← catalogue

The Blue Pavilions

by Arthur Quiller-Couch · English · Gutenberg #19977 · 382,192 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Blue Pavilions
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Blue Pavilions

Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch


        
Release date: November 30, 2006 [eBook #19977]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19977

Credits: E-text prepared by Lionel Sear


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLUE PAVILIONS ***


E-text prepared by Lionel Sear



THE BLUE PAVILIONS.

by

Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch (Q).

This e-text was prepared from a reprint of a version published in
1891.







TO A FORMER SCHOOLFELLOW.


MY DEAR ----,

I will not write your name, for we have long been strangers; and I,
at any rate, have no desire to renew our friendship.  It is now ten
years and more from the end of that summer term when we shook hands
at the railway-station and went east and west with swelling hearts;
and since then no report has come of you.  In the meantime you may
have died, or grown rich and esteemed; but that you have remained the
boy I knew is clearly beyond hope.

You were a genius then, and wrote epic poetry.  I assume that you
have found it worth while to discontinue that habit, for I never see
your name among the publishers' announcements.  But your poetry used
to be magnificent when you recited it in the shadow of the deserted
fives-court; and I believe you spoke sincerely when you assured me
that my stories, too, were something above contempt.

To the boy that was you I would dedicate a small tale, crammed with
historical inaccuracy.  To-day, no doubt, you would recognise the
story of Captain Seth Jermy and the _Nightingale_ frigate, and point
out that I have put it seventeen years too early.  But in those days
you would neither have known nor cared.  And the rest of the book is
far belated.

                                                        Q.

Shiplake, 20 _November_, 1891.




CONTENTS.


Chap.

       DEDICATION.

I.     CAPTAIN JOHN AND CAPTAIN JEMMY.

II.    THE DICE-BOX.

III.   THE TWO PAVILIONS.

IV.    THE TWO PAVILIONS (continued).

V.     A SWARM OF BEES.

VI.    THE EARL OF MARLBOROUGH SEEKS RECRUITS.

VII.   THE CAPTAINS MAKE A FALSE START.

VIII.  FATHER AND SON.

IX.    THE FOUR MEN AT THE "WHITE LAMB".

X.     THE TRIBULATIONS OF TRISTRAM.

XI.    THE GALLEY "L'HEUREUSE".

XII.   WILLIAM OF ORANGE.

XIII.  CAPTAIN SALT EFFECTS ONE SURPRISE AND PLANS TWO MORE.

XIV.   THE GALLEYS AND THE FRIGATE.

XV.     BACK AT THE BLUE PAVILIONS.



THE BLUE PAVILIONS.



CHAPTER I.


CAPTAIN JOHN AND CAPTAIN JEMMY.

At noonday, on the 11th of October, 1673, the little seaport of
Harwich, beside the mouth of the River Stour, presented a very lively
appearance.  More than a hundred tall ships, newly returned from the
Dutch War, rode at anchor in the haven, their bright masts swaying in
the sunshine above the thatched and red-tiled roofs of the town.
Tarry sailors in red and grey kersey suits, red caps and flat-heeled
shoes jostled in the narrow streets and hung about St. Nicholas's
Churchyard, in front of the Admiralty House, wherein the pursers sat
before bags and small piles of money, paying off the crews.
Soldiers crowded the tavern doors--men in soiled uniforms of the
Admiral's regiment, the Buffs and the 1st Foot Guards; some with
bandaged heads and arms, and the most still yellow after their
seasickness, but all intrepidly toasting the chances of Peace and the
girls in opposite windows.  Above their laughter, and along every
street or passage opening on the harbour--from Cock and Pye Quay,
from Lambard's stairs, the Castleport, and half a dozen other
landing-stages--came wafted the shouts of captains, pilots,
boatswains, caulkers, longshore men; the noise of artillery and
stores unlading; the tack-tack of mallets in the dockyard, where Sir
Anthony Deane's new ship the _Harwich_ was rising on the billyways,
and whence the blown odours of pitch and hemp and timber, mingling
with the landward breeze, drifted all day long into the townsfolk's
nostrils, and filled their very kitchens with the savour of the sea.

In the thick of these scents and sounds, and within a cool doorway,
before which the shadow of a barber's pole rested on the cobbles,
reclined Captain John Barker--a little wry-necked gentleman, with a
prodigious hump between his shoulders, and legs that dangled two
inches off the floor.  His wig was being curled by an apprentice at
the back of the shop, and his natural scalp shone as bare as a
billiard-ball; but two patches of brindled grey hair stuck out from
his brow above a pair of fierce greenish eyes set about with a
complexity of wrinkles.  Just now, a coating of lather covered his
shrewish underjaw.

The dress of this unlovely old gentleman well became his rank as
captain of his Majesty's frigate the _Wasp_, but went very ill with
his figure--being, indeed, a square-cut coat of scarlet, laced with
gold, a long-flapped blue waistcoat, black breeches and stockings.
Enormous buckles adorned the thick-soled shoes which he drummed
impatiently against the legs of his chair.

The barber--a round, bustling fellow--stropped his razor and prattled
gossip.  On a settle to the right a couple of townsmen smoked,
listened, and waited their turn with an educated patience.

"Changes, indeed, since you left us, Captain John," the barber began,
his razor hovering for the first scrape.

"Wait a moment.  You were about to take hold of me by the nose.
If you do it, I'll run you through.  I thought you'd like to be
warned, that's all.  Go on with your chatter."

"Certainly, Captain John--'tis merely a habit--"

"Break yourself of it."

"I will, sir.  But, as I was saying, the changes will astonish you
that have been at sea so long.  In the first place, a riding-post
started from hence to London and from London hither a-gallop with
brazen trumpet and loaded pistols, to keep his Majesty certified
every day of the Fleet's doings, and the Fleet of his Majesty's
wishes; and all Harwich a-tremble half the night under its
bedclothes, but consoled to find the King taking so much notice of
it.  And the old jail moved from St. Austin's Gate, and a new one
building this side of Church Street, where Calamy's Store used to
stand--with a new town-hall, too--"

Here, as he paused to scrape the captain's cheek, one of the two
townsmen on the settle--a square man in grey, with a red waistcoat--
withdrew the long pipe from his mouth and groaned heavily.

"What's that?" asked the hunchback snappishly.

"That, sir, is Mr. Pomphlett," the barber explained.  "He disapproves
of the amount spent in decorating the new hall with pillars, rails,
balusters, and what not; for the king's arms, to be carved over the
mayor's seat and richly gilt, are to be a private gift of Mr. Isaac
Betts, and the leathern fire-buckets to be hung round the wall--"

Mr. Pomphlett emitted another groan, which the barber good-naturedly
tried to drown in talk.  Captain Barker heard it, however.

"There it is again!"

"Yes, sir.  You see Mr. Pomphlett allows his public spirit to run
high.  He says--"

The little captain jerked round in his chair, escaping a gash by a
hair's-breadth, and addressed the heavy citizen--

"Mr. Pomphlett, sir, it was not for the sake of listening to your
observations upon public affairs that I came straight off my ship to
this shop, but to hear the news."

The barber coughed.  Mr. Pomphlett feebly traced a curve in the air
with his pipe-stem, and answered sulkily--

"I s-said nun-nothing.  I f-felt unwell."

"He suffers," interposed Mr. Pomphlett's neighbour on the settle, a
long-necked man in brown, "from the wind; don't you, Pomphlett?"

Mr. Pomphlett nodded with an aggrieved air, and sucked his pipe.

"Death," continued the man in brown, by way of setting the
conversation on its legs again, "has been busy in Harwich, Barker."

"Ah! now we come to business!  Barber, who's dead?"

"Alderman Croten, sir."

"Tut-tut.  Croten gone?"

"Yes, sir; palsy took him at a ripe age.  And Abel's gone, the Town
Crier; and old Mistress Pinch's bad leg carried her from us last
Christmas Day, of all days in the year; and young Mr. Eastwell was
snatched away by a chain-shot in the affair with the Smyrna fleet;
and Mistress Salt--that was daughter of old Sir Jabez Tellworthy, and
broke her father's heart--she's a widow in straitened circumstances,
and living up at the old house again--"

"_What!_"

Captain Barker bounced off his chair like a dried pea from a shovel.

"There now!  Your honour's chin is wounded."

"P'sh! give me your towel."  He snatched it from the barber's arm and
mopped away the blood and lather from his jaw.  "Mistress Salt a
widow?  When?  How?"

"I thought, maybe, your honour would know about it."

"Don't think.  Roderick Salt dead?  Tell me this instant, or--"

"He was drowned, sir, in a ditch, they tell me, but two months after
he sailed with his company of Foot Guards, in the spring of this
year.  It seems 'twas a ditch that the Marshal Turenne had the
misfortune to forget about--"

"My hat--where is it?  Quick!"

Already Captain Barker had plucked the napkin from his throat, caught
up his sword from a chair, and was buckling on the belt in a
tremendous hurry.

"But your honour forgets the wig, which is but half curled; and your
honour's face shaved on the one side only."

The hunchback's answer was to snatch his wig from between the
apprentice's tongs, clap it on his head, ram his hat on the top of
it, and flounce out at the shop door.

The streets were full of folk, but he passed through them at an
amazing speed.  His natural gait on shipboard was a kind of
anapaestic dance--two short steps and a long--and though the crowd
interrupted its cadence and coerced him to a quick bobbing motion, as
of a bottle in a choppy sea, it hardly affected his pace.  Here and
there he snapped out a greeting to some ship's captain or townsman of
his acquaintance, or growled testily at a row of soldiers bearing
down on him three abreast.  His angry green eyes seemed to clear a
path before him, in spite of the grins which his hump and shambling
legs excited among strangers.  In this way he darted along High
Street, turned up by the markets, crossed Church Street into West
Street, and passed under the great gate by which the London Road left
the town.

Beyond this gate the road ran through a tall ravelin and out upon a
breezy peninsula between the river and the open sea.  And here
Captain Barker halted and, tugging off hat and wig, wiped his crown
with a silk handkerchief.

Over the reedy marsh upon his right, where a windmill waved its lazy
arms, a score of larks were singing.  To his left the gulls mewed
across the cliffs and the remoter sandbanks that thrust up their
yellow ridges under the ebb-tide.  The hum of the little town sounded
drowsily behind him.

He gazed across the sandbanks upon the blue leagues of sea, and
rubbed his fingers softly up and down the unshaven side of his face.

"H'm," he said, and then "p'sh!" and then "p'sh!" again; and, as if
this settled it, readjusted his wig and hat and set off down the road
faster than ever.

A cluster of stunted poplars appeared in the distance, and a long
thatched house; then, between the trees, the eye caught sight of two
other buildings, exactly alike, but of a curious shape and colour.
Imagine two round towers, each about forty feet in height, daubed
with a bright blue wash and surmounted with a high-pitched, conical
roof of a somewhat darker tint.  Above each roof a gilt vane
glittered, and a flock of white pigeons circled overhead or,
alighting, dotted the tiles with patches of silver.

A bend of the road broke up this cluster of trees and buildings.
The long thatched house fell upon the left of the highway, and in
front of it a sign-post sprang into view, with a drinking-trough
below.  Directly opposite, the two blue roofs ranged themselves side
by side, with long strips of garden and a thick privet hedge between
them and the road.  And behind, in the direction of the marsh, the
poplars stretched in an irregular line.

Now the nearer of these blue pavilions was the home of Captain
Barker, who for more than two years had not crossed its threshold.
Yet he neither paused by its small blue gate nor glanced up the
gravelled path.  Nor, though thirsty, did he turn aside to the porch
of the Fish and Anchor Inn; but kept along the privet hedge until he
came to the second blue gate.  Here he drew up and stood for a moment
with his hand on the latch.

A trim lawn stretched before him to the door of the pavilion, and
here, on a rustic seat before an equally rustic table, sat a long
lean gentleman, in a suit of Lincoln green faced with scarlet, who
gazed into a pewter tankard.  His sword lay on the turf beside him,
and a hat of soft cloth edged with feathers hung on the arm of the
bench.

This long gentleman looked up as the gate clicked, stretched out his
legs, rose, and disappeared within the pavilion, returning after a
minute with a jug of beer and a fresh tankard.

"Paid off your crew already?"

The little hunchback took a pull, answered "No" as he set down the
tankard, and looked up at the weathercock overhead.

"Wind's in the south-east."

The long man looked at the little one and pursed up his mouth.
His face proclaimed him of a like age with Captain Barker.
It did not at all match his figure, being short as a bull-dog's; and
like a bull-dog he was heavily jowled.  Many weathers had tanned his
complexion to a rich corn-colour.  His name was Jeremy Runacles, and
for two years, that had ended on this very morning, he had commanded
the _Trident_ frigate.  As he climbed down her ladder into his gig he
had left on the deck behind him a reputation for possessing a shorter
temper than any three officers in his Majesty's service.  At present
his steel-blue eyes seemed gentle enough.

"You've something to tell," he said, after a minute's silence.

The hunchback kicked at a plantain in the turf for two minutes
longer, and asked--

"How's the little maid, Jemmy?"

"Grown.  She's having her morning nap."

"She want's a mother."

"She'll have to do with a nurse."

"You don't want to marry again?"

"No."

"That's a lie."

Before Captain Runacles could resent this, the little man turned his
back and took six paces to the party hedge and six paces back.

"I say, Jemmy, do you think we could fight?"

"Not decently."

"I was thinking that.  I don't see another way out of it, though."

He kicked the plantain out of the ground, and, looking up, said very
softly--"Meg's a widow."

Captain Jeremy Runacles sat down on the rustic bench.  A hot flush
had sprung into his face and a light leapt in his eyes; but he said
nothing.  Captain Barker cocked his head on one side and went on--

"Yes, you lied, Jemmy.  That fellow, as I guess, ran off and left
her, finding that the old man had the courage to die without coming
to reason.  He went back to his regiment, sailed, and was drowned in
a ditch.  She's back at the old house, and in want."

"You've seen her?"

"Look here, Jemmy.  You and I are a couple of tomfools; but we try to
play fair."

"Upon my soul, Jack," observed Captain Jemmy, rising to his feet
again, "we can't fight.  You're too good a fellow to kill."

"H'mph, I was thinking that."

As if by consent, the pair began to pace up and down the turf, one on
either side of the gravelled path.  At the end of three minutes
Captain Jack looked up.

"After all, you've been married once, whereas I--"

"That doesn't count," the other interrupted.  "I married in an
unguarded moment.  I was huffed with Meg."

"No, I suppose it doesn't count."

They resumed their walk.  Captain Jemmy was the next to speak.

"It seems to me Meg must decide."

"Yes, but we must start fair."

"The devil! we can't propose one in each ear.  And if we race for
it--"

"You must give me half a mile's start."

"But we can write."

"Yes; and deliver our letters together at the door."

"On the other hand, I've always heard that women look upon a written
proposal of marriage as rather tame."

"That objection would hardly apply to two in one day.  And, besides,
she knows about us."

"We'll write," said Captain Jemmy.

He went into the pavilion to search for pens and paper, while Captain
Barker stepped down to the Fish and Anchor to borrow a bottle of ink.

"There must be preliminaries," the little man observed, returning and
setting the ink down in the centre of the rustic table, on which
already lay a bundle of old quills and some quarto sheets of yellow
paper.

"As for instance?"

"_Imprimis_, a thick folio book for me to sit on.  The carpenter
built this table after your measure."

"I will fetch one."

"Also more beer."

"I will draw some."

"Thirdly, a time-keeper.  My stomach's empty, but it can hold out for
another hour.  We'll give ourselves an hour; start together and
finish together."

Captain Runacles fished a silver whistle from his waistcoat pocket
and blew on it shrilly.  The blue and white door of the pavilion was
opened, and a slight old man in a blue livery appeared on the step
and came ambling down the path.  The weight of an enormous head, on
the top of which his grey wig seemed to be balanced rather than
fitted, bowed him as he moved.  But he drew himself up to salute the
two captains.

"Glad to welcome ye, Captain John, along with master here.  Hey, but
you've aged--the pair o' ye."

"Simeon," said his master, "draw us some beer.  Aged, you say?"

"Aye--aged, aged: a trivial, remediless complaint, common to folk.
Valiant deeds ye'll do yet, my masters; but though I likes to be
hopeful, the door's closin' on ye both.  Ye be staid to the eye,
noticeably staid.  The first sign o't, to be marked at forty or so,
is when a woman's blush pales before wine held to the light; the
second, and that, too, ye've passed--"

"Hurry, you old fool!  As it happens you've been proving us a pair of
raw striplings."

"Hee-hee," tittered the old man sardonically, and catching up the
tankards trotted back to the house, with his master at his heels.
Captain Barker, left alone, rearranged his neckcloth, contemplated
his crooked legs for a moment with some disgust, and began to trot up
and down the grass-plot, whistling the while with great energy and no
regard for tune.

The pair reappeared in the doorway--Captain Runacles bearing an
hour-glass and a volume of "Purchas," and Simeon the tankards,
crowned with a creamy froth.

"Have you picked your quill?"

"Yes," answered the hunchback, settling himself on top of the brown
folio.  "No, 'tis a split one."

The pens were old, and had lain with the ink dry upon them ever since
the outbreak of the Dutch War.  The two men were half a minute in
finding a couple that would write.  Then Captain Runacles turned the
hour-glass abruptly; and for an hour there was no sound in the
pavilion garden but the scratching of quills, the murmur of pigeons
on the roof, and the creaking of the gilded vane above them.



CHAPTER II.


THE DICE-BOX.

That same afternoon, at four o'clock, Captain Barker and Captain
Runacles entered Harwich and advanced up the West Street side by
side.  Each had a bulky letter in his side-pocket, and the address
upon each letter was the same.  They talked but little.

On the right-hand side of West Street, as you enter the town, and a
hundred yards or more from the town gate, there stood at that time a
two-storeyed house of more pretensions than its fellows--from which
it drew back somewhat.  A line of railings, covered with ironwork of
a florid and intricate pattern, but greatly decayed, shut it off from
the roadway.  The visitor, on opening the broad iron gate over which
this pattern culminated in the figure of a Triton blowing a
conch-shell, found himself in a pebbled court and before a massive
front-door.

Neglect hung visibly over house and court alike as the two captains
entered by the iron gate and looked around them with more trepidation
than they had ever displayed in action.  Grass sprouted between the
pebbles and a greenish stain lay upon the flagstones.  The drab
frontage was similarly streaked; dust and rain together had set a
crust upon the windows, and tufts of dark mossy grass again
flourished in the gutter-pipes beneath the eaves.

Surveying this desolation, Captain Jemmy uttered a grunt and Captain
John a "p'sh!"  They fumbled in their pockets, drew out their two
letters, and moved to the blistered front-door.  A bell-pull, as
rusty as the railings outside, depended by the jamb.  Captain Jemmy
tugged at it.  It was noteworthy that whenever any effort had to be
put forth, however small, the tall man stepped forward and the
hunchback looked on.  It was Captain Jemmy, for instance, who had, a
moment before, pushed back the gate.

He had to tug thrice before a discordant bell sounded within the
house, and twice again before footsteps began to shuffle along the
passage.

A bolt was let down and the big door fell open, disclosing a small
serving-girl, who stared upon the visitors with round eyes.

"Is your mistress within?"

"Mistress Salt is within, sirs; but--"

"But what?"

"She--she can't see you!" The girl burst into tears.

"Who the devil asked her to see us?" rapped out Captain Barker.

"You are to take these two letters," interposed Captain Runacles.
Each captain held out his letter.  "You are to take these two--blow
your nose and dry your eyes--letters to your mistress at once--mind
you, _at once_--and together--_together_, you understand, and--what
in thunder are you whimpering about?"

"I c-c-can't, sirs."

"Can't!  Why, in the name of--don't drip on 'em, I tell you!  Why, in
the name of--"

The iron gate creaked behind them, and the two captains turned their
heads.  A portly, broad-shouldered gentleman, in a suit of snuff
colour, came slowly across the court, with both hands behind him, and
a cane rapping against his heels.

"Dr. Beckerleg."

"Hey?  Why--Captain Barker!  Captain Runacles!  Glad to see you
both--glad to see you both home again!  Also I'd be glad to know what
you're both doing here, at such a time."

The captains looked at each other and coughed.  They turned towards
the doorway.  The serving-girl had disappeared, taking their letters
with her.  Captain Barker faced round upon the Doctor.

"You said 'at such a time,' sir."

"I did."

"And why not at this time, as well as another?"

"God bless me! Is it possible you don't know?"

"It is not only possible, but certain."

The Doctor bent his head, pointed up at a window, and whispered; then
went softly up the three steps into the house.

He left the two friends staring at each other.  They stood and stared
at each other for three minutes or more.  Then Captain Barker spoke
in a hoarse whisper.

"Jemmy, do you know anything about this--this kind of business?"

"Nothing.  I was abroad, you know, when my own little maid--"

"Yes, I remember.  But I thought, perhaps--say, I can't go home
till--till I've seen the Doctor again."

"Nor I."

A dull moan sounded within the house.

"Oh, my God!" groaned Captain Runacles; "Meg--Meg!"

A lattice was opened softly above them and the doctor leant out.

"Go away--you two!" he whispered and waved his hand towards the gate.

"But, Doctor--"

"H'sh! I'll come and tell you when it's over.  Where shall you be?"

"At the Three Crowns, down the street here."

"Right."

The lattice was closed again very gently.  Captain Barker laid his
hand upon the tall man's sleeve.

"Jemmy, we're out of this action.  I thought I knew what it meant to
lay-to and have to look on while a fight went forward; but I didn't.
Come--"

They passed out of the courtyard and down the street towards the
Three Crowns.  Beneath the sign of that inn there lounged a knot of
officers wearing the flesh-coloured facings of the Buffs, and within
a young baritone voice was uplifted and trolling, to the
accompaniment of clinking glasses, a song of Mr. Shirley's:

     You virgins that did late despair
        To keep your wealth from cruel men,
     Tie up in silk your careless hair:
        Soft Peace is come again! . . .

