but I hadn't a doubt that the Berbalangs were
after Aoodya or the child, or both, and I headed for home with the wind
singing by my ears.  At the foot of the pass I looked back.  Hamid was
following, skipping from one lava stone to another at a pace that did
credit to his old legs.  He waved a hand and called--as I thought, to
encourage me; and away down I pounded.

"I must have reached the edge of the plain in twenty minutes (the climb
had taken us more than two hours), and, once there, I squeezed my elbows
into my sides and settled into stride.  Luckily the season was dry, and
a fire, three weeks before, had swept over the tall lalang grass,
leaving a thin layer of ash, which made running easy.  For all that, I
was pretty near dead beat when I reached the compound and ran past the
sentry.  The man cried out at sight of me as I went by; but I thought he
was just pattering out his challenge, being taken unawares; and knowing
he would not let off his musket if he recognised me, I paid no
attention.

"I had prepared myself (as I thought) for anything--to find Aoodya dead
beside the child, or to find them both unharmed and flourishing as I had
left them.  But what happened was that I burst in and stared around an
empty room.  _That_ knocked the wind out of my sails.  I called twice,
leaned my head against the door-post and panted; called again, and,
getting no answer, walked stupidly back across the compound to the gate.

"The sentry there was pointing.  I believe he was telling me, too, that
Aoodya, with the child in her arms, had passed out some while before.
But as he waved a hand towards the plain I saw a figure running there,
and recognised Hamid.  The old man was heading, not towards us, but for
the seashore, and, plain as daylight, he was heading there with a
purpose.  I remembered now his cry to me from the head of the pass.
So I pressed elbows to side again and lit out after him.

"He was making for a thick patch of jungle between us and the sea, and
though I had run at least a mile out of the way I soon began to
overhaul him.  But long before I reached the clump he had found an
opening in it and dived out of sight, and I overtook him only when the
growth thinned suddenly by the edge of a crater, plunging down to a lake
so exactly like Sinquan that I had to look about me and take my bearings
before making sure that this was another, and one I had never yet seen.

"I caught him by the arm, and we peered down the slope together.
At the foot of it, and by the edge of the lake, there ran a strip of
white beach; and there, and almost directly below us, were gathered the
Berbalangs.

"They were moving and pushing into place in a sort of circle around a
small bundle which at first sight I took for a heap of clothes.  At that
distance they seemed harmless enough, and, barring the strangeness of
the spot, might have been an ordinary party of islanders forming up for
a dance.  But when, all of a sudden, the ring came to a standstill, and
a figure stepped out of it towards the bundle in the centre, my wits
came back to me, and I flung up both arms, shouting 'Aoodya! Aoodya!'

"She must have made three paces in the time my voice took to reach her.
She was close to the child.  Then she halted and stood for a moment
gazing up at me.  I saw something bright drop from her.  And with that
she stooped, caught up the child, and was racing up the slope towards
us.

"'Steady!' muttered Hamid, as a man broke from the circle, plucked up
the knife from the sand and rushed after her.  'Steady!' he said again.

"Aoodya had a start of twenty yards or more, and in the first
half-minute she actually managed to better it.  Hamid, beside me, rubbed
a bullet quickly on the rind of one of his lime-fruits and rammed it
home.  He took an eternal time about it; and below, now, the man was
gaining.  Unluckily their courses brought them into line, and twice the
old man cursed softly and lowered his piece.

"Flesh and blood could not stand this.  I let out a groan and sprang
down the cliff.  It was madness, and at the third step all foothold
slipped from under me; but my clutch was tight on a fistful of creepers,
and their tendrils were tough as a ship's rope.  So down I went, now
touching earth, now fending off from the rock with my feet, now missing
hold and sprawling into a mass of leaves and roots, among which I
clutched wildly and checked myself by the first thing handy--until, with
the crack of Hamid's musket above, the vine, or whatever it was to which
I clung for the moment, gave way as if shorn by the bullet, and I
pitched a full twenty feet with a rush of loose earth and dust.

"I fell almost at the heels of Aoodya's enemy, upon a ledge along which
he was swiftly running her down.  Hamid's bullet had missed him, and
before I could make the third in the chase he was forty yards ahead.
I saw his bare shoulders parting the creepers--threading their way in
and out like a bobbin, and jogging as the pace fell slower; for now we
were all three in difficulties.  Perhaps Aoodya had missed the track; at
any rate the ledge we were now following grew shallower as it curved
over the corner of the beach and ran sheer over the water of the lake.
A jungle tree leaned out here, with a clear drop of a hundred feet.
As I closed on my man, he swerved and began to clamber out along the
trunk; and over his shoulder I saw Aoodya, with the babe in the crick of
her arm, upon a bough which swayed and sank beneath her.

"I clutched at his ankle.  He reached back with a hiss of his breath and
jabbed his knife down on my left hand, cutting across the two middle
fingers and pinning me through the small bones to the trunk.  I tell
you, sir, I scarcely felt it.  My right went down to my waist and pulled
out the _kris_ there.  He was the man I had caught within the verandah
three days before; these were the same eyes shining, like a cat's, back
into mine, and what I had promised him then I gave him now.  But it was
Hamid who killed him.  For as my _kris_ went into the flank of him,
above the hip, Hamid's second shot cut down through his neck.  His face
at the moment rested sideways against the branch, and I suppose the
bullet passed through to the bough and cost me Aoodya.  For as the
Berbalang fell, the bough seemed to rip away from where his cheek had
rested, and Aoodya, with my child in her arms, swung back under my feet
and dropped like a stone into the lake.

"I can't tell you, sir, how long I lay stretched out along that trunk,
with the Berbalang's knife still pinned through my hand.  I was staring
down into the water.  Aoodya and my child never rose again; but the
Berbalang came to the surface at once and floated, bobbing for a while
on the ripple, his head thrown back, his brown chest shining up at me,
and the blood spreading on the water around it.

"It was Hamid who unpinned me and led me away.  He had made shift to
climb down, and while binding up my wounded hand pointed towards the
beach.  It was empty.  The crowd of Berbalangs had disappeared.

"He found the track which Aoodya had missed, and as he led me up and out
of the crater I heard him talking--talking.  I suppose he was trying to
comfort me--he was a good fellow; but at the top I turned on him, and
'Master,' I said, 'you have tried to do me much kindness, but to-day I
have bought my quittance.'  With that I left him standing and walked
straight over the brow of the hill.  I never looked behind me until I
reached the Spaniards' compound, and called out at the gate to be let
pass.

"Captain Marquinez was lying in a hammock in the cool of his verandah
when the gate-keeper took me to him.  He was, I think, the weariest man
I ever happened on.  'So you want to leave the island?' said he when my
tale was out.  'Yes, yes, I believe you; I've learnt to believe anything
of those devils up yonder.  But you must wait a fortnight, till the
relief-boat arrives from Jola'--"


Here the story-teller broke off as a rider upon a grey horse came at a
foot-pace round the slope of Burrator below us and passed on without
seeing.  It was the Rajah, returning solitary from the hunt, and his
eyes were still fastened ahead of him.

"Ah, great man!  England is a weary hole for the likes of you and me.
It's here they talk of the East, but we have loved it and hated it and
known it, and remember.  Our eyes have seen--our eyes have seen."

He stood up, pulled himself together with a kind of shiver, and suddenly
shambled away across the slope, having said no good-bye, but leaving me
there at gaze.



VICTOR.


I.


"You will ruin his life," said one of the two women.  As the phrase
escaped her she remembered, or seemed to remember, having met with it in
half a dozen novels.  She had nerved herself for the interview which up
to this moment had been desperately real; but now she felt herself
losing grip.  It had all happened before . . . somewhere; she was
reacting an old scene, going through a part; the four or five
second-hand words gave her this sensation.  Then she reflected that the
other woman, too, had perhaps met them before in some cheap novelette,
and, being an uneducated person, would probably find them the more
impressive for that.

The other woman had in fact met them before, in the pages of _Bow
Bells_, and been impressed by them.  But since then love had found her
ignorant and left her wise; wiser than in her humiliation she dared to
guess, and yet the wiser for being humiliated.  She answered in a
curiously dispassionate voice: "I think, miss, his life is ruined
already; that is, if he sent you to say all this to me."

"He did not."  Miss Bracy lifted the nose and chin which she inherited
from several highly distinguished Crusaders, and gave the denial sharply
and promptly, looking her ex-maid straight in the face.  She had never--
to use her own words--stood any nonsense from Bassett.

But Bassett, formerly so docile (though, as it now turned out, so
deceitful); who had always known her place and never answered her
mistress but with respect; was to-day an unrecognisable Bassett--not in
the least impudent, but as certainly not to be awed or brow-beaten.
Standing in the glare of discovered misconduct, under the scourge of her
shame, the poor girl had grasped some secret strength which made her
invincible.

"But I think, miss," she answered, "Mr. Frank must have known you was
coming."  And this Miss Bracy could not deny.  She had never told a lie
in her life.

"It is very likely--no, it is certain--that he guessed," she admitted.

"And if so, it comes to the same thing," Bassett persisted, with a shade
of weariness in her voice.

"You ungrateful girl!  You ungrateful and quite extraordinary girl!
First you inveigle that poor boy at the very outset of his career, and
then when upon a supposed point of honour he offers to marry you--"

"A 'supposed' point, miss?  Do you say 'supposed'?"

"Not one in a thousand would offer such a redemption.  And even he
cannot know what it will mean to his life--what it will cost him."

"I shall tell him, miss," said Bassett quietly.

"And his parents--what do you suppose they would say, were they alive?
His poor mother, for instance?"

Bassett dismissed this point silently.  To Miss Bracy the queerest thing
about the girl was the quiet practical manner she had put on so
suddenly.

"You said, miss, that Mr. Frank wants to make amends on a 'supposed'
point of honour.  Don't you think it a real one?"

Miss Bracy's somewhat high cheekbones showed two red spots.  "Because he
offers it, it doesn't follow that you ought to accept.  And that's the
whole point," she wound up viciously.

Bassett sighed that she could not get her question answered.
"You will excuse me, miss, but I never 'inveigled' him, as you say.
That I deny; and if you ask Mr. Frank he will bear me out.  Not that
it's any use trying to make you believe," she added, with a drop back to
her old level tone as she saw the other's eyebrows go up.  It was indeed
hopeless, Miss Bracy being one of those women who take it for granted
that a man has been inveigled as soon as his love-affairs run counter to
their own wishes or taste; and who thereby reveal an estimate of man for
which in the end they are pretty sure to pay heavily.  All her answer
now was a frankly incredulous stare.

"You won't believe me, miss.  It's not your fault, I know; you _can't_
believe me.  But I loved Mr. Frank."

Miss Bracy made a funny little sound high up in her Crusader nose.
That the passions of gentlemen were often ill-regulated she knew; it
disgusted her, but she recognised it as a real danger to be watched by
their anxious relatives.  That _love_, however--what she understood by
_love_--could be felt by the lower orders, the people who "walked
together" and "kept company" before mating, was too incredible.
Even if driven by evidence to admit the fact she would have set it down
to the pernicious encroachment of Board School education, and remarked
that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

"'Love!'  My poor child, don't profane a word you cannot possibly
understand.  A nice love, indeed, that shows itself by ruining his
life!"

That second-hand phrase again!  As it slipped out, the indomitable
Bassett dealt it another blow.

"I am not sure, miss, that I love him any longer--in the same way, I
mean.  I should always have a regard for him--for many reasons--and
because he behaved honourably in a way.  But I couldn't quite believe in
him as I did before he showed himself weak."

"Well, of all the--" Miss Bracy's lips were open for a word to fit this
offence, when Bassett followed it up with a worse one.

"I beg your pardon, miss, but you are so fond of Mr. Frank--Supposing I
refused his offer, would you marry him yourself?"

The girl, too, meant it quite seriously.  In her tone was no trace of
impudence.  She had divined her adversary's secret, and thrust home the
question with a kind of anxious honesty.  Miss Bracy, red and gasping,
tingling with shame, yet knew that she was not being exulted over.
She dropped the unequal fight between conventional argument and naked
insight, and stood up, woman to woman.  She neither denied nor
exclaimed.  She too told the truth.

"Never!"--she paused.  "After what has happened I would never marry my
cousin."

"I thought that, miss.  You mean it, I am sure; and it eases my mind;
because you have been a good mistress to me, and it would always have
been a sorry thought that I'd stood in your way.  Not that it would have
prevented me."

"Do you still stand there and tell me that you will hold this unhappy
boy to his word?"

"He's twenty-two, miss; my own age.  Yes, I shall hold him to it."

"To save yourself!"

"No, miss."

"For his own sake, then?" Miss Bracy's laugh was passing bitter.

"No, miss--though there might be something in that."

"For whose then?"

The girl did not answer.  But in the silence her mistress understood,
and moved to the door.  She was beaten, and she knew it; beaten and
unforgiving, In the doorway she turned.

"It is not for your own sake that you persist?  It was not to gratify
yourself--to be made a lady--that you plotted this?  Very well; you
shall be taken at your word.  I cannot counsel Frank against his honour;
if he insists, and you still accept the sacrifice, he shall marry you.
But from that hour--you understand?--you have seen the last of him.
I know Frank well enough to promise it."

She paused to let the words sink in and watch their effect.  This was
not only cruel, but a mistake; for it gave Bassett--who was past caring
for it--the last word.

"If you do, miss," she said drearily, yet with a mind made up,
"I daresay that will be best."



II.


Long before I heard this story I knew three of the characters in it.
Just within the harbour beside which I am writing this--on your left as
you enter it from the sea--a little creek runs up past Battery Point to
a stout sea-wall with a turfed garden behind it and a low cottage, and
behind these a steep-sided valley, down which a stream tumbles to a
granite conduit.  It chokes and overflows the conduit, is caught again
into a granite-covered gutter by the door of the cottage, and emerges
beyond it in a small cascade upon the beach.  At spring tides the sea
climbs to the foot of this cascade, and great then is the splashing.
The land-birds, tits and warblers, come down to the very edge to drink;
but none of them--unless it be the wagtail--will trespass on the beach
below.  The rooks and gulls, on their side, never forage above the
cascade, but when the ploughing calls them inland, mount and cross the
frontier-line high overhead.  All day long in summer the windows of the
cottage stand open, and its rooms are filled with song; and night and
day, summer and winter, the inmates move and talk, wake and sleep, to
the contending music of the waters.

It had lain tenantless for two years, when one spring morning Miss Bracy
and Mr. Frank Bracy arrived and took possession.  They came (for aught
we knew) out of nowhere; but they brought a good many boxes, six cats,
and a complete set of new muslin blinds.  On their way they purchased a
quart of fresh milk, and Mr. Frank fed the cats while Miss Bracy put up
the blinds.  In the afternoon a long van arrived with a load of
furniture; and we children who had gathered to watch were rewarded by a
sensation when the van started by disgorging an artist's lay-figure,
followed by a suit of armour.  From these to a mahogany chest of drawers
with brass handles was a sad drop, and we never regained the high
romance of those first few minutes; but the furniture was undeniably
handsome, and when Miss Bracy stepped out and offered us sixpence apiece
to go and annoy somebody else, we came away convinced that our visitors
were persons of exceptionally high rank.  It puzzled us afterwards that,
though a bargain is a bargain, not one of us had stayed to claim his
sixpence.

The newcomers brought no servants; but after a week there arrived (also
out of nowhere) an elderly and taciturn cook.  Also, Miss Bracy on the
third morning walked up to the farm at the head of the valley and hired
down the hind's second daughter for a "help." We knew this girl, Lizzie
Truscott, and waylaid her on her homeward road that evening for
information.  She told us that Miss Bracy's cats had a cradle apiece
lined with muslin over pink calico; that the window curtains inside
reached from the ceilings to the floors; that the number of knives and
forks was something cruel--one kind for fish, another for meat, and a
third for fruit; that in one of the looking-glasses a body could see
herself at one time from head to feet, though why you should want a
looking-glass to see your feet in when you could see them without was
more than she knew; and, finally, that Miss Bracy had strictly forbidden
her to carry tales--a behest which, convinced that Miss Bracy had
dealings with the Evil One, she meant to observe.  The elderly cook when
she arrived warned us away from the door with a dialect we did not
recognise.  Her name (Lizzie reported) was Deborah, and in our haste we
set her down for a Jewess; but I seem to have detected her accent since,
and a few of her pet phrases, in the pages of Scottish fiction.

This is all I can tell--so fitful are childish memories--of the coming
of Miss Bracy and Mr. Frank.  I cannot say, for instance, what gossip it
bred, or how soon they wore down the edge of it and became, with their
eccentricities, an accepted feature of the spot they had made their
home.  They made no friends, no acquaintances: everyone knew of Miss
Bracy's cats, but few had seen them.  Miss Bracy herself was on view in
church every Sunday morning, when Mr. Frank walked with her as far as
the porch.  He never entered the building, but took a country walk
during service, returning in time to meet her at the porch and escort
her home.  His other walks he took alone, and almost always at night.
The policeman tramping towards Four Turnings after midnight to report to
the country patrol would meet him and pause for a minute's chat.
Night-wandering beasts--foxes and owls and hedgehogs--knew his footstep
and unlearned their first fear of it.  Sometimes, but not often, you
might surprise him of an afternoon seated before an easel in some
out-of-the-way corner of the cliffs; but if you paused then to look, he
too paused and seemed inclined to smudge out his work.  The Vicar put it
about that Mr. Frank had formerly been a painter of fame, and (being an
astute man) one day decoyed him into his library, where hung an
engraving of a picture "Amos Barton" by one F. Bracy.  It had made a
small sensation at Burlington House a dozen years before; and the Vicar
liked it for the pathos of its subject--an elderly clergyman beside his
wife's deathbed.  To him the picture itself could have told little more
than this engraving, which utterly failed to suggest the wonderful
colour and careful work the artist (a young man with a theory and
enthusiasm to back it) had lavished on the worn carpet and valances of
the bed, as well as on the chestnut hair of the dying woman glorified in
the red light of sunset.

Mr. Frank glanced up at the engraving and turned his face away.
It was the face of a man taken at unawares, embarrassed, almost afraid.
The Vicar, who had been watching him, intending some pleasant remark
about the picture, saw at once that something was wrong, and with great
tact kept the talk upon some petty act of charity in which he sought to
enlist his visitor's help.  Mr. Frank listened, gave his promise
hurriedly and made his escape.  He never entered the Vicarage again.



III.


Eighteen years had passed since Miss Bracy's interview with Bassett; and
now, late on a summer afternoon, she and Mr. Frank were pacing the
little waterside garden while they awaited their first visitor.

Mr. Frank betrayed the greater emotion, or at any rate the greater
nervousness.  Since breakfast he had been unable to sit still or to
apply himself to any piece of work for ten minutes together, until Miss
Bracy suggested the lawn-mower and brought purgatory upon herself.
With that lawn-mower all the afternoon he had been "rattling her brain
to fiddle-strings"--as she put it--and working himself into a heat which
obliged a change of clothes before tea.  The tea stood ready now on a
table which Deborah had carried out into the garden--dainty linen and
silverware, and flowered china dishes heaped with cakes of which only
Scotswomen know the secrets.  The sun, dropping behind Battery Point,
slanted its rays down through the pine-trunks and over the fiery massed
plumes of rhododendrons.  Scents of jasmine and of shorn grass mingled
with the clean breath of the sea borne to the garden wall on a high tide
tranquil and clear--so clear that the eye following for a hundred yards
the lines of the cove could see the feet of the cliffs where they
rested, three fathoms down, on lily-white sand.  Miss Bracy adored these
clean depths.  She had missed much that life could have given; but at
least she had found a life comely and to her mind.  She had sacrificed
much; but at times she forgot how much in contemplating the modest
elegance of the altar.

She wore, this evening, a gown of purplish silk, with a light cashmere
scarf about her shoulders.  Nothing could make her a tall woman; but her
grey hair, dressed high _a l'imperatrice_, gave her dignity at least,
and an air of old-fashioned distinction.  And she was one of those few
and fortunate ladies who never need to worry about the appearance of
their cavaliers.  Mr. Frank--six feet of him, without reckoning a slight
stoop--always satisfied the eye; his grey flannel suit fitted loosely
but fitted well; his wide-brimmed straw hat was as faultless as his
linen; his necktie had a negligent neatness; you felt sure alike and at
once of his bootmaker and his shirtmaker; and his fresh complexion, his
prematurely white hair, his strong well-kept hands, completed the
impression of cleanliness for its own sake, of a careful physical cult
as far as possible removed from foppery.

This may have been in Miss Bracy's mind when she began: "I daresay he
will be fairly presentable, to look at.  That unfortunate woman had at
least an art of dressing--a quiet taste too, quite extraordinary in one
of her station.  I often wondered where she picked it up."

Mr. Frank winced.  Until the news of his wife's death came, a fortnight
ago, her name had not been spoken between them for years.  That he and
his cousin regarded her very differently he knew; but while silence was
kept it had been possible to ignore the difference.  Now it surprised
him that speech should hurt so; and, at the same moment, that his cousin
should not divine how sorely it hurt.  After all _he_ was the saddest
evidence of poor Bassett's "lady-like" tastes.

"I suppose you know nothing of the school she sent him to?" Miss Bracy
went on--"King William's, or whatever it is."

"King Edward's," Mr. Frank corrected.  "Yes, I made inquiries about it
at the time--ten years ago.  People speak well of it.  Not a public
school, of course--at least, not quite; the line isn't so easy to draw
nowadays--but it turns out gentlemen."

In her heart Miss Bracy thought him too hopeful; but she said,
"He wrote a becoming letter--his hand, by the way, curiously suggests
yours; it was quite a nice letter, and agreeably surprised me.
I shouldn't wonder if his headmaster had helped him with it and cut out
the boyish heroics; for of course _she_ must have taught him to hate
us."

"My dear Laura, why in the world--" began Mr. Frank testily.

"Oh, she had spirit!"--the encounter of long ago rose up in Miss Bracy's
memory, and she nodded her head with conviction.  "Like most of the
quiet ones, she had spirit.  You don't suppose, I imagine, that she
forgave?"

"No."  Mr. Frank came to a halt and dug with his heel at a daisy root in
the turf.  Then using his heel as a pivot he swung himself round in an
awkward circle.  The action was ludicrous almost, but he faced his
cousin again with serious eyes.  "But it is not her heart that I doubt,"
he added gently.

Miss Bracy stared up at him, "My dear Frank, do you mean to tell me that
you _regret_?"

Yes; as a fact he did regret, and knew that he would never cease to
regret.  He was not a man to nurse malice even for a wrong done to him,
still less to live carelessly conscious of having wronged another.
He was weak, but incurably just.  And more; though self entered last
into his regret, he knew perfectly well that the wrong had wrecked him
too.  His was a career _manque_: he had failed as a man, and it had
broken his nerve as an artist.  He was a dabbler now, with--as Heine
said of de Musset--a fine future _behind him_, and none but an artist
can tell the bitterness of that self-knowledge.  Had he kept his faith
with Bassett in spirit as in letter, he might have failed just as
decidedly; her daily companionship might have coarsened his inspiration,
soured him, driven him to work cheaply, recklessly; but at least he
could have accused fate, circumstance, a boyish error, whereas now he
and his own manhood shared the defeat and the responsibility.  Yes, he
regretted; but it would never do to let Laura know his regret.
That would be to play the double traitor.  She had saved him
(she believed) from himself; with utterly wrong-headed loyalty she had
devoted her life to this.  The other debt was irredeemable, but this at
any rate could be paid.

He evaded her question.  "My dear," he said, "what was done has been
atoned for by her, and is being atoned for by--by us.  Let us think of
her without bitterness."

Miss Bracy shook her head  "I am a poor sort of Christian," she
confessed; "and if she has taught this boy to hate us--"

"Mr. Victor Bracy," announced Deborah from the garden-porch behind them,
and a tall youth in black stepped past her and came across the turf with
a shy smile.

The pair turned with an odd sense of confusion, almost of dismay.
They were prepared for the "Victor," but somehow they had not thought of
him as bearing their own surname.  Mr. Frank had felt the shock once
before, in addressing an envelope; but to Miss Bracy it was quite new.

Yet she was the first to recover herself, and, while holding out her
hand, took quick note that the boy had Frank's stature and eyes, carried
his clothes well, and himself, if shyly, without clumsiness.  She could
find no fault with his manner of shaking hands; and when he turned to
his father, the boy's greeting was the less embarrassed of the two.
Mr. Frank indeed had suddenly become conscious of his light suit and
bird's-eye neckcloth.

"But how did you come?" asked Miss Bracy.  "We sent a cart to meet you--
I heard no sound of wheels."

"Yes, I saw it outside the station; but the man didn't recognise me--
quite a small crowd came by the train--and of course I didn't recognise
him.  So I bribed a porter to put my luggage on a barrow and come along
with me.  Half-way up the hill the cart overtook us--the driver full of
apologies.  While they transhipped my things I walked on ahead--yes,
listen, there it comes; and--Oh, I say, what a lovely spot!"

Miss Bracy was listening--not for the wheels and not to the story, but
critically to every word as it came from his lips.  "The woman has
certainly done wonders," was her unspoken comment.  At Victor's frank
outburst, however, she flushed with something like real pleasure.  She
was proud of her cottage and garden, and had even a sort of proprietary
feeling about the view.

They sat down around the little tea-table; the boy first apologising for
his travel-stains (he was, in fact, as neat as a pin) and afterwards
chatting gaily about his journey--not talking too much, but appealing
from one to another with a quick deferent grace, and allowing them
always the lead.  "This is better and better," thought Miss Bracy as she
poured tea; and, after a while, "But this is amazing!"  He was a
thorough child, too, with all his unconscious tact.  The scent of a
lemon-verbena plant fetched him suddenly to his feet with his eyes
bright.  "Please let me--" he thrust his face into the bush;
"I have never seen it growing like this."

Miss Bracy looked at Mr. Frank.  How utterly different it was from their
old-maidish expectations!  They had pictured the scene a hundred times,
and always it included some awkwardly decorous reference to the dead
woman.  _This_ had been their terror--to do justice to the occasion
without hurting the poor boy's feelings--to meet his sullen shyness,
perhaps antipathy, with a welcome which somehow excused the past.
Yes, the past (they had felt) required excuse to _him_. And he had made
no allusion to his mother, and obviously wished for none.  Miss Bracy
could not help smiling at the picture of their fears.

The boy turned, caught her smiling, and broke into a jolly laugh at his
own absurdity.  It echoed in the garden, where no one had laughed aloud
for years.