There was one sitting-room but no bedroom to be had at the Three
Crowns.  So they ordered up a dinner which they could not touch, but
sat over in silence for two weary hours, drinking very much more
burgundy than they were aware of.  Captain Jemmy, taking up three
bottles one after another and finding them all empty, ordered up
three more, and drew his chair up to the hearth, where he sat kicking
the oaken logs viciously with his long legs.  The little hunchback
stared out on the falling night, rang for candles, and began to pace
the room like a caged beast.

Before midnight Captain Runacles was drunk.  Six fresh bottles stood
on the table.  The man was a cask.  Even in the warm firelight his
face was pale as a sheet, and his lips worked continually.

Captain Barker still walked up and down, but his thin legs would not
always move in a straight line.  His eyes glared like two globes of
green fire, and he began to knock against the furniture.  Few men can
wait helplessly and come out of it with credit.  Every time Captain
John hit himself against the furniture Captain Jemmy cursed him.

     Tie up in silk your careless hair;
        Soft Peace is come again!

--Sang the little man, in a rasping voice.  "Your careless hair," he
hiccoughed; "your careless hair, Meg!"

Then he sat down on the floor and laughed to himself softly, rocking
his distorted body to and fro.

"Bah!" said his friend, without looking round.  "You're drunk."
And he poured out more burgundy.  He was outrageously drunk himself,
but it only affected his temper, not his wits.

"Meg," he said, "will live.  What's more, she'll live to marry me."

"She won't.  She'll die.  Hist! there's a star falling outside."

He picked himself up and crawled upon the window-seat, clutching at
the red curtains to keep his footing.

"Jemmy, she'll die! What was it that old fool said to-day?
The door's closing on us both.  To think of our marching up, just
now, with those two letters; and the very sun in heaven cracking his
cheeks with laughter at us--us two poor scarecrows making love thirty
years after the time!"

His wry head dropped forward on his chest.

After this the two kept silence.  The rest of the house had long
since gone to rest, and the sound of muffled snoring alone marked the
time as it passed, except when Captain Jemmy, catching up another oak
log, drove it into the fire with his heel; or out in the street the
watch went by, chanting the hour; or a tipsy shouting broke out in
some distant street, or the noise of dogs challenging each other from
their kennels across the sleeping town.

A shudder of light ran across the heavens, and over against the
window Captain Barker saw the east grow pale.  For some while the
stars had been blotted out and light showers had fallen at intervals.
Heavy clouds were banked across the river, behind Shotley; and the
roofs began to glisten as they took the dawn.

Footsteps sounded on the roadway outside.  He pushed open the window
and looked out.  Doctor Beckerleg was coming up the street, his hat
pushed back and his neckcloth loosened as he respired the morning
air.

The footsteps paused underneath, by the inn door; but the little
Captain leant back in the window-seat without making a sign.  He had
seen the Doctor's face.  Before the fire Captain Jemmy brooded, with
chin on breast, hands grasping the chair-rail and long legs stretched
out, one on each side of the hearth.  The knocking below did not
rouse him from this posture, nor the creaking of feet on the stairs.


Doctor Beckerleg stood in the doorway and for a moment contemplated
the scene--the empty bottles, the unsnuffed candles guttering down
upon the table, and the grey faces of both drunken men.  Then he
turned and whispered a word to the drawer, who had hurried out of bed
to admit him and now stood behind his shoulder.  The fellow shuffled
downstairs.

Captain Barker struggled with a question that was dried up in his
throat.  Before he could get it out the Doctor shook his head.

"She is dead," he announced, very gravely and simply.

The hunchback shivered.  Captain Runacles neither spoke nor stirred
in his chair.

"A man-child was born at two o'clock.  He is alive: his mother died
two hours later."

Captain Barker shivered again, plucked aimlessly at a rosette in the
window-cushion, and stole a quick glance at his comrade's back.
Then, putting a finger to his lip, he slid down to the floor and
lurched across to the Doctor.

"She was left penniless?" he whispered.

"That, or almost that, 'tis said," replied Dr. Beckerleg in the same
key, though the question obviously surprised him.  "Her father left
his money to the town, as all know--"

"Yes, yes; I knew that.  Her husband--"

"Hadn't a penny-piece, I believe: pawned her own mother's jewels and
gambled 'em away; thereupon left her, as a dog his cleaned bone."

The little man laid a hand on his collar, and as the doctor stooped
whispered low and rapidly in his ear.

Their colloquy was interrupted.

"I'll adopt that child!" said Captain Runacles from the hearth.
He spoke aloud, but without turning his head.

Captain Barker hopped round, as if a pin were stuck into him.

"You!--adopt Meg's boy!"

"I said that."

"But you won't."

"I shall."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Jemmy; but I intend to adopt him
myself."

"I know it.  You were whispering as much to the Doctor there."

"You have a little girl already."

"Precisely.  That's where the difference comes in.  This one, you'll
note, is a boy."

"A child of your own!"

"But not of Meg's."

Captain Runacles turned in his chair as he said this, and, reaching a
hand back to the table, drained the last bottle of burgundy into his
glass.  His face was white as a sheet and his jaw set like iron.
"But not of Meg's," he repeated, lifting the glass and nodding over
it at the pair.

His friend swayed into a chair and sat facing him, his chin but
just above the table and his green eyes glaring like an owl's.

"Jemmy Runacles, _I_ adopt that boy!"

"You're cursedly obstinate, Jack."

"Having adopted him, I shall at once quit my profession and devote
the residue of my life to his education.  For a year or two--that is,
until he reaches an age susceptible of tuition--I shall mature a
scheme of discipline, which--"

"My dear sir," the Doctor interposed, "surely all this is somewhat
precipitate."

"Not at all.  My resolution was taken the instant you entered the
room."

"That hardly seems to me to prove--"

The little man waved aside the interruption and continued:
"Tristram--for I shall have him christened by that name--"

"He'll be called Jeremiah," decided Captain Runacles shortly.

"I've settled upon Tristram.  The name is a suitable one, and
signifies that its wearer is a child of sorrow."

"Jeremiah also suggests lamentations, and has the further merit of
being my own name."

"Tristram--"

"Jeremiah--"

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," cried Dr. Beckerleg, "would it not be as well
to see the infant?"

"I can imagine," Captain Barker answered, "nothing in the infant that
is likely to shake my resolution.  My scheme of discipline will be
based--"

"Decidedly, Jack, I shall have to run you through," said his friend
gloomily.  Indeed, the Doctor stood in instant fear of this
catastrophe; for Captain Runacles' temper was a byword, and not even
his customary dark flush looked so dangerous as the lustreless,
sullen eyes now sunk in a face that was drawn and pinched and
absolutely wax-like in colour.  To the Doctor's astonishment,
however, it was the little hunchback who now jumped up and whipped
out his sword.

"Run me through!" he almost screamed, dancing before the other and
threatening him with absurd flourishes--"Run me through?"

"Listen, gentlemen; listen, before blood is spilt!  To me it appears
evident that you are both drunk."

"To me that seems an advantage, since it equalises matters."

"But whichever of you survives, he will be unable to forgive himself;
having sinned not only against God, but also against logic."

"How against logic?"

"Permit me to demonstrate.  Mrs. Salt, whom (as I well know) you
esteemed, is lost to you; and in her place is left a babe whom--
healthy though he undoubtedly is--you cannot possibly esteem without
taking a great deal for granted, especially as you have not yet set
eyes on him.  Now it is evident that, if one of you should kill the
other, a second life of approved worth will be sacrificed for an
infant of purely hypothetical merits.  As a man of business I condemn
the transaction.  As a Christian I deprecate the shedding of blood.
But if somebody's blood must be shed, let us be reasonable and kill
the baby!"

Captain Barker lowered his point.

"Decidedly the question is more difficult than I imagined."

"At least it cannot be settled before eating," said Dr. Beckerleg, as
the drawer entered with a tray.  "You will forgive me that I took the
liberty of ordering breakfast as soon as I looked into this room.
Without asking to see your tongues, I prescribed dried herrings and
home-brewed ale; for myself, a fried sole, a beef-steak reasonably
under-done, a kidney-pie which the drawer commended on his own
motion, with a smoked cheek of pork, perhaps--"

"You wish us to sit still while you devour all this?"

"I am willing to give each side of the argument a fair chance."

"But I find nothing to argue about!" exclaimed Captain Runacles,
pushing his plate from him after a very faint attempt to eat.
"My mind being already made up--"

"And mine," interrupted Captain Barker.

"If I suggest that both of you adopt the child," Dr. Beckerleg begun.

"Still he must be educated; and our notions of education differ.
Moreover, when we differ--as you may have observed--we do so with
some thoroughness."

"Let me propose, then, a system of alternation, by which you could
adopt the boy for six months each, turn and turn about."

"But if--as would undoubtedly happen--each adoptive parent spent his
six months in undoing the other's work, it must follow that, at the
end of any given period, the child's mind would be a mere _tabula
rasa_.  Suppose, on the other hand, we failed to wipe out each
other's teaching, the unfortunate youth would be launched upon life
with half his guns pointed inboard and his needle jerking from one
pole to the other.  Consider the name, Jeremiah Tristram!"

"It is heterogeneous," admitted the Doctor.

"He would be called Tristram Jeremiah," Captain Barker put in.

"Well, but that is not less heterogeneous.  O wise Solomon!" cried
the Doctor, with his mouth full of kidney-pie; "had I but the
authority you enjoyed in a like dispute, I would resign to you all
the credit of originality!"

"As it is, however, you are wasting our time, and it becomes clear
that we must fight, after all."

"By no means; for I have this moment received an inspiration.
Drawer!"

The drawer answered this summons almost before it was uttered, by
appearing in the doorway with a dish of eggs and a fresh tankard.

"Set the dish down and attend," commanded Dr. Beckerleg.  "You have a
dice-box and dice in the house?"

"No, sir.  His worship the Mayor--"

"My good fellow, the regulations against play in this town are well
known to me; also that the Crowns is an orderly house.  Let me
suggest, then, that you have several gentlemen of the army lodging
under this roof; that one of these, if politely asked, might own that
he had come across such a thing as a dice-box during his sojourn in
the Low Countries.  It may even be that in the sack of some
unpronounceable town or other he has acquired a specimen, and is
bringing it home in his valise to exhibit it to his family.  Be so
good as to inform him that three gentlemen, in Room No. 6, who are
about to write a tractate on the amusements of the Dutch--"

"By your leave, sir, I don't know how it may be on campaign; but in
this house we never awaken a soldier for any reason which he cannot
grasp at once."

"In that case let him have his sleep out before you vex him with our
apologies.  But meanwhile bring the dice."

The fellow went out, whispered to the chamber-maid, and returned in
less than five minutes with a pair of dice and a leathern box much
worn with use.

"They belong," he whispered, "to a young gentleman of the Admiral's
regiment, who was losing heavily last night."

"Thank you; they are the less likely to be loaded.  You may retire
for a while.  My friends," the Doctor continued, as soon as they were
alone, "Aristotle invented Chance to account for the astonishing fact
that there were certain things in the world which he could not
explain.  I appeal to it for as cogent a reason.  Indeed, had
Mistress Margaret--whose soul God has this night resumed--had she, I
say, been spared to receive and ponder the two letters which I saw
you deliver at her door; and had she invited me, as a tried friend,
to decide between them, I feel sure I should have ended by putting a
dice-box into her hands.  Do not blush.  No true man need blush that
he has loved such a woman: and you are both true men, if a trifle
obstinate--_justi et tenaces propositi_.  Men of your character,
Flaccus tells us, do not blench at the thunderbolts of Jove himself;
and truly, I can well imagine his missile fizzing harmlessly into
your party hedge, unable to decide between the pavilion of Captain
John and the pavilion of Captain Jeremy.  But Chance, being witless,
discriminates without trouble; and because she is blind, her
arbitraments offend nobody's sensibility.  Do you consent?"

The two captains looked at the dice-box and nodded.

"The conditions?"

"One throw," said Captain Runacles.

"And the highest cast to win," added Captain Barker.

"You, Captain Barker, are the senior by a year, I believe.  Will you
throw first?"

The little man caught up the box, rattled the dice briskly, and
threw--four and three.

Captain Runacles picked them up, and made his cast deliberately--six
and ace.

"Gentlemen, you must throw again.  Fortune herself seems to hesitate
between you."

Captain Barker threw again, and leant back with a sob of triumph.

"Two sixes, upon my soul!" murmured the Doctor.

"I'm afraid, Captain Jeremy--" Captain Jeremy took the dice up,
turned them between finger and thumb, and dropped them slowly into
the box.  As he lifted his hand to make the cast he looked up and saw
the gleam in his friend's greenish eyes.

The next moment box and dice flew past the hunchback's head and out
at the open window.

"That's my throw," Captain Runacles announced, standing up and
turning his back on the pair as he staggered across the room for his
hat.  But the little man also had bounced up in a fury.

"That's a vile trick!  I make the best throw, and you force me to
fight."

"Ah," said the other, facing slowly about and putting on his hat.
"I didn't see it in that light.  Very well, Jack, I decline to fight
you."

"You apologise?"

"Certainly."

The little man held out a hand.  "I might have known, Jemmy, you were
too good a fellow--" he began.

"Oh, stow away your pretty speeches and take back your hand.  I can't
prevent your playing the fool with Meg's child; but if I had a decent
excuse, you may make up your mind I'd use it.  As it is, the sight of
you annoys me.  Good morning!"

He went out, slamming the door after him, and they heard him descend
the stairs and turn down the street.

"A day's peace," mused Captain Barker, "strikes me as more expensive
than a year's war.  It has cost me my two dearest friends."

He strode up and down the room muttering angrily; then looked up and
said:

"Take me to Meg; I want to see her."

"And the child?"

"To be sure.  I'd clean forgotten the child."

Dr. Beckerleg led the way downstairs.  A pale sunshine touched the
edge of the pavement across the road, and while Captain Barker was
settling the bill, the doctor stepped across and picked a dice-box
out of the gutter.

"Luckily I found the dice, too; they were lying close together," said
he, as his companion came out.  He turned the box round and appeared
to be reflecting; but next moment walked briskly into the bar and
returned the dice to the drawer, with a small fee.

"She is not much changed?" asked the Captain, as they moved down the
street arm in arm.

"Eh? You were saying?  No, not changed.  A beautiful face."

Though middle-aged and lined with trouble it was, as Dr. Beckerleg
said, a beautiful face that slept behind the dusty window above the
court where the sparrows chattered.  From a chamber at the back of
the house the two men were met, as they climbed the stairs, by the
sound of an infant's wailing.  Dr. Beckerleg went towards this, after
opening for the Captain the door of a room wherein no sound was at
all.

When, half an hour later, Captain Barker came out and closed this
door gently, Dr. Beckerleg, who waited on the landing, forbore to
look a second time at his face.  Instead he stared fixedly at the
staircase wall and observed:

"I think it is time we turned our attention upon the child."

"Take me to him by all means."

Margaret's son was reclining, very red and angry, in the arms of
an old woman who attempted vainly to soothe him by tottering up
and down the room as fast as her decrepit legs would carry her.
The serving-girl, who had opened the door on the previous evening,
stood beside the window, her eyes swollen with weeping.

"He is extremely small," said the Captain.

"On the contrary, he is an unusually fine boy."

"He appears to me to want something."

"He wants food."

"Bless my soul! Has none been offered to him?"

"Yes; but he refuses it."

"Extraordinary!"

"Not at all.  I understand--do I not?--that you have adopted this
infant."

The Captain nodded.

"Then your parental duties have already begun.  You must come with me
at once and choose a wet nurse."

As they passed through the hall to the front-door, Captain Barker
perceived two letters lying side by side upon a table there.
He snatched them up hastily and crammed one into his pocket.
Then, handing the other to Dr. Beckerleg:

"You might give that to Jemmy when you see him, and--look here, as
soon as the child is out of the house, I think--if you went to
Jemmy--he might like to see Meg, you know."



CHAPTER III.


THE TWO PAVILIONS.

Captain Barker and Captain Runacles had been friends from boyhood.
They had been swished together at Dr. Huskisson's school, hard by the
Water Gate; had been packed off to sea in the same ship, and
afterwards had more than once smelt powder together.  Admiral Blake
and Sir Christopher Mings had turned them into tough fighters by sea;
and Margaret Tellworthy had completed their education ashore, and
made them better friends by rejecting both.  In an access of misogyny
they had planned and built their blue pavilions, beside the London
road, vowing to shut themselves up and look on no woman again.
This happened but a short time before the first Dutch War, in which
the one served under Captain Jonings in the _Ruby_ and the other had
the honour to be cast ashore with Prince Rupert himself, aboard the
_Galloper_.  Upon the declaration of peace, in the autumn of 1667,
they had returned, and, forgetting their vow, laid siege again to
their mistress, who regretted the necessity of refusing them thrice
apiece.

Upon his third rejection, Jeremy Runacles was driven by indignation
to offer his hand at once to Mistress Isabel Seaman, sister of that
same Robert Seaman who, as Mayor of Harwich, admitted Sir Anthony
Deane to the freedom of the Corporation, and had the honour to
receive, in exchange, twelve fire-buckets for the new town-hall.
As Mistress Isabel inherited a third of the profits amassed by her
father in the rope-making trade, she was considered a good match.
Captain Barker, however, resented the marriage on the ground that she
was out of place in a pavilion expressly designed for a confirmed
bachelor.  When, after a few months, her husband also began to hold
this view, Mrs. Runacles, instead of reminding him that he, and he
alone, was to blame for her intrusion, did her best to make matters
easy by quitting this world altogether on St. Bartholomew's Eve,
1670, leaving behind her the smallest possible daughter.  But as this
daughter at once required a nurse, the alleviation proved to be
inconsiderable--as Mr. Runacles would have delighted to point out to
his wife, had she remained within earshot.  As it was, he took
infinite pains to select a suitable nurse, and forthwith neglected
the child entirely--a course of conduct which was not so culpable as
might be supposed, since (with the sole exception of Mrs. Runacles)
he had never been known to err in choosing a subordinate.  In times
of peace he gave himself up to studying the mathematics, in which he
was a proficient, and to the designing of such curious toys as
sundials, water-clocks, pumps, and the like; which he so multiplied
about the premises, out of pure joy in constructing them, that
Simeon, his body-servant, had much ado to live among the many
contrivances for making his life easier.

Although the two pavilions were exactly similar in shape and
colour, their gardens differed in some important respects.
On Captain Runacles' side of the hedge all was order--trim turf
and yews accurately clipped, though stunted by the sea winds.
Captain Barker's factotum, Narcissus Swiggs by name, was a slow man
with but a single eye.  His orbit in gardening was that of the four
seasons, but he had the misfortune to lag behind them by the space of
three months; while the two sides of the gravel path, though each
would be harmonious in itself, could only be enjoyed by shutting one
eye as you advanced from the blue gate to the blue front-door.
The particular pride of Captain Barker's garden, however, was a
collection of figure-heads set up like statues at regular intervals
around the hedge.  The like of it could be found nowhere.
Here, against a background of green, and hanging forward over a green
lawn, were an Indian Chief, a Golden Hind, a Triton, a Centaur, an
effigy of King Charles I., another of Britannia, a third of the god
Pan, and a fourth of Mr. John Phillipson, sometime alderman and
shipowner of Harwich.  Though rudely modelled, the majority received
an extremely lifelike appearance from their colouring, which was
renewed every now and then under the Captain's own supervision.
He asserted them to be beautiful, and his acquaintances were content
with the qualification that to an unwarned visitor, in an uncertain
light, they might be disconcerting.

To this paradise Captain Barker introduced his newly adopted son,
with the wet-nurse that the Doctor had found for him: and after
explaining matters to Narcissus--who had heard of the _Wasp's_
arrival in port and had been vaguely troubled by a long conversation
with Simeon, next door--installed the new-comers in the two rooms
under the roof of the pavilion and sat down to meditate and wait for
the child's development.

On the fourth morning after the installation, Narcissus appeared and
demanded a higher wage.  This was granted.

On the sixth morning, Narcissus appeared again.

"That there nurse--" he began.

"What of her?"

"As touching that there nurse, your instructions were to feed her
up."

"Well?"

"I've fed her up."

"Well?"

"She's ate till she's sick."

The Captain sent post-haste for Dr. Beckerleg.

"That woman's green with bile," the Doctor announced.  "You've been
over-feeding her."

"I did it to strengthen the child."

"No doubt; but this sort of woman will eat all that's put before her.
Lower her diet."

This was done.  The woman recovered in a couple of days and resigned
her place at once, declaring she was starved.

A second wet-nurse was sought for and found.  The child thrived, was
weaned, and began to cut his teeth without any trouble to mention.
Twice a day Captain Barker visited his nursery and studied him
attentively.

"I'll own that I'm boggled," he confessed to Dr. Beckerleg.
"You see, a child is the offspring of his parents."

"That is undeniable!" the Doctor answered.

"And science now asserts that he inherits his parents' aptitudes:
therefore, to train him _secundum naturam_, I must discover these
aptitudes and educate or check them."

"Decidedly."

"Well, but his mother was an angel, and his father the dirtiest scamp
that ever cheated the halter."

"I should advise you to strike a mean.  What of the child himself?"

"He does nothing but eat."

"It appears to me that, striking a mean between the two extremes you
mention, we arrive at mere man.  I perceive a great opportunity.
Suppose you teach him exactly what Adam was taught."

"Gardening?"

"Precisely.  He will start with some advantage over Adam, there being
no Eve to complicate matters."

"He shall be taught gardening," the little Captain decided.

"The pursuit will accord well with his temperament, which is notably
pacific.  The child seldom or never cries.  At the same time we
cannot quite revert to the Garden of Eden.  His life will, almost
certainly, bring him more or less into contact with his fellow-men."

"We must expect that."

"Therefore, as a mere measure of precaution, it might be as well to
instruct him in the use of the small-sword."

"I will look after that.  There is nothing I shall enjoy more
than teaching him--precaution.  We have now, I think, settled
everything--"

"By no means." The Doctor put a hand into his tail-pocket, and after
some difficulty with the lining pulled out a small book bound in
green leather and tied with a green ribbon.  "Here," he announced,
"is the first volume of a treatise on education."

"Plague take your books!  You're as bad as Jemmy, yonder.  I tell you
I'll not addle the boy's head with books."

"But this treatise has the advantage to be unwritten."

Dr. Beckerleg untied the ribbon, and holding out the book, turned
over a score of pages.  They were all blank.

"Undoubtedly that is an advantage.  But then, it hardly seems to me
to be a treatise."

"No: but it will be when you have written it."

"I?"

"Certainly, you intend to train Tristram in accordance with nature.
On what do we base our knowledge of nature?  On experiment and
observation.  For many reasons your experiments with the child must
be limited; but you can observe him daily--hourly, if you like.
In this volume you shall record your observations from day to day,
_nulla dies sine linea_.  It is the first present I make to him, as
his godfather: and in doing so I set you down to write the most
valuable book in the world, a complete History of a Human Creature."

Captain Barker took the volume.

"But I shall never live to finish it."

"We hope not.  The beauty, however, of this history will be that at
any point in its progress we may consult it for Tristram's good, and
learn all that, up to that point, God has given us eyes to see.
It may be that in deciding to make him a gardener we have been
mistaken.  That book will enlighten us."

"There's one blessing," said Captain Barker, tucking the book under
his arm; "whatever pursuit the boy may follow, he'll want to follow
it unmolested.  And therefore, in any case, I must teach him to use
the small-sword."

During the first few months, almost every entry in the Captain's
green volume dealt with Tristram's appetite.  Nor did this fluctuate
enough to make the record exciting.  He was a slow, phlegmatic
infant, with red cheeks and an exuberant crop of yellow curls.
He slept all night and a good third of the day, and, beyond cutting
ten teeth in as many months, exhibited no precocity.  Nothing
troubled him, if we except an insatiable hunger.  He was weaned with
extreme difficulty, and even when promoted to bread and biscuits and
milk puddings, continued to recognise his nurse's past service and
reward it with so sincere an affection that the woman accepted an
increase of wage and cheerfully consented to stay on and take care of
him.

Captain Barker saw nothing in all this to shake his first resolution
of making the boy a gardener, but rather found in each successive day
a reason the more for making haste to learn something about
horticulture himself, in order that when the time came he might be
able to teach it.  At length he took counsel with Narcissus Swiggs
and unfolded his desire.

Mr. Swiggs listened sleepily, and as soon as his master had done gave
him a month's notice.

"What the devil's the use of that?" Captain Barker asked.

"I thought you weren't satisfied, that's all."

"If I weren't, I should kick you out without half these words.
You've been thinking of yourself all this while."

"I mostly does."

"Then don't, while I'm talking." And Captain Barker explained his
scheme a second time.

"No use," pronounced Mr. Swiggs at the close, shaking his head
ponderously.

"Why not?"

Mr. Swiggs swept his hand before him, summing up the whole landscape
with one majestic semicircle.

"Where is your soil?" he asked.  "And where is your water?
Springs?"--he paused a couple of seconds--"There ain't none.  All
that mortal man can do, I does."

"And what is that?"

"I does without."

"But the marsh behind us--"

"Salt."

"Narcissus Swiggs, you have been in my service twenty years."

"Twenty-three."

"During that time you have once or twice argued with me.  I ask you,
as a Christian man, to tell me truly what you got by it."

"Naught."

"Just so.  On this occasion, however, I've listened with great
patience to all your objections--"

"Not a tithe of 'em."

"They're all you'll have a chance of making, at any rate.  And I
answer them thus: If the worst comes to the worst, I'll cover the
whole of this property with a couple of tubs, one to catch rain-water
and t'other filled with garden mould.  If the sea rots 'em, I'll have
the whole estate careened, and its bottom pitched and its seams
stopped with oakum.  I'll rig up a battery here, and if the
water-butt runs dry you shall blaze away at the guns till you fetch
the rain down, as I've seen it fetched down before now by a
cannonade.  But I mean to have a garden here, and a garden I'll
have."

Faithful to this resolve, Captain Barker set to work to study the art
in which Tristram was to be instructed, and, being by nature a hater
of superficiality, determined to begin by acquainting himself with
everything that had been written about the nature and habits of
plants from the earliest ages to that present day.  He engaged a
young demy of Magdalen College, Oxford--son of Mr. Lucas, saddler, of
the High Street, Harwich--who was much pinched to continue his
studies at the University, to extract and translate for him whatever
Aristotle, Theophrastus and others of the Peripatetic school had
written on the subject; to search the college libraries for
information concerning the horticulture of China and Persia, the
hanging gardens of Babylon, those planted by the learned Abdullatif
at Bagdad, and the European paradises of Naples, Florence, Monza,
Mannheim and Leyden to draw up plans and a particular description of
the Oxford Physic Garden, by Magdalen College, as well as the
plantations of Worcester, Trinity and St. John's Colleges; and to
ransack the bookshops of that seat of learning for such works as
might be procurable in no more difficult tongue than the Latin.
In this way Captain Barker became possessed of a vast number of
monkish herbals, Pliny's _Historia Naturalis_, the _Herbarum Vivas
Eicones_ of Brunsfels, the treatises of Tragus, Fuchsius, Matthiolus,
Ebn Beithar and Conrad Gesner, the _Stirpium Adversaria Nova_ and
_Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia_ of Matthew Lobel, with the works
of such living botanists as Henshaw, Hook, Grew and Malpighi.
As the Captain had no thought of resuming a seafaring life,
he felt confident of digesting in time these masses of learning,
though it annoyed him at first to find himself capable of
understanding but a tenth of what he read.  On summer evenings he
would sit out on the lawn, with a folio balanced on his knee, and do
violence to Mr. Swiggs's ears with such learned terms as
"Boraginiae," "Cucurbitaceae," "Leguminosae," and as winter drew in,
master and man would hold long consultations indoors over certain
plants, the portraits of which in the herbals seemed familiar enough,
though their habitats often proved, on further reading, to lie no
nearer than Arabia Felix or the Spice Islands.  Nevertheless, they
took some practical steps.  To begin with, the soil of the garden
before the Blue Pavilion was entirely changed--Captain Barker
importing from The Hague no less than thirty tons of the mould most
approved by the Dutch tulip-growers.  A tank, too, was sunk at the
back of the building towards the marsh, as a receptacle and reservoir
for rain-water; and by Tristram's fourth birthday his adoptive father
began to build, on the south side of the house, a hibernatory, or
greenhouse, differing in size only from that which Solomon de Caus
had the honour to erect for the Elector Palatine in his gardens at
Heidelberg.


Meanwhile Captain Runacles, who watched these operations from
the other side of the privet hedge and picked up many scraps of
rumour from the antique Simeon, was consumed with scorn and envy.
The two friends no longer spoke.  At the back of the Fish and Anchor,
across the road, there stretched at this time the largest and fairest
bowling-green in the east of England--two good acres of smooth turf,
stretching almost to the edge of the sea-cliff, on which side the
wall was cut down to within a foot of the ground, so that the gossips
as they played, or sat and smoked on the benches about the green,
might have a clear view of the ships entering or leaving the harbour,
or of others that, hull-down on the horizon, took the sunset on their
sails.  Hither it had always been the custom of the two captains to
repair at the closing in of the day, and drink their beer together as
they watched this or that vessel more or less narrowly avoiding the
shoals below.  Nor would they commonly retire, unless the weather was
dirty, until the sea-coal fire was lit above the town-gate and the
lesser lighthouse upon the town-green answered with its six candles.
Now, however, though they met here as usual, no salutation was
exchanged.  On benches as far apart as possible they drank their beer
in silence and watched the players.  The situation was understood by
everybody at the inn; and at first some awkward attempts were made to
heal the breach.  But Captain Jeremy's scowl and the light in Captain
John's green eyes soon convinced the busybodies that they were
playing with fire, and likely to burn their fingers.

In his home Captain Runacles grew restless.  To cure this, he set to
work and finished a large dial which he had long intended to present
to the Corporation of Harwich, to set up over the town-gate.
The Corporation accepted the gift and employed their clerk to write a
letter of thanks.  The language of this letter was so flattering that
Captain Runacles made another dial for the Exchange.  Being thanked
for this also, he presented an excellent pendulum clock of his own
making, to be placed over his Majesty's arms upon the principal gate
of the dockyard, with a bell above the clock to strike the hours of
the day, as well as to summon the men to their work; and two more
dials, the one for the new town-hall, the other for the almshouses
near St. Helen's Port.  Again the Corporation thanked him as
profusely as before, but asked him to be at the expense of affixing
these dials, which, both by their beauty and number, were rapidly
making Harwich unique among towns of its size.  Upon this Captain
Runacles, in a huff, forswore all further munificence, and applied
himself to the construction of a pair of compasses capable of
dividing an inch into a thousand parts, and to the sinking of a well
in the marsh behind his pavilion.  The design of this well was
extremely ingenious.  It was worked by means of a wheel, nine feet in
diameter, with steps in its circumference like those of a treadmill,
and so weighted that by walking upon it, as if up a flight of stairs,
a person of eleven or twelve stone would draw up a bucket--two
buckets being so hung, at the ends of a rope surrounding the wheel,
that while one ascended, full of water, the other, which was empty,
sank down and was refilled.  These buckets being too heavy for a man
to overturn to pour out the water, he bored a hole in each, and
contrived to plug the holes so that the weight of the bucket as it
bumped upon the trough prepared for it at the well's edge jogged out
the plug and sent the water running down the trough into whatever
pail or vessel stood ready to catch it.  Nor is it astonishing that
he lost his temper when, after these preparations, he found the well
was not deep enough, and the water as much infected with brine as if
he had gathered it from the surface of the marsh.

It was on the day following this disappointment that, while walking
to and fro the length of his turfed garden, between three and four in
the afternoon (for his habits were methodical), he heard a child's
voice lifted on the far side of the party hedge:

"Dad!"

"Eh?  What is it?" answered the voice of Captain Barker, from his new
tulip-bed, across the garden.

"What thing is this?"

"A nymph."  Captain Runacles guessed by this that the four-year-old's
question had reference to one of the figure-heads disposed along the
hedge.

"What is a nymph?"

"A sort of girl."

"I don't like this sort of girl.  She's got no legs."

"Come over here and look at this tulip."

"There's a much better sort of girl next door," Tristram continued,
unheeding.

"What do you know about her?" sharply inquired his guardian.

"Oh, I see her often at the top window, and sometimes out walking.
Nurse says we're not to speak, so we put out our tongues at each
other."

"Tristram, come over here and look--"

"She's got funny curls, and puts her doll to bed in the window-seat
every night.  I like that sort of girl.  When I grow up," the young
bashaw proceeded, "I shall have lots of that sort of girl all over
the garden, instead of these wooden things."

Captain Barker treated this Oriental day-dream with silence.

"Dad--why am I worth more than all the girls in the world?"

"Who said you were?"

"Nurse.  She says you think so.  She says the big man next door would
give his eyes to have a boy like me; but he can't make nothing of a
girl, and don't try.  Narcissus--"

"Hallo!" replied the heavy voice of Mr. Swiggs.

"Have you got a boy?"

"No, sir: 'nmarried."

"What did you give your eye for, then?"

"Losh!"  ejaculated Narcissus, as Captain Barker pounced on the
youngster and haled him off to the tulip-bed.  The interrogatory was
stayed for a while.

Captain Runacles, who had caught every word, strode half a dozen
times up and down his grass-plot: then summoned Simeon.

"Tell nurse to send Miss Sophia down to me."

Five minutes later a small child of seven appeared in the doorway,
and, after hesitating there for a moment, stepped timidly across the
turf.  Her figure and movements were ungainly and her complexion
appeared unnaturally sallow against a dark grey frock.  A wet brush,
applied two minutes before with inconsiderate zeal, had taken all the
curl out of her dark hair and smoothed it in preposterous bands on
either side of her brow.  Her arms hung stiff and perpendicular, and
she fidgeted with her short skirt as she advanced.

Captain Runacles stopped short in his walk and surveyed her.

"H'm," he said.  "Don't shuffle."

The little girl looked up, dropped her eyes again quickly, and let
her hands hang limp beside her.  She was shaking from head to foot.

"You are a girl."

"Pardon, father," she mumbled in a low whisper.

"Next door there lives a small boy.  You are in the habit of putting
out your tongue at him.  Why?"

"I--I--"

Her voice wavered and she broke into a fit of sobbing.

"Tut, tut! Stop that noise; I haven't scolded you.  On the contrary,
I sent for you in the hope that you might always be able to put out
your tongue at that boy.  Sophia, dry your eyes and attend, please.
Would you like to be an accomplished woman?"

"If it please you, father."

"Now may the devil fly away with the whole sex!  If they _do_ happen
to desire anything good in itself, it's always to please some man or
another.  Sophia, I ask you if, for your own sake, and for the sake
of knowledge, you will be my pupil; if you care to pursue--"  Captain
Runacles checked himself, not because he had any idea that he was
talking over the head of a girl of seven, but because a general
proposition had occurred to him.

"Woman's notion of a pursuit," he said, clasping his hands behind him
and regarding his daughter's tear-stained face with severity--
"woman's notion of a pursuit is entirely passive.  Her only idea is
to be pursued, and even so her mind runs on ultimate capture.
Sophia," he continued, himself forgetting for the moment his view of
knowledge as _sui causa optandum_, "would you like to please me by
licking that boy across the hedge into a cocked-hat?"

"But--oh, father!"

"What is it?"

She could not answer for a moment.  Nor did he know that she besought
God every night to change her into a boy that she might find some
grace in his sight.

"You have one advantage," said her father coldly, as she struggled to
keep down her tears.  "Your rival across the hedge is in a fair way to
be turned into a fool.  We will begin to-morrow.  In a week or so I
shall be able to pronounce some opinion on your capacity.  Now run
indoors to your nurse--why, bless my soul!"

The child had trotted forward, and, taking his hand, kissed it
passionately.  He looked into her face, and, finding it white as a
sheet, lifted her in his arms and carried her into the pavilion.



CHAPTER IV.


THE TWO PAVILIONS (continued).

"We must have an apiarium," Captain Barker announced a week later.

"What's that?" Mr. Swiggs asked.

"Half a dozen beehives, at least."

"No room."

"There is nothing," pursued Captain Barker, "that gives such
character to a garden as an apiarium unless it be fishponds.
I will have both."

"No water."

"The fishponds shall be constantly supplied with running water.
I will have three ponds at different levels, connected with miniature
waterfalls and approached by an _allee verte_.  The glimpse of water
between green hedges will be extremely refreshing to the eye.
The apiarium shall stand close to these ponds--as Virgil commends:"

     At liquidi fontes et stagna virentia musco
     Adsint, et tenuis fugiens per gramina rivus

"--And shall be surrounded with beds of violets and lavender and such
blue flowers as bees especially love.  When, Narcissus, I glance over
the hedge at the back of the house and behold Captain Runacles' two
acres lying waste, cumbered like a mining country with the ruins of
his mechanical toys, I have a mind to--"

"He'll neither sell nor lend."

"I perceive that in time we must set about draining so much of the
marsh outside as belongs to me.  There, if anywhere, the fishponds
must lie.  In the meantime there is a full rood of ground beyond the
northern hedge that we may consider.  By cutting a path through the
privet there and enclosing this parcel, we gain for our bees a
quadrangle which will not only give them their proper seclusion, but
may be planted in the classical style without detriment to the
general effect of our garden.  The privet serving as a screen. . . ."

Invigorated by Mr. Swiggs's opposition, the little man continued for
twenty minutes to revel in details, and ended by rushing his
companion off to examine the ground.  In his hot fit he forgot all
about Tristram, who, tired of listening, had slipped away among the
gooseberry-bushes, with a half-eaten slice of bread and butter in his
hand.

The fruit proved green and hard--for it was now the third week of
May--and by the time his bread and butter was eaten the boy had a
fancy to explore farther.  He wandered through the strawberry-beds,
and, finding nothing there but disappointment, allowed himself to run
lazily after a white butterfly, which led him down to the front of
the pavilion, over the parterres of budding tulips and across to an
east border gay with heart's-ease, bachelor's buttons, forget-me-nots
and purple honesty.  The scent of budding yews met him here, blown
softly across from Captain Runacles' garden.  The white butterfly
balanced himself on this odorous breeze, and, rising against it,
skimmed suddenly over the hedge and dropped out of sight.

Now there was set, under an archway in this hedge, a blue door, the
chinks of which were veiled with cobwebs and the panels streaked with
the silvery tracks of snails.  By this _pervius usus_ (as Captain
Runacles called it) the two friends had been used to visit each
other, but since the quarrel it had never been opened.  No lock had
been fixed upon it, however.  Only the passions of two obstinate men
had kept it shut for four years and more.

The child contemplated this door for a minute, then lifted himself on
tip-toe and stretched his hand up towards the rusty latch.  It was a
good six inches above his reach.

He glanced back over his shoulder.  Nobody was in sight.  His eyes
fell on a stack of flower-pots left by Narcissus beside the path.
He fetched one, set it upside-down in front of the door and climbed
atop of it.

This time he reached the latch and lifted it with some difficulty.
His weight pressed the door open and he fell forward, sprawling on
hands and knees, into the next garden.

He picked himself up, and was on the point of fetching a prolonged
howl, but suddenly thought better of it and began to stare instead.

Barely six paces in front of him, and in the centre of a round
garden-bed, a small girl was kneeling.  She held a rusty table-knife,
the blade of which was covered with mould; and as she gazed back at
him the boy saw that her face was stained with weeping.

"Hallo!"

"Hallo!"

"I was just thinking of you, little boy, and beginning to despise
you, when plump--in you tumbled."

"But, I say--look here, you know--I've been told what despising is,
and if you despise me you ought to say why."

"Because I've been ordered to.  I'm going to do it out of this book
here.  Listen: 'A point is that which has no parts and no magnitude,'
and that's only the beginning.  Oh, my dear, I'll wither you up--you
just wait a bit!"

She dug the knife viciously into the earth.

"I don't care," said Tristram affably.

"P'r'aps you don't know what 'Don't Care' came to?"

"No, I don't."

"Well, he came to--a place.  It was a good deal deeper down than this
hole I'm digging."

"What's the hole for?"

"My doll, here.  I've got to put away childish things; so I'm going
to cover her right up and never see her face again.  Oh! oh!"

She began to sob as if her heart would break.

"I wouldn't cry if I were you.  I didn't cry just now when I tumbled
off the flower-pot."

"You don't know what it is to be a mother."

"No, but I can dig ever so much better than you.  Look here.
I've got a spade of my own, and I'll show you how to dig properly, if
you like."

He ran off and returned with it in less than a minute.  In another
minute they were engrossed in the burial rites, the girl still
playing at tragedy, but enjoying herself immensely.

"We must read something over the remains," she announced.

"Why?"

"Because it's always done, unless the dead person is buried with a
stake through his inside."

"Then we'd better take her out again and put a stake through her;
because I can't read."

"Haven't you begun to learn yet?"

"No."

"Well," said Sophia, picking up the Euclid, "you can hold a corner of
the book and listen to what I read, and perhaps you can repeat some
of it after me, you contemptible boy."

They were standing over the doll's grave, side by side, and chanting
in antiphon the fourth proposition of the First Book of Euclid, when
Captain Runacles came round the corner of the house and halted to rub
his eyes.

At the sound of his footstep on the gravel Sophia snatched the
book from Tristram and looked desperately round.  It was too late.
Her father was glaring down upon them both, with his hands behind him
and his chin stuck forward.

"You miserable child!"

He pronounced it deliberately, syllable by syllable, and turned upon
Tristram.

"Will you kindly explain, sir, to what I owe the honour of your
presence in my garden?"

Tristram, who had never before been addressed with harshness, failed
to understand the tone of this speech, and answered with amiable
directness--

"I tumbled in, off a flower-pot."

"Indeed!"

"Yes; and I stayed because I liked the girl here."

"You do her infinite honour."

"I'm going away now because I'm hungry.  But I'll come back again
after dinner, all right."

"No," said Captain Runacles grimly; "on that point you must allow me
to correct you.  You infernal young cub, if I catch you here again--"

"Hi! Captain!" interrupted a voice at the foot of the garden.

Doctor Beckerleg stood beside the blue gate and held it open to admit
another visitor, whose dress and appearance were unfamiliar to the
Captain.  He paused midway in his threat and removed his eyes from
the children.  Sophia crept towards the house, while Tristram seized
his opportunity and slipped away to the safe side of the privet
hedge.

"Let me present," said the Doctor, "Mr. Josias Finch, of Boston, New
England."

"Attorney-at-law," Mr. Finch added, lifting his hat politely.

He was a little man with a triple chin and small, intelligent eyes
that twinkled deep in a round, fat face.  His dress was of a
slate-coloured material, decorated with silver buttons, and he wore a
voluminous wig.

"With news for you, Captain."

"Important news," Mr. Finch echoed.  He pulled out a silver snuff-box
and offered it to Captain Runacles.  "You don't indulge?  But you
will suffer me, no doubt.  Ah," he went on, inhaling a pinch, "it has
been a long journey, sir, and my stomach abhors sea-voyaging."

"Shall we step into the house?" suggested Captain Runacles.