And with that laugh Bassett's revenge began.



IV.


For with that laugh they began to love him.  They did not--or at any
rate Miss Bracy 'did not--know it at the time.  For some days they
watched him; and he, the unsuspicious one, administered a score of
shocks as again and again he took them neatly and decisively at
unawares.  He had accepted them at once and in entire good faith.
They were (with just the right recognition of their seniority) good
comrades in this jolliest of worlds.  They were his holiday hosts, and
it was not for the guest to hint (just yet) at the end of the holiday.

He surprised them at every turn.  His father's canvases filled him with
admiring awe.  "Oh, but I say--however is it done?"  As he stood before
them with legs a trifle wide, he smoothed the top of his head with a
gesture of perplexity.  And Mr. Frank, standing at his shoulder with
legs similarly spread, used the same gesture--as Miss Bracy had seen him
use it a thousand times.  Yet the boy had no artistic talent--not so
much as a germ.  For beauty of line and beauty of colour he inherited an
impeccable eye; indeed his young senses were alive to seize all innocent
delight,--his quickness in scenting the lemon-verbena bush proved but
the first of many instances.  But he began and ended with enjoyment; of
the artist's impulse to reproduce and imitate beauty he felt nothing.
Mr. Frank recognised with a pang that he had failed not only in keeping
his torch bright but in passing it on; that the true self which he had
missed expressing must die with him barren and untransmitted.
The closer he drew in affection, the farther this son of his receded,--
receded in the very act of acknowledging his sonship--with a gesture,
smilingly imprehensible; with eyes which allured the yearning he
baffled, and tied it to the hopeless chase.

Mr. Frank, who worshipped flowers, was perhaps the most ineffective
gardener in England.  With a trowel and the best intentions he would do
more damage in twenty minutes than Miss Bracy could repair in a week.
She had made a paradise in spite of him, and he contented himself with
assuring her that the next tenant would dig it up and find it paved with
good intentions.  The seeds he sowed--and he must have sown many pounds'
worth before she stopped the wild expense--never sprouted by any chance.
"Dormant, my dear Laura--dormant!" he would exclaim in springtime,
rubbing his head perplexedly as he studied the empty borders.
"When I die, and am buried here, they will all sprout together, and you
will have to take a hook and cut your way daily through the vegetation
which hides my grave."  But Victor, who approached them in the frankest
ignorance, seemed to divine the ways of flowers at once.  In the autumn
he struck cuttings of Miss Bracy's rarest roses; he removed a sickly
passion-flower from one corner of the cottage to another and restored it
to health within a fortnight.  Within a week after his coming he and
Miss Bracy were deep in cross-fertilizing a borderful of carnations she
had raised from seed.  He carried the same natural deftness into a score
of small household repairs.  He devised new cradles for Miss Bracy's
cats, and those conservative animals at once accepted the improvement;
he invented a cupboard for his father's canvases; he laid an electric
bell from the kitchen beneath the floor of the dining-room, so that Miss
Bracy could ring for Deborah by a mere pressure of the foot; and the
well-rope which Deborah had been used to wind up painfully was soon
fitted with a wheel and balance-weight which saved four-fifths of the
labour.

"It beats me where you learned how to do these things," his father
protested.

"But it doesn't want learning; it's all so simple--not like painting,
you know."

Mr. Frank had been corresponding with the boy's headmaster.  "Yes, he is
a good fellow," said one of the letters; "just a gentle clear-minded
boy, with courage at call when he wants it, and one really remarkable
talent.  You may not have discovered it, but he is a mathematician; and
as different from the ordinary book-made mathematician--from the dozens
of boys I send up regularly to Cambridge--as cheese is from chalk.
He has a sort of passion for pure reasoning--for its processes.
Of course he does not know it; but from the first it has been a pleasure
to me (an old pupil of Routh's) to watch his work.  'Style' is not a
word one associates as a rule with mathematics, but I can use no other
to express the quality which your boy brings to that study. . . ."

"Good Lord!" groaned Mr. Frank, who had never been able to add up his
washing bills.

He read the letter to Miss Bracy, and the pair began to watch Victor
with a new wonder.  They were confident that no Bracy had ever been a
mathematician; for an uncle of theirs, now a rector in Shropshire and
once of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where for reasons best known to
himself he had sought honours in the Mathematical Tripos and narrowly
missed the Wooden Spoon, had clearly no claim to the title.  Whence in
the world did the boy derive this gift?  "His mother--" Miss Bracy
began, and broke off as a puff of smoke shot out from the fireplace.
It was late September; Deborah had lit the fire that morning for the
first time since May, and the chimney never drew well at starting.
Miss Bracy took the tongs in hand, but she was not thinking of the
smoke; neither was Mr. Frank, while he watched her.  They were both
thinking of the dead woman.  The thought of her--the ghost of her--was
always rising now between them and her boy; _she_ was the impalpable
screen they tried daily and in vain to pierce; to _her_ they had come to
refer unconsciously all that was inexplicable in him.  And so much was
inexplicable!  They loved him now; they stretched out their hands to
him: behind _her_ he smiled at them, but through or across _her_ their
hands could never reach.

As at first they had avoided all allusion to her, and been thankful that
the boy's reticence made it easy, so now they grew almost feverishly
anxious to discover how he felt towards his mother's memory.
They detected each other laying small traps for him, and were ashamed.
They held their breath as with an air of cheerful unconsciousness he
walked past the traps, escaping them one and all.  At first in her
irritation Miss Bracy accused him of what she (of all women!) called
false pride.  "He is ashamed of her.  He wishes to forget, and is only
too glad that we began by encouraging him."  On second thoughts she knew
the charge to be undeserved and odious.  His obvious simplicity gave it
the lie.  Moreover she knew that a small water-colour sketch of her in
her youth--a drawing of Mr. Frank's--stood on the table in the boy's
bedroom.  Miss Bracy often dusted that room with her own hands.

"And, Frank," she confessed one day, "he kisses it!  I know by the
dullness on the glass when I rub it."  She did not add that she rubbed
it viciously.  "I tell you," she insisted, almost with a groan,
"he lives with her.  She is with him in this house in spite of us; she
talks with him; his real existence is with her.  He comes out of it to
make himself pleasant to us, but he goes back and tells her his
secrets."

"Nonsense, Laura," Mr. Frank interrupted testily.  "For some reason or
other the boy is getting on your nerves.  It is natural, after all."

"Natural?  Yes, I see: you mean that I'm an old maid, and it's a case of
crabbed age and youth."

"My dear Laura, I mean nothing so rude.  But, after all, we have been
living here a great many years and it _is_ a change."

"Frank, you can be singularly dense at times.  Must I tell you in so
many words that I am fond of the boy, and if he'd be only as fond of me
he might racket the house down and I'd only like him the better for it?"

Mr. Frank rubbed his head, and then with sudden resolution marched out
of the house in search of Victor.  He found the boy on the roof removing
a patent cowl which the local mason had set up a week before to cure the
smoky chimney.

"My dear fellow," the father cried up, "you'll break your neck!
Come down at once--I have something particular to say to you."

Victor descended with the cowl under his arm.  "Do be careful. . . .
Doesn't it make you giddy, clambering about in places like that?"
Mr. Frank had no head at all for a height.

"Not a bit. . . . Just look at this silly contrivance--choked with soot
in three days!  The fellow who invented it ought to have his head
examined."

"It has made you in a horrible mess," said his father, who took no
interest in cowls, but lost his temper in a smoky house.

"I'll run in and have a change and wash."

"No; put the nasty thing down and come into the garden."  He opened the
gate, and Victor followed, after dipping his hands in the waterfall.

"The fact is, my boy, I've come to a decision.  This has been a pleasant
time--a very pleasant time--for all of us.  We have put off speaking to
you about this, but I hope you understand that this is to be your home
henceforward; that we wish it and shall be the happier for having
you . . ."

Victor had been gazing out over the cove, but now turned and met his
father's eyes frankly.  "I have a little money," he said.
"Mother managed to put by a small sum from time to time, enough to start
me in life.  She did not tell me until a few days before she died: she
knew I wanted to be an engineer."

He said this quite simply.  It was the first time he had mentioned his
mother.  Mr. Frank felt his face flushing.

"But your headmaster tells me it will be a thousand pities if you don't
go to Cambridge.  I am proposing that you should go there--should
matriculate this term.  My dear boy"--he laid a hand on Victor's arm--"
don't refuse me this.  I have no right--perhaps--to insist; but I
daresay you can guess what your acceptance would mean to me.  You can
choose your own career when the time comes.  For your sake your mother
would have liked this: ask yourself if she would not."

Mr. Frank had not looked forward to pleading like this; yet when it came
to the point this seemed his only possible attitude.  Victor had removed
his gaze, and his eyes were resting now on the green sunny waves rolling
in at the harbour's mouth.  For almost a minute he kept silence; then--

"Yes, she would advise it," he said.  It was as though he had laid the
case before an unseen counsellor and waited submissively for the answer.
Mr. Frank had gained his end and without trouble: yet he felt a
disappointment he could not at once explain.  He was the last man in the
world to expect a gratitude which he did not deserve; but in the
satisfaction of carrying his point he missed something, and surmised
what he missed.  The boy had not turned to _him_ for the answer, but had
turned away and brought it to him.  Father and son would never have the
deeper joy of taking counsel together heart to heart.



V.


So Victor went up to Trinity, and returned for the Christmas vacation on
the heels of an announcement that he had won a scholarship.  He had
grown more manly and serious, and he smoked a tobacco which sorely tried
Miss Bracy's distinguished nose; but he kept the boyish laugh--the laugh
which always seemed to them to call invitingly from the door of his
soul, "Why don't you enter and read me?  The house is clean and full of
goodwill--Come!"  But though they never ceased trying, they could never
penetrate to those inner chambers.  Sometimes--though they might be
talking of most trivial matters--the appeal would suddenly grow
pathetic, almost plangent, "What is this that shuts me off from you?
We sit together and love one another: why am I set apart?"  Time was
when he had seemed to them consciously reticent, almost of set purpose;
but now it was they who, looking within the doorway, saw the dead woman
standing there with finger on lip.

He made no intimate friends at Cambridge; yet was popular and something
of a figure in his College, which had marked him down for high--perhaps
the highest--university honours, and was pleasantly astonished to find
him also a good cricketer.  His good looks attracted men; they asked his
name, were told it, and exclaimed, "Bracy?  Not the man Trinity is
running for Senior Wrangler?"  With this double reputation he might have
won a host of friends, and his father and Miss Bracy would gladly have
welcomed one, in hope that such companionship might exorcise the ghost:
but he kept his way, liking and liked by men, yet aloof; with many
acquaintances, censorious of none, influenced by none; avoiding when he
disapproved, but not judging, and in no haste even to disapprove; easy
to approach, and almost eager for goodwill, yet in the end inaccessible.

His first Easter vacation he spent with a reading-party in Cumberland.
There he first tasted the "sacred fury" of the mountains and
mountain-climbing, and in Switzerland the next August it grew to be a
passion.  He returned to it again and again, in Cumberland playing at
the game with half a dozen fellow-undergraduates whom he had bitten with
the mania; but in Switzerland during the Long vacations giving himself
over to a glut of it, with only a guide and porter for company--
sometimes alone, if he could ever be said to be alone.  As in
mathematics so in his sport, the cold heights were the mistresses he
wooed; the peaks called to him, the rare atmosphere, the glittering
wastes.  He neither scorned danger nor was daunted by it.  Below in the
forests he would sing aloud, but the summits held him silent.  As an old
pastor at Zermatt told Mr. Frank, he would come down from a mountain
"like Moses, with his face illumined."

He started on his third visit to Switzerland early in July: in the
second week in August Miss Bracy and Mr. Frank were to join him at
Chamounix, and thence the three would make a tour together.  He started
in the highest spirits, and halted at the gate to wave his ice-axe
defiantly. . . .



VI.


The clergyman who ministered to the little tin English Church boarded at
the big hotel, which kept a bedroom and a sitting-room at his disposal.
They faced north from the back of the building, which stood against the
mountain-side; but the sitting-room had a second window at the corner of
the block, and from this the eye went up over a plantation of dark firs
to the white snowfields of the Col and the dark jagged wall of the
Aiguille du Geant--distant, yet as clear as if stencilled against the
blue heaven.  It was a delectable vision; but the clergyman, being
short-sighted as a mole, had never seen it.  He wore spectacles with a
line running horizontally across them, and through these he peered at
Mr. Frank and Miss Bracy as if uncertain of their distance.

Mr. Frank, in a suit of black, sat at the little round table in the
centre of the room, pressing his finger-tips into the soft nap of a
gaudy French table-cloth.  Miss Bracy stood by the window with her back
to the room, but she was listening.  She too wore black.  The fourth
person, at the little clergyman's elbow, was Christian the guide.
It was he who spoke, while Mr. Frank dug his fingers deeper, and the
clergyman nodded at every pause sympathetically, and both kept their
eyes on the table-cloth, the pink and crimson roses of which on their
background of buff and maroon were to one a blur only, to the other a
pattern bitten on his brain.