"By all means, sir.  My business is simple, but may require some
elucidation.  May I suggest that Dr. Beckerleg accompanies us?
He is already acquainted with the drift of my commission, for reasons
I will expound hereafter."

"Of course.  Come in, Doctor."  He led the pair into his dining-room.
"I may as well state, Mr. Finch, that my temper is somewhat
impatient.  If you come as a friend, my hospitality is yours for as
long as you care to use it; but I'd take it kindly if you came to the
heart of your business at once."

"To be sure, sir, and a very proper attitude.  I plunge, then, into
the middle of affairs.  You will doubtless remember Silvanus
Tellworthy, younger brother of the late Sir Jabez Tellworthy whose
virtues recently ceased to adorn this neighbourhood."

"Perfectly."

"His conscience led him to exchange this country, in the thirty-fifth
year of his age, for a soil more amical to his religious opinions."

"I have heard 'twas for fear of the attentions of a widow in Harwich;
but proceed."

"After amassing a considerable fortune he died, sir, of a paralytical
stroke, upon the 12th of November last."

"I am sorry to hear it."

"That was the common expression of Boston at the time.  Dismissing
for a more leisurely occasion the consideration of his civic virtues,
I may say that I had the honour to possess his confidence in the
double capacity of friend and legal adviser.  It fell to me to draw
up his will, some few years before his decease; and now I am left to
the task of giving it effect.  He was a childless man, and, with the
exception of some trifling legacies to the town of Boston and a few
private friends, bequeathed his wealth to his only niece, Margaret,
daughter of the Sir Jabez Tellworthy already mentioned, and her
heirs."

Captain Runacles uncrossed his legs and addressed Dr. Beckerleg.

"Doctor, haven't you brought this gentleman to the wrong pavilion?"

"Wait a moment."

"I should rather say," Mr. Finch continued, "that a life interest
only was bestowed upon Margaret Salt, the bulk of the estate going to
the anticipated heirs of her body, and being (also by anticipation)
apportioned among them on a principle of division which need not
occupy our attention, for (as it turns out) she has left but one
child.  My client made this will soon after receiving the news of his
niece's marriage with Captain Roderick Salt, and before he had any
reason to suspect that gentleman's real character.  It was therefore
natural that in selecting a couple of trustees he regarded the
Captain as the man who, of all others, might be reckoned on to look
after the interests of the child or children.  When, however, the
unamiable qualities of Captain Salt reached his ear, he would
doubtless have made some alteration in the will, but for the tidings
of that officer's death in the Low Countries.  He had such confidence
in the surviving trustee--"

"Man alive!" Captain Runacles broke in, "if you are talking of
yourself, let me advise you to quit England by the first ship that
sails.  The child is already furnished with a guardian--a guardian,
my dear sir, who will nullify your legal claim upon the child by the
simple expedient of taking your life."

"But, excuse me--"

"You will waive your claim, of course.  But let me advise you also to
conceal it; for Captain Barker is quite capable, should he get hold
of this will, of regarding your mere existence as an insult."

"But, dear me--if you'll allow me to speak--I am not talking of
myself."

"No?"

"No; I am not the child's legal guardian."

"I congratulate you.  But who is it, then?"

"It is you, Captain Runacles."

"What!" The Captain leapt up and glared at Mr. Finch incredulously.

"Here is a copy of the will; read for yourself.  My friend, Silvanus
Tellworthy, remembered you as a friend of his early days and as a man
of probity.  He had heard also, from time to time, news of your
public actions that increased his esteem.  He was informed--pardon me
if I mention it--of your sincere and honourable affection for his
niece; and, indeed, hoped, I may say--"

"No more on that point, if you please."

"Sir, I am silent, and ask your pardon."

"But--but--Doctor, this is simply astounding.  Do you hear what this
gentleman says?--that I--I alone--am Tristram's guardian after all?"

Mr. Finch and Dr. Beckerleg exchanged an anxious look.  The Doctor
cleared his throat and took up the story.

"No, my dear Captain, I regret that you make one mistake.  You said
'alone.'"

"What?  Is there another trustee?"

"There is the man already mentioned--Roderick Salt."

"Tut, tut--he's dead."

"I fear, on the contrary, that he's alive."

"But he was drowned, confound him!"

"Some meddling Netherlander, cursed with too much humanity, must have
baulked the will of Heaven by dragging him out of the ditch and
reviving him.  He was rescued, sir, and clapped into prison; escaped
by turning traitor and entering the service of the Prince of Orange--
in what capacity I dare not say, but likely enough as a spy, or
perhaps a kidnapper of soldiers.  There are plenty of the trade along
the frontiers just now.  He has changed his name, but has been
recognised by more than one Harwich man at The Hague, and again at
Cuxhaven.  For a year now I have heard nothing of him.  Belike he is
off upon a dirty mission to some German principality no bigger than
your back-garden; ambassadors of his size are as easy to find on the
Continent of Europe as a needle in a bottle of hay.  Or maybe he
wanders on some gaming campaign of his own."

The face of Captain Runacles, as the Doctor proceeded, went through
three rapid changes of colour--white, scarlet and purple.

"You knew all this?" he shouted, the congested veins standing out
upon his temples; "you knew all this, and kept us in the dark?"

"I did.  It affected the child in no way.  The fellow clearly knew
nothing, or cared nothing, about Tristram.  Even supposing--which was
absurd--that he would wish to burden himself with the boy, I felt
pretty sure of Barker's ability to cope with him at the briefest
notice.  Moreover, considering his mode of life, I hoped by waiting a
very short while to be able to tell you that Captain Salt's career
was ended by the halter.  You see, he was evidently not born to be
drowned, and I drew the usual inference.  But Mr. Finch's news puts a
very different complexion on the business.  Tristram being heir, as I
understand, to some fifteen hundred pounds per annum--"

"Mr. Finch," said the Captain calmly, stepping to the door and
locking it, "have you, by any chance, the intention of seeking out my
co-trustee?"

"H'm: I am bound, sir, to consider my duty as a professional man."

"Let me entreat you also to reconsider it."

The little attorney glanced over his shoulder at the closed door.

"Sir," he replied with dignity, "I perceive that I have been
unfortunate enough to give you a wrong notion of my character.
Let me say that, in interpreting my duty, I am even less likely to be
coerced by threats than by the strict letter of the law.  I will not
be dragooned.  And I decide nothing until you have opened that door."

"And that's mighty well said," commented Dr. Beckerleg.

Captain Jemmy slipped back the bolt.

"I shall nevertheless hold you to account," he growled.

"Thank you; I am accustomed to responsibility.  And now let me say
that as the child seems to be in good hands--"

"On the contrary, he's in outrageously bad ones."

"--Or rather, in the hands of an upright and kindly gentleman, I
think we may perhaps agree that these rumours about Captain Salt
are--shall we say?--too good to be true.  May I ask Dr. Beckerleg
here if he believes in ghosts?"

"Firmly," answered the Doctor, hiding a smile.

"I have known occasions," the attorney went on, with a serious face,
"when a cautious belief in ghosts has proved of the very highest
service in dealing with apparently intractable problems.  Or suppose
we call it an hypothesis, liable to correction?"

"That's it," assented the Captain heartily.  "I can believe Roderick
Salt to be a ghost until he comes to me and proves that he is not."

"Decidedly."

"And then I'll make him one."

The corners of Mr. Finch's mouth twitched perceptibly.

"Gently, dear sir!  Remember, please, that I am only concerned with
the immediate situation.  To-morrow I start again for Bristol,
leaving the future to be dealt with as your prudence may direct.
But I have no doubt," he added, with a bow "that you will act, in all
contingencies, with a single eye to the child's welfare.  It is
understood, then, that the child, Tristram Salt, remains under the
care of Captain Barker, your friend, and his adoptive father--"

"Not at all."

"I think so," said Dr. Beckerleg quietly, looking straight into the
Captain's eyes.

"That's for me to decide, Doctor."

"Tut, tut! it was decided the moment you were born."

"I think," Mr. Finch interposed, "it is time I gave Captain Runacles
some necessary information about the boy's inheritance."

It was close upon four o'clock when the little blue door which, until
that morning, had remained shut for over four years was opened a
second time and Captain Runacles stepped through into Captain
Barker's domain.  His wig was carefully brushed and he carried a
gold-headed cane.  Whatever emotion he may have felt was concealed by
the upright carriage and solemn pace proper to a visit of state.

Captain Barker, who stood at the lower end of the garden and stooped
over his beloved tulips, started at the sound of footsteps, looked
round, and hastily plucking his wig from the handle of a spade that
stood upright in the mould by his elbow, arranged it upon his bald
scalp and awaited the other's advance.

The pair did not shake hands.

"I have come to speak with you about--er--Tristram."  The name stuck
in Captain Jeremy's throat.

"The boy strayed into your premises to-day.  I know it.  If you are
aggrieved by such a trifle--"

"I am not.  If you doubt the sufficiency of my excuse for calling
upon you, let me say at once that I come as the boy's guardian."

"Upon my word--"

"As his legal guardian."

"Bah!  This is too much!  Do you conceive yourself to be jesting?"

"Have you ever known me to jest?"

"Not wilfully."

"Not, at any rate, upon parchment.  Be so good as to run your eye
over this."

The little man took the copy of Silvanus Tellworthy's will and
fumbled it between his fingers.

"Is this some dirty trick of lawyer's work?"

"It is."

"Do you really wish me to read it?"

"Unless you prefer me to explain."

"I do--vastly."

"Very well, then."

And Captain Runacles proceeded to explain the will in a hard,
methodical voice, nodding his head whenever he reached a point of
importance at the parchment which rustled between Captain Barker's
fingers.  For a while this rustle sounded like the whisper of a
gathering storm.

"It follows from this," concluded Captain Runacles, "that I am
responsible for the child's upbringing.  Can you carry the reasoning
a step farther?"

The little man looked up.  The wrath had clean died out of his
puckered face; and in place of it there showed a blank despair,
mingled with loathing and unspeakable bitterness of soul.

"Yes, I can," he replied very slowly, and turning away his face leant
a hand on the spade beside him.  "Oh, Jemmy, Jemmy!" he muttered.

There was no entreaty in the words, but they pierced Captain Jemmy's
heart like two stabs of a knife.  He took a step forward and
stretched out a hand as if to lay it on his old friend's shoulder.
The little man jumped aside, faced him again, hissing out one word--

"_You!_"

The arm dropped.

"Jack--I'm sorry; but you have drawn the wrong conclusion."

The pair looked each other in the face for a moment, and Captain
Runacles went on, but more coldly and as if repeating a task--

"Yes, the wrong conclusion.  For my own part, as you once pointed
out, I have a girl.  I may add that I propose to train up Sophia; and
I haven't the faintest doubt that, in spite of her sex, I can train
her to knock your Tristram into a cocked-hat in every department of
useful knowledge.  At the same time it has occurred to me that, as
his guardian, I am at least bound to give the boy every chance.
You are teaching him gardening?"

Captain Barker nodded, with a face profoundly puzzled.

"You object to it?" he asked.

"Decidedly, under your present conditions.  You are cramped for
space."

"We are using every inch between the road and the marsh."

"You forget my back-garden, which lies waste at present."

"My dear Jemmy!"

"By knocking a hole in the party hedge you gain two and a half acres
at least.  Then, as to water--you depend on the rainfall."

"That's true."

"But there's an excellent spring between this and Dovercourt; and the
owner will sell."

"It's half a mile away."

"God bless my soul! I suppose I am not too old to design a conduit."

Captain Jack's arm stole into Captain Jemmy's.

"You'll be saying next," the latter went on, "that I'm too old to set
about draining the marsh.  Then, as to sundials: you're amazingly
deficient in sundials.  Now half a dozen here and there--and a
fish-pond or two--unless you'd like to have a moat.  I could run you
a moat around the back, and keep it supplied with fresh water all the
year round.  By the way, talking of moats and fresh water, did I tell
you that Roderick Salt was not drowned, after all?"

"Eh?  How did he die, then?"

"He's not dead."

"Good God!"

"He has been seen at The Hague, and again at Cuxhaven, by men of this
very port.  Beckerleg will give you their names."

"But you tell me--the will, here, says--that he's joint guardian--"

"Yes: it's serious, if he finds out.  Mr. Finch--I may say I've a
large respect for that attorney--Mr. Finch suggests that it may have
been his ghost.  I think, Jack, we must take that explanation."

"Rubbish!"

"Ghosts have some useful properties."

"Name one or two."

"Well, to start with, they can be disbelieved in until seen."

"I begin to see."

"Then, again, should one appear, he can be believed in and walked
through.  This is a rule without exceptions.  If you have reason to
believe that a ghost stands before you, your first step would be to
make a hole in him to convince yourself."

"But if one should be mistaken?"

"If the apparition gives up the ghost, so to speak, and you find
yourself mistaken, I see no harm in owning it.  As co-trustee of
aggrieved man, I will at any time listen to your apologies.  By the
by, I have asked Mr. Finch to call upon you to-morrow and explain his
theory, among other matters of business.  You will understand that I
bear no affection towards this boy of yours: on the contrary, I
sincerely desire my Sophia to shame him with her attainments.
It is a mere matter of my duty towards him; and I'll be obliged if
you keep him, as far as possible, out of my sight.  Now about those
dials--"

Captain Barker understood, but replied only by tightening for a
moment the hand that rested on his comrade's sleeve.  The old friends
moved on beside the flower-borders and fell into trivial converse to
hide a joy as deep as that of sweethearts who have quarrelled and now
are reconciled.



CHAPTER V.


A SWARM OF BEES.

The green volumes in which, for the next thirteen years, Captain
Barker kept accurate chronicle of Tristram's progress, and of every
fact, however trivial, that seemed to illustrate it, have since been
lost to the world, as our story will show.  There were thirty-seven
of these volumes; and as soon as one was filled Dr. Beckerleg
presented another.  It is our duty to take up the tale on the 1st of
May, 1691--the very day upon which misfortune stopped Captain
Barker's pen and (as it turned out) closed his _magnum opus_ for
ever.

Let us record only that during these thirteen years Tristram added so
much to his stature as to astonish his friends whenever they looked
at him; and that he took little interest in the affairs of the world
beyond the privet hedge--affairs which just then were extremely
unsettled and disturbed the sleep and appetite of a vast number of
people.  To begin with, King Charles had died without doing his
faithful subjects the honour of explaining whether he did so as a
Protestant or a Papist, an uncertainty which caused them endless
trouble.  The religion of his brother and successor, though quite
unambiguous, put them to no less vexation by being incurably wrong;
and after four years of heated controversy they felt justified in
flocking, more in sorrow than in anger, round the standard of
William, Prince of Orange, who agreed with them on first principles
and had sailed into Torbay before an exceedingly prosperous breeze.
King James having escaped to Saint Germains, King William reigned in
his stead, to the welfare of his people and the disgust of Captain
Barker and Captain Runacles, who from habit were unable to regard a
Dutchman otherwise than as an enemy to be knocked on the head.
Moreover, they retained a warm respect for the seamanship of their
ejected Sovereign, under whom they had frequently served, when as
Duke of York he had commanded the British Fleet.

Now, shortly after daybreak upon May morning, 1691--which fell on a
Friday--his Majesty King William the Third set out from Kensington
for Harwich, where a squadron of five-and-twenty sail, under command
of Rear-Admiral Rooke, lay waiting to escort him to The Hague,
there to open the summer campaign against King Lewis of France.
This expedition raised his Majesty's spirits for more than one
reason.  Not only would it take him for some months out of a country
he detested, and back to his beloved Holland--the very flatness of
which was inexpressibly dear to his recollection, though he had left
it but a month or two--but the prospect of this year's campaign had
awakened quite an extraordinary enthusiasm in England.  For the first
time since Henry the Eighth had laid siege to Boulogne, an English
army commanded by an English king was about to exhibit its prowess on
Continental soil.  It became the rage among the young gentlemen of
St. James's and Whitehall to volunteer for service in Flanders.
The coffee-houses were threatened with desertion, and a prodigious
number of banquets had been held by way of farewell.  The regiments
which marched into Harwich on the last day of April to await the King
were swollen with recruits eager for glory.  Addresses of duty and
loyalty met his Majesty at every halting-place, and acclamations
followed the royal coach throughout the route.  The townsfolk of
Harwich, in particular, had hung out every scrap of bunting they
could find, besides erecting half a dozen triumphal arches, which by
their taste and magnificence were calculated to leave the most
favourable impression in the Sovereign's mind.

The first of these arches, bearing the inscription _God Save King
William, Defender of our Faith and Liberty_, was erected on the
London road, a dozen paces beyond the Fish and Anchor Inn, Captain
Barker having refused the landlord--who desired to build the arch
right in front of his inn-door--permission to set up any pole or
support against the privet hedge.  In fact, he and Captain Runacles
had sworn very heartily to sit indoors, pull down their blinds and
withhold their countenances from the usurper.

Nature, however, which regards neither the majesty of kings nor the
indignation of their subjects, made frustrate this unamiable design.

At twenty minutes past four that afternoon a hiveful of Captain
Barker's bees took it into their heads to swarm.

It was a warm afternoon, and the little man sat in his library
composing a letter to Mr. John Ray, of Cambridge University, whose
forthcoming _Historia Plantarum_ he believed himself to be enriching
with one or two suggestions on hibernation.  Narcissus Swiggs was
down at the Fish and Anchor drinking King William's health.
Tristram, who was supposed to be at work clipping the privet hedge
around the apiarium, was engaged in the summer-house, at the far end
of it, upon business of his own.

This business--the nature of which shall be explained hereafter--
completely engrossed him.  Nor did he even hear the restless hum of
the bees at the mouth of the hive, ten paces away, nor the noisy
bustle of the drones.  It was only when the swarm poured out upon the
air with a whir of wings and, darkening for an instant the sunny
doorway of the summer-house, sailed over the yew hedge towards the
road, that Tristram leapt to his feet and ran at full speed towards
the pavilion.

"The bees have swarmed!" he called out, thrusting his head in at the
library window.

Captain Barker dropped his pen, bounced up, and came rushing out by
the front-door.

"Where?"

"Down towards the road."

Years had not tamed the little hunchback's agility.  Without
troubling to fetch hat or wig, he raced down the garden path, and had
almost reached the gate before Tristram caught him up.

"Up or down did they go?" he asked, standing in the middle of the
road, uncertain in which direction to run.

"Across, most likely; but higher up than this, by the line they
took," Tristram answered, pointing in the direction of the town.
"Hullo!"

"What is it?"

"Why, look: there--under the arch!"

Beneath the very centre of the triumphal arch, and directly under the
sacred name of King William, there hung a black object larger than a
man's head and in shape resembling a bunch of grapes.  It was the
swarm, and a very fine one, numbering--as Captain Barker estimated--
twenty thousand workers at the very least.  He ran under the arch,
and nearly cricked his neck staring up at them.

His excited motions had been seen by a small knot of wagoners and
farm-hands, who were drinking and gossiping on the benches before the
Fish and Anchor, to wile away the time of waiting for the King's
arrival.  At first they thought the royal cavalcade must be in sight,
though not expected for an hour or more; and hurried up in twos and
threes.

"What's the to-do, Captain?"

"Where's that lumbering fool Narcissus?" demanded Captain Barker,
stamping his foot and pointing to the cluster over his head.

Mr. Swiggs came forward, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
He had been the last to arrive, having lingered a minute to attend to
the half-emptied mugs of his more impatient fellows.

"Here," he announced.

"Fetch a ladder, and bring one of the new hives--the one I rubbed
with elder-buds the day before yesterday.  Tristram, run to the house
for my gloves and a board.  Quick, I say--here, somebody kick that
one-eyed dawdler!  What the plague?  Haven't there been kings enough
in England these last fifty years that you waste a good afternoon on
the look-out for the newest?"

"You'll be careful of my arch, Captain?" the landlord hazarded
nervously.  "His Majesty'll be coming along presently--"

"I'll be careful of my bees.  D'ye want me to leave them there till
he passes, and maybe to lose the half of my swarm down the nape of
his royal neck?  I can't help their wearing the orange: they were
born o' that colour, which is more than you can say, landlord, or any
man Jack here present.  But I can prevent their swarming and buzzing
in his Majesty's path like any crowd of turncoats.  Ah, here comes
Tristram with the ladder!  Set it here, my boy.  Take care--don't run
a hole through _King William_--leave that to his new friends.  So--
now pull on the gloves and step up, while I come after with the
hive!"

Tristram, having fixed the ladder firmly a little to the right of the
swarm, began to ascend.  Captain Barker, giving orders to Narcissus
to stand by with the flat board, took the empty hive, and holding it
balanced upside-down in the hollow of his palm, was preparing to
follow on Tristram's heels, when an interruption occurred.

Round the corner of the road from Harwich town came a red-coated
captain, riding on a grey charger, and behind him a company of foot
marching eight abreast, with a sergeant beside them.

"Hullo!" cried the Captain, halting his company and riding forward.
He was a thin and foppish young gentleman in a flaxen wig, and spoke
with a high sense of authority, having but recently sacrificed the
pleasures of his coffee-house and a fine view of St. James's Park to
seek even in the cannon's mouth a bubble reputation that promised to
be fashionable.

"Hullo! what's the meaning of this?"

"Bees," answered Captain Barker shortly. "Narcissus, is the board
ready?"

"Do you know, sir, that his Majesty is shortly expected along here?"

"To be sure I do."

"Then, sir, you are obstructing the road.  This is most irregular."

"Not at all--most regular thing in the world.  A little early,
perhaps, for the first swarm."

"Be so good as to take down that ladder at once, and let my company
pass."

"A step higher, Tristram," said the little man, turning a deaf ear to
this order.  "Better use the right hand.  Wait a moment, while I get
the hive underneath."

"Take down that ladder!" shouted the red-coated officer.

"You must wait a moment, I'm afraid."

"You refuse?"

"Oh dear, yes!  Keep back, sir, for the bees are easily frightened."

"Sergeant!" foamed the young man, "come and remove this ladder!"

He spurred his horse up to the arch as the sergeant stepped forward.
The beast, being restive, rubbed against the ladder with his flank
and shook it violently just as Tristram dislodged the swarm overhead.
Captain Barker reached out, however, and caught them deftly in the
upturned hive.  Into it they tumbled plump.  But the little man,
exasperated by the shock, had now completely lost his temper.
With sudden and infernal malice he inverted the beehive and clapped
it, bees and all, on the officer's head.

With that he skipped down to the ground, and Tristram, foreseeing
mischief, slid down after him quick as thought.

The officer roared like Hercules caught in the shirt of Nessus.
Nor for a few seconds could he get rid of his diabolical helmet: for
a couple of bees had stung the charger, which began to plunge and
caper like a mad thing, scattering the crowd right and left with his
hoofs.  When at length he shook the hive off, the furious swarm
poured out upon the air, dealing vengeance.  The soldiers, whose red
coats attracted them at once, fled this way and that, howling with
pain, pursued now by the bees and now chased into circles by the
lashing heels of the grey horse.  The poor brute was stung by degrees
into a frenzy.  With a wild leap, in which his four legs seemed to
meet under his belly, he pitched his master clean over the crupper
and, as a wind through chaff, swept through the people at a gallop
and off along the road towards the town.

"Phew!" whistled Captain John Barker: and stepping quickly to the
prostrate officer he whipped the unhappy gentleman's sword from its
sheath and handed it to Tristram.

"We'd best get out of this."

"That's not easy.  There's a score of soldiers between us and the
gate; and the sergeant looks like mischief."

"Bless my soul, what a face I've put on that young man!"

The officer, who had been stunned for a moment by his fall, was soon
recalled to life by the pain of the stings.  He sat up and looked
round.  Already his face had about as much feature as a turnip.
His eyes were closing fast, and a lump as large as a plover's egg
hung on his under-lip.

"Seize those men!" he shouted, and began a string of oaths, but
stopped because the utterance caused him agony.

The sergeant, who had been bending over him, drew his side-arm and
advanced--a hulking big fellow with a pimply face and an ugly look in
his eye.

"Dad," said Tristram, "you made me promise once never to run a man
through unless he molested me in the midst of a peaceful pursuit."

"Well?"

"It appears to me that bee-keeping is a peaceful pursuit."

"Decidedly."

"And that this fellow is going to molest me."

"It looks like it."

"Then I may run him through?"

"Say rather that you must."

"Thank you, dad.  I felt sure of it; but this is the first time I've
had to decide, and as it was a promise--You'd best get behind me, I
think.  Set your back to the arch.  Now, sir."

"You are my prisoners," the sergeant announced.

"Pardon me.  Let me direct your notice to this weapon, which is in
_carte_--you seem to have overlooked it."

"You are making matters worse."

"That is very likely.  Guard, sir, if you please!"

"You mean to resist?"

"Ah, have you grasped that fact, at last?"

The sergeant rushed upon him and crossed swords.  His first lunge was
put aside easily, and he was forced to break ground.

"Hullo!  So you can really fence!" he panted, feinting and aiming a
furious thrust at Tristram's throat.

"Upon my word," said Tristram, parrying, and running him through the
thigh as he recovered, "this gentleman seems astonished at
everything!"

As the sergeant dropped, Captain Barker darted from behind Tristram
and pounced upon a musket which one of the soldiers had abandoned
when first assailed by the bees.

"This gets serious," he muttered.  "Those fellows yonder are fixing
bayonets."

Indeed, some half a dozen of the red-coats had already done so, and
surrender seemed but a matter of a few moments.

"Give me the musket," said Tristram placidly, "and take the sword.
My arm is longer than yours.  Now get behind my shoulder again.
Don't expose yourself, but if one of these fellows slips under my
guard, I leave him to you."

"Good boy!" murmured the little man, exchanging weapons.  It is a
fact that tears of pride filled his eyes.

"There are six of them.  Excuse me, dad, if I ask you to look out for
your head.  I am going to try a _moulinet_."

The six soldiers came on in a very determined manner, each man
presenting his bayonet at Tristram's chest.  They had little doubt of
his instant submission, and were considerably surprised when
Tristram, lifting the musket by its barrel, began to whirl it round
his head with the fury of a maniac.  The foremost, as the butt
whizzed by his cheek, drew back a pace.

"Run the rebels through!" cursed the officer behind them.

The leader shortened his grasp on his bayonet, and, watching his
opportunity, dashed under Tristram's arm.  At the same instant
Captain Barker popped out, and with a quiet pass spitted him clean
through the right lung.

"All together, you sons of dogs!" yelled the sergeant, who had
dragged himself to a little distance, and was stanching the flow of
blood from his wounded thigh.

Two of the soldiers heard the advice and came on together with a
rush.  The first of them caught the full swing of Tristram's musket
on the side of his stiff cap and went down like an ox.  The second
took Captain Barker's sword through the left arm and dropped his
bayonet.  But before either Tristram or the Captain could disengage
his weapon the other three assailants were upon them, and the fight
was over.

"Surrender!" cried one, holding his point against Tristram's chest.

"Must I?" the latter inquired, turning to Captain Barker.

"H'm, there seems to be no choice."

"And you also, sir."

"Certainly.  Here is my sword; it belongs to your captain yonder,
whom you may recognise by his uniform.  Assure him, with my
compliments--"

He was interrupted by the clatter of hoofs, and two gentlemen on
horseback came cantering up the road and drew rein suddenly.

"Hey!  What have we here?" demanded a foreign voice.

The soldiers turned and presented arms in a flurry.  The taller of
the two horsemen was an extremely handsome cavalier in a nut-brown
peruque and scarlet riding-suit on which several orders glistened.
He bestrode a black charger of remarkable size and beauty; and
seemed, by his stature and presence, to domineer over his companion,
a small man with a hooked nose and an extremely emaciated face, who
wore a plain habit of dark purple and rode a sorrel blood-mare of no
especial points.  Nevertheless it was this little man who had spoken,
and at the sound of his voice a whisper ran through the crowd:

"The King!"

It was, in fact, his Majesty King William III., who, tired of the
slow jolting of the royal coach along the abominable road of that
period, had exchanged that equipage for his favourite mare and
cantered ahead of his escort, refreshing his senses in the strong
breeze that swept from seaward across the level country.

"Sir, will you be good enough to explain?" he demanded again,
addressing the unfortunate officer, who had picked himself up from
the road and stood covered with shame and swellings.

"Your Majesty, the two prisoners here were engaged in obstructing
your Majesty's high-road."

"They seem to be still doing so."

"And knowing that your Majesty was shortly expected to pass, I
proceeded to remove them."

"But what is this?  A company of my foot-guards in confusion!
One-two-three-four of them wounded--if, indeed, one is not killed
outright!  Do you tell me that this old man and this boy have done it
all, besides bruising the faces of a dozen more?"

"They and a swarm of cursed bees, your Majesty."

"This is incredible! . . . Bees?"

"Yes, your Majesty," put in Captain Barker, "he is telling you the
truth.  You see, it happened that my bees swarmed this afternoon, and
had no better taste than to alight on this arch, under which your
Majesty was shortly expected to pass.  We were about to hive them
when this young gentleman came along at the head of his company, and
there arose a discussion, at the end of which I hived him instead."

"But these wounded men--"

"Ah, your Majesty, it was unfortunate; but one can never tell where
these discussions will end."

"Three of my men and a sergeant placed _hors de combat_--a dozen more
unfit to be seen--an officer dismounted, and his whole company
scattered like a flock of geese!  I am seriously annoyed, sir.  What
is your name?"

"Sire, I am called Captain Barker, and was formerly an officer in the
fleet of his late Majesty King Charles the Second."

"Barker . . . Barker?  I seem to remember your name.  Captain John
Barker, are you not?"

"That is so."

"Sometime in command of the _Wasp_ frigate?"

"Your Majesty has a perfect recollection of his most insignificant
enemies."

King William bit his lip.

"My memory is good, Captain Barker, as you say.  Why did you quit the
service?"

"For private reasons."

"Come, sir; you were, if I remember right, a gallant commander.
With such their country's service stands above private reasons.
Of late your country's claim has been urgent upon all brave men; and,
by the havoc I see around, you are not past warfare."

"Well, but--"

"Speak out."

"Sire, all my life I have fought against Dutchmen."

"You found them worthy foes, I expect."

"In all respects."

"Would they be less worthy allies?"

"Not at all.  But consider, sire, the habits of a lifetime.
From boyhood I never met a Dutchman whom it was not my duty to knock
down.  To-day, if I sailed in an English ship-of-war, what should I
find?  Dutchmen all around me.  Your Majesty, I cannot speak the
Dutch language except with a cutlass.  I distrust my habits.
They would infallibly lead to confusion.  In the heat of action, for
instance--"

The little man stopped abruptly.  It seemed that his speech gave
uncommon pleasure to the tall gentleman on the black charger, whose
face twitched with a barely perceptible smile.  King William, on the
other hand, was frowning heavily.

"Sir," he said, "your tongue runs dangerously near sedition."

"I am sorry your Majesty thinks so."

"You are also very foolish.  I find you incurring my just anger, and
hint, as plainly as I can, at an honourable way of escape.  Captain
Barker, are you aware that your case is serious?"

"I am, sire.  Nevertheless, I decline to escape by the road you are
good enough to leave open."

"Your reasons?"

"They are private, as I had the honour to inform your Majesty."

"My lord," said the King, turning irritably to his companion,
"what shall I do to this intractable old man?  You have a voice in
this, seeing that he has spoilt four of your favourite guards."

The tall man in scarlet bent and muttered a word or two in a low
voice.

"Ah, to be sure: I had forgotten the youngster.  Is this your son,
sir?"

"By adoption only."

"A strapping fellow," said his Majesty, eyeing Tristram from head to
foot.

"And as good as he's tall.  Sire, his offence--if offence it be--
arose from the affection he bears me, and from no worse cause.
He would not willingly hurt a fly."

"What is he called?"

"Tristram."

"He has a second name, I suppose?"

"Tristram Salt, then, in full."

The man in scarlet at these words gave a quick, penetrating glance at
the speaker, and for an instant seemed about to speak; but closed his
lips again, and fell to regarding Tristram with interest, as King
William went on:

"He ought to be in my army."

"Your Majesty does him much honour, but--"

"But?"

"May it please your Majesty, I had other intentions concerning him."

"My lord of Marlborough," said the King, turning coldly from the
little man and pointing with his gloved hand towards Tristram,
"allow me to present you with a recruit."

Captain Barker's face was twisted with a spasm of fury.  But as he
stammered for words another voice was lifted, and Captain Runacles
came through the crowd.  He had been fetched from his laboratory by
Mr. Swiggs, and had arrived on the scene in time to hear the last
sentence.

"Your Majesty!  Listen to me!"

King William was turning calmly to ride back to his escort.  But at
sight of the intruder's commanding and venerable figure he checked
his mare.

"Pray, sir, who are you? And what have you to say?"

"I'm Jeremy Runacles, and this lad's guardian."

"He is peculiarly unfortunate in the loyalty of his protectors."

"Sire, I have served my country in times past."

"I know it, Captain Runacles.  But it seems that you, too, fight only
against the Dutch."

"Your Majesty has, it appears, done me the honour to study my poor
record."

"My word, sir!  Does that surprise you?"

"No, sire, it reassures me.  For you must be aware that I am no
rebel."

"H'm."

"Though, to be sure, I cannot help my tastes."

"You may suffer for them, none the less."

"I am ready to pay for them.  Since your Majesty has taken a fancy to
this young man--"

"Who, by the way, has maltreated a whole company of my guards."

"--Permit me, as his guardian, to ransom him.  He has large estates."

"You forget, sir," exclaimed the King haughtily, "that I am punishing
him.  Do you entertain the idea of bribing me?"

"I forget nothing, sire.  I even remember that this is England, and
not Holland."

"My lord," said William, turning to the Earl of Marlborough, "I pray
you dispose of the recruit as you think fit.  Have him removed, and
have the highroad cleared of these rebels; for I see my escort down
the road."

And touching the sorrel with his heel, his Majesty cantered back to
meet the approaching cavalcade.



CHAPTER VI.


THE EARL OF MARLBOROUGH SEEKS RECRUITS.

Night had fallen.  It was past eight o'clock, and Captain John and
Captain Jemmy sat facing each other, one on each side of the empty
fireplace, in Captain John's library.  They were in complete
darkness--for the red glow of tobacco in the pipe which Captain Jemmy
puffed dejectedly could hardly be called a light.  For half an hour
no word had been spoken, when somebody tapped at the door.

"What is it?" asked Captain Barker.

"A gentleman to see you," answered the voice of Mr. Swiggs.

"What's his name?"

"He won't say."

"Tell him I am busy to-night."

Narcissus withdrew, and knocked again a minute later.

"He says he must see you."

"Have you turned him out?"

"I told him you were busy with Captain Jemmy.  'Who's Captain Jemmy?'
he asks.  'Captain Jemmy Runacles,' I answers.  'All the better,'
says he."

"Excuse me," said a voice at the door; "but my business concerns both
of you gentlemen.  Also it concerns Tristram Salt."

"Narcissus, bring a couple of candles."

While Mr. Swiggs was executing this order an oppressive silence
filled the room.  The stranger's dark shadow rested motionless by the
doorway.  Above the breathing of the three men could only be heard
the far-off sound of Harwich bells still ringing their welcome to
King William.

When the candles were brought in and Narcissus had retired again
after closing the shutters, the stranger removed the broad-brimmed
hat and heavy cloak which he had worn till that moment, and tossed
them negligently on the table before him.

It was the scarlet-coated cavalier who had ridden beside the King
that afternoon.

"The Earl of Marlborough!"

"The same, sirs; and your servant."

"Be kind enough, my lord, to state the message you bring from your
master, and to leave this house as soon as it is delivered."

To Captain Barker's astonishment, the Earl showed no sign of
resenting this speech.

"You are wrong," he answered quietly; "William of Orange is not my
master.  If I mistake not, you and I, gentlemen, acknowledge but one
sovereign ruler, King James."

At these bold words, uttered in the calmest voice, the two captains
caught their breath and stared at each other.  Captain Runacles was
the first to recover.  He laughed incredulously.

"Your lordship appears to have forgotten Salisbury."

Any other man would have winced at this taunt.  But the Earl of
Marlborough met it with the face of a statue.

"Captain Runacles, I have neither forgotten it nor am likely to.
The remembrance of that affair has followed me night and day.
I cannot--even now that I am pardoned--rid myself of its horror.
I cannot eat; I cannot sleep.  I see my crime in its true light, and
am appalled by its enormity.  And yet--God help me!--I thought at the
time I was saving my country.  Gentlemen, you, who have faced no such
responsibility as then confronted me, will be apt to judge me without
mercy.  I know not if I can persuade you that my remorse is honest.
But consider--Here am I at William's right hand, already rich and
powerful, and possessing limitless prospects of increased power and
riches.  Yet am I ready to sacrifice everything, to brave everything,
to bring utter ruin on my fortune, if only I can rid myself of this
nightmare of shame.  Is this the attitude of insincerity?"

"Upon my word, my lord, I'd give something to know why the devil you
tell all this to us."

"I hardly know myself," answered the Earl, sighing deeply, but still
without a grain of expression on his handsome face.  "A man haunted
as I am can hardly account for all his utterances.  I have come to do
you a service, and, having done it, might have withdrawn without a
word.  But the sight of you recalled the honest words you spoke to
the usurper this afternoon.  Sirs, I envied you then; and just now an
insane longing took hold of me to set myself right with two such
inflexible friends of King James."

"Would it not be more to the point if you first obtained pardon from
King James himself?"

"I have done so."

"Well, my lord, I cannot yet see what your affairs have to do with
us.  But if it will give you any pleasure that we should believe
these remarkable statements--"

"I have assured you that it will."

"Then perhaps you will produce some proof of them in black and
white."

The Earl drew a folded paper from his breast and spread it upon the
table before them.  It was an affectionate letter of pardon, dated a
month back from the Court of Saint Germains, written throughout and
signed by the hand of King James himself.

"Thank you, my lord.  When his Majesty writes thus, it is not for his
subjects to bear rancour.  Will you kindly state your immediate
business?"

"It concerns the young man Tristram Salt.  You desire that he should
be restored to you?"

"My lord," said Captain Barker, "that young man is more to me than
many sons."

"You are indignant at the recollection of this afternoon?"

"What has that to do with it?"

"Much.  But let me continue.  Your adopted son, Captain Barker,
is at this moment lying in the hold of his Majesty's frigate the
_Good Intent_.  He is in irons."

"In irons!"

"Yes, sir.  He has undoubtedly imbibed your opinions with regard to
the Dutch, for he began his military career by blacking the eyes of a
gentleman of that nation, who, as ill-luck will have it, is his
superior officer."

"The devil!"

"To-morrow morning he will receive six dozen lashes--perhaps more.
I take the most cheerful view in order to spare your feelings; but
most decidedly it will be six dozen, unless--"

"Unless--what?"

"Unless I remit the sentence.  The young man, you understand, was
placed under my care."

"My lord, you will pardon him?"

"With pleasure.  Nay, I will restore him to you this very night--"

Captain Barker leapt up from his seat in a transport of gratitude,
and would have caught the Earl's hand had not his friend dragged him
back by the coat-tails.

"--On conditions," his lordship concluded.

"Name them."

"In a moment.  We are agreed, I believe, that to blacken a Dutchman's
eyes is no great sin.  There are too many Dutchmen around his
Majesty--as you, sirs, had the courage to inform his Majesty this
afternoon."

"Did we say that?"

"I understood you to hint it, at any rate.  I assure you that I am
never so much disposed to regret my change of allegiance on that
November night at Salisbury as when I look around and see how little
my own countrymen have profited by that action."

"A while ago," interposed Captain Runacles sharply, "it was the crime
itself that pursued you with remorse."

"The results, sir, have helped me to see the crime in its proper
light."

"My lord, I have the deepest respect for your genius; but at the same
time it appears to me that you lack something."

"Indeed? It would be a kindness to point out in what respect--"

"Let me call it--a gift.  But I interrupt you."

"To proceed, then.  We are at one on the question of these Dutchmen;
at one also on the question of William's high-handed action this
afternoon.  Let me propose a plan by which you can effectively mark
your disgust of both, while at the same time you recover the young
man on whom you set so much store.  Gentlemen, you are not past
serving your country on the seas."

"King William hinted as much to-day,"  replied Captain Barker, "and I
gave him my answer."

"I appeal to you not in the name of William, but in the name of your
true sovereign, King James."

"That is another matter, I'll admit.  Would you mind putting the
question definitely?"

"I must have your word to regard what I am about to say as a secret."

"If it does not bind us in any way."

"It does not.  You are free to accept or reject my offer."

"We promise, then."

"Listen: I am in a position to offer each of you the command of one
of his Majesty's ships."

"As a condition of getting back Tristram tonight?"

The Earl nodded.

"But excuse me--"

"Ah, I know what you will say.  It is a sacrifice of your leisure.
I admit it; but from certain expressions of yours this afternoon I
gathered that your love for this lad might overcome your natural
disinclination."

"You mistake.  I was about to say that this offer of yours strikes us
as rather barren.  At least it might have been kept until King James
is restored to his country.  In that event he may very well prefer to
give his commands to younger men; but in any event he will find us
obedient to his royal wish."

"That is a very loyal attitude.  But, as it happens, you would be
required to enter into your commands before his Majesty's
restoration."

"Explain yourself, my lord."

"I am not in a position to speak with authority or exactness
of the events which will shortly take place in the British fleet.
I am a mere soldier, you understand.  But let us suppose a case.
King William sails early to-morrow, with Rear-Admiral Rooke's
squadron, for the Maese.  Let us suppose that no sooner is his
Majesty landed at The Hague and safe in his own beloved realm than
our gallant English sailors display a just distaste for their Dutch
commanders by setting those commanders ashore, and running--let us
say--for Calais, where their true Sovereign waits to be conveyed
across to the country which his rival has quitted.  Obviously, for
this purpose, the fleet would need, on the spot, capable officers to
step into the shoes of the deposed Dutchmen."

"You propose that Jack and I shall be two of these officers?" asked
Captain Runacles slowly, with a glance at his comrade.

"I think it advisable that you should be at The Hague.  You
understand that I merely sketch out a possible course of events."

"Of course.  Do you think it likely that the British squadron--
supposing it to behave as you say--would receive support at Calais?"

"I fancy it might find a large squadron of his French Majesty's fleet
waiting there to co-operate."

"And the army?"

"It is possible that events might happen, about that time, among our
regiments in Flanders."

"That, in other words, they would desert to King Lewis?"

"You put it crudely, Captain Runacles.  I believe that our gallant
soldiers will act with a single eye to their country's welfare; and I
am sure they will do nothing that can be constructed as a blot upon
their country's flag."

"I also am tolerably certain of that, my lord," answered Captain
Jemmy drily.  "Come, Jack--your answer?"

The little hunchback had been leaning back, during the last minute or
two, with his face in the shadow; but at these words he bent forward.
His cheeks were white and drawn.

"Why must I give the answer, Jemmy?"

"Because the lad is your son.  It rests with you to save him or not."

Captain Barker stood up.

"You'll abide by my decision?"

"Certainly." Captain Runacles crossed his legs and eyed the visitor
deliberately.

"Then," said the little man, dragging out the words syllable by
syllable, "there, my lord, are your hat and cloak.  Oblige me by
quitting this house of mine at once."