"It must have been between noon and one o'clock"--the guide was saying--
"when we crossed the Col and began on the rocks.  I was leading, of
course; the Herr next, and Michel"--this was their porter--"behind.
We had halted and lunched at the foot of the rocks.  They were nasty,
with a coating, for the most part, of thin ice which we must knock away;
but not really dangerous.  The Herr was silent; not singing--he had been
singing and laughing all through the morning--but in high spirits.
He kept his breath now for business.  I never knew him fatigued; and
that day I had to beg him once or twice not to press the pace.
Michel was tired, I think, and the wine he had taken earlier had upset
his stomach; also he had been earning wages all the winter in England as
a gentleman's valet and this was his first ascent for the year, so it
may have been that his nerve was wrong.

"The first trouble we had with him was soon after starting on the rocks.
We were roped; and at the first awkward place he said, 'If one of us
should slip now, we are all lost.'  The Herr was annoyed, as I have
never seen him; and I too was angry, the more because what he said had
some truth, but it was not, you understand, the moment to say it.  After
this we had no great trouble until we had passed the place where Herr
Mummery turned back.  About thirty metres from the summit we came to a
bit requiring caution; a small _couloir_ filled with good ice but at a
slope--so!"  Here Christian held his open hand aslant, but Mr. Frank did
not lift his eyes.  "They anchored themselves and held me while I cut
steps--large steps--across it.  On the other side there was no good
foothold within length of the rope, so I cast off, and the Herr came
across in my steps with Michel well anchored.  It was now Michel's turn,
and having now the extra length of rope brought across by the Herr, I
could go higher to a rock and moor myself firmly.  The Herr was right
enough where he stood, but not to bear any strain; so I told him to cast
off that I might look to Michel alone.  While he unknotted his rope I
turned to examine the rock, and at that instant . . . Michel did not
understand, or was impatient to get it over . . . at any rate he started
to cross just as the Herr had both hands busy.  He slipped at the third
step . . . I heard, and turned again in time to see the jerk come.
The Herr bent backward, but it was useless: he was torn from his
foothold--"

The little clergyman nodded and broke in: "They were found, close
together, on a ledge two thousand feet below.  Your son, sir, was not
much mutilated, though many limbs were broken--and his spine and neck.
The bodies were found the next day and brought down.  We did all that
was possible.  Shall I take you and madame to the grave?"

But the guide had not finished.  "He fell almost on top of Michel, and
the two went spinning down the _couloir_ out of sight.  I do not think
that Michel uttered any cry: but the Herr, as the strain came and he
bent backwards against it, seeking to get his axe free and plant
it . . . though that would have been useless . . . the Herr cried once
and very loud . . . such a strange cry!--"

"Madame will be glad," interrupted the clergyman again, who had heard
Christian's story at the inquest,--"Madame will be glad"--he addressed
Miss Bracy, who, as he was dimly aware, had been standing throughout
with face averted, staring up at the far-away cliffs.  "The young man's
last thoughts--"

But Christian was not to be denied.  He had told the story a score of
times during the last three days, and had assured himself by every
evidence that he could tell it effectively.  He was something of an
egoist, too, and the climax he had in mind was that of his own emotions
in recrossing the fatal _couloir_ ropeless, with shaking knees, haunted
by the Englishman's last cry.

"Such a strange cry," he persisted.  "His eyes were on mine for a moment
. . . then they turned from me to the _couloir_ and the great space
below, It was then he uttered it, stretching out his hands as the rope
pulled him forward--yet not as one afraid.  'Mother!' he cried: just
that, and only once--'Mother!'"

Mr. Frank looked up sharply, and turned his head towards Miss Bracy.
The clergyman and the guide also had their eyes on her, the latter
waiting for the effect of his climax.

"It must be a consolation to you--" the clergyman began to mumble.

But Miss Bracy did not turn.  Mr. Frank withdrew his eyes from her and
fixed them again on the gaudy tablecloth.  She continued to stare up at
he clean ice-fields, the pencilled cliffs.  She did not even move.

So Bassett was avenged.



THE CAPTURE OF THE _BURGOMEISTER VAN DER WERF.


A REPORTED TALE OF A DUTCHMAN AND A PRIVATEER

Yes, a heap of folks have admired that teapot.  Hundreds of pounds we
must have been offered for it, first and last, since the night my wife's
grandfather, Captain John Tackabird--or Cap'n Jacka, as he was always
called--brought it into the family over the back-garden wall, and his
funny little wife went for him with the broom-handle.  Poor souls, they
were always a most affectionate couple, and religious too, but not much
to look at; and when he took and died of a seizure in the Waterloo year
she wasn't long in following.

Ay, ay--very pleasant in their lives! though not what you would call
lovely.  I've heard that, through being allowed by his mother to run too
soon, Tackabird's legs grew up so bandy, the other children used to
drive their hoops between them.  And next, at fifteen, what must he do
but upset a bee-skip!  A bee stung him, and all his hair came off, and
for three parts of his natural life be went about as bald as an egg.
To cap everything, he'd scarcely began courting when he lost his left
eye in a little job with the preventive men; but none of this seemed to
make any difference to the woman.  Peters her maiden name was--Mary
Polly Peters; a little figure with beady black eyes.  She believed that
all Captain Jacka's defects would be set right in another world, though
not to hinder her recognising him; and meantime the more he got chipped
about the more she doted on what was left of the man.

Everyone in Polperro respected the couple, for Mary Polly kept herself
_to_ herself, and Captain Jacka was known for the handiest man in the
haven to run a Guernsey cargo or handle a privateer, and this though he
took to privateering late in life, in the service of the "Hand and
Glove" company of adventurers.  By and by Mr. Zephaniah Job, who looked
after these affairs in Polperro--free-trade and privateering both--
started a second company called the "Pride of the West," and put Captain
Jacka to command their first ship, the old _Pride_ lugger; a very good
choice, seeing that for three years together he cleared over forty per
cent. on the adventurers' capital.

The more was his disappointment when they built a new lugger, the
_Unity_, one hundred and sixty tons, and Job gave the command to a smart
young fellow called Dick Hewitt, whose father held shares in the concern
and money to buy votes beside.  I've told you how Jacka swallowed his
pride and sailed as mate under this Hewitt, and how he managed to heap
coals of fire on the company's head.  Well that's one story and this is
another.  I'm telling now of the second boat, when Captain Jacka, or, as
you might say, Providence--for what happened was none of his seeking,
and the old boy acted throughout as innocent as a sucking-child--left
off shaming the company as honest men, and hit them slap in their
pockets, where they could feel.

The bottom of the quarrel was that Mr. Job, the agent, took a dislike to
Jacka.  He was one of your sour, long-jawed sort, a bit of a lawyer,
with a temper like Old Nick, and just the amount of decent feeling that
makes a man the angrier for knowing he's unjust, especially when the
fellow that's hit takes it smiling instead of cursing; and more
especially still when he carries but one eye in his head, and be dashed
if you can tell whether its twinkling back at you out of pure sweetness
of nature or because it sees a joke of its own.  I believe Captain Jacka
twinkled back on Mr. Job as he twinkled on the rest of the world,
willing to be friends and search for the best side of everyone, if he
might be allowed.  But Mr. Job couldn't be sure of this, and I'm fain to
admit the old boy was a trial to him, with his easy-going ways.
Job, you see, was a stickler for order; kept his accounts like the Bank
of England, all in the best penmanship, with black and red ink, and
signed his name at the end with a beautiful flourish in the shape of a
swan, all done with one stroke--he having been a school-master in his
youth, and highly respected at it until his unfortunate temper made him
shy a child out of window, which drove him out of the business, as such
things will.  In young Dick Hewitt he had a captain to his mind: soap
and tidiness and punctuality, and oil and rotten-stone for the very
gun-swivels; all the crew touching caps, and nerve and seamanship on top
of all.  Jacka admired the young spark, for all his boastfulness; for
his own part he could do anything with a ship but keep her tidy.
"What's the use of giving yourself on-necessary work?" he'd say in his
mild manner, if he saw one of his hands coiling a rope or housing a sail
neatly.  "We may be wantin' it any minute, and then you'll be sorry for
labour thrown away."  The dirtiness of his decks was a caution, and this
was the queerer because in his own parlour you might have eaten your
dinner off the floor.  "I reckon," he'd explain, "when the Lord made sea
and land He meant there should be a difference, and likewise when He
made man and woman," and stuck to his untidiness afloat because it made
him the gladder to be at home again.  Mary Polly, though she lived
within forty yards of the sea, and was proud of her husband as any
mortal woman, would never step on board a boat.  The sight of one
(she declared) turned her stomach, and she married their only child to a
house-decorator.

All this untidiness was poison to Mr. Job, and it worked inside the man
until he was just one simmering pot of wrath, and liable to boil over at
the leastest little extra provocation.

One day--it was the tenth of July in the year 'nine; Peter's Tide, and
the Upper Town crowded with peep-shows and ranter-go-rounds, and folks
keeping the feast--Mr. Job takes a stroll down the quay past the
sweet-standings, and cocks his eye over the edge, down upon the deck of
the old _Pride_ that was moored alongside and fitting out for a fresh
cruise.  And there, in the shade of the quay wall, sat old Captain Jacka
with a hammer, tap-tapping at a square of tinplate.

"Hullo!" Mr. Job hailed.  "Where's the crew?"

"Up riding the hobby-horses, I b'lieve," answered Jacka, as friendly as
you please.

"And in thirty-six hours you've engaged to have the _Pride_ ready for
sea!"

"She's about ready now," said Jacka, stopping to put a peppermint in his
mouth.  He had bought a packet off one of the sweet-standings, and
spread it on the deck beside him.  "Feast-day doesn't come round more
than once a year, and I haven't the heart to deny them, with the work so
well forward, too."  The old fellow fairly beamed across his deck, the
raffle of which was something cruel.  "There's a fat woman up there,
too.  I'm told she's well worth seeing."

"You call that dirty mess 'being fit for sea'?" asked Mr. Job, nodding
down, but bottling up his anger after a fashion.  "Look here, Captain
Tackabird, you're a servant of the company; and I'll trouble you to
stand up and behave respectful when the company's agent pays you a visit
of inspection."

"Cert'nly, Mr. Job." Jacka scrambled up to his feet as mild as milk.
"Beg your pardon, sir, I thought you'd just strolled down to pass the
time of day."

"And don't flash that plaguey thing in my eyes, as you're doing."
For Jacka was standing in the sunshine now, with the tinplate in his
hands blazing away like a looking-glass.

"Very well, sir.  Perhaps you'll allow me to fetch a hat out of the
cabin; for my head feels the heat powerful, being so bald.  They do say
it twinkles a bit, too, when the sun catches it the right way."

So down he went to the cabin, and up he came again to find Mr. Job with
his best coat-tails spread, seated on the carriage of the _Pride's_
stern-chaser.

"Oh, Lord!" he couldn't help groaning.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, Mr. Job, nothing."  The fact was, Jacka had smeared a dollop
of honey on that very gun-carriage to keep the wasps off him while he
worked.  The sweet-standings, you see, always drew a swarm of wasps on
feast-days, and the old man never could abide them since his accident
with the bee-skip.

Mr. Job sat there with his mouth screwed up, eyeing the whole length of
the lugger.

"I'd like to know why you were hammering out that tinplate?" said he.
"I can see with my own eyes you've been knocking dents in the deck; but
I s'pose that wasn't your only object."

"I reckoned to tack it over this here hole in the bulwarks where the
tide swung her up against the quay-end."  Captain Jacka showed him the
place.

"I'd have let you have a fresh plank if you'd only reported the damage
in time."

"Oh," said Jacka, "a scrap of tin will answer just as well--every bit."

"I can't think, Captain Tackabird, how it comes that you've no more
regard for appearances.  Just look at the _Unity_, for instance, and how
young Hewitt keeps her."

"Born different, I suppose."

"Ay, and if you don't look out you'll end different.  Patching a boat
with tin!"  Mr. Job let out a rasping kind of laugh.  "But that's
Polperro, all over.  Do you know what they tell about you, down to St.
Ann's?"--Mr. Job came from St. Ann's--"They say, down there, that every
man-child in Polperro is born with a patch in the seat of his--"

Mr. Job stood up and cast a hand behind him, to explain. . . .

"I put it there to keep off the wopses," said Captain Jacka.


"But what did he say?" asked Mary Polly, when her husband brought home
the tale.

"First he said, 'I'll make you pay for this.'  Well, that was fair
enough, for I ought to have warned him; but when I asked the price, and
where the stuff could be matched--for 'twas his best suit, you
understand--all of a sudden he stamps his foot and lets fly with the
most horrible oaths.  It fairly creamed my flesh to hear him.
He's a man of wrath, my love, and the end of him will be worse than the
beginning."

"I daresay; but he'll give you the sack before that happens."

The two poor old souls looked at one another; for Job had control of all
the privateering companies in Polperro, and influence enough to starve a
man out of the place.

"Lev us take counsel of the Lord," said the old boy, as she knew he
would.  So down on their knees they went, and prayed together.
Jacka even put up a petition for Mr. Job, but Mary Polly couldn't say
"Amen" to that.

The next morning Captain Jacka went down to the _Pride_ at the usual
hour, but only to find his crew scrubbing decks and Mr. Job ready for
him.  "There's your marching orders," says the enemy, handing him a
paper; "and if you want a character at any time, just come to me, and
I'll give you a daisy."