"God bless you, Jack!" muttered his friend.  The Earl's brow did not
even flush at the rebuff.  Throughout his career this extraordinary
man was able to overlook the contempt of others as easily as he
disregarded their sufferings.  Probably, as Captain Runacles had
said, he lacked a gift.

On this occasion he picked up his hat and cloak without a trace of
discomposure.

"I understand you to refuse my offer?" he said.

"Yes."

"You prefer that the young man should receive six dozen lashes
to-morrow morning."

Captain Barker winced and his mouth contracted painfully.

"My lord, I took that boy from his dead mother when he was a few
hours old.  Never in his life has a hand been laid upon him in anger.
He will hardly understand what it means.  But he has been taught to
know honour and to cherish it.  I choose as he would choose, were he
here."

"Are you going, my lord?" added Captain Jemmy.  "You have your
answer."

"Not quite yet, I fancy.  Captain Barker, you told me you took this
lad from his dead mother.  She was a Mistress Salt, I believe."

"Excuse me if I fail to see--"

"You will see in a moment.  I am not wrong, perhaps, in supposing
that lady to have been the wife of Roderick Salt, sometime my comrade
in the Foot Guards.  He married in Harwich, I remember; and in many
respects the resemblance which this lad bears to him is remarkable."

"There is no likeness in their characters, my lord."

"I daresay not; indeed, I hope not.  But suppose now I inform you
that Roderick Salt is still alive--"

The Earl broke off and looked at the two captains narrowly.

"Did you know that?" he asked.

There was no answer.

"I seem to remember an expression which you, Captain Runacles, let
fall this afternoon.  You told his Majesty that Tristram Salt owned
large estates.  Is the boy's father aware of this?"

Again he paused for an answer, but none came.

"These estates are administered under trust, I presume.  Who are the
legal trustees?"

"I am,"  Captain Jemmy replied, with a sudden effort.

"You alone?"

Captain Jemmy, after struggling for a moment with the wrath in his
throat, answered:

"I refuse to say."

"Well, well, the affair seems to need some explanation, but doubtless
admits of a very good one.  It is none of my business, and I do not
ask you to satisfy me.  But I cannot help thinking that Roderick Salt
will be hardly more astonished to find that his son is a man of large
estates than disposed to make inquiries."

"What do you mean, my lord?"

"I mean that, as father and son happen at this moment to lie aboard
the same vessel, the _Good Intent_--"

The chair which Captain Barker had been grasping and tilting
impatiently fell to the floor with a crash.

"--I foresee a scene of happy recognition and mutual explanations.
We will suppose the father to learn the truth before to-morrow's
punishment is inflicted.  We will picture his feelings"--the Earl
paused, and fired a shot more or less at a venture--"when he becomes
aware that, though by law enabled to buy his son off from military
service, he has by chicanery been rendered powerless.  We will
imagine him an enforced spectator, wincing as each stroke draws
blood."

"You will do this thing! You will tell him!"

"My dear sirs, I shall hate to do it.  In proof that I speak
sincerely, let me say that my offer still remains open.  May I now
count on your accepting it?"

"No!" thundered the little man, springing forward in a fury.
Captain Jemmy caught him by the arm, however, and forced him back to
the arm-chair.  The Earl shrugged his shoulders.

"Truly you are a Roman parent," said he, bowing ironically; "but you
will excuse me if I find it time to seek the lad's natural father.
Remember, if you please, gentlemen, your promise of silence."

He opened the door and passed quietly through the hall and out of the
house.  In the road at the foot of the garden a sergeant stepped out
of the shadow and saluted him.

The Earl gave a muttered order.

"Where is my horse?" he asked.

"A little up the road, my lord.  The orderly is walking him up and
down to keep him warm."

The Earl nodded and walked on.  A hundred yards farther he came up
with them, and, climbing into the saddle, trotted off towards
Harwich, the orderly at his heels.

At the Cock and Pye Stairs a boat was waiting.  He dismounted and,
giving his horse over to the orderly, stepped on board and was rowed
swiftly out towards the harbour, where the lights of the squadron
flickered and its great hulls brooded over the jet-black water.
As the boat crossed under the tilted stern and high, flaming lanterns
of Rear-Admiral Rooke's ship, the _Foresight_, the sentry on deck
sang out his challenge.

It was answered.  The boat dropped alongside and the Earl climbed
upon deck.  Turning at the top of the ladder, he gave his boatman the
order to wait for half an hour, and acknowledging the sentry's
salute, made his way aft, and down the companion-stairs to the cabin
set apart for him.

In the passage below was a second sentry, pacing up and down; and by
the Earl's door an orderly standing ready.

"Send Captain Salt to me.  After that, you may retire."

The man saluted and went off on his errand, and the Earl stepped into
his cabin.  The furniture of this narrow apartment consisted of a
hanging-lamp, a chair or two, a chest heaped with dispatch-boxes and
a swing-table upon which a map of the Low Countries was spread amid
regimental lists and reports, writing materials, works on
fortification, official seals and piles of papers not yet reduced to
order.  Pushing aside the map and a treatise by the Marechal de
Vauban that lay face downwards upon it, the Earl drew a blank sheet
of paper towards him, dipped pen in ink, and after a moment's
consideration scribbled a sentence.  Then, sprinkling it quickly with
sand, he folded the paper, and was about to seal it, when a light tap
sounded on the cabin-door.

"Come in," said the Earl quietly, holding the sealing-wax to the
flame, and without troubling to turn.

The man who stood on the threshold demands a somewhat particular
description.

He was tall and of an eminently graceful figure.  The uniform which
he carried--that of a captain in the 1st or Royal Regiment of Foot--
well set off his small waist, deep chest and square shoulders.
His complexion was clear and sanguine, albeit no longer retaining the
candour of youth; his wig was carefully curled, and in colour a light
golden-brown.  Though in fact his age was not far short of fifty, he
looked hardly a day older than thirty-five.

In many respects his resemblance to Tristram was exceedingly close.
The stature and proportions were Tristram's; the nose like Tristram's
in shape, but slightly longer; the eyes of the same greyish blue,
though in this case deep lines radiated from the outer corners.
Above all, there was a fugitive, baffling likeness, that belonged to
no particular feature, but to all.  On the other hand, the difference
in expression between the two faces was hardly less striking: for
whereas Tristram's beamed a modest kindliness on his fellows, this
face looked out on the world with an unshrinking audacity.  Beside it
the Earl of Marlborough's handsome countenance seemed to lack
intelligence; but the Earl's countenance was then, and remains
to-day, an impenetrable mask.

"You sent for me, my lord?" Captain Salt's voice was silvery in tone
and pleasant to hear as running water.

"I did," said the Earl, pressing his seal upon the letter and sitting
down to direct it.  "You have the lists?"

The other drew a bundle of papers from his breastpocket, and
advancing, laid them upon the table.  The Earl put the letter aside,
opened the bundle and ran his eye over its contents.

"You are sure of all these men?"

"Quite."

"You seem to have enough.  We mustn't overdo this, you understand?
It wouldn't do for the affair to--succeed."

Captain Salt smiled.

"If they carry off a vessel or two," the Earl went on, "it's no great
loss, and it will give Saint Germains the agreeable notion that
something is about to happen.  They've been plaguing me again.
This time it's an urgent letter in my royal master's own hand.
He calls on me to bring over the whole army in the very first
action--the born fool!  Can he really believe I love him so dearly?
Has he really persuaded himself that I've forgotten--?"

He checked himself; but for the first time that evening his face was
suffused with a hot flush.  For, in fact, he was thinking of his
sister, Arabella Churchill; and John Churchill, though he had made no
scruple to profit by his sister's shame, had never forgiven it.

Captain Salt filled up the pause in his dulcet voice: "We want, my
lord, such a mutiny as, without succeeding, shall convince England of
the strong dissatisfaction felt by our forces at the favouritism
shown by his Majesty towards the Dutch."

"Salt," said his lordship, eyeing him narrowly, "you are remarkably
intelligent."

"Why, my lord, should I conceal my thoughts when they tally with my
honest hopes?  I look around, and what do I see?  Dutchmen filling
every lucrative post; Dutchmen crowding the House of Lords; Dutchmen
commanding our armies; Dutchmen pocketing our fattest revenues.
England is weary of it.  I, as an Englishman, am weary of it.
My lord, if I dared to say it--"

"Would you mind looking out and observing if the sentry is at his
post?"

Captain Salt stepped to the door and opened it.  The sentry was at
the far end of the passage, engaged in his steady tramp to and fro.

"My lord," he said, closing the door softly and returning, "let this
mutiny fail!  It will serve its purpose if it brings home to the
understanding of Englishmen the iniquity of this plague of Dutchmen.
Let that feeling ripen.  You will return before the winter, and by
that time you may strike boldly.  Then, from your place in the House
of Lords, you can move an address--"

"Go on," murmured the Earl, as he paused for a moment.

"--An address praying that all foreigners may be dismissed from his
Majesty's service."

The Earl looked up swiftly and checked his fingers, which had been
drumming on the table.

"Decidedly you are intelligent," he said very slowly.

"What can William do if that address is carried, as it may be?
To yield will be to discard his dearest friends: to resist will mean
a national rising.  He will lose his crown."

"And then?"

"My lord, _may it not be possible to eject William without restoring
James?_"

"Ah!"

"There is the Princess Anne."

The Earl looked into his companion's eyes and read his own thoughts
there.  James was a Papist, William a Dutchman; but the Princess Anne
was an Englishwoman and a Protestant.  And the Earl and his Countess
held the Princess Anne under their thumbs.  Let her succeed to the
throne, and he would be, to all intents, King of England.  Nay, he
would hold the balance of Europe in his palm.

"My friend," he said, under his breath, "you are too dangerous."
Aloud he gave the talk a new turn.

"This mutiny will not succeed," he observed reflectively.  "The men
who intend to rise must be informed against."

"It appears so."

"But not too soon.  They must not succeed, as I said; but they must
have time enough to show their countrymen that the discontent is
serious, and to convince James that only an accident has prevented
their coming over to him in a body."

"That is clear enough."

"The only question," the Earl pursued, "is--who is to give the
information at the proper moment?"

"Undoubtedly that is a difficulty."

"I thought--excuse me if I come to the point--I thought that _you_
might do so."

"My lord!"

"You object?"

"Decidedly I do.  Already I have risked too much in this business."

"I can think of nobody," said the Earl coldly, "so well suited for
the task.  William thinks you are his spy, and would receive your
information without suspicion.  He does not guess that, owing to my
knowledge of your past--of the affair of the dice at Antwerp, for
instance, or that trivial letter from Saint Germains which I happen
to possess--"

Captain Salt's sanguine cheeks were by this time white as death.

"If you insist--" he stammered in a hoarse voice that bore no
resemblance to his natural tone.

"I'm afraid I must.  At the same time I mean to reward you," the Earl
continued pleasantly; "and a portion of the reward shall be paid in
advance.  My dear captain, I have the most delightful surprise for
you.  You were once a married man, and the lady you married was a
native of this port."

"Thank you, my lord; I was aware of the fact."

"You left her."

"I did."

"And in your absence she bore you a son."

"I have since heard a rumour to that effect," said Captain Salt
coldly.

"Cherish that son, for his worth to you is inestimable.  He lies, at
this moment, on board the  _Good Intent_--I regret to say in irons.
His Majesty enlisted him this afternoon, somewhat against his will,
and he began very unluckily by kicking his superior officer from one
end of the frigate to the other.  It was the natural ebullition of
youth, and the sergeant was a Dutchman.  Therefore in this letter I
have pardoned him.  Take it--a boat is waiting for you--and convey it
to his captain.  Thereafter seek the poor lad out and imprint the
parental kiss upon both cheeks.  Reveal yourself to him!"

"Your lordship is excessively kind, but I stand in no immediate need of
filial love."

"My dear sir, I promise you that this son means thousands in your
pocket.  He means to you a calm old age, surrounded by luxuries which
are hardly to be gained by espionage, however zealously practised."

"In what way, may I inquire?"

"I will inform you when you have done the small service I asked just
now."

Captain Salt took the letter and moved towards the door.

"By the way," the Earl said, "it may be painful to you to be reminded
of your former connection with Harwich; but did you happen to know,
in those days, two gentlemen, captains in King Charles's Navy, and
natives, I believe, of this town--Barker and Runacles?"

"I did.  They were both, at one time, suitors for the hand of my late
wife."

"Indeed?  I have been trying to enlist them for this business of the
mutiny."

"They were a simple pair, I remember, and would serve our purpose
admirably."

"I found them a trifle too simple.  Well, I won't keep you just now.
Remember the help I expect from you; but we will talk that over in a
day or two.  Meanwhile, keep a parent's eye upon your son (he's
called Tristram), for through him your reward will be attained.
Good night."



CHAPTER VII.


THE CAPTAINS MAKE A FALSE START.

It was past midnight when Captain Runacles left his friend's pavilion
and let himself through the little blue door to his own garden.
The heavens were clear and starry, and he paused for a moment on the
grass-plot, his hands clasped behind him, his head tilted back and
his eyes fixed on the Great Bear that hung directly overhead.

"Poor Jack!" he muttered, shaking his head at the constellation, as
if gently accusing Fate.  His nature had been considerably softened
by the little man's distress, and he had come away with a generous
trouble in his heart.

"I shan't sleep a wink to-night," he decided; and went on
inconsequently, "After all, a girl is less anxiety than a boy.
People don't find it worth their while to kidnap a girl and flog her
with a cat-o'-nine-tails.  A turn of a die, and I'd have been in
Jack's shoes to-night; while, as it is--"

As it was, however, he seemed hardly to enjoy his good fortune, for
he added, still looking up:

"Plague seize it!  I shan't sleep a wink--I know I shan't.  What a
magnificent show of stars!  Let me see, how long is it before
daybreak?  One-two-three-five hours only.  I won't go to bed at all--
I'll have a turn at the telescope."

He stole into the house softly and climbed up the spiral staircase.
A faint light shone out on the first landing from the half-open door
of his workroom.  He entered and turned up the lamp.

Its light revealed a scene of amazing disorder.  The walls were
covered with books and charts; the floor was littered with
manuscripts, mathematical instruments, huge folios, piled
higgledy-piggledy, carpenter's tools, retorts, bottles of chemicals.
In one corner, beside a door leading to his bedroom, stood a
turning-lathe three inches deep in sawdust and shavings; in another,
a human skeleton hung against the wall, its feet concealed by the
model of a pumping-engine.  Hard by was nailed a rack containing a
couple of antique swords, a walking-cane and a large telescope.

Captain Runacles took down this telescope and tucked it under his
arm.  Then, unhitching a dressing-gown of faded purple from a peg
behind the door, he turned the lamp low again and stepped out upon
the landing.  Here he paused for a minute and listened.  The house
was still.  From the floor below ascended the sound of breathing,
regular and stertorous, which proved that Simeon was asleep.

He put his hand on the stair-rail and ascended to the next floor,
passing his daughter's room on tiptoe.  Above this, a flight of steps
that was little more than a ladder led up into the obscurity of the
attics.  He climbed these steps, and, entering a lumber-room, where
he had to duck his head to avoid striking the sloping roof, felt his
way to a shuttered window, with the bolt of which he fumbled for a
moment.  When at length he drew the shutter open, a whiff of cold air
streamed into the room and a parallelogram of purple sky was visible,
studded with stars and crossed by the bars of a little balcony.

Captain Runacles stepped out upon this balcony.  He had constructed
it two years before, and it ran completely round the roof.  Under his
feet he heard the pigeons murmuring in their cote.  Below were spread
the dim grass-plots and flower-beds of the two gardens; and, far upon
his right, the misty leagues of the North Sea.  Full in front of him,
over Harwich town, hung the dainty constellation of Cassiopeia's
chair, and all around the vast army of heaven moved, silent and
radiant.  One seemed to hear its breathing up there, across the deep
calm of the firmament.

He turned to the western horizon, to the spot where the Pleiades had
just set for the summer months, and lifting his glass moved it slowly
up towards Capella and the Kids, thence on to Perseus, and that most
gorgeous tract of the Milky Way which lies thereby.  Now, in the
sword-handle of Perseus, as it is called, are set two clusters of
gems, by trying to count which the Captain had, before now, amused
himself for hours together.  He was about to make another attempt,
and in fact had reached fifty-six, when he felt a light touch on his
elbow.

He faced quickly round.  Behind him, on the balcony, stood his
daughter.

"Don't be angry," she entreated in a whisper.  "I heard you come up.
I couldn't sleep until I saw you."

He looked at her sternly.  Her feet were bare, and she wore but a
dark cloak over her night-rail.  In the years since we last saw her
she had grown from an awkward girl into a lovely woman.  Thick waves
of dark hair, disarranged with much tossing on her pillow, fell upon
her shoulders and straggled over the lace upon her bosom.  The face
they framed was pale in the starlight, but the lips were red, and the
black eyes feverishly bright.

"Father," she went on, "I have something I must tell you."

Then, as he continued to regard her with displeasure, she broke off,
and put the question that of all her trouble was uppermost.

"What has become of Tristram?"

"He has gone to make the campaign against the French.  He was
enlisted to-day.  It was--unexpected," her father answered slowly,
with his eyes fixed on hers.

"He went unwillingly,"  she said, speaking in a quick whisper; "he
was dragged off--trepanned!  Simeon told me about it, and besides, I
know--"

"What do you know?"

"I know he never went willingly.  Oh, father, listen"--with a swift
and pretty impulse she stepped forward, and reaching up her clasped
hands laid them on his shoulder--"Tristram--Tristram is very fond of
me."

"Good Lord!"

Captain Jemmy raised a hand to disengage her grasp from his shoulder,
but let it fall again.

"He told me so this morning at sunrise," she went on rapidly.  "You
see, it was May morning, and I went out to gather the dew, and he was
there, in the garden already, and he said--well, he said what I told
you; and being so masterful--"

"I can't say I've observed that quality in the young man; but no
doubt you've had better opportunities of judging."

"You shan't talk like that!" she broke out almost fiercely.  It was
curious that this girl, who until this moment had always trembled
before her father, now began to dominate him by force of her passion.

"Oh, I mustn't, eh?  Devil take the fellow!  He tumbles out of one
mess into another, and plays skittles with my peace of mind, and in
return I'm not allowed a word!"

"Father, you will fetch him back?"

"Now, how the--"

"But you must."

"Indeed!"

"Because I love him dearly--there! I have nobody left but you,
father."  She knelt and caught his hand, exchanging audacity for
entreaty in a second.

"Little maid," said her father, with a tenderness as sudden,
"get up--your feet must be as cold as ice, on these slates.
Go in, and go to bed."

"Let me stay a little.  I can't sleep indoors.  It was so happy this
morning, and to-night the trouble is so heavy!"

Captain Jemmy vanished into the lumber-room for a moment, and
reappeared, tugging an old mattress after him and bearing a tattered
window-curtain under his left arm.  He spread the mattress on the
balcony, motioned his daughter to sit, and wrapped her feet warmly in
his purple dressing-gown.  Then, as she lay back, he spread the
curtain over her, tucking it close round her young body.  She thanked
him with dim eyes.

"Sophia," he began, with much severity, "you say you have only your
old father in the world, and I'm bound to say you seem to find it
little enough.  My dear, are you aware that you've just been
disappointing my dearest hopes?"

"Don't say that!"

"I begin to think I mustn't say anything.  I have brought you up
carefully, instructing you in all polite learning, and even in some
of the abstruser sciences.  I have meant you, all along, to be the
ornament of your sex, and now--the devil take it!--you prefer, after
all, to be an ornament of the other!  I intended you, by your
accomplishments, to make that young man look foolish."

"And I assure you, father dear, he did look foolish this morning, and
again this afternoon in the summer-house."

"Now, upon my soul, Sophia!  I call your attention to the fact I've
been suspecting ever since you began to speak, that you're at the
bottom of all to-day's mischief.  If that unfortunate youth hadn't
been making love to you when he should have been attending to the
bees, the chances are they would never have taken it into their heads
to swarm upon that accursed arch, and consequently . . ."

There was nothing which Captain Runacles enjoyed so thoroughly as to
discover the connection between effects and their causes.  When such
a chance offered, it was a common experience with him to be drawn
into prolixity.  But he was pained and surprised, nevertheless, after
twenty minutes' discourse (in which he proved Sophia, and Sophia
alone, to be responsible for the disasters of the day), to find that
she had dropped asleep.  He looked down for a minute or so upon her
closed lids, then moved to the rail of the balcony and ejaculated
under his breath:

"O woman--woman!  Wise art thou as the dove, and about as harmless as
the serpent!"

He considered the heavens for some moments, and added with some
tartness but with a far-off look at the stars, as though aiming the
remark at the late Mrs. Runacles:

"Her charm, at any rate, is not derived from her mother!"

He turned abruptly and considered her as she slept under the stars.
Stooping after a minute or two, and lifting her very gently, he bore
her into the house and down to her own room.  As they descended the
ladder from the attic, she stirred and opened her eyes drowsily:

"You will bring Tristram back?" she murmured, but so softly that he
had to bend his head to catch the syllables.

Her eyes closed again before he could answer.  He carried her to her
bed and laid her upon it; then, after waiting a while to assure
himself that she was fast asleep, retraced his steps softly to the
little balcony.

He was pacing it, round and round, like a caged beast, when the stars
grew faint and the silver ripple of the dayspring broke over the sea.
For two hours and more he had been thinking hard, and he rested his
elbows on the balcony and paused for a minute or two to watch the red
ball of the sun as it heaved above the waters.  To the north, beyond
the roofs of Harwich, he saw the lights of the royal squadron still
clear in the grey dawn.  Next his gaze turned to the triumphal arch
in the road below, which wore a peculiarly dissipated look at this
hour.  Then it strayed back to the garden below him and beyond the
party hedge; and was suddenly arrested.

On a rustic seat, in the far corner, sat Captain Barker, trying to
read in a book.