Well, the old chap said no word, but turned about then and there, and
back along the quay like a man in a dream.  All the way he kept fumbling
the document without daring to open it, and when he reached his own door
he just sat down on the little low wall outside, laid the cursed thing
on his knee, pulled a bandanna out of his breeches pocket, and polished
the top of his poor head till it fairly blazed in the eye of the sun.

He was sitting there, dazed and quiet, when the door opened and out came
Mary Polly with a rag-mat in her hand, meaning to bang it against the
wall, as her custom was.

"Hullo!" says she, stopping short on the threshold.  "Back again, like a
bad penny?"

"Bad enough, this time," says her husband, without turning round; and
drops his head with a groan.

I must say the woman's behaviour was peculiar.  For first of all she
stepped forward and gave his head a stroking, just as you might a
child's, and then she looks up and down the street, and says,
"I'm ashamed of 'ee, carryin' on like this for all the public to see.
Stick your hands in your pockets," says she.

"What's the use of that?"  But he did it.

"Now whistle."

"Eh?"

"Whistle a tune."

"But I can't."

"You can if you try; I've heard you whistlin' 'Rule Britannia' scores of
times, or bits of it.  Now I'm goin' to beat this mat and make believe
to be talkin' to 'ee.  At the very first sound old Mrs. Scantlebury'll
poke her head out, she always does.  So you go on whistlin', and don't
mind anything I say.  There'll be no peace in life for us after she gets
wind you've been sacked; and just now I want a little time to myself to
relieve my feelin's."

So Jacka started to whistle, feeling mighty shy, and Mary Polly picked
up the mat.

"I wish," says she to the mat, "you was Mr. (whang) Zephaniah (whang)
Job (whang).  I do dearly wish for my life you was Mr. (whang) Zephaniah
(whang) Job (whang).  I'd take your ugly old head with its stivery grey
whiskers and I'd (bang, whang)--I'd (bang, whang)--I'd treat you like
this here mat, and lay you down for folks to wipe their shoes upon, Mr.
(whang) Zephaniah (whang) Job (whang)."

"When Britain first at Heaven's command," whistled Jacka; and the Widow
Scantlebury, two doors up the street, was properly taken in.  An hour
later, when the news of Jacka's dismissal was all over the town, she had
to sit down and consider.  "I see'd him come up the street"--this was
how she told the story, being the sort of woman that never knows where
the truth ends--"just as Mary Polly was shaking out her mat.  He came up
like a whipped dog, stuck his hands in his pockets and started to
whistle, for all the world like a whipped dog, you understand?  Any fool
could see the man had something on his mind and wanted to break it
gentle.  But not she!  Went on banging the mat, if you'll believe me,
till my flesh ached to see a woman so dull-minded.  Of course it wasn'
no business of mine, tho' you _would_ think, after living with a man
thirty years--" and so on, and so on.

But when Mary Polly had relieved her feelings, and the two old souls
were in the kitchen with the door shut behind them, they came very near
to breaking down.  You see, Captain Jacka had followed the trade in
Polperro all his days, and his heart was in it till Mr. Job pulled him
up by the roots.  He and Mary Polly had saved a little, and looked
forward to leaving it to their only child--my wife's mother, that was;
and anyway it wasn't enough to maintain them, let be that to touch a
penny of it would have burnt their fingers.  No; Captain Jacka must find
a new billet.

But in a month or so, when folks had given up sympathising--for Mary
Polly hated to be pitied, and gave them no encouragement--he saw plain
enough that there was no billet for him in a small place like Polperro
where Mr. Job ruled the roost.  Before Christmas his mind was made up;
and early in Christmas week he said good-bye to his wife, marched up to
Four Turnings with his kit on his back, and shipped on board Boutigo's
Two-Horse Conveyance for Falmouth.

There was a Mr. Rogers living at Falmouth who had been a shareholder in
the old "Hand and Glove" company, but had sold out over some quarrel
with Mr. Job; and to him Jacka applied.

"I'm told that seamen are scarce, sir," says he.  "I was wondering if
you could find me a berth anywhere, for I've 'arned forty per cent. for
my employers before now, and could do it again, but for a man of my
unfortunate looks 'tis hard to get a start."

Mr. Rogers tapped the desk with his ruler, like one considering.
"Why have they turned you out?" he asked.  "Anything professional?"

"How could _I_ help Mr. Job's sitting down on a lump of honey?
I put it to you, sir, as a business man."

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mr. Rogers.  "Let's have the story."

So out it all came.  "He's a man of wrath," said Captain Jacka,
"and he'll be sorry for it when he comes to die."

"There's one or two," said Mr. Rogers, "would like to hurry that
reckoning a bit.  Well, well, I can make shift to fit you up with
something for a week or two, and maybe by that time there'll be an
opening aboard one of the Packets.  Just now, in Christmas week,
business is slack enough, but what do you say to going mate on a vessel
as far as the Downs?"

"Nothing I should like better," says Jacka.

"You'd better have a look at her first," says Mr. Rogers.

So he takes Jacka off to the Market Strand, calls for a waterman's
wherry, and inside of ten minutes they were being pulled out to the
Roads.

"There's your ship," says Mr. Rogers, as they pushed out beyond the old
dock into Carrick Roads.

Jacka opened first his eyes and then his mouth.  The vessel was a kind
of top-sail schooner, but with a hull there was no mistaking, the more
by token that the tide was swinging her stern-on, and showing him a pair
of windows picked out in red paint, with shutter-boards and brass hinges
shining.

"Mr. Rogers," he said, "I han't read the _Sherborne Mercury_ lately,
but is--is the war over?"

"No, nor likely to be."

"But, Mr. Rogers, sir, either that there ship is a Dutchman or else I
be."

"Look at her flag, you old fool."

"Never see'd the like of it."

"That's the flag of the Principality of Nibby-Gibby.  Ever heard of it?"

"Can't say I have."

"No more did I till the day before yesterday, and I won't swear I've got
it right yet.  But 'tis somewhere up the Baltic I understand.
That there ship--her name, by the way, is the _Burgomeister Van der
Werf_--is bound up Channel with sugar from Jamaica--with a licence.
Maybe you folks up to Polperro don't know what that means?"

"I only know that, if I'd ran across her in the old _Pride_, I'd have
clapped a crew on board and run her into a British port and no questions
asked."

Says Mr. Rogers, "If that's the way you Polperro men keep abreast of
Board of Trade regulations, it strikes me you might have done worse than
lose your billet with the _Pride of the West_."

In the time left before the waterman brought them alongside, Mr. Rogers
explained, as well as he could, the new system (as it was then) of
licences; by which the Government winked at neutral vessels carrying
goods into the enemy's ports, in spite of the blockade, and bringing us
back Baltic timber for shipbuilding.

"But a Dutchman isn' no neutral," Captain Jacka objected.

"I did hear," said Mr. Rogers, stroking his chin and looking sideways,
"that these licences have their market-price, and that in Amsterdam just
now it's seven hundred rix-dollars."

"Well-a-well, if the Board of Trade's satisfied," says Jacka, "it's not
for the likes of me to object.  But if I was a Christian ruler I should
think twice afore invitin' such a deal of hard swearin'."

"You'll find Captain Cornelisz a Lutheran," Mr. Rogers assured him,
"and a very sociable fellow, with the little English he can muster."

Well, to make my story short, Jacka stepped on board and found the Dutch
skipper monstrous polite and accommodating, though terrible sleepy, the
reason being that, his mate falling sick at Kingston of the yellow
fever, he had been forced to navigate his vessel home single-handed.
He owned up, too, that he had a poor head for ciphering, so that 'twas
more by luck than good management he'd hit off the Channel at all.
At any rate he was glad enough of a chance to shift off responsibility
and take a sound nap, and inside of half an hour the bargain was struck
over a glass of hot schnapps.  Mr. Rogers shook hands and put off for
shore again, and a boat went with him to fetch Jacka's kit, which he'd
left in the office.

At six o'clock the _Van der Werf_ weighed anchor and headed out under
easy canvas.  The wind outside was almost dead contrary, E. by N. and
half E., and blowing a little under half a gale, but the skipper seemed
in a hurry, and Jacka didn't mind.

"She's a good boat by all seeming," said he as they cleared St.
Anthony's light; "but she wants a sea-way.  I reckon, sir, you'd better
stay on deck for a tack or two, till I find how she comes about.
I'm accustomed, you see, to something a bit sharper in the bows, and
just at first that may tempt me to run it too fine."

"Who wants you to run it fine at all?" asked Captain Cornelisz.

"Well, naturally you'll work it in short tacks and hug the English side
pretty close."

"Short tacks?  Not a bit of it; tide'll be running up strong by time
we're out in deep water.  Put her right across for France, keep her
pretty full--she won't bear pinching--and let her rip."

"Risky."

"How's that?"

"_Chasse-marees_ are pretty thick, I'm told, once you get near t'other
side, 'specially between Morlaix and Guernsey, let alone a chance of
dropping across a French cruiser."

"My good man, I've been stopped twice on this voyage already by French
cruisers: once off Brest, and the second time about fifty miles this
side of Ushant."

"You don't tell me!" says Jacka.  "How the dickens did they let you go?"

"Well," answers the Dutchman, "I took the precaution of fitting myself
_with two sets of papers_.  Oh," says he, as Jacka lets out a low
whistle, "it's the ordinary thing in our line of business.  So you just
do as I tell you and make the boards as long as you please, for I'm
dropping with sleep in my boots.  Keep the ship going, and if you sight
anyone that looks like trouble just give me a hail down the companion,
for I can talk to any frigate, British or French."

With that he bundled away below, and Jacka, after a word or two with the
man at the helm, to make sure they understood enough of each other's
lingo, settled down with his pipe for the night's work.

The wind held pretty steady, and the _Van der Werf_ made nothing of the
cross-seas, being a beamy craft and fit for any weather in a sea-way.
Jacka conned her very careful, and decided there was no use in driving
her; extra sail would only fling up more water without improving her
speed.  So he jogged along steady, keeping her full and by, and letting
her take the seas the best way she liked them.  Towards morning he even
began to doze a bit, till warned by a new motion of the ship that she
wasn't doing her best.  He opened his eyes and shouted--

"Up with your helm, ye lubber!  Hard up, I tell ye, and keep her full!"

A pretty heavy spray at that moment came over the bow and took him fair
in the face, and he stumbled aft in none too sweet a temper.  Then he
saw what had happened: the fresh hand at the wheel had dozed off where
he stood and let the _Van der Werf_ run up in the wind.  The fellow was
little more than a boy, and white in the face with want of sleep.
Captain Jacka was always a kind-hearted man.  Said he, as he flung the
spokes round, and the _Van der Werf_ began to pay off: "Look here, my
lad, if you can't keep a better eye open, I'll take a trick myself.
So go you forward and stow yourself somewheres within call."

With that he took the helm, and glad of it, to keep himself awake; and
so held her going till daybreak.

By eight in the morning, just as the light began creeping, and Jacka was
calculating his whereabouts, he lifted his eye over the weather-bow,
and--

"Hullo!" he sings out.  "What's yonder to windward?"

The lad he'd relieved jumps up from where he'd been napping beside the
bitts, and runs forward.  But, whatever he sang out, Jacka paid no
attention; for by this time his own one eye had told him all he wanted
to know, and a trifle more; and he clutched at the wheel for a moment
like a man dazed.  Then, I believe, a sort of heavenly joy crept over
his face, mixed with a sort of heavenly cunning.

"Call up the crew," he ordered.  "I'm going to put her about.  The whole
crew--every man-Jack of them!"

By the time the men tumbled up, Jacka had his helm up, and the _Van der
Werf_, with sheets pinned, was leaning to it and knocking up the
unholiest sputter.

"All right, my lads.  Don't stand glazing at me like stuck pigs.
Stand by to slacken sheets.  I'm going to gybe her."

Well, they obeyed, though not a man of them could guess what he was
after.  Over went the big mainsail with a jerk that must have pitched
Captain Cornelisz clean out of his bunk below; for half a minute later
he comes puffing and growling up the companion and wanting to know in
his best Dutch if this was the end of the world, and if not, what was
it?

"That's capital," says Jacka, "for I was just about stepping down to
call you.  See that lugger, yonder?"  He jerked his thumb over his
shoulder at a speck in the grey from which the _Van der Werf_ was now
running at something like nine knots an hour.

"Well?"

"I know that lugger, and we're running away from her."

"Pack of stuff!" says Captain Cornelisz, or Dutch to that effect.
"D'ee want to be told a dozen times that this is a licensed ship?"
And he called for his flag, to hoist it.

"Oh, drop your fancy pocket-handkerchiefs, and listen to reason, that's
a dear man!  _O' course_ I know you carry a licence; but the point is--
the lugger don't know.  _O' course_ I'm running away from her, by your
leave; but the point is--she can run and reach three miles to our two.
And lastly, _o' course_ you're master here, and can do what you please;
but, if you're not pressed for time, there's money in it, and you shan't
say I didn't give you the chance."

Captain Cornelisz eyed Jacka for a full minute, and then a dinky little
smile started in one eye and spread till it covered the whole of his
wide face.

"You're a knowing one," said he.

"Was never considered so," answered Jacka, very modest.

"She's put about and after us," said the skipper, after a long stare
over his right shoulder.

"She'll have us in less than three hours.  There's one thing to be done,
and that's to stow me somewheres out of the way; for if anyone on board
of her catches sight of me, the game's up.  S'pose we try the lazarette,
if you have such a place.  I like fresh air as a rule, but for once in a
while I don't mind bein' squoze; and, as lazarettes go, yours ought to
be nice and roomy."

"You shall have a bottle of Hollands for company," promised Captain
Cornelisz.

So the hatch was pulled up, and down Jacka crept and curled himself up
in the darkness.  The Dutchman provisioned him there with a bottle of
strong waters and a bag of biscuits, and--what's more--called down to
him so long as was prudent and kept him informed how the chase was
going.

By this time the lugger--which I needn't tell you was Mr. Zephaniah
Job's pet _Unity_, with Captain Dick Hewitt commanding--was closing down
on the _Van der Werf_, overhauling her hand-over-fist.  Down in the
lazarette Jacka had scarcely finished prising the cork out of his bottle
of Hollands when he heard the bang of a gun.  This was the lugger's
command to round-to and surrender; and the old boy, who had been vexing
himself with fear that some cruiser might drop in and spoil sport, put
the bottle to his mouth and drank Mr. Job's very good health.

"For I think," says he to himself, with a chuckle, "I can trust Cap'n
Dick Hewitt to put his foot into this little mess just as deep as it
will go."

With that, being heavy after his night's watch, he tied up his chin in
his bandanna handkerchief to keep him from snoring, curled round, and
dropped off to sleep like a babe.


Well, sir, Cap'n Dick Hewitt brought-to his prize, as he reckoned her;
and when he came aboard and sized up the cargo and the _Unity's_ luck,
as he reckoned it, his boastfulness was neither to hold nor to bind.
No such windfall had been picked up for the _Pride of the West_ during
the four years he'd been in the company's service.  He scarce stayed to
give a glance at the _Van der Werf's_ papers, though Captain Cornelisz
was ready for him with the wrong set.  "I guess," says he, "you'll spare
yourself the trouble to pretend you ain't a Dutchman"; and when the
skipper flung his arms about and began to jabber like a play-actor,
'twas "All right, Mynheer; we'll talk about that at Falmouth.
Look here, boys," he sings out to his boarding party, "we've something
here too good to be let out of sight.  My idea is to reach back for
Polperro in company, and let Mr. Job and the shareholders have a view of
her before taking her round to Falmouth.  It won't cost us three hours
extra," says he, "and a little bit of a flourish is excusable under the
circumstances."

So up for Polperro they bore, half a dozen men from the lugger working
the _Van der Werf_, and old Captain Jacka asleep in her lazarette till
roused out of his dreams by the rattle as they cast anchor half a
cable's length outside the haven.  The tide was drawing to flood and the
evening dusking down, and in sails Captain Dick in the _Unity_ as big as
bull's beef, and shouts his news to all the loafers on the quay.

"But come and take a look at her for yourself," says he to Mr. Job, who
had stepped down with his best telescope.

Job put off that evening in something like a flutter of spirits; for to
tell the truth half a dozen of the shareholders had been cutting up
rough over his treatment of Jacka, and here was an answer for them, and
proof that he'd been right in preaching up Dick Hewitt to be worth ten
of the old man.

Alongside he comes in the _Unity's_ boat, steps aboard, and makes a
polite leg to Captain Cornelisz, with any amount of sham sympathy in his
eye.

"Dear, dear," says he, "this is a very unfort'nit business for you,
Cap'n What's-your-name!  In time of war I s'pose such things must
happen; but I can't help feelin' sorry for you," says he.

"I was thinkin' to reckon the damage at six hundred pounds," says the
Dutch skipper, meek as you please.

"Hey?" says Mr. Job.

"Well, sir, I likes to be reasonable; but it's a question of missing the
convoy, and under the circumstances--case of illegal detention at the
best--you won't consider six hundred pounds out of the way.  Of course,"
says he, "I haven't been allowed to study your lugger's papers, so it
may be flat piracy.  But if your skipper had taken the trouble to study
mine--"

"What in thunder is he telling about?" demanded Mr. Job.

"Only this, sir," answered Captain Cornelisz, smiling very sweet, and
pulling out his licence from his side-pocket, he read, "'And the said
vessel has our protection while bearing any flag except the French, and
notwithstanding the documents accompanying the said vessel and cargo may
represent the same to be destined to any neutral or hostile port, or to
whomsoever such property may appear to belong.'  The wording you see,
sir, is very particular, and under the circumstances I can't say less
than six hundred pounds; but, of course, if you oblige me to take it to
the courts, there's your papers to be considered, which may raise the
question of piracy."


Just an hour later, when Mr. Job had returned to shore in the devil's
own temper to call a hasty meeting of his shareholders--and Captain
Hewitt along with him, with his tail between his Legs--Captain Cornelisz
raised the trap of the lazarette.

"I'm thinking a little fresh air's no more than you deserve," said he.

"But where are we, in this world?" asked Jacka.

"So well as I can learn, 'tis a place called Polperro."

Jacka chuckled.  "Seen anything of a party called Job?"

"He's to bring me six hundred pounds before morning," answered the
Dutchman, lighting his pipe.  "And see here--I'm a fair-dealin' man, and
I own I owe you a good twenty of it.  You shall have it when you leave
the ship, and I'll chance making it right with the owners."

"Very good of you, to be sure," allowed Jacka.

"But that isn't all.  I owe you something on my own account, and if
there's any small favour I can do you, in reason--"

"Well, since you put it so friendly, I'd like an hour or so ashore."

"Ashore?  What, to-night?"

"It's my home, you see," Jacka explained; "and my old woman lives
there."

"You don't say so?  Well, you shall be put ashore as soon as you please.
Anything else?"

"I see'd a very pretty teapot and sugar basin in your cabin yestiddy.
I don't know if you set any particular store by them; but if you don't,
my old woman's terrible fond of china, and you can deduct it out of the
twenty pounds, it you like."

"Shouldn't think of it," says Captain Cornelisz; "they're best Nankin,
and they're yours.  Anything else?"

"Well, if I might ask the loan of a pair of your breeches till
to-morrow.  They seem to me a bit fuller in the seat than mine, and let
alone being handy to carry the china in, they'll be a kind of disguise.
For, to tell the truth, I don't want to be seen in Polperro streets to
be mixed up with this business, and my legs be so bandy that in any
ordinary small clothes there's no mistaking me, even in the dark."


So the _Van der Werf's_ boat landed Jacka that night in pitch darkness
half a mile west of the haven, where a ridge of rock gives shelter from
the easterly swell.  And just half an hour later, as Mary Polly turned
in her sleep, she heard a stone trickle down the cliff at the back of
the cottage and drop thud! into the yard under her window.  She sat bolt
upright in bed.  "There's some villain of a thief after my Minorca's
eggs," said she.

Another stone trickled and fell.  Like the woman of spirit she was, she
jumped out of bed, crept downstairs to the kitchen, picked up the broom,
and listened, with her hand on the latch of the back-door.

She heard the scrape of a toe-plate on the wall outside.

This was too much.  "You mean, sneakin', snivellin', pilferin',
egg-stealin' highwayman!" cries she, and lets fly.

Well, sir, the sugar basin was scat to atoms, but the teapot, as you
see, didn' suffer more than a chip.  The wonder was, she stayed her hand
at the second stroke, old Jacka being in no position to defend himself
or explain.  In later days when she invited her friends to tea, she used
to put it down to instinct.  "Something _warned_ me," she'd say.
But that's how the teapot came into our family.



KING O' PRUSSIA.


REPORTED TALE OF A SMUGGLER, A REVENUE CUTTER, AND AN OFFICIOUS
MINISTER.

You have heard tell, of course, of Captain John Carter, the famous
smuggler of Prussia Cove, and his brothers Harry, Francis, and Charles,
and Captain Will Richards, "Tummels," Carpenter Hosking, Uncle Billy,
and the rest of the Cove boys; likewise of old Nan Leggo and Bessie
Bussow that kept the Kiddlywink[1] there?  Well, well, I see our
youngsters going to school nowadays with their hair brushed, and I hear
them singing away inside the classroom for all the world as if they were
glad to grow up and pay taxes; and it makes me wonder if they can be the
children of that old-fangled race.  Sometimes I think it's high time for
me to go.  There was a newspaper fellow down here when the _General
Walker_ came ashore, and, after asking a lot of questions, he put the
case in a nutshell.  "You're a link with the past," he said; "that's
what you are."  I don't know if he invented the expression, or if he
picked it up somewhere and used it on me, but it's a terrible clever
one.

You mustn't think I'm boasting.  I never knew Captain John; he died in
the year 'seven, and I wasn't born for twelve months after.  But I've
shaken hands with Captain Harry--the one who was taken prisoner by the
French, and came near to losing his head.  He spent his latter years
farming at Rinsey and local preaching; a very earnest man.  He gave me
my first-class ticket--that was in the late twenties, and not long
before his death.  And Captain Will Richards I knew well; he took over
the business after Captain John, and lasted down to the Crimea year.
I carried the coffin; eighty-five his age was, according to the plate on
it; but, of course, the business had come to an end long before.

Everybody calls it Prussia Cove in these days.  The visitors ask for
Prussia Cove, and go and crane their heads over.  You know the place?--
just east of Cuddan Point.  It's three coves really; Pisky's Cove,
Bessie's Cove, and Prussia.  The first has no good landing, but plenty
of good caves; east of that comes Bessie's, where the Kiddlywink stood,
with a harbour cut in the solid rock, and a roadway, and more caves; and
east of that, with a point and a small island dividing them, comes
Prussia, where John Carter had his house.  Before his time it was called
Porthleah, but he got the nickname "King o' Prussia" as a boy, and it
stuck to him, and now it sticks to the old place.  The visitors crane
their heads over (for you must do that to count the vessels in the
harbour right underneath you), and ask foolish questions, and get
answered with a pack of lies.  There's an old tale for one, about a
fellow who heard that the real King of Prussia had been defeated by
Napoleon Bonaparte.  "Ah," says he, "I'm sorry for that man.
Misfortunes never come single; not more'n six weeks ago he lost three
hundred keg of brandy, by information, so I'm told."  All nonsense!
Porthleah never lost but one keg in all John Carter's time, and that was
a leaky one in a pool at Pisky's which the custom-house fellows sniffed
as they went by.  To be sure, one day when the King was away from home,
the collector came round from Penzance, seized a cargo, and carried it
off to the Custom House store.  What did Carter do when he came home and
heard about it?  He had agreed to deliver the goods by a certain day,
his character for honest business was at stake and he wasn't going to
disappoint his customers.  So he rode into Penzance that night, broke
open the Custom House store, and rode back with all his kegs; nothing
else, mind you.  When the officers next morning discovered what had
happened, they allowed at once this was Carter's work, because he was an
honest man and wouldn't take anything that didn't belong to him.

But the tale they tell oftenest is about the battery he kept on Enys
Point, and how he opened fire with it upon His Majesty's vessel; and I
want you to have the rights of _that_ as I had it from Captain Will
Richards himself.  To hear folks speak you would think the King just
opened fire and blazed away for the fun of it; whereas, with all his
daring, he was the quietest, most inoffensive man in the trade, if only
you let him alone.  Mr. Wearne, the collector, understood this, and it
was not by his fault either that the firing came about, but all through
an interfering woman and a preacher who couldn't mind his own business.

It began in this way.  Bessie Bussow had a sister-in-law married and
living over here in Ardevora--Ann Geen was the name of her--a daughter
of Kitty Lemal.  (You've heard tell of Kitty Lemal and her eight
daughters, and her stocking full of guineas?  No?  Well there's another
story for you one of these days.)  This Ann was the youngest of the
eight, and married John Geen latish in life, just in time to bring him a
boy before he left her a widow; and after her mother Kitty died she and
the boy lived together in the old house at Carne Glaze--Ugnes House[2]
they used to call it.  The boy, being the son of old parents, was a
lean, scrag-necked child, with a lollopping big head, too clever for his
years.  He had the Lemals' pluck inside him though, for all his unhandy
looks; and, of course, his mother thought him a nonesuch.

Well, with all the country talking about John Carter and his doings, you
may fancy that every boy in Ardevora wanted to grow up in a hurry and be
off to Prussia Cove a-smuggling.  It took young Phoby Geen (his real
name was Deiphobus) as bad as the rest.  He had been over to the Cove
with his mother on a visit to Bessie Bussow, and there in the Kiddlywink
the King had patted him on his big head and given him a shilling.
After that the boy gave his mother no peace.  She, poor soul, wanted to
make a preacher of him, and wouldn't hear of his going; but often, after
he had turned fifteen, she would be out of bed ten times of a night and
listening at his door to make sure he hadn't run off in the dark.

I told you the boy was clever; and this is how he gained his end.
There had always been a tale that the Ugnes House was haunted--the ghost
being old Reginald Bottrell, Kitty Lemal's father, a very respectable
sea-captain, who died in his bed with no reason whatever for being
uncomfortable in the next world.  Still, "walk" he did, or was said to;
and one fine day the boy came to his mother with a pretty tale.
It went that, the evening before, he and his young cousin, Arch'laus
Bryant, had been lying stretched on their stomachs before the fire in
the big room--he reading the _Pilgrim's Progress_ by the light of the
turves, and Arch'laus listening.  The boys were waiting for their
supper, and for Mrs. Geen to come back from her Saturday's shopping.
Happening to look up as he turned a page, Phoby saw, on the steps which
led down into the room, a brisk, stout little gentleman, dressed in a
long, cutaway coat, black velvet waistcoat and breeches, black ribbed
stockings, and pump shoes tied with a bow.  He twinkled with brass or
gilt buttons--one row down the coat and two rows down the waistcoat--and
each button was stamped with a pattern of flowers.  His head was bald,
except for a bit of hair at the back; he had no hat; and when he turned,
after closing the door behind him, Phoby took notice that his belly was
round and as tight as a drum.  The boy denied being frightened;
"the gentleman," he said, "was most pleasant-looking in all his
features.  I didn't take 'en for a sperat, but for somebody come to see
mother.  I stood up and said, 'Good eveling, sir.  Mother'll be back in
a minute or two if you'll take a seat.'"  "I'm not come for she, but
for thee," he said; "Deiphobus Geen, idle no longer.  Arise, take my
advice, and go a-smuggling."  And with that he vanished through the
door.