The little man, too, had obviously passed the night out of his bed.
His clothes were dishevelled and his attitude was one of extreme
dejection.  He kept his head bowed over the book and was wholly
unaware of the eyes that watched him from the opposite pavilion.

But his friend above on the balcony displayed the most nervous
apprehension of being seen.  He took his hand from the rail, as if
fearful of making the slightest sound, and stole back through the
window into the lumber-room.  Once within the house, however, he
behaved with the briskest determination.  Descending first of all to
his own room, he washed his face and towelled it till it glowed.
Then, changing his coat and wig, he took up hat and cane, descended
to the front-door, and crossing the grass-plot, let himself into
Captain Barker's garden.

Captain Barker still sat and read in his book; and as he read the
tears coursed down his wrinkled cheeks.  For it was the first of the
famous green volumes.

He looked up as his friend advanced; and Captain Jemmy was forced to
regard the weathercock on the roof for a minute or so to make sure of
the quarter in which the wind lay.

"It's due west," said Captain John, as he stared up; "and it's
ebb-tide till nine o'clock.  They'll sail early."

"H'm; I shouldn't wonder.  You're early out of bed."

"Well, for the matter of that, so are you--eh?"

"I haven't been to bed."

"Nor have I."

"I've been thinking," said Captain Runacles.

"And I've been trying not to think."

"Well, but I've come to a conclusion.  Go and get your hat, Jack."

"Why?"

"We've got to fetch Tristram back."

"How?"

"By tossing our consciences over the hedge and going to see King
William."

The little man shook his head.

"No, Jemmy.  You mean it kindly, and God bless you!  But I can't do
it."

"Why not? If _I_ can do it--"

"You'd repent it, Jemmy.  You're letting your love for me carry you
too far."

"What put it into your head that I'd do this for love of _you_?"

"For Tristram, then."

"Damn Tristram!  That youngster strikes me as causing a fuss quite
out of proportion to his intrinsic worth."

"Well, but--"

"My dear Jack, I have reasons for wishing Tristram back.  You needn't
ask what they are, because I shan't tell you; but they're at least
as intelligible as all the reasons you can find in that volume."
He caught it out of his friend's hand, and read: "_June 12th.--T.
to-day refused his biscuit and milk at six in the morning, but took
it an hour later.  Peevish all night; in part (I think) because not
yet recovered of his weaning, and also because his teeth (second pair
on lower jaw) are troubling him.  Query: If the biscuit should be
boiled in the milk, or milk merely poured over the biscuit_--" Here
he glanced up, and seeing the anguish on the hunchback's face, handed
back the book.

"I beg your pardon, Jack.  But get your hat and come along."

"You forget, Jemmy.  We gave our word, you know."

Captain Runacles stared.

"Trouble has unhinged your wits, my friend.  Did you seriously
imagine I intended to disclose to his Majesty the proposal we heard
last night?"

"What, then?"

"My notion was that we should go and offer him our swords and our
services in ransom for Tristram.  He may rebuff us.  On the other
hand, there's a chance that he will not.  You remember that he began,
yesterday, by offering you this way of escape.  You are to take me
with you and beg for a renewal of that offer.  Maybe he'll demur.
You'll then point out that you have two men's service to tender him
in lieu of one.  I _have_ smelt powder in my time, Jack, and I once
had the luck to run De Ruyter's pet captain through the sword-arm and
to carry his ship.  It's the very devil that I never could master the
fellow's Dutch name sufficiently to remember it; but his Majesty--who
has a greater grasp of his mother tongue--may be able to recall it,
and the recollection may turn the scale.  Anyhow, we'll try."

"You can serve this William?"

"I can; for the matter stands thus: We go and say, 'Your Majesty has
laid hands on a young man.  Will it please your Majesty to take two
old men in exchange?'  We're a couple of old hulks, Jack; but we may
serve, as well as a youngster, to be battered by the French."

"But suppose that this plot breaks out?--I mean that which the Earl
hinted at."

"My friend, that proposal may be divided into two parts.  The first
is mutiny; the second is desertion to the French.  How do you like
them?  Could you stand by and help either?"

"Why, no," answered Captain Barker, with a brightening face;
"because, after all, one could always die first."

"To be sure.  Make haste, then, and fetch your hat, or we shall be
too late to save the boy."

Captain Runacles waited at the foot of the garden, while his friend
hurried into the house and returned in something like glee.

"We are lucky.  Narcissus tells me his Majesty is sleeping ashore at
Thomas Langley's house in Church Street.  It seems that his cabin was
not put rightly in order aboard the _Mary_ yacht, and he won't embark
until he has broken his fast."

"Come along, then!" said Captain Jemmy, opening the gate.  "We may
catch him before he goes on board."

But scarcely had the pair set foot in the road outside when a voice
commanded them to halt.

In front of them, barring the highway towards Harwich, stood a
sergeant, with half a dozen soldiers at his back.  They seemed to
have sprung out of the hedge.

"Pardon, gentlemen; but you are walking towards Harwich."

"We are."

"My orders are to forbid it."

"Who gave you that order?"

"The General."

"What?  The Earl of Marlborough?"

"Yes."

"So this is how he trusts our word!" muttered Captain Runacles.
"But, excuse me," he added aloud, "our business is with his Majesty."

"I am truly sorry, gentlemen."

"You decline to let us pass?"

"I hope you will not insist."

"Well, but I have an idea.  You can march us into Harwich as your
prisoners.  Take us into his Majesty's presence--that's all I ask,
and I don't care how it's done.  You shall have our _parole_ if you
please."

The sergeant shook his head.  "It's against my orders."

"Then we must try to pass you."

"Suffer me to point out that we are seven to two."

"Thank you.  But this is an affair of conscience."

"Nevertheless--"

"Confound it, sir!" broke in the little hunchback.  "You are here, it
seems, to frustrate our intentions; but I'm hanged if you shall
criticise them too.  Guard, sirs, if you please!"

And whipping out their swords, these indomitable old gentlemen fell
with fury on their seven adversaries and engaged them.

The struggle, however, lasted but a minute.  Six bayonets are not to
be charged with a couple of small-swords; and just as Captain Barker
was on the point of spitting himself like an over-hasty game chicken,
the sergeant raised his side-arm and dealt him a cut over the head.
Hat and wig broke the blow somewhat; but the little man dropped with
a moan and lay quite still in the road.

Hearing the sound, Captain Jemmy turned, dropped his sword, and ran
to lift his friend.  The stroke had stunned him, and a trickle of
blood ran from a slight scalp-wound and mingled with the dust.

"Jack, Jack!" sobbed his friend, kneeling and peering eagerly into
his face.  The hunchback opened his eyes a little and stared up
vacantly.

As he did so the dull roar of heavy guns broke out in the direction
of Harwich, shaking the earth under Captain Jemmy's feet.  It was the
town's parting salute to his Majesty King William the Third.  And at
the same moment the leading ship of the royal squadron swung out of
harbour on the ebb-tide and, rounding the Guard Sandbank, stood
majestically towards the open sea, her colours streaming and white
canvas bellying over the blue waters.



CHAPTER VIII.


FATHER AND SON.

Tristram, meanwhile, was lying in darkness on board the _Good
Intent_, a frigate of twenty-six guns, converted for the nonce into a
transport-ship to accommodate three companies of his Majesty's Second
Household Regiment, the Coldstreams.  To this regiment the Earl had
thought fit to attach him at first, not only on account of his fine
inches, but also to keep him out of his father's way, being unwilling
that the two should meet until he had visited the Blue Pavilions and
endeavoured to bring Captain Barker and Captain Runacles to terms.

It cannot be said that his first acquaintance with military life had
lifted Tristram's spirits.  The frigate--to which he had been
conveyed without further resistance--struck him as smelling extremely
ill below decks; and he was somewhat dashed by the small amount of
room at his service.  Moreover, the new suit into which he was
promptly clapped, though brilliant in colour, had been made for a
smaller man, and obstructed his breathing, which would have been
difficult enough in any case.  On the gun-deck, where he found
himself, it was impossible to stand upright and equally impossible to
lie at length, every foot of room between the tiers of nine-pounders
being occupied by kits, knapsacks, chests and mattresses littered
about in all conceivable disorder, and the intervals between these
bridged by the legs of his brothers-in-arms.  As the Coldstreams were
an exceedingly well-grown regiment, and for the most part deeply
absorbed just then in dicing, quarrelling, chuck-penny and lively
discussions on the forthcoming campaign, Tristram had found the
utmost difficulty in avoiding the sheaves of legs between him and the
empty mattress assigned for his use.  In his dejection of spirits it
was a comfort to find that none of his future comrades turned a head
to observe him.  He cast himself down on the mattress and gave vent
to a profound sigh.

"Alas, Sophia!" he ingeminated, "how liable to misconception--though
doubtless wise on the whole--are the rulings of Providence, which in
one short hour has torn me from your soft embrace to follow a calling
which I foresee I shall detest!"

Unluckily this emotion, though warranted by his circumstances, proved
too great for the ready-made suit which he wore.  At the first sigh
two buttons burst from his jacket, one of which flew a full twelve
inches and gently struck the cheek of a Dutch sergeant who was taking
forty winks upon the adjacent mattress.

"Vat the devil for?" exclaimed Sergeant Klomp, opening his eyes and
glaring upon the recruit.

"I beg your pardon," said Tristram.

"Zat was in fon, hey?"

"On the contrary--"

"Vat for, if not?"

"It was accidental, I assure you.  I was unbosoming myself--"

"So; I will deach you to onbosom yourself of his Majesty's buttons.
Agsidental!  You shall not be agsidental to me!"  Sergeant Klomp
rolled his eyes, and, picking up his cane, which lay beside him, rose
to his feet and advanced with menace on his face.

Tristram hastily applied his syllogism.  "It is right," he said to
himself, "to resist when molested in a peaceful occupation.
Sighing is a peaceful occupation.  Therefore I must resist this man."
In obedience to this valid conclusion he hit Sergeant Klomp in the
stomach as he advanced, caught the cane out of his hand and
belaboured him the entire length of the gun-deck.  It was impossible
to do this without discommoding the legs of the company and annoying
them beyond measure.  And consequently, at the end of ten minutes,
Tristram found himself in irons in the lazarette, condemned to pass
the night with two drunken men, whose snores were almost comforting
in the pitchy darkness; for, as he told himself, human propinquity,
if not exactly sympathy, is the first step towards it.  He had been
listening to this snoring for four hours, when a hatchway above him
was lifted, and a lantern shone down into the lazarette.  It was
carried by a corporal, who came cautiously down the ladder, lighting
the footsteps of an officer who followed and held a handkerchief to
his nose, for the smell of the bilge was overpowering.

"Pah!" exclaimed this officer, as he arrived at the ladder's foot,
and peered around.  "Set the light down on the floor and leave us.
What a hole!"

He waited whilst the corporal re-ascended the ladder and disappeared;
then, picking up the lantern, held it aloft and let its rays shine
full on Tristram's face.

"Ah," he said, after regarding our hero in silence for a few seconds,
"it is unmistakable!"  And with that he sighed heavily.

"Pardon me, sir," said Tristram, "but the sight of me appears to
cause you sorrow."

"On the contrary, it fills me with joy."

"I am glad to hear you say so, because, as I am fastened here in
these irons, it would have been out of my power to relieve you of my
presence.  Since you are glad, however--"

"Unspeakably."

"--You would do me a great favour by saying why."

"Because--look at me, dear lad--because you are my only son!"

"In that I really think you must be mistaken.  There are two
gentlemen yonder in the corner who at present are asleep.  Are you
quite sure one of these is not the object of your search?"

"Quite sure, my dear lad.  It is unmistakable, as I said.  You are
Tristram?"

"I am; though I don't see why it should be unmistakable."

"Those eyes--that voice!  It is impossible you should not be
Margaret's son!"

"My mother's name was Margaret," Tristram answered; "that's true
enough.  She died when I was born."

"Tristram," said his visitor, lowering the lantern and bowing his
head, "I was her unworthy husband, and am your father, Roderick
Salt."

"That would certainly be plausible, but for one difficulty."

"What is it?"

"My father was drowned some months before I was born."

"You are mistaken.  He was partially drowned, but not quite."

"I admit that alters the case."

"Shall I tell you how it happened?"

"By all means, sir; for I think the story must be interesting.
At the same time I ought to warn you that I already possess a father,
on whom you can scarcely improve."

"To whom do you refer?"

"He is called Captain Barker by those who love him less than I."

"Is it he, then, that has brought you up?  Curse him!"

Tristram opened his eyes.  "Why should you curse him?" he asked.

"Because he has stolen your love from me."

"But--excuse me--it is only this moment that I have heard you were
competing for it."

"He has told you evil concerning me."

"On the contrary, he has never uttered your name.  It was my nurse
who told me one day that you were drowned; and even this turns out to
be a mistake, as you were about to prove."

"My son, your words and bearing cut me to the heart.  It is no less
than I have deserved, perhaps; though, could you know all, I am sure
you would judge me leniently.  But at least I can give you some small
proof of my love.  Let me first release you from those irons."

He set the lantern on the floor, drew a small key from his pocket and
unlocked his son's fetters.

"Thank you.  That is decidedly more agreeable," said Tristram,
stretching his stiffened limbs.

"You were suffering before I came?"

"Why, truly," Tristram replied, shrugging his shoulders as he glanced
around; "I find military life duller than I expected.  And since this
is the first night I have spent from home--"

"My poor boy!  Doubtless, too, you were brooding on what would happen
to-morrow morning."

"Say rather on what happened this morning," corrected Tristram, his
thoughts reverting to Sophia.

"But surely the prospect of to-morrow's punishment--"

"Oh, will there be a punishment to-morrow?"

"Why, you kicked a sergeant from one end of his Majesty's ship to the
other! Did you imagine you could do that with impunity?"

"I assure you he deserved it."

"Nevertheless, you would have been flogged on deck to-morrow had I
not come with a pardon."

"You astonish me: and really you have been very kind to me.
Still, it would have been quite unjust."

Captain Salt regarded his son quietly for a moment or two.  In truth
he was somewhat staggered by this simplicity.

"You wish to escape from this service?" he asked.

"I dislike it more and more.  Besides--"

"Tell me your desires; for, believe me, my son, I have no dearer wish
than to further them."

Tristram held out a hand and took his father's.

"Forgive me, sir, for my coldness just now.  Remember that I had
never seen, had scarcely heard of, you before.  You are very good to
me.  I believe, by looking in your eyes, that you love me; and I
believe--I know--that in time I should love you greatly in return.
But you must pardon that which I am going to say.  Sir, I cannot help
loving best those who have dealt lovingly with me all my life.  I was
homesick--" he broke off, as a lump rose in this throat.

"You shall go home," said Captain Salt.

Still holding his hand, Tristram stared at him incredulously.

"Why should you doubt me, my son?  Do you think I despise those
feelings, or can neglect them?  No; I honour them, though bitterly
regretting that, as fate has willed it, they can never be entertained
for me."

"Don't say that, my father."

"Why should I blink the truth?"  Captain Salt turned and brushed away
a fictitious tear.  "No, Tristram; you shall go back to those you
love better.  I only ask you to be patient for a few days; for,
indeed, I have but a certain amount of influence with those who
enlisted you to-day against your will.  Listen.  Early to-morrow the
squadron sets sail.  If the wind holds we shall be within the Maese
by Sunday morning.  As soon as your regiment disembarks you shall be
a free man: for not till then shall I have an opportunity of speaking
with his Majesty.  The squadron will be returning at once to this
port, and I trust you may return with it.  In the meantime you must
give me your word to remain where you are; for though the punishment
is remitted, you are still under arrest.  I have seen your captain,
however, and you will find matters made very light for you.
The sentry will bring you food and drink."

He stopped, for Tristram had fallen on one knee and was passionately
kissing his hand.

"How ill you must think of me!" he murmured; "and how can I thank
you?"

"By keeping one tender thought or two for a father who held aloof
from you, while it was for your good, and came to you when, for the
first time, you wanted him.  Mine has been a hard life, Tristram, and
not altogether a good one.  By asking you to share it, I had done you
Heaven knows what injury."

This was true enough, and it struck the speaker as so pathetic that
he managed even to squeeze up a tear.

"But come," he went on, with a sudden change to vivacity, "tell me
how you happened into this scrape?"

And so, with the lantern between them casting long spokes of light on
the ship's timbers, the rafters and the two drunken sleepers in the
corner, father and son sat and talked for the better part of an hour;
at the end of which time Captain Salt, who dexterously managed to do
nine-tenths of the listening, was pretty well posted in the affairs
of the Blue Pavilions and their inmates, and knew almost as much of
Tristram's past history as if he had spent a day with the
thirty-seven green volumes.  It was past two in the morning when he
arose to return to his own ship.

At parting he kissed Tristram on both cheeks.  "Farewell, dear lad!"
he said, with a manner that was admirably paternal.  "We shall not
meet again till the ships cast anchor in the Maese.  Meanwhile steel
your heart and look forward to a better fortune."

He picked up the lantern and, climbing the ladder, nodded back
reassuringly as he lifted the hatch.  At the same time he was
secretly a good deal perplexed; for in all that he had learnt there
was nothing to throw light on the Earl's words.  "Now, why the devil
is the lad to be looked after?" he wondered.  For in fact Tristram
had said nothing of the inheritance.  And the reason for this was the
very simple one that he himself knew nothing about it, Captain Barker
and Captain Runacles having long ago agreed to keep it a secret from
him until he should come of age.  They had arrived at this resolution
after many weeks of discussion, and beyond a doubt their wisdom had
been justified in the course of the last hour.

There was no perplexity visible, however, in the kindly smile which
Tristram beheld and returned with interest.  A moment after he was
left in blank darkness.  But, being by this time tired out, as well
as greatly comforted, he curled himself up on the bare floor, and
within five minutes had dropped off into a dreamless sleep.

It was morning when he awoke, though he could not tell the hour; for
the only light that reached his prison was filtered through the hatch
above, which somebody had kindly tilted open.  The sounds that woke
him were those of feet moving to and fro in the captain's cabin
overhead, and, far forward in the ship, the clatter of boots as the
soldiers turned out.  He looked about him and made two discoveries.
In the first place, his two drunken companions had vanished, or had
been removed; and secondly, their place was taken by a loaf and a tin
pannikin.

He reached out a hand for these, and began without hesitation the
first meal in his life of which the green volumes were to keep no
record.  With less hunger he might have found it nauseous; for the
bread was incredibly mouldy and had been gnawed all round the crust
by rats, while the liquor in the pannikin was a mixture of fiery rum
and unclean water.  The first gulp fetched the tears; but, after
sputtering a bit, he managed to swallow a good half of it.  As he
breakfasted he heard a deal of muffled shouting above, and then a
distant clanking sound that was unfamiliar.  The _Good Intent_ was
weighing anchor.

These noises, however, did not trouble Tristram, who was minded by
this time to bear his fortune with hardihood.  Only the thought of
Sophia vexed him while he ate, and he sighed once or twice with a
violence that set the rats scampering.  Then it struck him that his
morning prayers were unsaid, and, scrambling on his knees, he
committed himself to the care of Heaven, and afterwards felt still
easier at heart.  Also, being a prudent youth in some respects, he
decided to reserve half of the loaf in case no more should be brought
for the day; and, because his hunger was excessive, it took some time
to decide on the amount to be set aside.  Indeed, he was still
discussing this with himself when the _Good Intent_ shook with the
roar of the royal salute.

For the moment Tristram imagined that he must be in the midst of a
sea-fight at the very leat.  But his apprehensions were presently
distracted by the motions of the ship under him--motions which at
length became erratic and even alarming.  For the _Good Intent_ was
not only heaving up and down, but seemed to be tearing forward in a
series of vehement rushes, with intervals of languid indecision.
Tristram's stomach soon began to abhor these intervals, and in a
little while he found himself wondering to what end he had set aside
half a loaf from his breakfast.  For, as it seemed to him, he was
going to die, and the sooner the better.

"Decidedly,"  he thought, "my breakfast was poisoned, else I could
never feel like this."

The _Good Intent_ took another lurch forward, and a clammy sweat
broke out on both sides of his forehead.

"If I have enemies so wicked," sighed he, "may God forgive them!"
And, uttering this Christian wish, he fell forward with his forehead
against the boards.

A little past noon the sentry brought him a fresh loaf, with a plate
of fat bacon and another pannikin.  The sea being choppy, by this
time the vessel echoed from end to end with groans and lamentations.

"Is it a massacre?"  Tristram asked, sitting up and regarding the man
with wild eyes.  But the sight of the bacon, which was plentifully
doused with vinegar, conquered him afresh.  The sentry chuckled and
went away.

To be short, our hero passed two-and-twenty hours in this extremity
of wretchedness, and was only aroused, early next morning, by a
corporal who thrust his head in at the hatchway and bade him arise
and come on deck with all speed, as the regiment was about to
disembark.  And, as a matter of fact, when Tristram tottered up the
ladder into the fresh air which swept the deck, he found that, though
he had been beyond remarking any difference in the ship's motion, she
was now lying at anchor, and within a cable's length from a desolate
shore, which began in sandhills and ended in mist.

The rain was pouring perpendicularly from a leaden sky and drenching
the decks.  The soldiers, in their great-coats, huddled together as
they waited for the boats, and shrugged their shoulders to keep the
drops from trickling down the napes of their necks.  Somebody gave
Tristram a great-coat and knapsack, and pointed out the group to
which he was to attach himself.  He obeyed, though scarcely aware of
what he did: for his head was light, his hunger was ravenous, and his
legs were trembling beneath him.  A soldier cursed close by, and he
cursed too, echoing the man's words without knowing why.  Another man
slapped him on the back, mistaking him for a crony, and begged his
pardon.  "It really makes no difference," said Tristram politely, and
at once fell to wondering if this remark were absurd or no.  Beyond
the grey veils of rain he spied, now and then, a cluster of red roofs
and a steeple close beside the shore.