The boy pitched this tale to his mother, and Arch'laus backed him up,
adding that the ghost had turned to him and said, "Thou, too, Arch'laus
in a year's time shall be a smuggler--p'r'aps sooner."  He told this to
his father and got strapped for it.  But Mrs. Geen came of a family that
believed in ghosts.  The boy's tale described his grandfather to a
hair--which was not wonderful considering how often she had talked to
Phoby about the old man.  At any rate, after being in two minds for a
week she gave way, after a fashion, and allowed Phoby to run over to
Prussia Cove to his aunt, Bessie Bussow; and Bessie--who loved spirit--
had him apprenticed to Hosking, the Cove carpenter.  Pretty carpenter's
work Hosking was likely to teach him!

Now, after the way of women, the deed was no sooner done than Mrs. Geen
began to repent it.  She knew very well that her dear boy would run into
danger; but she kept her trouble to herself until there arrived at
Ardevora a new Methodist preacher called Meakin.  In those days John
Wesley himself used to pay us a visit pretty well every August or
September, but this year, for some reason or other, he gave us an extra
revival, and sent down this Meakin to us at the beginning of June.
For a very good reason he was never sent again.

He started very well indeed.  You couldn't call him much to look at; he
had a long pair of legs which seemed differently jointed to yours and
mine; no shoulders nor stomach to speak of, no-coloured hair, and a
glazing, watery eye.  But the wonder began when you heard his voice.
It filled his clothes out suddenly like one of those indiarubber
squeakers the children blow at Whitsun Fair; and coming from a man whose
looks were all against him, it made you feel humble-minded for having
been so quick to judge.  I think he had found out the value of this kind
of surprise and went about neglecting his appearance on purpose.

As I say, he started very well.  He preached at the Stennack on
Saturday, and next day near the market-place, "for the sake," he said,
"of those who could not climb the hill"--though, to be sure, they
needn't have left their doors to hear him a mile off.  There was a tidy
gathering--farm-carts and market-carts and gigs from all parts of the
country round--almost as many as if he had been John Wesley himself.
He preached again at five o'clock in the evening, and so fired up Mrs.
Geen that by ten next morning she was down at Nance's house, where he
lodged, laying all her trouble before him.

Mr. Meakin heard her out, and then took a line which altogether
surprised her.  He seemed to care less for the danger her Phoby was
running than for the crime he was committing.  Yes; he called it a
crime!

"As a Christian woman," he said, "you must know his soul's in danger.
What in comparison with that does his body matter?"

Mrs. Geen hadn't any answer for this, so what she said was, "My Phoby
've never given me a day's trouble since his teething."  And then,
seeing the preacher was upset, and wishing to keep things as pleasant as
possible, she went on, "I don't see no crime in learning to be a
carpenter."

"By your own showing," said Mr. Meakin, "he is in danger of being led
into smuggling by wild companions."

"Nothing wild about John Carter," she held out.  "A married man and as
steady as you could wish to see; a man with convictions of sin, as I
know, an' two of his brothers saved.  You couldn' hear a prettier
preacher than Charles.  And John, he always runs a freight most careful.
I never heard of any wildness at all in connection with he--not a
whisper."

The preacher fairly stamped, and began tapping the palm of his hand with
his forefinger.

"But the smuggling, ma'am--that's what I call your attention to!
The smuggling itself is not only a crime but a sin; every bit as much a
sin as the violence and swearing which go with it."

"No swearing at all," said Ann Geen.  "You don't know John Carter, or
you wouldn' suggest such a thing.  Every man that swears in his employ
is docked sixpence out of his pay.  My sister-in-law keeps the money in
a box over her chimney-piece, and they drink it out together come
Christmas."

By this the preacher was fairly dancing.  "Woman!" he shouted, soon as
he could recover his mouth-speech.

"I'm no such thing!" said she, up at once and very indignant.
"And your master, John Wesley, would never have said it."

The preacher took a gulp and tried a quieter tack.  "I beg your pardon,
ma'am," says he, "but you seemed to be wilfully misunderstanding me.
Let us confine ourselves to smuggling," says he.

"Very well," says she; "I'm agreeable."

"I tell you, then, that it's a sin; it's defrauding the King just as
much as if you dipped your hand into His Majesty's pocket"--"I shouldn'
dream of being so familiar," said Mrs. Geen, but he didn't hear her--
"and if you'll permit me, I'll explain how that is," he said.

"Well," she allowed, folding the shawl about her which she always wore
in the hottest weather; "you can say what you mind to about it, so long
as you help me get my Phoby back.  That's what I come for."

I daresay, now, you've sometimes heard it brought up against us in these
parts that we're like the men of Athens, always ready to listen to any
new thing.  The preacher took up his parable then and there; and being,
as I say, an able man in spite of his looks, within half an hour he had
actually convinced the woman that there was something to be ashamed of
in smuggling.  And as soon as he'd done that, nothing would satisfy her
but to hire the pony-cart from the George and Dragon and drive the
preacher to Prussia Cove the very next day to rescue her boy from these
evil companions.  "'Twould be a great thing to convince John Carter,"
she said, "and a feather in your cap.  And even if you don't, the place
is worth seeing, and he usually kills a pair of ducks for visitors."

So early the next day (Tuesday, June 4), away they started; and, the day
being hot and the pony slow, arrived at Bessie Bussow's about four
o'clock.  'Tis a pretty peaceable spot on a June afternoon, with the sun
dropping out to sea and right against your eyes; and this day the Cove
seemed more peaceable than ordinary--the boats at anchor, no sound of
work at all, and scarcely a sign of life but the smoke from Bessie
Bussow's chimney.

"Where's my boy?" was the first question Mrs. Geen put to her
sister-in-law after the two women had kissed each other.

"Out seaning," answered Bessie, as prompt as you please.
"But most likely he'll be home some time to-night.  The master's got a
new sean-boat, and all the boys be out working her.  There's not a soul
left in the Cove barring the master himself and Uncle Billy."

"Well, I'm glad of my life the boy's at such innocent work; but I've
come to see John Carter and take him away.  The preacher here says that
smuggling is a sin and the soul's destruction; he's quite sure of it in
his own mind, and whiles there's any doubt I don't want my Phoby to risk
it."

"Aw?" said Bessie.  "I'd dearly like to hear how he makes that out.
But I han't got time to be talking just now.  You'd best take him across
and let him try to persuade John Carter, while I get your room ready.
I saw John going towards his house ten minutes ago, and I'se warn he'll
offer the preacher a bed and listen to all he's got to say."

So, having stabled the pony, Mrs. Geen and the preacher walked over to
Carter's house together.  They found the King in his kitchen-parlour,
divided between his accounts and a mug of cider, and he made them
welcome, being always fond of preachers and having a great respect for
Ann Geen because of her family.

There was a great heap of shavings in the fire-place, for the room was a
sunny one, facing south by west.  But the King told her where to find
some tea that had never paid duty, and she took off her bonnet and
boiled the kettle in the kitchen at the back, and it wasn't till they'd
drunk a cup that she explained what had brought her, and called on the
preacher to wrestle.

Captain John listened very politely, or seemed to, and nodded his head
at the right time; but he couldn't help being a bit absent-minded.
Fact was, he expected a cargo home that very evening, and didn't feel so
easy about it as usual.  Up to now he had always run his stuff in
goodish-sized vessels--luggers or cutter-rigged craft running up to
fifty or sixty tons as we should reckon now.  But Captain Will Richards
had taken a great fancy to the Cawsand plan of using light-built open
row-boats or, as you might say, galleys, pulling eight oars, and put
together to pass for sean-boats.  After the war, when there was no
longer any privateering, vessels like Captain Carter's, carrying
eighteen or twenty guns apiece, couldn't pretend to be other than
smugglers or pirates, and then these make-belief sean-boats came into
use everywhere.  But just now they were a novelty.  The King, persuaded
by Richards, ordered one down from Cawsand, and had already used it once
or twice to meet his larger craft somewhere in a good offing and
tranship their cargoes.  By this he could run his kegs ashore at any
state of the tide, leaving the empty vessels to be watched or overhauled
by the Customs' fellows.

But this time--the weather being fine and settled, and the winds light--
he was trying a faster game, and had sent the sean-boat right across
channel to Roscoff, keeping his sailing-craft in harbour.  It would be
dark before nine, no moon till after mid-night, and by all calculations
the boat ought to make the cove between ten and eleven, after lying well
outside and waiting her chance.  It all seemed promising enough, but
somehow the King couldn't be quite easy.

However, he listened quietly, and the preacher talked away for one solid
hour, until Uncle Billy Leggo (who had been keeping watch all the
afternoon) came knocking at the door.  "You'll excuse me a minute," said
the King, and went outside to hear the report.  The weather had been
flat calm all day, with a slow ground-swell running into the cove, but
with the cool of the evening a light off-shore breeze had sprung up, and
Uncle Billy had just seen the Revenue cutter stealing out from Penzance.

"Botheration!" said Captain Carter, and fined himself sixpence.
Then he went back to the parlour, and the preacher started afresh.

Twice again before supper came Uncle Billy with news of the cutter's
movements, and the second time there could be no mistaking them, for she
was dodging back and forth and lying foxy around Cuddan Point.

All through supper the preacher talked on and on, and the King ate
without knowing what he was eating.  He couldn't afford to lose this
cargo; yet Mr. Collector Wearne meant business this time, and would
collar the boat to a certainty unless she were warned off.  But to show
a light from the coast meant a hundred pounds fine or twelve months'
hard labour.  The King slewed round in his chair and looked at the great
pile of shavings in the fireplace.  A hundred pounds fine with the
chance of burning the house-thatch about his ears!

Supper over, he and his guests turned their chairs towards the
fireplace.  The King took flint and steel and struck a match; lit his
pipe, and stared at the shavings; then dropped the light on the floor,
ground it out with his heel, and puffed away thoughtfully.  The preacher
went on talking.

"Render unto Caesar . . . tribute to whom tribute is due.  That applies
to King George to-day every bit so much as it did to Caesar."

"Caesar and King George be two different persons," said Captain John,
stopping his pipe with his thumb.

"The principle's the same."

"I don't see it," said the captain.  "I read my Bible, and it says that
Caesar ordered the whole world to be taxed.  Now that's sense.
Caesar didn't go niggling away with a duty on silk here and another on
brandy there and another on tea and another on East Indy calicoes.  Mind
you, I've got no personal feeling against King George; but it does annoy
me to see a man calling hisself King of England and making money in
these petty ways."

"It's his birthday to-day," put in Mrs. Geen; "though I didn't remember
it till I saw the flag on Ardevora church-tower this morning."

"Is it?  Then we'll drink his health, ma'am, to show there's no
animosity."  Captain John fetched a bottle of brandy and glasses and
mixed drinks for his guests.  Then he took his seat, reached out for
flint and steel again, and says he very quietly--

"I wish the boys were at home.  We'd have a bonfire."

"Up to Walsall--that's where I come from," said the preacher, "we always
kept up His Majesty's birthday with a bonfire and fireworks.  But you
don't seem so loyal in these parts."

"Fireworks?  Did you now?"  Captain John set down the tinder-box and
rubbed his chin.  "Well," said he, going to a cupboard, and glancing up
on his way at the tall clock, "as it happens I've a rocket or two here--
though to be sure it seems like a waste, with nobody left in the Cove to
see or raise so much as a cheer."

"It's the spirit of the thing that counts," said the preacher.

"They've lain here so long," Captain John went on in a sort of musing
way, "they may be mildewed, for all I know."

"You leave that to me," said the preacher; "I knows all about fireworks.
There don't seem nothing wrong about this one," he said, taking it and
fingering the fuse.  "May I have a try with 'em?"

"Try, and welcome.  I don't understand these things for my part: I only
know they takes up a lot of room in the cupboard, and I'll be glad to
see the last of 'em."

So out into the night they three went together.  But when they had the
rocket fixed, Captain John was taken that poorly he had to come back and
sit in the chair, and rub his thighs and his stomach.  And when, sitting
there, he heard the rocket go up, _whoosh!_ he had to rub them the
harder.

"It went off capital!" called the preacher, popping his head in at the
door.  "Can't us try another?"  And now Captain John had to rub his eyes
before turning to him.  "Take the lot," he said, and pushed the whole
bundle into the preacher's hands.  "Aw, if King George had a few more
friends like you!  Take the lot of 'em, loyal man!"  He fairly thrust
him out to door, and had to lean a hand there before he could follow,
feeling weak all over to think of Collector Wearne and his men, and what
their faces must be like, down in the Revenue cutter; but he had no time
to taste the fun of it properly, for just then he heard Bessie Bussow's
voice outside asking questions all of a screech.  The first rocket had
fetched her over hot-foot and agog, and the captain had to run out and
stop her tongue, and send her home with Ann Geen.  But they didn't go
till the preacher had touched off every single rocket, stepping back
as they went _whoosh! whoosh!_ and waving his hat and crying, "God save
the King!"  "God save the King!" cried Captain John after him, and
Bessie stood wondering if the end of the world had come, or the master
had gone clean out of his wits.

The captain used to try and explain it afterwards when he told the
story.  "You've seen a woman in hysterics," he'd say, "and you know how
a man feels when he wants to drop work and go on the drink for a week.
Well, 'twasn' exactly one or t'other with me, but a little like both.
I'm a level-headed tradesman, and known for such, but if ever that chap
walks into my house again, I'll be wise, and go straight out by the back
door and put myself under restraint."

After the women had gone, he took the fellow back to the kitchen, and
sat putting questions to him in a reverent sort of voice, and eyeing him
as awesome as Billy Bennett when he hooked the mermaid, until the poor
creature talked himself sleepy, and asked to be shown to his room.
Captain Carter saw him to bed, came downstairs to the parlour again, and
spread himself on the sofa for forty winks; for between the boat dodging
out to sea and the pack-horses waiting ready up at Trenowl's farm above
the hill, there was no going to bed for him that night.

He had been sleeping maybe for two hours, when a whistle fetched him to
his feet and out of the door like a scout.  'Twas nothing more nor less
than the boys' arrival signal, and this was what had happened.

When the preacher's first rocket went off, the collector, down on board
the cutter, was taking his bit of supper in the cabin.  At the sound of
it he rushed up the companion, and found all his crew on deck with their
necks cricked back, barring one man, who that moment popped his head up
through the fore-hatchway.  "What on earth was that?" he asked.
"A rocket, sir," said the chief boatman; "just sent up from Prussia
Cove." Mr. Wearne couldn't find his breath for a moment; but when he
did, 'twas to say, "Very well, John Carter.  I've a-got you this time,
my dandy!  I don't quite understand how you come to be such a fool.
But that rocket costs you a hundred pounds, and if I'm not mistaken I'll
have your cargo 'pon top of it."

The breeze still blew pretty steady, and he gave orders to stand out
into the bay, get an offing, and keep a sharp look-out as the moon rose.
He knew that all Carter's ordinary craft, except the sean-boat, were
quiet at anchor at Bessie's Cove; but he reckoned that the boat had gone
out this time to meet and unload a stranger.  He never dreamed she would
be crossing all the way to Roscoff and back on her own account.
He knew, too, that Carter had a "spot" near Mousehole to fall back upon
when a landing at Prussia Cove couldn't be worked.  So he stood out to
put the cutter on a line commanding both places, which, with the
soldier's wind then blowing, was easy enough; and as she pushed out her
nose past Cuddan Point the whole sky began to bang with rockets.

This puzzled him fairly, as Carter knew it would.  And it puzzled the
Cove boys in the sean-boat as they lay on their oars about three miles
from shore and discussed the first warning.  But in one of the flashes
Captain Harry Carter, who was commanding, spied the cutter's sails quite
plain under the dark of the land, plain enough to see that she was
running out free.  He knew that he couldn't have been seen by her in the
heave of the swell, for the sean-boat lay pretty low with her heavy
cargo, and he'd given her a lick of grey paint at Roscoff by way of
extra precaution.  So, thought he, "A signal's a signal; but brother
John doesn't know what I know.  Let the cutter stand out as she's going,
and we'll nip in round the tail of her.  She can't follow into the Cove,
with her draught, even if she spies us; and by daybreak we'll have the
best part of the cargo landed."  And so he did, muffling oars and
crossing over a mile to southward of the cutter, and after that way-all!
and pull for the Cove.

The preacher at John Carter's, and Mrs. Geen at Bessie Bussow's, both
woke early next morning.  But Mrs. Geen was first by a good hour, and
what pulled the preacher out of bed was the sound of guns.  He put his
head out of window, and could hardly believe it was the peaceful place
he'd come upon last evening.  The beach swarmed with men like emmets.
Near up, by high-water mark, men were unloading a long-boat for dear
life--some passing kegs, others slinging them to horses, others running
the horses up the cliff under his window.  At first he thought it must
be their trampling had woke him out of sleep, but the next moment
_bang!_ the room shook all about him, a cloud of smoke drifted up
towards him from the Enys Point, and through it, while 'twas clearing,
he saw John Carter and another man run to the battery and begin to load
again, with Mrs. Geen behind them waving a rammer, and dancing like a
paper-woman in a cyclone.  Below the mouth of the Cove tossed a boatload
of men, pulling and backing with their heads ducked, their faces on a
level with their shoulders, and all turned back towards the battery,
while a big red-faced man stood up in the stern-sheets shaking his fist
and dancing almost as excitedly as Mrs. Geen.  Still farther out, a fine
cutter lay rocking on the swell, her bosom swinging and sails shaking in
the flat calm.

The preacher dragged on his clothes somehow, tore out of the house and
down to the Point as fast as legs would carry him.  "Wha--what's the
meanin' of this?" he screeched, rushing up to Captain John, who was
sighting one of his three little nine-pounders.

"Blest if _I_ know!" said the captain.  "We was a peaceable lot enough
till you and Mrs. Geen came a-visiting; but you two would play Hamlet's
ghost with a Quaker meeting."

"It's my Phoby--they're after my Phoby!" screamed Mrs. Geen, and then
she turned on the fellow behind Captain John; it was Hosking, once a
man-of-war's man, and now supposed to be teaching her boy the carpentry
trade.  "_This_ is what you bring en to, is it?  You deceiver, you!
You bare-faced villain!" (The man had a beard as big as a furze bush.)
"Look at the poor lamb up there loadin' the hosses, and to think I bore
and reared en for this!  If you let one of they fellows lay hands on my
Phoby I'll scratch out ivery eye in your head . . ."

"Stand by, Tim," says the captain quietly.  "Drat the boat!  If she
keeps bobbiting about like that I shall hit her, sure 'nuff!"
_Bang!_ went the little gun, and kicked backwards clean over its
carriage.  The shot whizzed about six feet above the boat, and plunged
into the heaving swell between it and the cutter.  "Bit too near, that.
I don't want to hurt Roger Wearne, though he _do_ make such tempting,
ugly faces."

"But what do they want?  What are they after?" stuttered the preacher.

"They're after my Phoby!" cried Mrs. Geen.

"Not a bit of it," said Captain John good-humouredly.  "From all I can
see it's the preacher here they want to collar."

"_Me!_" screams the poor man--"_me!_"

"Well, if you _will_ go letting off rockets.  I dunno what it costs up
to Walsall, or wherever you come from, but down in these parts 'tis a
hundred pound or twelve calendar months."

The preacher turned white and began to shake all of a sudden like a
leaf.  "But I didn't mean--I had no idea--you don't intend to tell me--"
he stammered.

"Here, Tummels!" Captain John hailed a man who came running down to lend
a hand with the guns.  "Take the preacher here and fix him on one of the
horses; sling a keg each side of him if he looks like tumbling off.
Sorry to hurry you, sir," he explained; "but 'tis for your good.
You must clear out of this before the officers get sight of your face,
and I don't know how much longer I can frighten 'em off.  When you get
up to Trenowl you can cast loose and run, and it mayn't be time wasted
if you make up an _alibi_ as you go along.  It don't seem hospitable, I
grant ee, but as a smuggler you're too enterprising for this little
out-o'-the-way cove."

Tummels led the preacher away in too much of a daze to answer.
He opened his mouth, but at that moment _bang!_ went Hosking with
another of the guns.  By and by Captain John let out a chuckle as he saw
the poor man moving up the cliff track, swaying between two kegs and
clutching at his horse's mane every time Tummels smacked the beast on
the rump.  The horse he rode was almost the last.  By seven o'clock the
boys had cleared the whole of their cargo, and still the preventive boat
hung in the mouth of the Cove, pulling and backing and waiting for the
chance Captain John never allowed them.

You see, Captain Harry, having dodged in behind the cutter without being
spied, had a pretty start with the unloading.  When day broke, Mr.
Wearne, finding no sean-boat or suspicious craft in sight, and allowing
that there was no fear of another attempt before nightfall, had stood
down again for Prussia Cove, meaning to send in a boat (for the cutter
drew too much water) and have it out with Captain Carter about the
rockets.  You can fancy his face when he came abreast the entrance and
found the boys working like a hive of bees.  As for resistance, the King
always swore he hadn't an idea of it till Mrs. Geen put it into his
head.  The battery was never intended for more than show.  "She's a
wonderful woman," he declared; but he had a monstrous respect for all
the Lemals.  "Blood in every one of 'em," he said.

But, of course, the fun wasn't finished yet.  Soon after seven, and
after the last of the cargo had been salved under their eyes, the
preventive men drew off.  By a quarter past eight Wearne had worked the
cutter in as close as he dared, and then opened fire with his guns.
The first shot struck the 'taty-patch in front of Carter's house; the
second plunked into the water not fifteen yards from the gun's muzzle.
In the swell running she could make no practice at all, though she kept
it up till midday.  The boys behind the battery ran out and cheered
whenever one flew extra wide, and this made Wearne mad.  Will Richards,
Tummels, and young Phoby Geen posted themselves in shelter behind the
captain's house, and whenever a shot buried itself in the soft cliff one
of them would run with a tubbal and dig it out.  All this time Uncle
Bill Leggo, having finished loading up the kegs, was carting water from
the stream on the beach to the kitchen garden above the house, and his
old sister Nan leading the horses (for it was a two-horse job).
Richards called to him to leave out, it was too dangerous.  "Now there,"
said Uncle Bill, "I've been thinkin' of Nan and the hosses this brave
while!"

At noon Wearne ceased firing, and sent off a boat towards Penzance.
The Cove boys still held the battery; and the two parties had their
dinners, lit their pipes and studied each other all the long
after-noon.  But towards five o'clock a riding company arrived to help
the law, and opened a musket fire on the rear of the battery from the
hedge at the top of the hill.  The game was up now.  The boys scattered
and took shelter in Bessie Bussow's house, and Captain John, having
hoisted a flag of truce, waited for Wearne and his boat with all the
calmness in life.

"A pretty day's work this!" was the collector's first word as he stepped
ashore.

"Amusin' from first to last," agreed Captain John in his cordial way.

Says the collector slowly, "Well, tastes differ.  You may be right, of
course, but we'll begin at the beginning, and see how it works out.
First, then, at nine forty-five last night you showed an unauthorised
light for the purpose of cheating the revenue.  Cost of that caper, one
hundred pounds."

"Be you talkin' of the rockets?"

"'Course I be."

"Well then, _I_ didn't fire them, nor anyone belongin' to the Cove.
I didn't set anyone to fire them, and they waren't fired to warn
anybody.  Let alone I have proof they was sent up by a Methody preacher
to relieve his feelin's.  You've known me too long, Roger Wearne, to
think me fool enough to waste a whole future joy[3] over so simple a
business as warnin' a boat."

"What are you tellin' me?"

"The truth, as I always do; and I advise you to believe it, or 'twon't
be the first time you've seen too far into a brick wall."

Wearne knew well enough what Captain John meant.  Just a year before he
had paid a surprise visit to the Cove, ferreted out a locked shed and
asked to be shown what was inside.  The King refused.  "It held
nothing," he said, "but provisions for his brother Henry's vessel."
Of course Wearne couldn't believe this; a locked store in Prussia Cove
was much too sure a thing.  So first he argued, and then he broke the
door open, and, sure enough, found innocent provisions inside just as
he'd been promised.  Next morning the shed was empty.  "Didn' I warn
'ee," said John, "against breaking in that door and leaving my property
exposed.  Now I'll have to make 'ee pay for it;" and pay for it Wearne
did.

"All I know," the captain went on, "is that a Methody preacher paid me a
visit last night, with the objic (so far as I can make out, for things
have been movin' so fast I hadn't time to question en as I wished) o'
teachin' me what was due to King George.  In pursooance o' which--it
being His Majesty's birthday--he took and fired a dozen rockets I keep
on the off-chance of wantin' one of these days to signal the Custom
House at Penzance.  I own 'twas a funny thing to do, but folks takes
their patriotism different.  I daresay, now, _you_ didn't even remember
'twas His Majesty's birthday."

Wearne tried a fresh tack.  "We'll take that yarn later on," he said.
"You can't deny a cargo was run this morning."

"We'll allow it for the moment.  But that only proves that no boat was
warned away."

"And when I sent a boat in to capture it, you deliberately opened fire;
in other words, tried to murder me, His Majesty's representative."

"Tried to murder you?  Look here."  Captain John stepped to one of his
still loaded guns and pointed it carefully at a plank floating out at
the mouth of the Cove--a plank knocked by the cutter's guns out of Uncle
Bill Leggo's 'taty patch, and now drifting out to sea on the first of
the ebb.  He pointed the gun carefully, let fly, and knocked the bit of
wood to flinders.  "That's what I do when I try," he said.  "Why, bless
'ee, I was no more in earnest than _you_ were!"

This made Wearne blush for his marksmanship.  "But _you'll_ have to
prove that," he said.

"Why, damme," said John Carter, and fined himself

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