"What place is that yonder?" he asked the man who stood at his elbow.

"Vlaardingen," said the fellow gruffly.  It was Sergeant Klomp, and
Tristram turned it over in his mind whether to offer an apology or
no.  While he was still debating, a brisk young officer came along
and called out:

"Get ready, boys.  This is our turn."

In less than a minute after, for no apparent reason, the crowd around
Tristram surged forward to the bulwarks, and he was carried along
with the rush.  Then he found himself swaying unsteadily down a
flight of steps and calling to the men behind not to hustle and
precipitate him into one or other of the two longboats that lay
below.  Into the nearer of these his company swept him, and poured in
at his heels until the gunwale was nearly level with the water.
The rowers pushed off in the nick of time, and pulled their freight
slowly across the sullen tide, while the rain beat down relentlessly.

As they neared the shore, a landing-stage, or low jetty, of sunk
piles disengaged itself from the mist.  This was the sole object that
diversified the melancholy line of sandbanks, and towards it they
were steered, Tristram looking eagerly out under the peak of his cap,
from which a rivulet of water was by this time coursing down his
nose.

Half a dozen grey figures were standing on the jetty, and, as the
soldiers scrambled up its dripping steps, one of them advanced and
touched Tristram by the elbow.  It was his father.

"Safe and sound, my boy?  _Parbleu!_ but it's easy to see you're no
accomplished sailor; but that's all the better."

Tristram was feeling too faint to contest this, though it appeared to
him to be disputable.

"Let us get ahead of this mob," his father went on.  "Come, use your
best foot--it's no great distance."

He struck off the sodden track and dived into the mist, Tristram
following close at his heels.  Their way lay over hillocks and
hollows of sand in which they sank ankle-deep at every step.
In two minutes they lost sight of the regiment, and were walking with
their faces set, as it seemed, towards a wall of grey atmosphere,
impenetrable by the eye.  After five minutes of this Tristram
groaned.  He had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and his limbs
were weak as water.

"Courage, my son! A few paces more."

Almost as he spoke a building loomed out of the mist, and they found
themselves before a doorway, over which hung the sign of "The Four
Seasons."  A sentry, who stood beside the entrance, presented arms
and let them pass.  Captain Salt led the way indoors and up a rickety
staircase to the right, on the first landing of which they found two
pages in waiting.

"Say that Captain Salt desires to see his Majesty."

One of the pages tapped at the door, and, having delivered the
message, commanded them to enter.  The place in which Tristram now
found himself was a low-browed room, smelling highly of sawdust and
stale tobacco.  It was bisected by a long table of clean white deal,
at the end of which were seated three gentlemen whose attire bespoke
a considerable estate.  All three looked up as the pair entered, and
in the centre our hero at once recognised his Majesty, with the Earl
of Marlborough upon his left hand, and upon his right a general of a
plain but shrewd and honest countenance, who glanced at Captain Salt
for a moment and resumed the writing upon which he was engaged.

King Willliam set down the bundle of papers that he had been conning
with a sour expression, as if tasting bad wine, and ordered the
Captain to come forward, which he did, with a profound salute.

"I have examined the lists, Captain Salt.  They tally with other
information which my admirals and generals have been able to give me;
though, as they have not your advantages, their knowledge is of
necessity scantier."

Beneath his words there lurked a contempt which made the Captain
wince.

"Your Majesty, I have endeavoured to do my duty--such as it is."

"You say well.  The disgrace lies with those who make it necessary."

"I am glad your Majesty should regard it in that light."

"Rest assured that I do, and admit the magnitude of the service you
have done us.  I understand you have come for your reward."

"Say rather that I have brought it."

"Explain yourself."

"I ask no reward, your Majesty, but the discharge of this young
recruit." As he spoke Captain Salt drew Tristram forward from the
doorway, where he was standing awkwardly.

"This is very extraordinary.  I expected some request for money, I
will confess."

"There are some things which rank above money," said the Captain with
feeling.

"We are told so," replied William drily.  "But might I ask for an
instance or two?"

"There is paternal love.  Your Majesty, this young man is my son."
The Captain, at this point, brushed away a tear with the back of his
hand.

"Why--but surely I remember his face?"

"That is probable: for you yourself, sire, did him the honour to
enlist him, no longer ago than last Friday."

"I remember the occasion.  But it did not then appear--at least, to
my recollection--that he was a son of yours, Captain Salt."

"Will your Majesty be good enough to note the likeness between us?"

"I do not doubt your word.  I merely remark that the two gentlemen
who then interceded for him omitted to mention his parentage."

"Their names, I believe--"

"They were two gallant but wrong-headed gentlemen of his late
Majesty's navy--Captain John Barker and Captain Jeremiah Runacles."

"It is to those gentlemen, who have guarded him from his infancy,
that I would restore this young man."

"This is very magnanimous conduct."

"A father, sire, may for his son's good disregard his own yearnings.
I would, with permission, escort him back to Harwich and assure
myself of his happiness.  Your Majesty need have no doubt of my
return with the next transport."

"Indeed, Captain Salt, I myself should advise you, for your own
safety, to be out of the way until this small storm has blown over.
Present yourself as soon as you return.  Sir," he continued,
addressing Tristram, "you are discharged from my service, which, I
must say, has not bettered your looks.  Return to your guardians and,
if they will allow you, cultivate some small amount of loyalty."

"I thank your Majesty very heartily," Tristram replied ingenuously,
"and I regret if the plant has, until now, found no place in our
garden."

"The squadron will sail again for England at midnight," said William
with a faint smile; then, turning to the Earl of Marlborough, "My
lord, will you write out the order?"

At this moment one of the pages entered with a note for the King.

"Let him come in," said William, after opening it and running his eye
over the contents; then, addressing Captain Salt, "I fear this puts
an end to our conversation for the time.  If you will wait below, the
necessary papers shall be brought to you.  Farewell, young man; and
when you embrace them, assure Captain Barker and Captain Runacles
that I have still some hope of their finding a better mind."

They bowed and withdrew, giving place to the newcomer, who entered at
that moment--an old gentleman in a suit of dark blue edged with
silver.  As he passed them in the doorway his eyes scanned Tristram
narrowly, and he appeared to hesitate for a moment as if desirous of
putting a question to the youth.

Unconscious of this look, Tristram followed his father down the
stairs of the auberge.  They had hardly reached the bottom, however,
when a voice called from the landing above, and the Earl of
Marlborough descended after them.

"Here are the papers," he said.  "But, young sir, would you mind
waiting here for a minute or two while I speak with your father in
private?"

With this he opened a door upon the left and led the way through a
dark passage to a covered skittle-alley at the back of the house.
It was a deserted and ramshackle arcade and offered the poorest cover
from the rain, which dripped through the roof and drifted under the
eaves.  The skittles lay here and there, as if the last player, weary
of the game, had been tossing them about at haphazard.  Here the Earl
paused, looked around him, and began in a low voice.

"My friend, I regret to perceive that you begin to act without
instructions."

"In what way?"

"You propose to return at once to Harwich with this son of yours."

"Certainly, my lord.  It appears to me that I have deserved a holiday
by this week's work."

"You shall take one; but not at Harwich just yet."

"And why not at Harwich?"

"For two reasons.  In the first place you do no good, but harm, in
returning thither at this moment.  Understand that I am only asking
you to defer the visit for a week or two.  At present I am awaiting
certain necessary information, without which you will hardly lay your
hands on the good fortune I intend for you."

"You are mysterious, my lord.  This boy of mine--"

"Will bring you wealth and dignity, I promise, if you allow me to
conduct the affair.  If not--"

"What is the other reason?"

"The other reason," replied the Earl, looking down and moving a
skittle gently with the toe of his boot--"the other reason is that I
require you to spend the first part of your holiday elsewhere."

"Where may that be?"

"At Saint Germains."

"My lord, you risk my neck with much composure!"

"There is no risk at all, unless--"

"Pray finish your sentence."

"--Unless you refuse," said the Earl significantly.

"Proceed, my lord." Captain Salt's face flushed scarlet; then a sweat
broke out on his temples, where an instant before the veins had
swelled with rage.

"There is nothing to prevent your starting at once.  You have altered
the fuses, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"And made all the arrangements?"

"Nothing is omitted.  The guns will be fired twenty minutes too soon,
at ten minutes after nine.  As William knows nothing about the
signal, and has made his dispositions for half-past nine, the poor
fellows will have some fun for their pains, after all."

"Excellent!" said the Earl smiling.  "It only remains for you to
start.  Here are the papers; I advise you to keep them carefully
sorted.  This, in cipher, is for James.  It is full of promises; and
in addition, to keep his spirits up, you can give him an account of
the mutiny, pointing out how near it came to success.  A boat shall
take you to Sevenbergen; after that you know the road--the usual one.
The word is _Modena_.  You will take your son with you, of course,
and persuade him (if you can) that he is travelling back to Harwich
by the shortest road."

"That will be difficult."

"From Paris return to Dunkirk, and there await a letter from me.
By that time I hope to be able to send you information, on the
strength of which you may at once sail for Harwich.  Meanwhile guard
that young man as the apple of your eye. . . ."

We will return to the subject of this amiable advice.  Tristram had
been kicking his heels for ten minutes or more in the draughty
passage, and wondering if he should ever know the taste of food
again, when the door opened on the landing above, and the old
gentleman in blue and silver descended the stairs from his audience.
He was clearly in something of a hurry, and strode past our hero as
if unaware of his presence, but turned on his heel at the end of the
passage and came swiftly back.

"I ask your pardon, young man," he began, in a quick, foreign voice,
"but I thought I heard his Majesty speaking to you of a Captain
Runacles as I entered the room.  Forgive me if I seem too
inquisitive, but do you happen to know Captain Jeremiah Runacles?"

"I know no reason, sir, against my answering.  I know him well, and
love him."

"Ha? Where does he live?"

"In Harwich."

"He keeps hale?"

"In excellent health for his age."

"Could he still answer for himself with a small-sword?--I mean not
with a young adversary, but, say, with a man of my age?"

"I have not the slightest doubt of it, sir." Tristram stared at the
old gentleman, who was of a tall unwieldy figure, short bull neck and
choleric complexion.

"You will see him again shortly?"

"With God's help I shall see him in three days' time."

"Then I'd be obliged by your taking him a message from me.  Tell him,
sir, that I, Captain Van Adrienssen, may be heard of at The Hague at
any time, and have not forgotten a certain promise of his (to cut my
comb) which he uttered at one time when our ships lay alongside off
the Texel.  Assure him that, though night parted us, I still retain
the boot which he flung at my head and into my ship.  Say that I have
been waiting ever since for the man who fits that boot, and warn him
that we are both well stricken in years and have little time left in
which to try conclusions.  You have that by heart?"

"Yes, sir."

"Repeat it."

Tristram did so.

"Very well; now be careful to deliver it."

And, nodding his head sharply, the old gentleman hurried away on his
business just as the Earl and Captain Salt returned from their
colloquy.



CHAPTER IX.


THE FOUR MEN AT THE "WHITE LAMB".

"Well, my son," began Captain Salt, as the Earl reascended the
stairs.  "Thanks be that we are alone together at last!  Do I not
keep my promises?"

"Indeed, father, you are kind.  There is only one thing--"

"What is that?"

"I should prefer to return to Harwich alive; and seeing that I have
eaten nothing for a day and a half--"

His father interrupted him by taking his arm and hurrying him off to
the kitchen of the auberge, where a fat woman was basting a couple of
ducks before a roaring fire.

"Pardon me, mistress," he began in Dutch; "but can you give this
young man a breakfast?"

The hostess seemed to be annoyed.

"What does he want?" she inquired sharply.

The question being interpreted to Tristram, he answered that he
wanted everything, but that in the meantime the ducks would serve to
break the edge of his fast.

"But these are for his Majesty."

"What have you besides?"

"Salt fish."

"I will begin with salt fish."

"Bacon."

"I see," said Tristram, nodding up at a regiment of hams that
depended from a rack overhead; "I will eat these also.  What else?"

"Cheese."

"On second thoughts, I will begin with cheese while the fish is being
prepared.  Is that all?"

"Mother of God!  Is it not enough?"

"How can I tell yet?  Let me see your bread and cheese."

The woman left her ducks, and in a minute had dumped down a loaf and
a huge round cheese of an orange colour before our hero.

"When do we start?" he asked, with his mouth full.

"Shortly after dark."

"Then I have plenty of time."

"I should hope so.  Hostess, bring a bottle of wine."

"Two bottles," Tristram interrupted.

"It will get into your head."

"I hope so, for my head is something light at present."

"You propose, then, to spend the day in eating and drinking?"

"Unless you know of some better amusement with which we can beguile
the time."

"None whatever.  And as I must leave you for some time while I make
arrangements for our return--"

"I shall not be lonely," said Tristram, with a glance at the ducks,
followed by an upward look of resignation directed at the rows of
hams.

It was dark when Captain Salt returned, and found his son on the
settle where he had left him.  Tristram was not sitting, however, but
stretched at length and breathing heavily.  At the farther end of the
table sat the host and hostess of the inn, engaged in making out the
bill.

"One--two--three--six bottles!" exclaimed his father, counting the
ruins on the board.  "Why, the boy is drunk!"

"No, father," Tristram interrupted, sitting up and rubbing his eyes;
"not so much drunk as asleep, and not so much asleep but that I could
see the landlord here add three empty bottles to the two I had
finished, without counting one that came full to the table and was
emptied by him for his supper."

Captain Salt shot a searching glance at the couple, who coloured and
seemed confused.

"What is this?" he cried, examining the reckoning.  "Two ducks!"

"Ah, I'm afraid it is true that I ate one of the ducks."

"But they were for his Majesty!"

"It appears they were cooked on the chance of pleasing his Majesty,
who left, however, without inquiring for them.  The landlord and his
wife have just eaten the other.  Is it time to start?"

"Yes."

Tristram jumped up and stretched himself, smiling amiably on the host
and hostess, who returned his look with no very good will.  Captain
Salt, having made the proper deductions calmly, paid the reckoning,
and they left the house.

Outside the weather was still dirty, and a wind, which had gradually
risen since the morning, blew in their faces charged with chilly
moisture.  The mist, however, had cleared a little, and Tristram, as
he rammed his hat tightly on his head before facing the night, could
see the lights of the squadron far out upon the black and broken
waters of the Maese.

"In what ship do we return?" he asked.

The wind apparently drowned his question; for Captain Salt started
off without replying and led the way down across the sandbanks.
It seemed to Tristram that their path lay to the left of that by
which they had approached the inn early in the morning.  He was
straining his eyes on the look out for the wooden landing-stage, when
suddenly, on climbing a ridge somewhat higher than the rest, he saw
the white fringe of the waves glimmering close under his feet and the
inky shadow of a boat, in which sat a couple of dark forms.  One of
them, hearing the low whistle uttered by Captain Salt, scrambled
forward to the bows and held out a hand.

Tristram looked at his father, who nodded.  They entered the boat in
silence, and within a minute were being rowed rapidly across the
tide.  It struck our hero that the oars made remarkably little noise,
in spite of the energy with which they were plied.  He was about to
speak, but checked himself on seeing his father raise a finger to his
lips.  "What is the meaning of this?" he wondered.  His enormous meal
had made him drowsy; and deciding that, if not allowed to speak, he
might at least nod, he closed his eyes.

He opened them again with a start.  From the shore behind them the
roar of guns had just burst out upon the night.

This was his first impression; but the sound was not repeated, and in
a moment or two he fancied he must have been dreaming of the salute
he had heard in the lazarette of the _Good Intent_, as the squadron
sailed out of Harwich.  The boat was still moving with unabated
speed, and the dark, choppy water stretched all round them.
Through the murky night the ships' lanterns still shone steadily
enough, but farther off than before, and at a sharp angle behind his
right shoulder.

"It seems we are not steering very straight for the fleet," he could
not help remarking.

"We are not steering for the fleet," said his father.

"But I thought--"

He broke off as a series of sharp flashes danced out in the distance,
followed by the rattle of musketry and a dull, confused shouting.

"You perceive," Captain Salt remarked, "that the squadron is not the
safest means of reaching Harwich."

"What are they doing out there?"

"They are killing each other."

"That sounds very unpleasant."

"And as the night is too dark to distinguish faces with any
certainty, I thought you would prefer to go home by another way."

"A longer way?"

"It is certainly a trifle longer; but then, as it won't expose you to
the risk of being killed--"

"That's true.  I won't grudge the time."

The explosions of musketry, meanwhile, had been following each other
faster and faster, and at length became incessant.

"Bravo!" muttered Captain Salt to himself; "this will take some time
to quell."

"What did you say?"

"I was thinking, my son, that 'tis lucky you have somebody to look
after you."

Tristram sought for his father's hand and pressed it.  "I am not
ungrateful, as you think."

"Why should I think so?  You will have more yet to thank me for, I
hope."

The boat at this moment swung to the left, around a sandy promontory
that hid the jets of firearms behind them; but waves of light still
flickered across the black sky and the shouting still went on, though
growing fainter as they hurried forward.  By one of the flashes, more
vivid than the rest and accompanied by the crackle of a whole volley,
Tristram saw that the boat was now being propelled down a narrow
channel, both shores of which he could just perceive across the
gloom.

Captain Salt suddenly raised both hands to his mouth, and hollowing
the palms, uttered three mournful cries, long and loud, like the
wailing of a gull.

Within half a minute the sound was echoed back from the darkness on
the right shore, for which the boat immediately headed.  After thirty
strokes Tristram felt the sand rub beneath the keel, and they came to
a stand.

"Show the light!" his father called, jumping out into the water that
hardly covered the insteps of his riding-boots.

The red glow of a lantern appeared as if by magic, and revealed a man
standing but twenty yards ahead on a gentle slope of sand.  He held
the lantern in one hand, and his right arm was slipped through the
bridles of two horses that waited, side by side, and ready saddled,
their breath smoking out on the night wind.

"Dear me," Captain Salt observed, reaching a hand to Tristram, and
helping him to land; "I forgot to ask if you could ride."

"A very little, my father."

"You will find it difficult, then, to trot.  Therefore we will
gallop."

"You intend me to climb upon one of these beasts?"

"That is easy enough."

"I do not deny it; but I suppose you also wish me to stay on."

"Come; we must lose no time."

"Luckily the soil of Holland, as far as I am acquainted with it, is
soft and sandy.  On the other hand--"

"Well?"

"I was about to remark that they grow an immense quantity of tulips
in this country, which demand a harder soil."

"We shall pass none."

"That is fortunate.  For when I reach home and they ask me,
'Well, what have you done in Holland?' it would be sad to own,
'I have done little beyond rolling on a bed of tulips.'"

With this he climbed into the saddle and thrust his feet well into
the stirrups, while his father whispered a word or two to the
boatmen, who were about to push off on their return journey.

"Are you ready, my son?" he asked, returning and mounting beside him.

"Quite."

"Forward, then!"

The two horses broke into a trot.  "Ugh," exclaimed Tristram, bobbing
up and down.

"I told you we must go faster.  Stick your knees tightly into the
saddle--so."

The wind and the night began to race by Tristram's ears as his horse
leapt forward.  The motion became easier, but the pace was terrifying
to a desperate degree; for it seemed that he sat upon nothing, but
was being whirled through the air as from a catapult at the heels of
his father, who pounded furiously through the darkness a dozen
yards ahead.  For three minutes at least he felt at every stride an
extreme uncertainty as to his chances of realighting in the saddle.
It reminded him of cup-and-ball, and he reflected with envy that the
ball in that game is always attached to the cup with a string.

At the end of ten minutes Captain Salt reined up, and Tristram's
horse, after being carried past for twenty yards by his mere impetus,
stopped of his own accord and to his rider's intense satisfaction.

"Look," said the Captain, pointing to the sky behind them, which was
now illumined by a broad scarlet glare.

"What is that?"

"One of the ships on fire."

"Then I am better off where I am."

"Did you doubt it?"

"I was beginning to. . . . How much farther must we ride?"

"Two leagues."

Tristram groaned, and they set off again, but more slowly, for the
road now was paved with bricks instead of the loose sand over which
they had travelled hitherto, and moreover it ran, without fence or
parapet, along the top of a formidable dyke, the black waters of
which far beneath him caused Tristram the most painful apprehension.
Captain Salt, guessing this, slackened the pace to a walk.  The glare
still reddened the sky behind: but either the firing had ceased or
they had passed beyond sound of it.  At any rate, they heard only the
water lapping in the dykes and the wind that howled over the wastes
around.

Tristram had long since lost his hat, and his nose was bleeding from
a sharp blow against his horse's neck.  He was trying to stanch the
flow when the chimes of a clock pealed down the wind from somewhere
ahead and upon his right.  His father halted again, and after
scanning the gloom for a minute uttered again the three calls that
were like the wailing of a gull.

Again the signal was answered, this time from their left, and the
spark of a lantern appeared.  "Dismount, my son," said the Captain,
setting the example and leading his horse by the bridle towards the
light; "we leave our horses here."

"For others?"

"No, for a canal-boat."

"This country may be flat," thought Tristram; "but decidedly the
travelling is not monotonous."

As he drew near the lantern, he saw indeed that they were on the edge
of a canal, wherein lay a long black barge, with a boy on horseback
waiting on the tow-path, a little ahead of it.  On the barge's deck
by the tiller an immensely fat boatman leant and smoked his pipe,
which he withdrew placidly from his lips as Captain Salt gave the
password to the man with the lantern and handed over the smoking
horses.

"_Modena!_"

The fat man spat, stood upright and prepared for business as the
passengers stumbled on board.  Not a word more was spoken until
Tristram found himself in a long, low cabin divided

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/19977